John F. Kennedy and the Politics of Faith by Patrick Lacroix

Abstract

Reviewed by: John F. Kennedy and the Politics of Faith by Patrick Lacroix Mark Massa S.J. John F. Kennedy and the Politics of Faith. By Patrick Lacroix. [Studies in US Religion, Politics, and Law] (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2021. Pp. 272. Hardback $34.95. ISBN 978-0-7006-3049-3.) Patrick Lacroix has written an important work of revisionist scholarship. Indeed, he argues—for the most part quite convincingly—that scholars of American religion (and of U.S. Catholicism in particular) have largely gotten the "secular sixties" completely wrong. As Lacroix argues the case, most previous scholars studying the contours of twentieth century American religious history have taken it as axiomatic that the famous "religious revival" of the 1950s ended with Dwight Eisenhower, and that the election of JFK in 1960 ushered in both the end of anti-Catholicism as a mainstream American pastime and the beginning of the era of waning religiosity during the 1960s and 1970s. But according to Lacroix, there was no "secular sixties." And Lacroix points to the person Kennedy himself and his presidency for understanding the quite important intersection of religion and politics at the beginning of the 1960s. He argues that scholars studying American [End Page 636] religion have tended to echo (far too uncritically) the Christian right's own assertion that the "secular sixties" were a decade of waning religiosity in which faith-based groups largely eschewed political engagement. In this quite mistaken periodization, the naked public square that Kennedy's presidency ostensibly ushered in itself helped the forces of conservative religion to build up steam to emerge in the 1980s as the "New Religious Right." But from Lacroix's vantage, "the Kennedy years represent an important moment in the arc of U.S. religious history, connecting the religious revival of the 1950s to the conservative religious activism of the last quarter of the twentieth century" (2). As Lacroix shapes the story, both Kennedy himself and his presidency were key factors in a decade when "progressive religion"—far from staging a retreat—played a key role in politics and the public square. Indeed, the author constructs a narrative that seeks to displace most previous histories of U.S. religion that have largely ignored Kennedy's impact on faith-based activism. The creation of the Peace Corps, as well as his growing appreciation for the social vision of Pope John XXIII (documented in papal encyclicals like Pacem in terris) illustrate Kennedy's growing commitment to utilizing inter-denominational faith-based groups in realizing his social vision in civil rights and economic aid initiatives, both in the United States and abroad. And the author is at pains to document how Kennedy's own commitment to the causes of civil rights and the work of young people in the Global South were rooted in his own "progressive" Catholic values and moral sense, values seemingly given official church approbation by the "other John." Lacroix argues that religion was "repurposed" during the Kennedy presidency: religion certainly had been instrumentalized at the beginning of the Cold War in the late 940s in the U.S. battle against "godless communism." But both the tone and location of that marshaled faith was relocated after 1960: the religious faith of the American mainstream was utilized under JFK to promote liberal reform both domestically and abroad, specifically around the issues of racial justice, arms control, and U.S. contributions to developing countries in organizations like the Peace Corps. And the author argues that it was Kennedy himself who functioned as the center of gravity for this new ("progressive") religious activism, all the while espousing a firm commitment to a high wall of separation between church and state, the latter rising more from Kennedy's own deeply-held understanding of constitutional principles and from his "realist" recognition of anti-Catholic impulses on the Protestant right, rather than from his ostensibly secular values. [End Page 637] Lacroix's study is rife with historical ironies, not the least of which was that it was the Catholic candidate in 1960 who played a key role in uncovering and deepening the rift between the "Seven Sister" mainstream Protestant groups affiliated with the National Council of...