Religion

The American religious landscape at the end of the 1920s reflected the rapidly increasing complexity of American society. Modernizing social and cultural change since the late 19th century involved a number of developments that continued to influence American religion in the era of the Great Depression and World War II. These included the continuing growth of religious pluralism beyond the previously simpler patterns of Anglo-Protestant and Roman Catholic Christianity; the maturation of an increasingly ethnic Roman Catholicism into a political and cultural power, especially in industrialized cities; the fragmentation of Anglo-Protestantism into fundamentalist and modernist wings; the influential emergence of the neo-orthodox (or Christian Realism) movement; the continuing expansion of non-Anglo ethnic/religious groups (for example, Lutherans and Dutch Reformed throughout the Midwest and various wings of Judaism in urban areas); the development and expansion of a recently emergent Pentecostal form of Christianity; increasing regional and cultural/moral religious tensions (for example, urban versus small town/ rural, northeastern cosmopolitan versus southern evangelical, and differing views on Prohibition); the continuation of racially based religious divisions; the continued dominance of the white Southern Baptist Convention as a religious force in the South; and, a noticeable growth in cosmopolitan secularism and religious indifference, especially in heavily urbanized areas. The events of the Great Depression and World War II posed major challenges to existing patterns of belief and religious adherence. But these events did not dramatically redirect the changes set in motion during previous decades; and, despite the challenges, organized religion and religious belief remained potent factors in American life.

By the end of the 1920s, the United States had implemented legislation restricting large-scale immigration and thus ending the massive influx of Roman Catholics and Jews from southern and eastern Europe typical of the early years of the 20th century. However, this interlude allowed the estimated 20 million Roman Catholics, especially urban Irish, Italian, and Polish immigrants, to become more settled and Americanized, as well as to become a potent political force during the New Deal era. While still the objects of anti-immigrant and antiCatholic nativism, (as evidenced by the failed 1928 presidential campaign of the Roman Catholic Al Smith), ethnic Roman Catholics became key participants in labor movements as well as fervent supporters of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. Nobody knew this better than Roosevelt, and he paid careful attention to Catholics. Of the 196 federal judges that he appointed no fewer than 51 were Catholic, a dramatic contrast to the three previous administrations, which only appointed eight Catholics out of 214 vacancies. Roosevelt further cemented his relationship to the church with the appointment of two high-visibility officials, James A. Farley as postmaster general and Thomas J. Walsh as attorney general. So, politically speaking, Catholicism had finally been accepted by the establishment.

Roman Catholic religion itself became a more accepted and “respectable” form of American religion, especially in cosmopolitan areas, and influential bishops and church leaders obtained new political and social clout. The depression helped to produce the social empowerment of Roman Catholic clergy and lay voters, as Roman Catholics began to effectively utilize mass media, especially the radio. Some Roman Catholic broadcasters, most notably the controversial preacher Father Charles E. Coughlin, became nationally recognized figures, as much known for their political and social commentary as their purely doctrinal and ecclesiastical commitments. Meanwhile, women, such as Dorothy Day, who was a founding figure in the Catholic Worker movement, became active in the public arena as well, especially as related to labor and social issues that affected Roman Catholics. At the grass-roots level, Roman Catholic piety was characterized by Marian devotion, neighborhood festivals in urban areas, and more frequent reception of the Eucharist by the laity in worship services. At the onset of World War II, most Roman Catholics fervently and patriotically supported the war effort, further cementing their sociocultural status as “real” Americans.

Jewish religion during this period continued to display the dominance of Orthodox Judaism (the most traditionalist, rabbinical, and ethnically self-conscious branch) over the Conservative (less traditional with respect to Americanization and doctrinal issues) and Reform (the most nontraditional and Americanized) wings. The continuing power of Jewish Orthodoxy came about especially because of large-scale, urban Orthodox immigration from eastern Europe in previous decades. This predominant status was reinforced by the emergence of Yeshiva College (later University) in New York City as a vibrant intellectual center of Orthodoxy. By the late 1930s, Orthodox Judaism registered approximately 200,000 families, Conservative Judaism 75,000 families, and Reform Judaism 50,000 families. This represents a 40 percent increase in religiously active Jews over the previous decade, with the number of synagogues nationally rising from 1,910 in 1917 to 3,748 by 1937.

