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“It Has to Come from the Hearts of the People”: Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, Race, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 May 2015

RANDALL J. STEPHENS
RANDALL J. STEPHENS*
Affiliation:
Department of Humanities, Northumbria University. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

In recent years historians and scholars of religious studies have chronicled and debated the critical role that black and white liberal Protestants, Catholics, and Jews played in the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. At every stage of the movement, mainline and traditional black churches proved vital. Less is known about the actions and reactions of conservative or moderate white believers. The churches that these fundamentalists and evangelicals belonged to would grow tremendously in the coming decades, eventually claiming roughly 26 percent of the American population. From the 1960s forward, conservative Protestants would also become key political players, helping to decide national elections. Their responses to the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, which intended to end discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin, and the heated debates that led up to the law reveal much about how conservative Christians related to the state and to a changing society. Responses to the bill ranged from resigned acceptance to racist denunciation. But believers were united in their antistatism and in their opposition to political and theological liberalism. This article examines how evangelicals and fundamentalists engaged in politics and understood race and racism in personal terms. It also analyzes the religious dimensions of modern American conservatism.

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Articles
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , August 2016 , pp. 559 - 585
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press and British Association for American Studies 2015 

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References

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30 There surely was much opposition to civil rights among believers in the North and West as well. But on the very strong southern evangelical and fundamentalist reaction see, for example, the demographics of conservative Protestantism in Gaustad, Scott and Barlow, Philip L., New Historical Atlas of Religion in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 402Google Scholar; and Landis, Yearbook of American Churches, 254–59; see also the extensive regional survey on racial attitudes taken by the evangelical publication Christian Herald: “The Poll Report: Integration and You,” Christian Herald, Feb. 1965, 22–26. Finally see the strong sectional evidence in Dupont, Carolyn Renée, Mississippi Praying: Southern White Evangelicals and the Civil Rights Movement, 1945–1975 (New York: New York University Press, 2013)Google Scholar; and Dailey, Jane, “Sex, Segregation, and the Sacred after Brown,” Journal of American History, 91, 1 (June 2004), 119–44Google Scholar.

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38 Purdum, An Idea, 240.

39 Graham quoted in Kenneth L. Woodward, “The Preaching and the Power,” Newsweek, 20 July 1970, 52.

40 Reinhold Niebuhr, “A Theologian Says Evangelist Is Oversimplifying the Issues of Life,” Life, 1 July 1957, 92. See also Niebuhr, “Literalism, Individualism, and Billy Graham,” Christian Century, 23 May 1956, 640–42.

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43 Dalhouse, 156. “Curtained Control,” Dothan Eagle (Dothan, AL), 24 June 1965, 6.

44 Adam Bernstein, “Evangelist Billy James Hargis Dies. Spread Anti-Communist Message,” Washington Post, 30 Nov. 2004, B06.

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47 “An Open Letter to Martin Luther King, from Dr. Carl McIntire,” Christian Beacon (Collingswood, NJ), 11 June 1964, 3, 7–8.

48 “From Dr. McIntire: A Letter to President Johnson,” Christian Beacon (Collingswood, NJ), 2 April 1964, 1, 4.

49 Lyndon Johnson call to Houston Harte, 11.25 a.m., 4 June 1964, in Beschloss, Taking Charge, 383.

50 Quote from Lyndon B. Johnson, “Remarks to Members of the Southern Baptist Christian Leadership Seminar,” 25 March 1964, online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, at www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=26130, accessed 19 March 2014. See also Walker, Samuel, Presidents and Civil Liberties from Wilson to Obama: A Story of Poor Custodians (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 253Google Scholar; and Branch, Taylor, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963–65 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), 266–67Google Scholar.

51 Fulton B. Creech, Sumter, SC, to K. Owen White, Houston, TX, “Letters to the Editor,” Sumter Daily Item, 22 May 1964, 6.

52 Landis, Yearbook of American Churches, 23.

53 “Negro Rights Backing Urged: Southern Baptists Receive Proposal,” The Blade (Toledo, OH), 20 May 1964, 45.

54 Chappell, David L., “A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Faith, Liberalism, and the Death of Jim Crow,” Journal of the Historical Society, 3, 2 (March 2003), 129–62Google Scholar, 150; and Alvis, Joel L., Religion & Race: Southern Presbyterians, 1946–1983 (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1994)Google Scholar, 9, 71, 120. For the more militant end of the spectrum see Dailey, “Sex, Segregation,” 119–44. See also “Free Will Baptists Take Racial Stand,” Christianity Today, 27 Aug. 1965, 54.

