Tells the Facts and Names the Names

Dec. 16-31, 2010 Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair vol. 17, no. 22 A Brief Word on Expect to be surprised, and expect it fairly soon: the several calamities of President G.W. Bush and the fum- the bling of President Obama have opened the doors for a By Alexander Cockburn new alignment. added up in our intellectual backpacks, ideas that should How Religious Awakenings be explosive get damp and moldy.W Too often, we leftists slog along history’s highway with stale, uncombus- Presage Radical Reforms tible stuff. Heading into 2011 we give over By Mason Gaffney this issue of our newsletter to Mason Gaffney’s bracing excursion through efore there were a U.S.A. and a has been too easy to slip into an alliance America’s Great Awakenings. To many First Amendment, church and with landowners. on the left the topic of religion these days state were intertwined in Western Rome coopted successive new grass- is explored overwhelmingly in terms of Europe,B whence came most of our tradi- roots monastic orders into acting as quavering alarums about the Christian tions. Kings and cardinals vied for pri- Roman agents: Cluniacs, Cistercians, right. Gaffney challenges this patronizing macy, but joined in overawing and domi- Benedictines, Carthusians, Franciscans, perspective. nating others. Both royalists and clerics Dominicans, Jesuits, et al., went through Readers will note references to Henry were major landowners, at the tip of the somewhat parallel evolutions from their George, a leading thinker, writer, and po- geocracy. They worked together to ratio- ascetic, abnegant, pietistic origins in litical activist when Populism was new nalize and sanctify landownership based protest against clerical ritualism, hierar- and later, as it merged into Progressivism. on conquest, chicane, fraud, slavery, debt chy, luxury and wealth. Troubadours and He began as a muckraking San Francisco slavery, prison labor, male chauvinism, Minnesingers could distract and bypass journalist documenting the outrageous imprisonment, ethnic bias, genocide, censors with tales of romance and scan- railroad land-grant scandals. He moved murder by burning, drowning, torture dal and tragedy, arts that flourish today, to and rose to fame writing and other barbaric acts, witch-hunting, but fail to prepare the ground for practi- for The Irish World on land monopoly, primogeniture, entail, confiscation, exile, cal reforms. Jews, carriers of the parent rackrenting and political suppression in etc. Missionaries supported imperialists religion with its egalitarianism, wrapped Ireland. He taught himself classical eco- abroad, and shared in their power and in its own language and mysteries, made nomics and published his classic Progress wealth, even owning slaves. Centuries of a special and important case, too com- and Poverty. struggle against Islam shaped Christian plex to sum up fairly in a few words. The George held that we can right the fanaticism, especially in Spain, Austria bred Chivalric Orders, some of wrongs of the land-grant giveaways most and Russia, and less extremely in all the which went into banking and grew too simply and expeditiously and legally by Crusading states. rich and powerful for their own survival. levying heavier taxes based on the value At home, however, heretics were On the good side, churches tempered of land. He taught that in the absence of more dangerous than infidels. Ruling the harshness of class exploitation with such taxation the original unequal distri- geocrats feared and persecuted egalitar- charity, welfare and education. Cynically, bution of land would simply magnify it- ian heretics like Anabaptists, Diggers, however, one might see it as a good cop/ self, leading to the kinds of extreme class Levelers, Lollards, Hussites and bad cop act. The education inherently en- divisions that menace us today. Taborites, Albigensians, tailed some self-enhancement. Churches History springs endless surprises. Jeff (Vaudois), Bogomils, Cathari, Donatists sought a monopoly of this, as the Vatican Halper suggested as much in this news- and Circumcellians, Humiliati, Poor did more recently under its 1933 concor- letter, two issues ago, apropos Israel and Men of Lyons, Calvinists, , et dat with Hitler. Currently in Alabama, Palestine. Now Gaffney challenges us to al. Calvinists in France evolved from an many conservative Southern Baptist think freshly about the intellectual and early alliance with laborers to a later al- Churches are at war with Christian tax religious motors of our history and fu- liance with merchants and probably in- reformer Susan Pace Hamill who would ture. On into 2011 with fresh stuff in our dustrialists. They recognized saving as make state taxes less regressive, in ways backpacks! CP a virtue worthy of reward. From there it that churches could not control and cap dec. 16-31, 2010 as they can their voluntary “charity.” A leading universities originated as semi- Jonathan Edwards was actually quite in- federal counterpart is former President naries), but the demand for preachers tellectual, but he excelled at playing on George H.W. Bush, with his “thousand exceeded the supply of educated ones, emotions. His “Sinners in the Hands of points of light” to displace Social Security so nearly anyone moved by the spirit, an Angry God” is a classic of hellfire and and other Federal welfare programs. or even by earthlier motives, could set damnation, with no hint of his scientific Again, on the good side, church texts up a church. So, naturally, there was an interests. If Edwards was just a tool of (to the extent laymen can and will read element of protest against established the eastern establishment, opiating the them) abound with egalitarian and dis- churches and the society they repre- masses, he did a