Both increased secularism and Americanization on the one hand, and the development of traditionalist, fervently mystical, and insular piety on the other, especially among Hasidic Jews (a more mystically inclined wing of Orthodoxy), flourished during this period. This set the stage for later controversies over the nature of Judaism and Jewish identity in modern America. Out of Jewish circles came several profoundly influential theologians and intellectuals, including Martin Buber (who also had a major impact in Christian circles). Also, Abraham Heschel became an influential participant in emerging Jewish/Christian dialogue, especially at the social level. And Mordecai Kaplan, who wrote the influential work Judaism as a Civilization (1934), advocated a comprehensive Jewish culture as a means of slowing the tide of secularism and religious indifference that was increasingly evident in the Jewish-American community of the day.

As with the Catholics, Roosevelt found it politically expedient to cultivate close relationships with the Jewish community, particularly noted intellectuals. As governor of New York, he found that many Jews were politically progressive and shared his own reform agenda. Once in the White House, Roosevelt surrounded himself with an influential coterie of Jewish friends and advisers, including Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, Bernard Baruch, and Henry Morgenthau. Moreover, an estimated 4,0005,000 young Jews already trained in law, economics, and similar fields, who could not navigate through the prevailing anti-Semitism encountered in the job market, were welcomed to fill government posts.

Of all the increasingly diverse groups in America during the era of the Great Depression and World War II, long-established white Anglo-Protestant religion suffered the most controversy, fragmentation, and continued upheaval. Some historians have labeled this period the era of the final “disestablishment” of Anglo-Protestant Christianity. This religious outlook had been the dominant religious and cultural framework of the nation from its founding until the early 20th century. Many factors contributed to this outcome, including the immigration patterns discussed previously. But conflict within mainstream Protestantism itself contributed greatly to its ebbing hegemony.

Most significantly, the fundamentalist/modernist controversy of the 1920s had split many Anglo-Protestant denominations, such as the Presbyterians, the Baptists, and the Methodists, with the smaller Episcopal Church eventually embracing modernism for the most part. Theological disputes centered upon the key question of how Protestant groups should respond to the challenging perspectives of modern science and biblical criticism, as well as to the growing spirit of rationalistic anti-supernaturalism among intellectuals. On the surface, a progressive-minded and optimistic modernism received the most positive exposure from the national media, academia, and intellectuals, as the movement attempted to accommodate and reinterpret traditional Christian doctrines in the light of a more modern mind-set. However, rapidly developing underground networks of evangelical and fundamentalist (two groups with similar theological perspectives but differing views on the question of engagement with broader, pluralistic society) organizations emerged that would lay the groundwork for the future public role of Protestant evangelicalism and fundamentalism. For example, the public evangelicalism of Billy Graham from the late 1940s onward would significantly influence American cultural and political ideology, especially in connection with anticommunism during the cold war era. Part of this shift can be traced to the dust bowl era, when hundreds of thousands of Midwestern conservative evangelical Protestants migrated to California, took up residence, and established their religion on the West Coast, where it flourished. Another cause for the increase in conservative Protestantism was its ceaseless efforts at evangelization coupled with a studious growth of educational and parachurch organizations. Through the 1930s the number of students attending the 70 or so evangelical Bible colleges doubled, and the churches also published their own newsletters and magazines.

