[The following is a post from The Wild Hunt<\/em> archives<\/a>. The Wild Hunt<\/em> is on hiatus through Labor Day weekend and will return with new posts on Tuesday, September 4th.]<\/p>\n Despite the fact that the history of the United States is incredibly well-documented, many of us labor under various\u00a0misapprehensions\u00a0regarding our nation\u2019s past. This seems especially true of America\u2019s religious history. Lately it seems as if there\u2019s been an\u00a0inundation\u00a0of pundits,\u00a0amateur\u00a0historians, and\u00a0demagogues trying to frame us into a reductive (Protestant) Christian mold, painting a picture of harmony and piety that endured until the post-60s culture wars started raging. This sort of narrative leaves little room for religious minorities and outsiders to\u00a0understand\u00a0their own experiences, or draw accurate lessons from history. While recent books by\u00a0Leigh Schmidt<\/a>,\u00a0Chas Clifton<\/a>,Courtney Bender<\/a>, and others, have taken the time to explore religious perspectives outside of this paradigm, there\u2019s still a great need to deconstruct and analyze just how our current ideas about American religiosity were formed.<\/p>\n Kevin M. Schultz,\u00a0Assistant Professor of History at the University of Illinois in Chicago, in his new book\u00a0\u201cTri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to Its Protestant Promise,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0recounts how goodwill and interfaith groups in the early 20th century battled a rise of nativistic politics, antisemitism, and anti-Catholicism to forge the notion of a \u201cJudeo-Christian\u201d America and ultimately (and somewhat unintentionally) usher in a sweeping\u00a0disestablishment\u00a0of religion in the United States. A look at how toxic religious nativism can be avoided in favor of pluralism, and how mistrusted religious minorities navigated an America dominated by Protestant Christianity.\u00a0I think Schultz\u2019s book should be required reading, especially for religious minorities currently struggling for equal treatment in American culture. I was lucky enough to conduct an interview with Kevin M. Schultz about the book, exploring how a new religious image of America was formed in the 20th century, how religious conservatives today exploit that image, and what lessons religious minorities today can take from this period in history.<\/p>\n What prompted you to write \u201cTri-Faith America?\u201d It certainly seem\u00a0very relevant to the state of religion and politics in America today.\u00a0Do you feel this is a bit of forgotten history?<\/strong><\/p>\n When I wrote \u201cTri-Faith America,\u201d I wrote it purely as a piece of history. I was interested in the debates about pluralism and \u201cgetting along\u201d that took place during World War II, or more generally after the 1930s, when class differences dominated American politics, and before the 1960s, when the civil rights movement thrust race so dramatically into the national consciousness.<\/p>\n As I began to investigate the question, which was in fact not very often investigated, it became increasingly clear to me that battles between Protestants, Catholics, and Jews were vitally important to Americans of that era. These debates dominated the development of the suburbs, the Supreme Court cases, the census, what should be taught in schools, and even the make-up of Little League teams.<\/p>\n It was only after I discovered all these debates that I saw how they fit into the question about whether or not America is a Christian nation, a debate that, as your question suggests, is relevant to the state of religion and politics today. Many of the actors in my story were saying things like \u201cWe need a broader, more inclusive, and more accurate conception of the American nation.\u201d Given the limits of the time, they adopted a \u201ctri-faith\u201d model, inviting Catholics and Jews to the table for the first time.<\/p>\n I think many people would be surprised at how manufactured our\u00a0modern ideas of America as a \u201cJudeo-Christian\u201d country are, that we\u00a0went from a status quo where, according to Franklin D. Roosevelt,\u00a0\u201cthe\u00a0Catholics and Jews are here under sufferance,\u201d<\/em>\u00a0to one where the\u00a0commonalities between Protestants, Catholics, and Jews were stressed\u00a0and a united religious front seen as vital to our nation. It seems\u00a0remarkable that interfaith and goodwill organizations were able to so\u00a0quickly turn the United States away from the growing nativism of the\u00a0times. I understand that WW2 was a great cultural unifier, but the\u00a0momentum had begun even before that. To what do you ascribe the\u00a0underlying success of this \u201ctri-faith\u201d effort?<\/strong><\/p>\n First off, I think I\u2019d disagree with the part of the question where you say \u201cwere able to so quickly turn the US away from nativism.\u201d It took a lot of work!<\/p>\n But I think two things are at play in this transformation, a transformation from, to put it too simply, nativism to an acceptance of pluralism. First, and I don\u2019t go into this much in my book, a lot of Americans were challenging the underlying structures of racism, things like the 19th century notion of the hierarchy of races, which of course always premised white Protestant superiority and then had all other groups lower in the hierarchy, with black people always at the bottom. Lots of Americans were challenging this idea in the first decades of the twentieth century\u2013scientists, Leftist Jewish intellectuals, some progressive reformers, many folks in the labor movement of the 1930s, and my interfaith folks, who were demanding greater inclusion and a new national image.