very convincing job of it! tributive sentiments, as in Exodus and sented, and anti-intellectualism accom- The Awakening may have renewed Leviticus; as in The Prophets, especially panied protest, as did a growing sense interest in missionary work, but fron- Amos and Isaiah; and, as in the of American unity. Revivals transcended tier people were at the cutting edge of of . There have been dozens of uto- sectarian barriers. Traditional differences conflict with Indians, and bitter about pian colonies with some such religious waned; pluralism and tolerance waxed. it. Some eastern geocrats supported the basis, from the smallest sects up to re- Revivalism came out of many churches. Indians in order to close the frontier gional powers like Puritan New England, The colonies soon owned a common re- and keep cheap labor at home. As a re- Quaker Pennsylvania, and the Mormon ligious experience, one that prepared the sult, bigotry against the aborigines was State of Deseret. Religious blacks have way for the common identification nec- a dominant feeling, at odds with the so- likened themselves to Hebrew slaves essary for a successful revolution. phisticated tolerance more fashionable fleeing Pharaoh. There were, of course, Democracy was another byproduct of on the eastern seaboard. currents and countercurrents, rebellions this ferment. The Awakening elevated The played a main and repressions, reforms and reactions, the common man and woman. Religion role leading to success in the American filling many tomes. Struggles inside and now extended far beyond the wealthy, Revolution. Britannia ruled the waves among churches mirrored class struggles as in Virginia, or the church member, and occupied our eastern port cities, in politics, a series of long and fascinat- as in New England. All persons, regard- but never the hinterlands, where they ing stories. less of wealth, status or education, could lost many battles and skirmishes. After The find religion. Sinners could put the past losses down south at Cowpens and behind them, in an instant of conversion. Kings Mountain and Eutaw Springs, they We begin our story here, in the English The revival made experience the defini- had to retreat, ultimately to the trap at colonies of North America, with the tive factor in faith, the self-authenticating Yorktown. Frontiersmen completed their Great Awakening in the frontiers and religious “experience” of being “saved,” or victory in the Jeffersonian revolution backwoods, from about 1740. These “born again,” or baptized, “washed in the that unleashed westward expansion from regions were relatively unchurched. blood of the lamb.” Evangelicals sought Hamiltonian constraints. Established eastern churches monopo- and welcomed newcomers and gave them Jefferson was a Piedmont geocrat him- lized seminary training (many of today’s status: all souls were equal in the sight of self, positioned to link East and West, God. Anyone could be pious and spiri- North and South. Religiously he was a tual, and judged by that merit. Piety did Deist, an intellectual. But as author of the not necessarily entail being abstemious Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, EDITORS or humanitarian. Tobacco and whiskey and then the First Amendment, he con- Alexander Cockburn and pelts were major frontier products. firmed the autonomy and legitimized the Jeffrey St. Clair Hunting, fishing, and Indian-fighting preaching of frontier primitives – at that ASSISTANT EDITOR were basic activities. As to personal hab- time meaning and Methodists, Alevtina Rea its, the frontier produced and reveled in in large part. He started the seculariza- tobacco and whiskey. tion of higher education by founding the BUSINESS The Awakening also fostered the idea University of Virginia and West Point. Becky Grant of separating church and state. Emphasis History has its ironies. Jefferson and Deva Wheeler on a personal conversion meant indi- his First Amendment liberated Baptists DESIGN viduals could find salvation. A specific from old mainline churches and es- Tiffany Wardle church- or state-recognized corporate tablished the separation of church and body was dispensable. Theologically, state. It was a new concept then, being COUNSELOR the Awakening led to an emphasis on vigorously contested today by Southern Ben Sonnenberg the subjective, the personal conversion, Baptists. (Church-owned buildings re- 1937-2010 not the institutional church. Just how mained tax-exempt, along with church- far this went depended on the evange- yards, church cemeteries, and now com- CounterPunch list. Jonathan Edwards, famous frontier mercial cemeteries, church parking lots P.O. Box 228 spellbinder, was a college man himself. used once a week, and church specula- Petrolia, CA 95558 Yet, he said he would “rather have one tions “for future expansion.”) 1-800-840-3683 word, one sentence from the Word of The [email protected] God, behind his conversion than all the The Second Great Awakening, ca. www.counterpunch.org theologians of the last 1,000 years giving 1810-60, reached its peak in “burned- All rights reserved. him an interpretation of his experience.” over” western NY and northeastern