55 Wayne Dehoney and E. S. James quoted in “Civil Rights Law Viewed as a Test,” News Service of the Southern Baptist Convention, 8 July 1964 (Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, Nashville, TN), 1, 2.

56 Manis, Andrew M., “‘Dying from the Neck Up’: Southern Baptist Resistance to the Civil Rights Movement,” Baptist History and Heritage, 34, 1 (Winter 1999), 33–48 Google Scholar, 34. See also Newman, Mark, Getting Right with God: Southern Baptists and Desegregation, 1945–1995 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2001)Google Scholar, 63, 83, 125, 185, 206. “Sou. Baptists Chided to Be More Active in Politics, Public Life,” Biblical Recorder (Raleigh, NC), 4 April 1964, 9. For an earlier, staunch segregationist take see Leon Macon, “The Segregation Problems,” Alabama Baptist, 8 March 1956, 3; and Macon, “Integration,” Alabama Baptist, 3 May 1956, 3. On the Southern Presbyterian split see Dupont, Mississippi Praying, 63, 214–216.

57 “Amendment Opposed by Baptists,” Daytona Beach Morning Journal, 23 May 1964, 5.

58 KJV, Romans 3:1.

59 For an insinuation of immorality and duplicity on the part of King and other activists see “To Tell the Truth,” Christianity Today, 4 Dec. 1964, 32.

60 Kenneth W. Shipps, “Christianity Today, 1951–,” in Lora and Longton, Conservative Press, 171–80, 171, 173. On Christianity Today's coverage of King and the civil rights movement see Evans, Curtis J., “White Evangelical Responses to the Civil Rights Movement,” Harvard Theological Review, 102, 2 (2009), 245–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 263, 268. “The Racial Turmoil,” Christianity Today, 2 Aug. 1963, 47; William Henry Anderson Jr., “Evangelicals and the Race Revolution,” Christianity Today, 25 Oct. 1963, 6–7.

61 “Civil Rights and Christian Concern,” Christianity Today, 8 May 1964, 29.

62 National Association of Evangelicals, Office of Public Affairs, “Pros and Cons of the Civil Rights Bill,” 6 Feb.1964, 1, 2, National Association of Evangelicals Records, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL, Series 5: executive director files, subseries 2: Clyde W. Taylor, Box 52, Folder 11: Civil Rights, 1964–1965. For a similar moderate, cautious position see “Civil Rights Legislation,” Christianity Today, 22 Nov. 1963, 31.

63 Henry, Carl F. H., “What Social Structures? Some Remarks on Professor Smedes's Alternative,” Reformed Journal, 16, 5 (May–June 1966), 8–10 Google Scholar.

64 Dan Merrick, Dallas, TX, to Clyde Taylor, Washington DC, 27 Feb. 1964, National Association of Evangelicals Records, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL, Series 5: executive director files, Subseries 2: Clyde W. Taylor, Box 52, Folder 11: Civil Rights, 1964–1965.

65 W. R. Kliewer, Bakersfield, California, to Cylde W. Taylor, Washington, DC, 22 March 1965; and Paul Gray, Tucson, Arizona, to Clyde Taylor, Washington, DC, June 9, 1964, National Association of Evangelicals Records, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL, series 5: executive director files, Subseries 2: Clyde W. Taylor, Box 52, Folder 11: Civil Rights, 1964–1965. And see Taylor's replies in Clyde W. Taylor, Washington, DC, to I. F. Scott, Brooks, GA, 15 April 1964; Clyde W. Taylor, Washington, DC, to P. H. Radke, Westwego, LA, 11 June 1964; Clyde W. Taylor, Washington, DC, to Elton Crowson, Memphis, Tennessee, 17 June 1964; Clyde W. Taylor, Washington, DC, to Ralph A. Vanderwood, 16 June 1964; and Clyde W. Taylor, Washington, DC, to Herbert S. Mekeel, Schenectady, NY, 22 March 1965, National Association of Evangelicals Records, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL, Series 5: executive director files, Subseries 2: Clyde W. Taylor, Box 52, Folder 11: Civil Rights, 1964–1965. For a similar response concerning the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer see Paul H. Leber, Moss Point, MS, letter to the editor, “In Mississippi,” Christianity Today, 25 Sept. 1964, 46.

