Religious Activism and Social Change in Postwar America
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The Politics of Conscience: Religious Activism and Social Change in Postwar America The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Bohlen, Casey. 2016. The Politics of Conscience: Religious Activism and Social Change in Postwar America. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:33840751 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA The Politics of Conscience: Religious Activism and Social Change in Postwar America A dissertation presented by Casey Bohlen to The History Department in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of History Harvard University Cambridge, MA May 2016 © 2016 Casey Bohlen All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Lizabeth Cohen Casey Bohlen The Politics of Conscience: Religious Activism and Social Change in Postwar America ABSTRACT This dissertation is a history of the post-World War II United States religious left, from its birth in the early Cold War through its twilight in the mid-1970s. Although the study of religion and politics is flourishing, recent scholarship has overwhelmingly focused on the Christian right and the resurgence of American evangelicalism. Yet Jewish, Catholic, and ecumenical Protestant activists were key players in the mid-century political left, from nuns staging interracial sit-ins in the middle of Chicago’s busiest intersections to rabbis and ministers running the nation’s largest illegal abortion referral network. Focusing on the work of activist clergy and religious youth, this project explains why such a diverse group of believers took to the streets in the name of conscience, what impact their activism had on public life, and why their influence withered in the last third of the twentieth century. It locates the origins of the postwar religious left - counterintuitively - in the Cold War religious revival of the 1950s; demonstrates how interfaith activism helped to transform postwar liberalism from a technocratic project to a moral crusade; and shows how mass disaffiliation in the 1970s undermined the religious left’s national resources at the same moment that Christian conservatives were experiencing a renaissance, leading to their eclipse in the public eye. In the process, it reveals how deeply interfaith activism has shaped left-liberal politics and policy-making in the modern United States, as well as how movements for social justice have transformed American faith traditions in turn. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................... V ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................ VI INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER ONE To Serve God And Country: Postwar Religious Thought And The Call To Social Action ......... 23 CHAPTER TWO Empowering The Faithful: Postwar Growth And The Institutional Foundations Of New-Breed Activism ........................................................................................................................................ 63 CHAPTER THREE To ‘Arouse The Dozing Conscience Of The Nation’: The Civil Rights Movement And The Rise Of New-Breed Activism ............................................................................................................. 113 CHAPTER FOUR “Let Him Join The Devil”: Interreligious Conflict And Civil Rights In The Urban North ........ 163 CHAPTER FIVE The Religious Crusade For Abortion Reform: A Shifting Model Of Activism And A Rising Political Tide ............................................................................................................................... 220 CHAPTER SIX Beyond Church Walls: The Fate Of The Postwar American Religious Left .............................. 260 EPILOGUE ................................................................................................................................. 307 BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................................... 312 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Percentage of Americans Affiliated with a Religious Institution, 1920-1963 .............. 69 Figure 2: Annual Denominational Revenue, 1930-1963 .............................................................. 70 Figure 3: Annual Value of New Religious Construction, 1920-1963 .......................................... 71 Figure 4: President Kennedy Receives a Historic Torah from RAC Representatives ................ 111 Figure 5: Campuses of Origin for Spectrum '66 Participants ..................................................... 180 Figure 6: Religious Identification of CCCO Delegates .............................................................. 183 Figure 7: Press Coverage of Religious Arrests in Willis Demonstrations, June 12, 1965 ......... 185 Figure 8: White Counter-Protesters, July 31, 1966..................................................................... 195 Figure 9: Marquette Park March, August 5, 1966 ...................................................................... 196 Figure 10: Editorial Cartoon in The New World, August 5, 1966 .............................................. 200 Figure 11: Percentage of Americans Affiliated with a Religious Institution, 1960-1980 .......... 267 Figure 12: Percentage of Americans Attending Religious Services Weekly, 1954-1976 .......... 268 Figure 13: Annual Value of New Religious Construction, 1964-1980 ...................................... 270 Figure 14: Reasons for Religious Disaffiliation, 1978 ............................................................... 274 Figure 15: Church Attendance by Age Group, 1958-1971 ......................................................... 276 Figure 16: Confidence in Select American Institutions, 1978 .................................................... 280 Figure 17: Protestant Membership Trends, 1960-1980 .............................................................. 301 Figure 18: Protestant Revenue Trends, 1960-1980..................................................................... 301 v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Historians rarely share academic authorship, but if we followed the example of the sciences, our bylines would break records. First and foremost, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the members of my dissertation committee, who were all unceasingly generous with their time, advice, and critical feedback. The fingerprints of my advisor, Lizabeth Cohen, are all over this dissertation, from the minutiae of word choice to the grand sweep of the argument. I refer back to her margin notes on a daily basis, the bold strokes of her pen striking out unnecessary hyphens and pushing me towards sharper reasoning and greater economy of language. I will never understand how she carved out so much time for her students while serving as Dean, but I am eternally grateful that she did. Jim Kloppenberg’s near-miraculous ability to conjure up grand insights out of mundane details is unparalleled. Entire sections of this dissertation sprang from of the seeds of his passing comments, and our conversations in his office were among the most intellectually invigorating experiences of all of graduate school. Lisa McGirr knows more about modern social movements than any other human being on the planet, and insofar as I successfully connected the work of grassroots actors to larger patterns of social change, it was through her influence and scholarly example. Curtis Evans warmly welcomed me into the academic community at the University of Chicago’s Divinity School, and then went above and beyond by agreeing to serve as my outside reader. His expertise in the history of religion was invaluable, as was his constant encouragement of the project. My interest in this research topic stretches back to my time as an undergraduate at Brown University, when Robert Self first encouraged me to explore the history of the religious left and vi Luther Spoehr shepherded my sprawling interests into a more succinct thesis on Father Robert Drinan, the first Catholic priest elected to Congress. Along the way, many talented librarians and archivists pushed my research down avenues that I could never have found on my own. Special thanks go to Mary Richardson and the rest of the staff at Yale Divinity Library, who spent an entire summer digging invaluable material out of unprocessed archives on my behalf. I was only able to take advantage of their hard work through the generous financial support of Harvard’s Department of History, the Charles Warren Center for the Study of American History, the Center for American Political Studies, and the beneficence of Ambassador John J. Loeb, Jr. Early drafts of this dissertation were improved greatly with the help of professional feedback from fellow scholars. I am deeply indebted to Nancy Cott, Dan McKanan, K. Healan Gaston, Michelle Nickerson, Daniel Horowitz, and Kathryn Lofton for their generous advice and feedback at various stages of this process. Andy Jewett deserves special thanks