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Ohio, territory that the Erie Canal by allying with new colleges funded by how both cities and states depended opened for a new wave of more in- robber barons. The Chautauqua move- more heavily on the property tax in the tensified settlement. It led to a strong ment extended science and culture to Progressive Era than ever before or after- Women’s Rights movement (Seneca Falls the masses. Imported German ideas ward. Convention, 1848), Mormonism (which of Sozialekonomie swayed the new Some Catholics sought to join the left New York but flourished out west), American Economic Association. Some Populist revolt. It was high time: most the Church of Christ, the Disciples of new academic economists, like R.T. Ely Catholics were blue-collar newcomers, Christ, and, above all, Abolition, leading and J.B. Clark, joined in to burnish their among the most exploited Americans. to the Civil War. John Brown became the credentials as liberals, even while focus- Irish Americans were boiling with tip of this iceberg. Women were promi- ing their efforts on sabotaging the sin- resentment against the Protestant nent: Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle gle tax, which was otherwise a pillar of Ascendancy, the name for the landlords Tom’s Cabin, and Union troops marched Progressivism. in Ireland. Rome, however, was preoc- to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” by In the Civil War, Baptists had split cupied with combating the Risorgimento Julia Ward Howe. Irish Catholics rose North and South, a division that has in Italy and retaining the Papal States. in public esteem with the successes of never healed. Northern Baptists pro- (From 1846-78, Rome – the Vatican – dashing General Philip Sheridan, until duced extremes like the arch robber meant Pius IX aka Pio Nono, longest- in 1870, at the , baron John D. Rockefeller and the liberal reigning pope in Church history. Winds Catholic leaders under the embattled theologian Harry Emerson Fosdick, but of change buffeted him for decades, Pius IX, with seriously flawed timing, the more numerous Southern Baptists making him doggedly conservative.) To chose the moment to declare the Pope defended and idealized antebellum so- court English support in Italy, as well as “infallible.” This stirred up anti-Catholic ciety and its mores: “Old times there to maintain its standing in the world- fears that were to undercut Sheridan, and are not forgotten.” After the war they wide comity of landownership, Rome ac- submerge Catholic influence for a gen- defended Jim Crow, lynchings, heroic cepted Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland, eration or more. memories of Confederate soldiers, Old undercutting the serious land reformer, The Dixie culture, country folk music, and the Michael Davitt of County Mayo, in favor Democratic Party. Bankrupt Southern of the temporizing Charles Stewart The Third Great Awakening came on farmers linked arms with Western Parnell. Parnell was a landlord himself the heels of the Second, as this spent it- ones, and with labor unions, socialists, and a constitutionalist who favored mild self in the failure of Reconstruction and Fenians, and a variety of native and con- and cosmetic reforms to take the rough the excesses of robber barons in the age tinental radicals. These Populists then edges off landlordism. Marital infidelities of rage for transcontinental railroads. merged with more temperate profession- The Civil War had drained the East of als and urbanists to form the Progressive Subscription Information capital: it was no time to commit more Movement that dominated American to laying tracks and strewing scarce capi- Subscription information can be found politics briefly but memorably, 1902-18, tal over 2,000 new miles, but victorious at www.counterpunch.org or call and echoed thereafter. Northern capitalists undertook to do so toll-free inside the U.S. Most people, including most histori- anyway. This folly led to the great crash 1-800-840-3683 ans, have no inkling of how many cities of 1873, the long ensuing depression and and states adopted “magnetic” tax sys- Published twice monthly deflation, and the Populist Revolt, whose tems, featuring large Georgist elements, except July and August, leading spokesman was Bible-thumping during this Progressive Era and in the 22 issues a year. William Jennings Bryan. 1920s as well. These include Houston, Religiously, prairie and Southern 1 - year hardcopy edition $45 San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Populism also spawned the Social 2 - year hardcopy edition $80 Portland, Seattle, Chicago, Detroit, movement, active missionary 1 - year email edition $35 Cleveland, Toledo, Pittsburgh, Newark, work, and several new denominations. 2 - year email edition $65 and itself. Los Angeles, This Social Gospel was more intellec- 1 - year email & hardcopy edition $50 for good measure, nearly elected a social- tual and less radically emotive than ear- 1 - year institutions/supporters $100 ist mayor, Job Harrington, in 1911. San lier Awakenings: professionalism and 1 - year student/low income $35 Francisco did elect Mayor E.R. Taylor, science (and scientism), for better and whom George’s biographer Charles A. Renew by telephone, mail, or on our worse, tempered grassroots populism. Barker credits with having helped, more website. For mailed orders please Progressive was an uneasy than any other person, Henry George to include name, address and email amalgam of the Social Gospel Movement write Progress and Poverty, and whom address with payment, or call 1-800- in the dominant Northeast and funda- history credits with having led San 840-3683 or 1-707-629 3683. Add mentalism in the South and West. The Francisco’s astounding recovery from its $17.50 per year for subscriptions mailed Dwight Moody Bible Institute of Chicago earthquake and fire catastrophe of 1906. outside the U.S.A. still represents progressive fundamental- Even more remarkable, Vancouver, B.C., Make checks or money orders payable to: ism in the big cities. One of its graduates, led all American cities in its adoption of Archer Torrey of Jesus Abbey, was an CounterPunch Georgist tax policy, and the speed of its outstanding Christian and Georgist mis- Business Office growth. Donald Reeb, a Georgist scholar sionary in Korea. PO Box 228, Petrolia, CA 95558 from SUNY Albany, has documented Progressivism tempered radicalism