66 P. H. Radke, Westwego, LA, to Clyde W. Taylor, Washington, DC, May–June 1964, National Association of Evangelicals Records, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL, Series 5: executive director files, Subseries 2: Clyde W. Taylor, Box 52, Folder 11: Civil Rights, 1964–1965.

67 On the law-and-order point of view see “Editorials: Wrongs Do Not Make Civil Rights,” Eternity, June 1964, 4–6, 36; and “Christian Responsibility and the Law,” Christianity Today, 17 July 1964, 20–21.

68 Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Christian Century, June 12, 1963, 772. Miller, Billy Graham, 93, 95.

69 Sutton, American Apocalypse, 288, 306, 330. Andrew Preston suggests that at a fundamental level evangelicals feared that the government might have a hand in regulating religion. Andrew Preston, “Tempered by the Fires of War: Vietnam and the Transformation of the Evangelical Worldview,” in Schäfer, American Evangelicals and the 1960s, 189–208, 206 n. 12. See also Schäfer, Piety and Public Funding: Evangelicals and the State in Modern America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012)Google Scholar.

70 Steven P. Miller, “The Persistence of Antiliberalism: Evangelicals and the Race Problem,” in Schäfer, American Evangelicals and the 1960s, 81–96, 83, 86.

71 Phillips-Fein, Kim, Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade against the New Deal (New York: W. W. Norton 2010), 228–31Google Scholar.

72 Ibid., 76.

73 Goldwater, Barry, The Conscience of a Conservative (Memphis: Bottom of the Hill Publishing, 2010; first published 1960), 18Google Scholar.

74 Billy James Hargis quoted in “Ike Called Dictator, Group Hears Cry for Press Purge,” Tuscaloosa News, 11 Aug. 1964, 3.

75 On evangelical support and/or disapproval of Goldwater see Dochuk, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt, 245–56; Williams, God's Own Party, 76–77. The anticommunist Oklahoma preacher Billy James Hargis used his magazine to endorse Goldwater. Richard V. Pierard, “Christian Crusade, 1948–1969,” in Lora and Longton, Conservative Press, 471–78, 474. See also Iola B. Parker, “Our Church's First Negro,” Christian Herald, Feb. 1964, 15; and John Edgar Hoover, “Bad Men Cannot Make Good Citizens,” Christian Herald, Oct. 1964, 23–27.

76 Billy Graham, “Message to Students,” University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Michigan, 13 Feb. 1964, Sermon 2832, Box 28, Folder 102, Archives of the Billy Graham Center, Wheaton, Illinois, 4. See also Graham's remarks on the civil rights bill in “Billy Graham Holds Press Conference,” News and Courier (Charleston, SC), 8 April 1964, 3-A. On evangelical worries about LBJ's raft of Great Society legislation see “Churchmen Ponder Blitz of Bills,” Christianity Today, 27 Aug. 1965, 45.

77 Marty, Martin E., “The Protestant Press: Limitations & Possibilities,” in Marty, Martin E., Deedy, John G. Jr., Silverman, David Wolf, and Lekachman, Robert, eds., The Religious Press in America (New York: Holt Rinehart, and Winston, 1963), 3–63 Google Scholar, 58. Board, Stephen, “Moving the World with Magazines: A Survey of Evangelical Periodicals,” in Schultze, Quentin J., ed., American Evangelicals and the Mass Media (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1990), 119–42Google Scholar, 128–29.

78 “The Poll Report,” 22–26.

79 Coffman, Elesha J., The Christian Century and the Rise of the Protestant Mainline (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 69Google Scholar. “How Do You Feel about Integration,” Christian Herald, Nov. 1964, 18; “The Poll Report,” 22–26.

80 Ronald L. Heinemann, “A. Willis Robertson (1887–1971),” at www.encyclopediavirginia.org, accessed on 7 June 2014.

81 Senator Willis Robertson (VA), “Civil Rights Act,” Congressional Record, 110, 6 (9 April 1964), 7417–18.

82 Ibid., 7418.

83 “Ours Is the Generation,” Christianity Today, 13 Oct. 1967, 28. Weyrich, Paul M., “Blue Collar or Blue Blood? The New Right Compared with the Old,” in Whitaker, Robert W., ed., The New Right Papers (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1982), 48–62 Google Scholar, 52.