<\/p>\n Out of this mix arose the folks I study in the book, who worked hard to reconceptualize the predominate notion of what it meant to be an American. They went on the road, setting up little morality plays with a priest, a rabbi, and a minister on stage all jabbing each other, asking the hard questions\u2013can a non-Catholic get to Heaven? Do Jews run the world? They went to Des Moines and Debuque. They filmed movie-shorts. Ironically, they were helped greatly by Adolf Hitler, who presented an image that Americans sought to avoid, and one way of doing so was by being tolerant of other faiths. The US Armed Forced supported it too, somewhat remarkably inviting these religious advocates on military bases all over the world, one of the only non-military groups to be given such access. Then the Cold War against those godless communists cemented the image of America as a land of religious pluralism.<\/p>\n So it took some time, and was the result of people working hard to create a new image of America.<\/p>\n One thing that struck me in your book is seeing Catholics as\u00a0outsiders, as a somewhat suspect religious minority struggling to gain\u00a0political and social parity with the nation\u2019s Protestants. One quote\u00a0in particular from Carlton J.H. Hayes (the first Catholic co-chairman\u00a0of the National Conference of Christians and Jews) seemed particularly\u00a0relevant:\u00a0\u201cI have always maintained that in this country Protestants\u00a0have the major responsibility for assuring justice and true toleration\u00a0to non-Protestants, not because they are Protestants but because they\u00a0are [the] majority group.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>With Catholics now the largest Christian\u00a0denomination in the United States, I can\u2019t imagine a prominent\u00a0Catholic lay-leader repeating these words, or words very much like\u00a0them. The idea of the politically dominant faiths in this country\u00a0\u201cassuring justice and true toleration\u201d<\/em>\u00a0to smaller faiths now seems\u00a0almost radical. Are shifts away from sentiments like these simply a\u00a0by-product of success? Has tri-faith America lost the ethos of\u00a0protecting religious minorities today?<\/strong><\/p>\n Ah, but Catholics were the largest Christian denomination even then, although most Catholics take issue with the label \u201cdenomination.\u201d Perhaps saying the largest group of Christians is better.<\/p>\n What changed was the nation\u2019s perception of itself. Now, instead of having Protestants dominating the nation\u2019s social and moral authority, most minority faiths are more or less tolerated and protected, and even to some extent endorsed. The addition of Muslim, Buddhist<\/a>, and maybe soon a Wiccan chaplain in the military might be one example.<\/p>\n But this tolerance and pluralism came at a cost: conservatives of all stripes\u2013Protestants, Catholics, and Jews\u2013have seen all this tolerance as a sign of a secularizing society. The timing made this seem accurate\u2013it began in the late 1960s and 1970s. So today, instead of having Catholics as a sizable minority demanding inclusion, now many Catholics see themselves as defending the last ramparts of Christianity and civilization. Any breech demands a response and minority faiths present a certain challenge\u2013they might just be the camel\u2019s nose in the tent.<\/p>\n An important split in post-war tri-faith unity was the differing\u00a0visions of America\u2019s religious future and the idea of pluralism. For\u00a0Catholics, who were growing in prominence and influence, an \u201call-in\u201d\u00a0pluralism was endorsed, where every faith commingled (and competed) in\u00a0the public square, but for the Jewish community, who were wary of\u00a0Catholicism\u2019s history of persecution in Europe, secularism seemed the\u00a0best option. While legal efforts have raised the wall between church\u00a0and state and helped bring about historic disestablishment rulings,\u00a0this split over the role of religion in our public life now rages\u00a0hotter than ever. Where do you think we are going? Will there be a\u00a0re-establishment, or will post-war secular gains hold?<\/strong><\/p>\n As a historian, I always hate to predict the future. And the Supreme Court\u2019s recent decisions on religion in public life are awkward, but they do shine a little light. Basically the Supreme Court has said religious icons that are old\u2013say, having \u201cIn God We Trust\u201d on our money or \u201cunder God\u201d in our pledge, both of which came in the 1950s\u2013are okay. We\u2019re honoring our past. But having new religious icons in public space\u2013say, building a giant statue of the 10 Commandments in a courthouse\u2013is a symbol of endorsement. This isn\u2019t terribly doctrinaire or logical, but as a pragmatic decision, it makes some sense.<\/p>\n My notion is that as a society we will continue to create space for worshipers of all faiths, even secular humanists and atheists\u2013and this is a direct follow up of Tri-Faith America. But alongside that, more and more people will be able to bring their religious perspective openly into the public sphere, and this won\u2019t be automatic grounds for dismissal. The burden then, of course, is for religious people to be able to make secular arguments. The idea that same sex marriage is wrong because it contradicts your faith is fine, but why should everyone have to live to the standards of your faith? If you can create a secular argument for why same sex marriage should be outlawed, then there will be a conversation, and that\u2019s the best we can hope for in a democracy!