The evangelist's lean face was red with emotion and wet from perspiration. After mopping his brow and neck with his white handkerchief, he'd wave it at his audience — trying both to air it dry in the humid August heat of the sawdust revival tent, and reinforce the point of his sermon — our surrender to Communism if we elected John Fitzgerald Kennedy, a Catholic, to the presidency.
It was the summer of 1960. I was 13, in the midst of adolescence. That summer we spent several weeks at our small cabin at the Free Methodist Church campgrounds just East of Jackson, Michigan. Each day was filled with Bible studies, youth meetings, prayer meetings, meals in the large WWII styled Quonset hut dining hall. The days concluded with a two-hour singing and preaching service in the barn-like tabernacle that sat 1,000. On one particular night, however, there was competition. A few miles outside camp on Ann Arbor Road, near the Dome Ice Cream parlor, a traveling evangelist had dumped a pile of sawdust on a vacant lot, erected a modest tent over it, and was preaching — not about God or Christ — but against Catholicism.
Historically (I'm old enough to feel the need to explain my childhood in such terms), General Dwight D. Eisenhower was completing his second term as President, and the cold war was hot. Senator Joseph McCarthy had died several years before. "McCarthyism", the "Red" fear he had fostered, was very much alive, thanks to Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev's rhetorical threat to take over the United States. Khrushchev was reported to have said, "We will bury you." To which my very Christian, evangelical, Bible teaching, daughter-of-missionaries, given-to-passion mother would proclaim during family supper, "I'd rather be dead than red." She'd say this, and then ask if I didn't agree with her. I never did know how to answer since she was the one that first taught me about Jeremiah's prophecies to the Judean king, Zedekiah: that it would be better to be alive and a slave in Nineveh, than dead and a snack for vultures in Judah. (Yeah, yeah, yeah…I knew a lot about the Bible back then. But you have to remember, I was Evangelical, not Catholic…and Evangelicals go to Sunday School, every Sunday their whole lives. Hint!)
The Kennedy-Nixon campaign of 1960 occurred during the pontificate of John XXIII, and, here in America, Catholics were busy having large families. We lived near the Divine Child parish in Dearborn, Michigan, and it seemed that every other house in the neighborhood was Catholic with 6-12 kids. Some Protestants (like my mother) were afraid that Catholicism would take over America — not by killing people (like the Communists had threatened) but by having babies who would eventually allow Catholics to dominate the democratic process. Dave Armstrong has reminded me that the contraceptive pill was introduced, also in 1960, not so much to give women a choice, but as a racist ploy to limit the number of African American babies. Demographics is destiny.
Back in the sawdust revival tent, the perspiring evangelist was waving his white handkerchief — and preparing yet another, but larger prop. I'll never forget the image — or the "logic." He had been railing and raging for some time against Catholicism and Communism. The parallels were unmistakable (to him): (a) both institutions started with the letter "C" and ended in "ism" — suffixes that, by the standards of the English language, identified evil ideologies; (b) both Moscow and the Vatican were determined to take over the world, one by death, the other by over-population; and (c) both were in league with the devil — Communism outlawed God (neat trick), and Catholicism was the sinister front for the anti-Christ. Americans should fear both, he told us. The facts spoke for themselves…and my Mom, bless her rather-dead-than-red-heart…joined the ever-louder "Amen!" chorus.
Then, it came time for the big climax, the coup-de-grace, the clincher. The evangelist selected two, good-looking children about my age from the audience, and led them onto the small wooden platform from which he was preaching. The kids looked like "plants" — they were dressed and combed for the part. Yes, in addition to knowing something about the Bible I was a cynic. I recall the girl was wearing a pretty white dress, with a bow in her curled blonde hair, like she had just posed for a shampoo ad. I really don't remember the boy. Adolescence was in the process of permanently altering my interests.
The evangelist had the kids stand next to each other facing the audience, hands at their sides, idealistic smiles distorting their faces (they had done this before). Then with great pathos he intoned: "Men and women of America. I am warning you with God as my witness. If you elect John Fitzgerald Kennedy to the Presidency this is what will happen." And suddenly out of nowhere (okay, so I was distracted) he produces a HUGE red communist flag, and drapes it over the kids' shoulders like a warm blanket on a cold night. Then he took the corners of the red flag and pulled it tight around the front of the kids, leaving only their faces staring sadly (as if on cue) at the audience like a mad Andy Warhol painting.
The image was complete. The memory indelible.
Irrelevant Appeals
A number of fallacies were at work during the dear evangelist's presentation, but let's focus on two particular irrelevant appeals. On the emotional side we have Exploitation of Strong Feelings, and on the objective side Appeal to Common Opinion.
The evangelist exploited the strong feelings of his Protestant American audience by transferring the real danger of Russian Communism onto the false danger of Catholicism. That the Russians posed a real threat to the United States was palatable. It was during this post WWII period that the nuclear arms race began — the devastation of Nagasaki and Hiroshima still fresh in the public's mind. Just a few years before, in 1957, the Russians launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, which invisibly transversed the United States twice a day and twice at night. The terror of atomic bombs falling from the immediacy of space, just 600 miles away, suddenly became reasonable, and some Americans built underground, self-contained bomb shelters with a month's supply of food and water. The fears were confirmed when three years later President Kennedy blockaded Cuba until the Russians dismantled their nuclear missile sites there.
Recall, however, that JFK was not communist, or Russian. In fact he had a strong anti-Communist platform. He was also an American war hero and a Pulitzer Prize winning author. But, he was Roman Catholic. While I'm not willing to judge just how good or bad a Catholic JFK was, it was clear that the Kennedy clan's faith was not hiding in a closet. JFK's Catholicism was an issue throughout the campaign, and he worked hard in the primaries to prove he could get the Protestant vote. That Catholicism was part of the Kennedys' lives was driven home to me by the famous, but tragic photograph of Bobby Kennedy lying on the ground, having just been shot by Sirhan-Sirhan's bullet. Moments from death, Kennedy's right hand fingers a rosary. You can almost hear his thoughts: "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for me now…at the hour of my death."
Of course, the image of Bobby fingering the rosary reminds me of a common American opinion the evangelist was counting on Protestant Americans remembering, that Catholics were idolaters. The evangelist was also convinced that Pope John XXIII was the anti-Christ, and was, from the Vatican, directing the entire JFK campaign with idolatrous and sinister intent. Because of the wide spread, misinformed opinion Protestants held about Catholicism, reinforced by the Catholic Church's silence on the issue and its lack of any effective public relations effort about what Catholics really believed, the argument was convincing. "Amen!" my mom shouted.
It may be hard to imagine the residual strength of the British and Irish Penal Laws (sometimes referred to as the "Popery Code") to outlaw and marginalize Catholicism here in America. The effects are still very evident in states like Georgia where the early prohibition against Catholics owning land, running for office, or practicing law is evident by the scarcity of Catholic churches there. Recently, the vocational director for Glenmary Home Missioners, Fr. Steve Pawelk, showed me a current county map of Georgia where each county that did not have a Catholic parish, was colored red. Surprisingly, the Northern part of Georgia was a sea of red.
It is easy to get caught up in beliefs and opinions that the majority of those around us hold. It seems that going along with the crowd, or agreeing with the strong feelings of others is more peaceful and less contentious. But where such fallacious common opinion and strong feelings are uncontested, danger lurks close at hand. Even the apparent use of such fallacies should raise a red flag.
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