3 dec. 16-31, 2010 made him an awkward choice for prud- American church was left “slouching to- The Fourth Great Awakening ish Rome to support, yet court historians ward ‘theological hibernation.’” The Irish The 4th Great Awakening could not have whitewashed his faults and elevated ethnic political bloc was confirmed in its well come from Protestants. Old-line him to the patron saint of Irish land re- introverted machine politics, and split church members had grown too rich form. Such were the rewards of modera- away from Georgist reform. The Church or secure: they lined up with wealth tion in the pursuit of justice. was returned to “prudent and safe men” and power. Fundamentalists, shamed In America, Rome reined in radical who left their members “inert.” That did at Dayton, Tennessee, shied away from Irish-American movements. In 1867 and not mean, however, the end of Catholic politics. The 4th Great Awakening was later the Fenians invaded Canada. Rome reformism in American politics, as we a Catholic Awakening, mostly Irish, and under Pio Nono disavowed them, en- will see, for, in the process of suppress- the first to succeed. Ethnically, it was an couraging President Andrew Johnson, ing McGlynn, Pope Leo XIII published echo of the repressed awakening of 1880- who had tolerated their open organizing, a landmark encyclical, Rerum Novarum, 1900. to send American troops to cut them off 1891, reviving Thomism from the 13th Irish Americans, during their pe- from behind. century, to be activated later in the 4th riod of “theological hibernation,” had In 1880, before Progress and Poverty quietly infiltrated American culture. became a bestseller, it was George’s Emphasis on a personal Finley Peter Dunne’s “Mr. Dooley” com- book The Irish Land Question that first conversion meant indi- mented satirically with deadly precision rocketed him to fame and popularity. on real politics; McClure’s Magazine Michael Davitt seized on the book and its viduals could find salva- published Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell, analysis. Patrick Ford, editor of The Irish tion. A specific church- or Upton Sinclair, and other leading muck- World, publicized it and hired George raking reformers of the times. More to visit and report on Ireland, where the state-recognized corpo- permanently, grudge-bearing Irish Brits raised his fame by arresting him Americans took over two vital institu- for no particular reason. So it was Irish rate body was dispens- tions: the American Catholic hierarchy Catholic Americans who coalesced as his able. Theologically, the and city political machines. The defeat political base. Terence Powderley, leader of James G. Blaine’s 1884 campaign for of the Knights of Labor with 700,000 or awakening led to an U.S. president revealed the great lever- so members, endorsed George and, in emphasis on the sub- age of a few angry Irish NYC Catholics 1886, supported him when George ran over national elections. The Rev. Samual for mayor of New York, where he won jective, the personal Burchard, supporting Blaine, unwisely most of the free Irish vote – “free” mean- conversion, not the in- tagged Democrats as the party of “Rum, ing independent of Tammany and the Romanism and Rebellion.” The reaction Roman Catholic hierarchy, which fused stitutional church. in Manhattan was severe. Manhattan against him. tipped New York State, which tipped An outstanding leader emerged in Great Awakening, that of the the nation to Grover Cleveland, because the form of Father Edward McGlynn, Era. New York had many more electoral votes the most popular priest in New York After 1918, Progressivism slowly faded than any other state. City. McGlynn founded the Anti- away. Women got the vote, then proceed- The lesson was not lost. To win, one Poverty Society with a program paral- ed to elect Warren G. Harding. Hiram had to court the Irish-American vote. lel to that of Henry George, only more Johnson and Robert LaFollette and Meantime, throughout the Progressive consistently radical. McGlynn defied Charles Evans Hughes won lots of votes, Era, Catholic city machines and the the Catholic hierarchy by supporting as Teddy Roosevelt had, but Nicholas Roman Catholic hierarchy in the North Henry George’s campaign for mayor of Murray Butler and Andrew Mellon had kept radicalism under control. Father New York City in 1886, giving George took over the GOP. Socialist Gene Debs (later Monsignor) John A. Ryan pub- the biggest vote he ever had. McGlynn won a million votes for U.S. president, lished Distributive Justice in 1916, but it tried to make American Catholicism even from a jail cell, and Communism followed Rerum Novarum and, there- virtually independent from Rome. in Russia thrilled some progressives but fore, was not a new departure. Rather, Archbishop Michael Corrigan told him led to Red scares and the deportations the morning star of the new Catholic to cool it, but McGlynn did not fold (as delirium of 1920 and The Immigration Awakening was Governor Al Smith of Powderly and Ford did). McGlynn was Act of 1924 and the long reign of J. New York. He was originally a Tammany defrocked, then refrocked, then exiled, Edgar Hoover. Clarence Darrow drove wheel horse, but he broke free, reformed in complex opaque maneuvering that fundamentalists underground in the NYC’s property tax in a most effective ended with Ultra- (Roman Scopes Trial, but the big loser was the Georgist way, starting in 1921, just as control) triumphant over McGlynn’s Populist leader, William Jennings Bryan. Progressivism was declining elsewhere. radical “Americanism” for the Church. Prohibition won but could not be en- To do that he overcame heavy pressure Conservative American Catholics sided forced. Gambling in stock and real estate from the Roman Catholic hierarchy, with Rome on this matter. became all the rage, eclipsing the Social allied with mortgage lenders like the The McGlynn episode makes a fas- Gospel and social reform. Church influ- Metropolitan Life Insurance Company cinating story. The unhappy byprod- ence declined, over both personal behav- (Met Life) and the NY Real Estate Board. uct, in Fr. Gilhooley’s view, was that the ior and social concerns. Smith then went national and won the