Less visible groups (at least from the vantage point of the Anglo-Protestant oriented media) included such ethnic and regional religious forces as the varied Lutheran bodies, often divided by Germanic and Scandinavian ethnic identities, and the Dutch Reformed churches, with both groups having important cultural and religious influences throughout much of the Midwest. Many white southerners continued to be profoundly influenced by the region’s sociocultural and revivalist powerhouse, the Southern Baptist Convention. However, newly emergent Pentecostal groups, such as the Assemblies of God, would further lay the groundwork for the future, rapid expansion of this charismatic variety of Christianity throughout the South and beyond. And African-American religion, virtually ignored outside of black circles, would continue its status as a crucial institution for blacks in a still highly segregated America. Black churches and religion especially offered hope to those in the South suffering under the ongoing burdens of Jim Crow life. Not surprisingly, blacks migrating northward to urban centers in search of work brought their own unique brand of Protestantism with them. Church life had a particularly strong hold on many black followers, especially in these hard times, and institutions such as Oliver Baptist Church and Pilgrim Baptist Church were among the nation’s largest Protestant denominations.

Theologically, the most noteworthy developments centered upon the continuing emergence of the NeoOrthodox, or Christian Realism, movement through the 1940s and beyond. This movement, sparked in Europe by such thinkers as Karl Barth and Emil Brunner (both from Switzerland), challenged the prevailing theological and cultural optimism that pervaded much of early-20th-century liberalism and modernism. Advocating the reappropriation of such Protestant Reformation-era themes as original sin, as well as the necessity of absolute human dependence upon divine grace for all aspects of existence, the theologian brothers Reinhold and H. Richard Niebuhr became profound spokespersons for the Neo-Orthodox movement in America. H. Richard Niebuhr explored the complex interactions of religion, culture, and the role of institutional Christianity in America. Reinhold Niebuhr examined overarching political and economic themes from the vantage point of a theological realism that severely criticized the optimistic (and what he believed to be naive) assumptions of modernistic Christianity. Reinhold Niebuhr would especially gain widespread exposure through the mass media as well as through his influential list of publications. The earlier optimism of religious liberalism was sent into widespread retreat by the emergence of the Neo-Orthodox movement, though religious liberalism continued to survive in certain quarters.

With such religious diversity prevalent throughout the increasingly fragmented Protestant world, the Great Depression mounted further challenges to mainstream Protestantism. The situation was further destabilized by rampant poverty and the growing despair of individuals who, in former times, might have looked to especially Protestant benevolent and charitable societies to provide effective RELIEF assistance. Protestant churches and organizations were quickly overwhelmed by the scope of the Great Depression, and, with the advent of Franklin Roosevelt’s comprehensive New Deal programs, individuals in the future would look increasingly to a rapidly expanding federal government for economic stability and confidence. But the anxieties and challenges of both the depression and World War II conversely led many people to seek comfort and ultimate explanations in religion.

By the time of World War II, more and more Americans embraced an increasingly generic monotheism (a broadly Protestant-Roman Catholic-Jewish nexus) in contrast to the dominant Protestant evangelical outlook of the 19th and early 20th centuries. While concern for “civil” religion continued to be stressed (a general faith in a less-defined God and the corresponding need for community morality and “decency”), foundations were being laid for a more secular nation in the years to come. On the other hand, and no doubt reflecting wartime and subsequent cold war fears, church membership actually grew from about 49 percent of the population in 1940 to 57 percent in 1950, and both church membership and church attendance in the United States were higher than in other Western nations. By the close of World War II, Americans appeared to be more willing to accept the proposition that the nation would be increasingly pluralistic religiously in the years to come.

See also Irish Americans; Italian Americans; Mexican Americans; Polish Americans.

Further reading: Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1972); Winthrop S. Hudson, Religion in America, 6th ed. (Upper Saddle River, N. J.: Prentice Hall, 1999); Martin E. Marty, Modern American Religion: The Noise of Conflict, 1919-1941 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991);---, Modern American Religion:

Under God, Indivisible, 1941-1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).

—J. Henry Allen, Jr.