The 1960s brought tumultuous cultural change in America. For evangelicals, the decade began with concerns about what would happen if the American people elected a Roman Catholic president.
In a close-fought campaign for the White House, Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy sought to dismiss fears that he would take orders from the pope and end the separation of church and state. CT reported on the “religion issue“ when it first emerged in the West Virginia primary.
Kennedy began to speak freely of the religious issue even while discrediting its importance. … He scolded the press so severely that not a single editor of the 400 present took up his offer to answer questions.
“The great bulk of West Virginians paid very little attention to my religion—until they read repeatedly in the nation’s press that this was the decisive issue in West Virginia,” Kennedy said. “I do not think that religion is the decisive issue in any state.”
“I do not speak for the Catholic church on issues of public policy,” he added, “and no one in that church speaks for me.” …
Questioned privately of how he would define his primary allegiance, Kennedy initially described it to a Christianity Today reporter in terms of the “public interest,” then indicated that it would be better expressed as a “composite” which includes “conscience.”
Did he feel that only a bigot would cite religious grounds for opposing a presidential candidate? No, but he said he found it hard to understand what intellectual anxiety there would be when one has answered in the negative (as Kennedy has) the all-important question: Would you be responsive to ecclesiastical pressures or obligations that might influence you in conducting the affairs of office in the national interest?
CT editors argued that concerns about Catholicism could not be so easily dismissed.
The past history and present practice of the Roman church illustrates its acceptance of the policy of persecution and oppression. The Protestants do not base their opposition merely on the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Eve nor on the Pope’s efforts to raise a rebellion against Queen Elizabeth. There are current events in Colombia, Spain, Italy, and Quebec. Where the Romanists are strong enough, they persecute; where less strong, they oppress and harass; where they are in the minority, they seek special privileges, government favor, and more power. …
Opposition to political Romanism is not unreasoning, because a Catholic in the presidency would be torn between two loyalties as no Protestant has ever been. A candidate may announce, and even sincerely believe, that he is immune to Vatican pressure; but can we be sure that he will not succumb in the confessional booth to threats of purgatory and promises of merit from the organization which he believes to hold the keys of heaven?
The Vatican does all in its power to control the governments of nations, and in the past and present it has often succeeded. The Pope favored Mussolini’s conquest of Ethiopia. He made a concordat with Hitler, a concordat that still is in force in Germany as a last remnant of an evil rule. The United States a century ago had unpleasant experiences with the Vatican and had to break off diplomatic relations—relations that should never have been established in the first place and should never be resumed. We know that Romanists do not accept the separation of the Church and State; we know that they oppose a government’s treating all churches alike; we know that they constantly seek tax money for their own uses.
Evangelicals were not, of course, opposed to religion in public life. In fact, editors argued that the way religion was being downplayed was the most troubling part of the political developments of 1960.
The real significance … is found not in a growing emergence of a Catholic bloc or party, nor even in a shift of the American political mood into the post-Protestant era, or into an era of pluralistic religious balances. The deeper fact is the widening public judgment that all religion is irrelevant to political attitudes and acts. The American mentality rapidly is losing any distinction of true versus false religion.
CT noted with approval how Eisenhower attended a presidential prayer breakfast in March—and mourned the end of an era.
When President Eisenhower strode from the gold-trimmed grand ballroom of Washington’s Mayflower Hotel … it marked a significant exit.
Eisenhower had just witnessed his third and last “Presidential Prayer Breakfast” as chief executive. As he left, more than 500 government officials and other dignitaries stood, their eyes fixed upon the man under whom the prayer breakfast had come to represent a red-letter day on the evangelical calendar.
The election was not the only political issue that year. The Civil Rights Movement drew increased attention with nonviolent protests of race-based segregation. CT editors surveyed white Christian leaders in the South for their response to the new, disruptive tactics.
Sharply critical of the “sit-ins” was Dr. William R. Cannon, president of Candler School of Theology, part of Methodist-operated Emory University in Atlanta, who called the methods “the worst possible.” … Dr. Robert W. Burns, pastor of the Peachtree Christian Church in Atlanta, who calls himself a “moderate” in the racial issue, also challenged the propriety of protest methods.
“These are not good means,” Burns said. “I’m very sorry to see them used.”
Dr. W. A. Criswell, pastor of the 12,000-member First Baptist Church of Dallas, largest in the Southern Baptist Convention, said he thought the question of property rights was involved.
“If a building is privately owned and run,” he observed, “I have assumed that one can do with it as he pleases.” …
Applause for the demonstrators’ manners came from the Rev. A. T. Mollegen, professor of New Testament language and literature at the Protestant Episcopal Seminary, Alexandria, Virginia.
“The dignity, restraint, discipline, and lack of vindictiveness of the Negro students’ demonstrations have been impressive,” said Mollegen. … “There is still great hope for America in our cold war with communism when our consciences respond to such efforts.”
Global Communism continued to be a major concern. CT invited J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, to write a series on the threat and explain how “churchgoers may effectively confront the Red menace.”