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Democratic nomination for U.S. presi- homes from the property tax for 10 years. cartels, a policy inherited from Herbert dent in 1928. Raymond Moley and Coughlin together Hoover. Moley wanted to limit compe- But small-town Protestant Americans, wrote FDR’s 2nd inaugural, including tition and let trade associations regulate not free of fear and bigotry, buried him “Let us drive the money changers from prices, wages, quality of goods, etc., on and chose Hoover, soon to be buried the temple” – vintage Coughlin. (FDR the model of medieval merchant guilds in turn by the Great Crash and Long kept a careful distance from Coughlin, but led by a corporate state (he admired Depression. These calamities left tradi- recognizing his unstable psyche, which Mussolini). That was NRA, but it didn’t tional Protestant leaders looking obsolete was later to undo him. Coughlin, sple- work: it choked off production and re- and confused in their celluloid collars netic at what he construed as betrayal, covery. Note that these price controls with their empty slogans and truisms. was to turn against FDR. So did Moley, were floors, not ceilings like later con- There ensued the 4th Great Awakening, although he, too, had avoided public trols. Moley’s idea was to keep prices up, the First Catholic Awakening. It was a identification with Coughlin.) not down. breakthrough, for better or worse, for Irish Catholic laymen like Moley, In 1937 came the “submerged depres- long-suppressed American Catholics. James Farley, Joseph Kennedy, Frank sion,” a depression within a depression. FDR, the leader, was a pedigreed Murphy, and James Byrnes gained great FDR, recognizing trouble, reversed field member of the old Hudson Valley Dutch power in the early New Deal, as did and turned to reviving competition and geocracy, but he was also a veteran New also Monsignor John A. Ryan of the anti-trust policy. Moley left in anger. York politician: no one needed explain to Religiously, prairie and Coughlin, increasingly erratic, was dis- him the imperative to win Catholic votes. credited and suppressed, even by Pius In 1931, Pope Pius XI unleashed a new southern Populism also XII who had negotiated the compact encyclical, Quadragesimo Anno (refer- spawned the Social with Hitler. FDR picked Catholic Ed ring to the 40th year since 1891 and the Flynn, boss of machine, to re- Rerum Novarum encyclical issued by Leo Gospel movement, ac- place deceased adviser Louis Howe. XIII). Unlike the latter, which it followed tive missionary work, and Flynn, a left-wing Catholic, pushed the closely, it was a smash hit. There were at Wagner Act empowering labor unions, least two differences. One was the timing several new denomina- modeled roughly on Aquinas’ craft – 1891 was a year of boom and prosper- tions. This Social Gospel guilds. (Senator Robert F. Wagner of New ity, the Mauve Decade, when laymen had York was a Catholic, too – not Irish, but all the answers, when the sweet incense was more intellectual and no one’s perfect). After the failure of car- of unearned increment hung heavy in less radically emotive telization, FDR exhumed trust-busting the air like a pheromone, sedating flighty led by Catholic Tommy Corcoran, Jewish minds that might otherwise be question- than earlier Awakenings. Ben Cohen, and vigorous Thurman ing the social compact; 1931 was the op- Arnold, a nominee of Catholic Senator posite – people who had thought they National Catholic Welfare Conference, Joseph C. O’Mahoney of Wyoming. Now were rich and secure were shocked, hurt- an organization whose boring innocu- the idea was to revive free markets, lower ing badly, and seeking new answers. ous name masks its hardball political prices, and raise wages. The Tennessee A second reason was the new radio function. Their best-known product was Valley Authority set about forcing down priest, Fr. Charles Coughlin of Royal the National Recovery Act – NRA (often power rates. Several allied programs had Oak, MI. Coughlin had mastered the new written NIRA, for National Industrial the same impetus. Associate Supreme medium of radio well before FDR, whom, Recovery Act), known by its logo, the Court Justice Owen Roberts switched in fact, he taught. He picked up the ball Blue Eagle. NRA was a cartelization of from opposing to endorsing FDR’s pro- from Pope Pius XI and ran with it. He American industry, supposedly modeled grams, belatedly giving more power to merchandized “Quadragesimo Anno” as on Aquinas’ ideas of merchant guilds, his Jewish colleague Louis Brandeis, a few such heavy essays were ever sold. By elaborated in Quadragesimo Anno. The Wilson appointee who had labored for the time of the 1932 elections, Coughlin Agricultural Adjustment Act was the years in the minority. Recovery com- was the most familiar radio voice in farm counterpart. NRA died, but AAA menced, when World War II struck and America, people knew what an encycli- survives under other names. eclipsed domestic policy. cal was, and what the pope would teach Another Irishman, Joseph Kennedy, In Europe, the history of them. savvy rumrunner questing for respect- Quadragesimo Anno was unfortunately Professor Raymond Moley of ability, led the new Securities and bound up with the growth of Fascism. , a prominent Irish Exchange Commission. Generally, Mussolini’s “corporate state” supported Catholic layman, was the buffer between FDR depended on votes from big city and was supported