84 Graham quoted in AP, “Graham Asks Congress Act on Violence,” Florence Morning News (Florence, SC), 15 Aug. 1965, 1. “Graham Predicts Worse Violence: Calls Riots in Los Angeles ‘Only a Dress Rehearsal,’” New York Times, 16 Aug. 1965, 18; Gladwin Hill, “Relief Begun: 20 Agencies Give Aid to Riot-Torn Area,” New York Times, 17 Aug. 1965, 1. See also Edward R. Fiske, “Billy Graham Links Concern with Social Issues to Religious Conversion,” New York Times, 6 Dec. 1966, 38.

85 Graham quoted in Frady, Marshal, Billy Graham: A Parable of American Righteousness (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006; first published 1979)Google Scholar, 415.

86 Oliver, “Evangelical Campus,” 57; “Editorial,” Christianity Today, 15 Jan. 1971, 22; and “Editorial,” Christianity Today, 7 June 1974, 30. See also the shift in opinions within the SBC: Manis, “Dying from the Neck Up,” 33–34.

87 “A Nation in Social Upheaval,” Moody Monthly, Feb. 1966, 21.

88 Balmer, Randall, “The Politicization of Evangelicalism,” in Lippy, Charles H. and Williams, Peter W., eds., Encyclopedia of Religion in America (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2010), 809Google Scholar. C. Robert Zelnick, “High-Court Tax Rulings: Bob Jones University, Church–State Group Receive Setbacks,” Christian Science Monitor, 16 May 1974, 2; and “Court Upholds U. S. Fund Cutoff in College Discrimination Case,” Atlanta Daily World, 20 Aug. 1974, 1.

89 Smith, “An Almost-Christian Nation?”, 338; BJU spokesperson quoted in Robert H. Reid, “At Bob Jones University Disciplined Life Stressed,” Daily News (Bowling Green, KY), 4 June 1974, 11. “Supreme Court Will Hear Bob Jones Suit,” Spartanburg Herald-Journal, 10 Oct. 1982, A-9. Tax-Exempt Status of Private Schools: Hearings before the Subcommittee on Oversight of the Committee on Ways and Means, House of Representatives, Ninety-Sixth Congress, First Session (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1979), 1319.

90 Reed, Ralph, Active Faith: How Christians Are Changing the Soul of American Politics (New York: The Free Press, 1996), 105Google Scholar. Balmer, Randall Herbert, Thy Kingdom Come: How The Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America, an Evangelical's Lament (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 14–17 Google Scholar; Richard J. Meagher, “Right Ideas: Discourse, Framing, and the Conservative Coalition,” PhD diss., New York University, 2008, 169–70. Crespino, Joseph, In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), 256Google Scholar.

91 Paul Weyrich's comments in Cromartie, Michael, No Longer Exiles: The Religious New Right in American Politics (Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1993), 25–26 Google Scholar.

92 See Edward G. Dobson in ibid., 52.

93 Richard Viguerie telephone interview with Washington Post reporter Thomas Edsall, 18 Jan. 1990, quoted in Edsall, Thomas Byrne and Edsall, Mary D., Chain Reaction: The Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 132Google Scholar. See also Joseph Crespino, “Civil Rights and the Religious Right,” in Schulman and Zelizer, Rightward Bound, 90–94.

94 Rogers M. Smith, “Church, State, and Society: Constitutional Consequences of the Rise of Christian Conservatism,” unpublished paper in the possession of the author, 15.

95 Weyrich quoted by Martin, William, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America (New York: Broadway Books, 1997), 173Google Scholar. Balmer, Randall, Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter (New York: Basic Books, 2014), 103–8Google Scholar.

96 FitzGerald, Frances, “The Evangelical Surprise,” New York Review of Books 31, 54, 7 (26 April 2007), 31Google Scholar.

97 Emerson and Smith, Divided by Faith, 63–68.

98 “Religious Groups Weigh in on Health Care Reform,” Pew Research: Religion and Public Life Project, at pewforum.org, 8 Oct. 2009, accessed 24 April 2014. “The Tea Party and Religion,” Pew Research: Religion and Public Life Project, at pewforum.org, 23 Feb. 2011, accessed 24 April 2014.

99 Noll, Mark A., “What Lutherans Have to Offer,” in Shahan, Michael, ed., A Report from the Front Lines: Conversations on Public Theology: A Festschrift in Honor Robert Benne (William B. Eerdmans, 2009), 76–86, 77Google Scholar.