Exposing Red Clergy
Exposing Red Clergy
McCarthyism in the Churches
This chapter forms the first detailed account of the fundamentalists’ prolonged mid-1950s campaign to instigate congressional and FBI investigations into alleged communist infiltration in American and World Council of Churches denominations. It provides a rereading of McIntire’s and the American Council of Christian Churches’ published matter on alleged Communists in the churches and charts the collaboration between his organizations and the House Un-American Activities Committee and Senator Joseph McCarthy. Cold War era popular perceptions of what constituted genuinely “American” religiosity are assessed, as well as McIntire’s and his associates simultaneous attempts to infuse the Republican Party with their notions of free enterprise and anticommunism. The chapter also examines the revolt against his political efforts that was led in the mid-1950s by his protégé Francis Schaeffer.
Keywords: fundamentalism, evangelicalism, anticommunism, McCarthyism, mainline Protestantism, Cold War, United Nations
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