by Quadragesimo Coughlin and FDR. Coughlin helped machines, many of them run by Irish Anno. The Lateran Treaty of 1929 sealed elect FDR in 1932, and FDR let him Catholics, and wove their views into an alliance of Mussolini and the Vatican. think he would be a power in his early his policies. After Louis Howe died in More generally, most of the fascist dic- administration. As Coughlin’s star rose, 1936, FDR picked “Boss” Ed Flynn of tators of Europe were cradle Catholics, he became the new Catholic spokes- the Bronx to become his chief strategist. weaned on Rerum Novarum, and later on man, replacing the Catholic Governor Al Flynn urged FDR to the left, but still fol- its sequel, Quadragesimo Anno: Antonio Smith, who had signed the 1921 Georgist lowed signals from Quadragesimo Anno. Salazar in Portugal, Francisco Franco law letting New York City exempt new Raymond Moley had pushed business in Spain, Adolf Hitler in Germany,

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Benito Mussolini in Italy, Arthur Seyss- Carlo Sforza, and Luigi Einaudi (only Peace Corps. Rachel Carson published Inquart in Austria, Monsignor Jozef Ludwig Erhard of the Wirtschaftswunder Silent Spring to great applause, triggering Tiso in Slovakia, Ante Pavelic in Croatia, was a Protestant). Was this to be the end an environmental movement that even Admiral Miklos Horthy in Hungary, of Great Awakenings? Nixon was later to join. Marshal Philippe Petain in France … it The Fifth Great Awakening Women’s Lib flourished along with is a long list. Many American Catholics the pill and new sexual mores, affect- Remarkably, though, all this time supported the rebellion of the clerical ing people of all faiths. Popular trou- there was seething underground a new fascist Francisco Franco in Spain and badours turned from saccharine love Catholic liberalism, suddenly to erupt Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia, keeping and marriage songs to ballads of social in the 2nd Catholic Awakening, and America neutral for years. It took Hitler’s significance from the Weavers, and so- America’s 5th. It began in Rome with megalomaniacal overreaching, and, fi- cial rebellion from the Beatles. Girls Pope John XXIII (1958-63). It broke nally, Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor to were burning bras and taking pills; on through in America with our election of sway America to the English side, pitting French beaches they were sunbathing President JFK (1960), it gained momen- American Catholics against continental topless. Prudery was out; bikinis were tum in Rome and worldwide with the Catholics – another of history’s ironies. in. College dorms were going coed, even (1962-65). LBJ, The spirit of the New Deal was to sharing bathrooms. Playboy and Hustler who succeeded JFK after the assassina- end abruptly. No sooner did Japan sur- were standard reading material. In 1969, tion and was a Texas Protestant (Disciples render than “our gallant fighting friend,” 500,000 people camped at Woodstock to of Christ), continued and even magni- Stalin’s Soviet Union, became again the celebrate the Age of Aquarius. The 1969 fied JFK’s policies. He picked up and atheistic “Red Menace.” Even during the Stonewall riots in New York City sparked ran with Catholic Michael Harrington’s war, FDR had dumped Henry Wallace the gay revolution. Wasn’t that a time?! 1962 book, The Other America, turning for milder Harry Truman – although It was too good to last; inevitably, the it into his “War on Poverty,” part of “The Harry was strong against monopolies. pendulum swung back, as pendula do. Great Society.” Between the time of FDR American prewar “isolationists” became Survival of the Roman and JFK, America lost five million of its interventionists, but now on the other as an institution took priority over the six million small farms, weakening the side. Ambitious generals spoke seri- liberal ideas of Vatican II, as priests and stand-pat rural and small-town ethos. ously about invading Russia again (as we nuns drifted away. Vietnam gloom fell, to Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker houses had in 1918-20, when fear of Bolshevism divide Catholics and shatter the dreams. grew in number and favor, more radi- trumped and terminated the Progressive The macho Texan in LBJ could not back cal than the earlier meliorist settlement Movement). American troops overseas away from a shooting war. Paranoids and houses of Protestant Jane Addams in (this writer among them) did not cotton jingoes popularized the “domino theory.” Chicago and Jewish Lillian Wald in New to this idea, not at all! Catholic imperialists could not give up York. Popular Catholic Sargent Shriver Americans regrouped to support the converts the French had made in headed the successful Peace Corps, with the new Cold War. The postwar reac- Vietnam. Cardinal Francis Spellman of enough success to run for vice president tion at home gradually turned fierce. New York became the new American in 1972 (although the effort by then was The reign of terror of Catholic Senator Pope, and led the charge to recover doomed). Joseph McCarthy was off and running, Vietnam from godless Communism. Barriers between Catholics and along with the House Un-American (Spellman looked back more than one Protestants began to leak, if not crum- Activities Committee (HUAC) under swing of the pendulum. He tore down ble. This writer never forgets the thrill of unreconstructed racist John Rankin of the portrait of Fr. Edward McGlynn in marching arm in arm and hand in hand Mississippi, and local witch-hunters like McGlynn’s old church, ’s, with priests and nuns down main av- Jack Tenney of California and turncoat and expunged all records of McGlynn enues in Milwaukee in 1965, in support Sheridan Downey. Red-baiting Richard from the archives. Down the memory