If communism is to be defeated, the task must rest largely upon the theologians and the ministers of the Gospel. Communism is a false secular religion with pseudo-theological explanations of the great verities of life, such as the creation, life on earth, and the world to come. Communism is an all-encompassing system with explanations—though wrong ones—for this great universe of God. The Party offers answers—though perverted ones—for the hopes, joys, and fears of mankind.
In the final analysis, the Communist world view must be met and defeated by the Christian world view. The Christian view of God as the Creator, Sustainer, and Lord of the universe is majestically superior to the ersatz approach of dialectical materialism concocted by Marx and Lenin. The task of our clergy today is to translate this Holy Truth into the daily lives of our men and women.
This truly is their responsibility as Christian clergymen.
Strong, responsible, and faithful Christians, wearing the full armor of God, are the best weapons of attack against communism and the other problems of our day. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness.” In this way you will be playing a vital role also in helping defend our cherished way of life.
A Dutch theologian also wrote about the dangers of resurgent antisemitism in Europe. Could the horrors of the Holocaust happen again?
One remembers what was done in the name of culture to fellow human beings. One remembers the easy shamelessness with which people could converse about the anti-Jewish program at the time it was being carried out. Hitler had said in his Mein Kampf that he could spot the Jews behind all the darkness in the world, and then he declared that he would rid Germany once and for all of its Jewish problem. …
I recall seeing Jews driven out of my parish in Amsterdam and out of all parts of the country, packed together as animal herds, and carted off toward Germany to vanish forever from our sight. We saw suffering that we had not imagined before. …
To those who have thought deeply about anti-Semitism, the recent outbreaks are no minor matter. We insist that the present anti-Semitic demonstrations are worse than what happened in Hitler’s day, not in effect, but in tendency and implication.
One CT writer was anxious about the “Strange New Faiths” and subcultures growing in America, including the advent of young people called “beatniks.” But another article argued that the lost, bearded young men of the 1960s were not so different from some of Jesus’ first disciples.
Across the bar of an American tavern leaned a young man still in his late teens. His hair flopped loosely over his ears in a disorderly tangled mop, and his rumpled sport shirt and soiled slacks hung carelessly on his frame as he toyed with a glass of beer and gazed vacantly into the mirror before him. One foot kept time with the monotonous rhythm of the juke box that was blaring out the latest popular hit. He was one of those whom Time magazine defined as “oddballs who celebrate booze, dope, sex, and despair, and who go by the name of ‘beatniks.’”
These self-conscious victims of fear and futility may be found anywhere among the younger set today. … Although the consciousness that the world is too much for us may be more acute today than ever before, it is by no means new. Jesus encountered this same attitude.
Innovative efforts to reach disillusioned youth could spark controversy. CT examined one fight over contemporary music: “Jazz in the Churches: Witness or Weakness?”
Liturgical jazz got its biggest boost yet when NBC’s “World Wide 60” series relayed to a Saturday night television audience a performance by the nine-piece “Contemporary Jazz Ensemble” of North Texas State College.
The Texas “combo” is currently blazing the liturgical jazz trail in a tour of U.ؘ S. churches and colleges. … Edgar E. Summerlin, 31-year-old music teacher who formerly played with nationally-known dance bands, says he wrote the jazz setting in memory of a nine-month-old daughter whose death a year ago drew him and his wife into the First Methodist Church of Denton, Texas. He was advised by Dr. Roger Ortmayer, professor of Christianity and the arts at Perkins School of Theology.
Would Wesley’s heart be warmed anew to hear the syncopated accompaniment to his service, or would it leave him cold?
“I think he would have liked it,” says the Rev. Charles Boyles, young Methodist minister who has been travelling with the ensemble. “Wesley moved out among the people, something that perhaps Methodists aren’t doing enough of today.”
Theological education seemed to be growing distant from real people and real concerns in 1960. A Southern Baptist seminary professor sounded the alarm in an address that CT published.
What is to be done for men who can discourse with facility on “encounter,” “myth,” “confrontation,” “kerygma,” “koinonia,” and “agape,” but who fail to bring the joy and strength of the Gospel of redemption into the lives of their parishioners? Or, for that matter, how adequate is the theological training of the man who can pronounce irrefutable absolutes on verbal inspiration, the pretribulation rapture of the elect, or God’s revelation in twentieth century Zionism, but who is totally devoid of the compassion of the Saviour, and totally blind to the personal and social sufferings and struggles of multitudes of creatures bearing the image of God?
Kennedy won the popular vote in the election in November by just 0.17 percent. Narrow victories in Illinois and Texas gave him a majority of the Electoral College, but many suspected the count had not been entirely honest in key precincts within those two states. Looking ahead, CT warned that evangelicals needed to prepare for dark times.
What matters most is whether, in the light of the world-shaking and possibly catastrophic character of what is happening under our eyes, evangelicals are ready to confront this revolutionary age with deeper commitment to our Christian calling and a sense of urgency that is geared to the crises of the hour.