<\/p>\n While the forming of a Judeo-Christian consciousness had many\u00a0benefits for future religious minority communities, most notably the\u00a0idea that\u00a0\u201cthere was no such thing as neutral advocacy of religion,\u201d<\/em>\u00a0it also provided a language and framework for the conservative\u00a0Christian activists of today. Today many of them off-handedly talk of\u00a0our \u201cJudeo-Christian\u201d heritage, or invoke the post-war\/early Cold War\u00a0religious consensus as a period they\u2019d like to return to. I was\u00a0particularly taken aback by a quote from a Catholic newspaper that you\u00a0highlight:\u00a0\u201cNon-Christian religious groups, prompted by the presence\u00a0of many of their children in public schools, are seeking to dilute or\u00a0to eliminate Christ from Christmas.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>Rhetoric like that could have\u00a0easily been placed in the mouth of many \u201ckeep Christ in Christmas\u201d\u00a0activists today. How much do conservative Christian activists owe to\u00a0this period, and how much is their conception of history shaped by it?<\/strong><\/p>\n Yes, I was struck by that too. A lot of the conversations I found in the archives could have happened on The Daily Show or Fox News last week. It was remarkable.<\/p>\n As for how much today\u2019s conservatives owe to the formulations of middle of the twentieth century, I think the answer is \u201cnot much.\u201d The reason is because they are ignorant of it. They think (as do lefties, I should add) that something called \u201cJudeo-Christianity\u201d has been around forever, when in fact it was more or less invented in the late 1930s to combat Hitler and to bring Jews into the fold of \u201cgood Americanism.\u201d Well, the thinking then went, if we can\u2019t be \u201cProtestant\u201d or even \u201cChristian,\u201d what\u2019s next? Judeo-Christian? Okay, let\u2019s go with that. It wasn\u2019t quite this simple, but that was the progression of thought, and the effort was to increase inclusivity. Today\u2019s conservatives, however, use \u201cJudeo-Christian\u201d as an exclusive term\u2013to keep those secularists and atheists and Muslims and Hindus out\u2013and that\u2019s the real distinction.<\/p>\n As for bringing Christ back into Christmas, there is a long history to that complaint, going back to the early 20th century and basically the invention of mass marketing and advertising.<\/p>\n Today the splits in religion seem to be between liberal and\u00a0conservative visions of America (and theology), not between Catholics,\u00a0Protestants, and Jews. You note that the United State\u2019s growing\u00a0religious diversity since the 1960s has\u00a0\u201cmade it difficult to refer to\u00a0the United States as a \u2018Judeo-Christian nation\u2019,\u201d\u00a0<\/em>though this growth\u00a0hasn\u2019t supplanted the\u00a0\u201cliberal-conservative divide.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0Is America moving\u00a0towards a post-Christian identity, religiously speaking, or do you\u00a0think the conservative religious alliances will manage to hold back\u00a0(or even reverse) this tide?<\/strong><\/p>\n Good question, and again I hate to guess about the future. I do think it would take extraordinary circumstances for the United States to become a \u201cChristian nation,\u201d whatever that might mean (and few advocates bother to develop a vision). There just are too many diverse faiths in America and too many constitutional protections to kill off all our religious pluralism. Plus, if you look back to colonial Massachusetts, even those folks felt like they were living in un-Christian times. Recall that the great form of speech then was the Jeremiad. The threat of a coming American godlessness has a long, long history.<\/p>\n If you were to offer a lesson from the history of Tri-Faith America\u00a0for religious minorities struggling today for acceptance and equal\u00a0treatment, what would it be?<\/strong><\/p>\n Histories lessons are always complicated because the events of the past happen in contexts that are very different from those that exist today. One of the things the advocates of \u201cTri-Faith America\u201d did quite successfully, though, was to present a positive and forceful image of what it meant to be an American, one that made their position the obvious next step. They were fighting over the meaning of America, and they were using historical actors and historical antecedents to push their vision forward. Today\u2019s conservatives are much better at this than today\u2019s liberals. But religious minorities in the past have used the various languages of good Americanism to show they belong, and those arguments were very successful for the people I study too.<\/p>\n \u2013<\/p>\n My thanks to Kevin M. Schultz for the interview, you can find\u00a0\u201dTri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to Its Protestant Promise\u201d at\u00a0Amazon<\/a>,\u00a0Barnes & Noble<\/a>,\u00a0Powell\u2019s<\/a>,\u00a0Google<\/a>, and other fine book (and e-book) sellers.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [The following is a post from The Wild Hunt archives. The Wild Hunt is on hiatus through Labor Day weekend and will return with new posts on Tuesday, September 4th.] Despite the fact that the history of the United States is incredibly well-documented, many of us labor under various\u00a0misapprehensions\u00a0regarding our nation\u2019s past. This seems especially […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[285,365,419,1009,1082,1209,2773,2774,1842,1861,2772],"class_list":["post-10249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","tag-books","tag-catholicism","tag-christianity","tag-history","tag-interview","tag-judaism","tag-judeo-christian","tag-kevin-m-schultz","tag-pluralism","tag-politics","tag-tri-faith-america"],"yoast_head":"\n