of civil rights for blacks and social jus- Nixon unseated long-time coop leader tubes of history went the Anti-Poverty tice for all. Suddenly the communicable Jerry Voorhis, and prepared to defeat Society and the Henry George connec- human race was doubled! The 1960s were Helen Gahagan Douglas with the slogan, tion!) an extraordinary time of Awakening all “She is pink right down to her under- Catholic boss Richard Daley of around. Chief Justice Earl Warren (1953- wear.” Chicago unleashed brutal police at- 69) handed down a memorable set of Truman, now a full-bore Cold War tacks on young demonstrators, Catholic new liberal opinions. Reverend Martin crusader, turned to European Catholics or otherwise, at the 1968 Democratic Luther King Jr., a Southern Baptist, in- as the new bulwark against Communism. Convention in his city. Social conserva- spired millions and led the “Second If they had cooperated with Hitler, all was tives of all faiths were alarmed and of- Reconstruction” of the South, more suc- forgiven now – Uncle Sam needed them fended, and, perhaps, a little frightened, cessful and lasting than the first, after badly. “New occasions teach new duties; by newly liberated sexual “deviants,” the the Civil War. King’s economics was time makes ancient good uncouth.” The boastful exhibitionism of Hugh Hefner, populist, Georgist, and Gandhian – a Marshall Plan poured billions into re- the universal use of contraceptives and lot to swallow – but carried along in the building continental Europe under new the growing acceptance of abortion. baggage of civil rights for blacks. Cesar Catholic leaders of Christian Democratic Pope John Paul, from 1978, led his Chavez was organizing field labor and parties – leaders like Alcide de Gasperi, Church back to traditionalism. Cardinal signing up thousands of idealistic col- Konrad Adenauer, Robert Schuman, Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI) quashed lege students. More thousands joined the

6 dec. 16-31, 2010

“Liberation Theology” in Latin America. growth and power leads Kevin Phillips Patten, Jimmy Swaggart, Paul Crouch, , Lee Atwater, and Karl to write that the Southern Baptist Jim and Tammy Bakker, Ted Haggard, Rove seized the times to assuage deflat- Convention, once the Confederate Gene Scott, James Dobson, … a long ros- ed segregationists with a new “southern state church, is now the American state ter, with new entries annually. strategy” that broke up and won over church. But it also carries the seeds of its And yet, working within this nest of much of the solid Democratic South, al- Civil War origins as the church of slav- apparently willful ignorance and reac- lying it at last with Spellman’s and Daley’s ery, and its postbellum role as the carrier tion and chauvinism (both male and Catholics. A new right-wing fervor of antebellum tradition and resistance military), we find in darkest Alabama a seized the nation, only briefly delayed by to Reconstruction. There is talk, even beam of sunshine in a lady law professor Nixon’s fall at Watergate. if it is just hot air, of repealing the 14th and radical tax reformer, Bible-reading The Sixth Great Awakening: Amendment. Southern Baptists have Methodist Susan Pace Hamill. Could she Will There Be One? turned “right-wing ” from be that new force from outside the usual being the ridiculous oxymoron, which it suspects? Why not? MLK Jr. came from When and whence will come the new obviously is, into a common journalistic Georgia. Awakening, if ever? History tells us it phrase. Stranger things have happened. may take 40 years to appear, and it will It has its left wing too; but, in 1979, Who would have thought that fron- most likely come out of left field, as a tier Indian-fighters in the clay hills and surprise, with a new leader – a political When and whence swamps of South Carolina would drive genius or juggler who realigns old forces. will come the new proud Cornwallis to defeat at Yorktown, It will follow a crisis. It will involve the trapped by the weak French fleet? Who Bible. Established mainline churches and Awakening, if ever? would have thought that hanging crazy intellectuals will despise and resist it. The History tells us it may John Brown in December 1859 would various calamities of the G.W. Bush ad- lead to the Emancipation Proclamation ministration and the inability of Obama take 40 years to ap- less than four years later? Who would and his team to solve the resulting prob- pear, and it will most have thought McKinley’s crushing Bryan lems and make jobs for Americans cer- in 1896 would lead to the Progressive tainly provide the needed crisis, although likely come out of left Movement, or that the anti-Catholic it is taking time for its gravity and perma- field, as a surprise, with vote of 1928 would lead to the Catholic nence to sink into the American psyche. New Deal, headed by a Hudson Valley How about blacks? They are suddenly a new leader – a politi- Dutch Episcopalian marshalling a bunch part of the establishment, at least in part. cal genius or juggler of machine politicians turned liberal re- MLK Jr. had an inspiring socio-econom- formers guided by the ideas of a dead ic philosophy, an amalgam of George, who realigns old forces. pope, steeped in the ideas of 13-century Gandhi, and the radical Jesus, work- , student of old Aristotle ing from within the Southern Baptist fundamentalists seized control of the who was writing before 322 B.C.? Who Church. But after him, black leaders have Southern Baptist Convention, the con- would have suspected a social revolution settled comfortably into their own es- trolling body. It retains elements that are in the 1960s led by the rich spoiled son tablishment, either tepid and meliorist, anti-urban, racist, nativist, xenophobic, of a Catholic rumrunner? Expect to be like our current president, or “extrem- and anti-scientific, leading a prominent surprised, and expect it fairly soon: the ist” and divisive like his former minister Southern Baptist, Bill Moyers, to lament calamities of President G.W. Bush and in Chicago. Barack Obama, the “change of the Southern Baptist Bush admin- the fumbling of President Obama have agent,” followed economic leads from the istration, “the delusional is no longer opened the doors for a new alignment. same old hand Larry Summers, whose marginal.” These views might seem like If Southern Baptists are anti-intellec- main qualifications were family connec- quaint eccentricities, but they are part tual, is intellectualism the cure? Probably tions, accommodating Wall Street, and of a Gestalt tilted against the social gos- not – a clerisy is a clerisy, whether altar- skill at self-aggrandizement. pel, public schools, social insurance, fair calling or blue-book grading. Academic The Southern Baptist denomination tax policy, environmental protection, economics has fallen for its own kind of still carries the seeds of its leading role consumer protections, bank regulation, doctrinaire fundamentalism, peaking in in the Populist Revolt. It is aggressively anti-trust policy, intellectuals, or science. Milton Friedman and Alan Greenspan, evangelistic and missionarian, with con- They have allied with Nixon, Reagan, for whom private property and unregu- stant personal salvation crusades and the Bushes, seemingly against their own lated markets were panaceas. They have altar-call ceremonies and public full- economic interests, to form the “New dropped distribution of wealth and in- immersion baptisms of nubile girls in Republican Majority,” as Gingrich and come, central concerns of classical eco- full public view in huge fish tanks set in others called it. nomics, in favor of the new lodestar of the back wall above the altar. It has be- At the fringes of this new center of obsessive “growth.” Diminishing marginal come the biggest American church today, American religion have been once-sub- utility of material stuff is forgotten: more sweeping from the old South up through marginal phenomena like Jerry Falwell GNP is always better, even when most the prairie states to form the Bible Belt. and his “Moral Majority,” Pat Robertson’s people are getting less. Intellectuals may became a serious religious actual campaign for U.S. president, and a sneer at the excesses of primitive preach- leader, consulting with presidents. Its long list of spellbinders, including Bebe ers, but their own rationality is just an-

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other blind faith: their own independent the Dutch Roosevelts, and the Irish after setbacks, to the Populist and then science is subject to herd manias worthy Kennedys. Someone or something will Progressive Movements. of lemmings. Even speculation in remote arise to combine that missing element, The Fourth Great Awakening led to future values is reliable, according to social justice, with the moral fervor and the New Deal. Friedman acolyte Robert Lucas. Flippers righteousness of faith and certainty. The Fifth Great Awakening led to and other speculators are guided by “ra- Free-market panaceas and banker de- the second Reconstruction, the Great tional expectations,” the human equiva- regulation have collapsed in shame and Society, Feminism, and social upheavals. lent of divine omniscience. This insight is calamity, but nothing has arisen to re- The Sixth Great Awakening is due, and sanctified by the annual Riksbank award place them. Something must and will; but will come from some unexpected quar- (aka the Nobel Prize in economics), our what, and how long must we wait? God ter. However bleak the outlook today, own kind of holy incantation, controlled moves in a mysterious way, his wonders now and again our better natures prevail. by bankers in Sweden who are not above to perform. My guess is that Mexican CP their own predatory lending to naïfs in Americans, our new despised and feared less sophisticated new nations of the minority, will take the lead: nothing pulls Mason Gaffney is professor of eastern Baltic. people together like contempt and per- Economics at the University of Some historians would liken this secution. They will ally with a variety of California, Riverside. He has published combination of Biblical and free- smaller ethnic groups. Where is the new on resource conservation (timber, water, market fundamentalisms to previous political genius to pull all these dispa- soils, mining and pumping, air, and urban Great Awakenings, but I don’t think rates together? This leader will appear; land), on tax policy, and on leasing public so. Robert William Fogel’s study, The many are grasping for the brass ring. lands, winning and losing battles on be- Fourth Great Awakening and the Future In summary, what can history teach half of common rights to resource rents, of Egalitarianism, seems to take this us about religion, economics, and socio- and how to reconcile such rights with position, and there are parallels, it is economic reform? economic efficiency. He has observed true. Paul Johnson sees the Thatcher- The First Great Awakening led and published on the cyclical rise and Reagan era as “the Recovery of Freedom.” after many years to the American and fall of idealism, integrity and objectivity What is lacking now is the moral senti- Jeffersonian Revolutions. in economic thinking, and the interplay ment of Jacques Turgot, Adam Smith, The Second Great Awakening led to of religious idealism with economists’ at- and John Stuart Mill; the egalitarian- the Civil War and Abolition. titudes and findings. He can be reached ism of Jefferson, Lincoln, Henry George, The Third Great Awakening led, at [email protected]

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