Candy magnate Robert Welch founded the John Birch Society
Robert Welch was a candy magnate who invented the Sugar Daddy and sold favorites like Junior Mints and Milk Duds. He was also very anti-communist. His dubious research led him to found the John Birch Society, a group whose mission was to spread conspiracy theories worldwide. They had major support from wealthy men like Fred Koch, father of the Koch brothers (who financed opposition to Obamacare and climate change legislation).
The John Birch Society spread conspiracy theories in the United States
Some of their most notable campaigns were those against Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Earl Warren and President Dwight Eisenhower. They claimed that these men were communist sympathizers working behind the scenes to put the communist agenda. Bogus stuff, but they gained thousands of followers across the country. They also fought the income tax, said that black people would not have wanted equality if the communists hadn’t taught them to, and argued that the US is a republic and not a democratic republic.
Some famous leaders of the Religious Right had ties to the John Birch Society
Phyllis Schlafly, RJ Rushdoony, Tim LaHaye, and many others had ties to the birchers. This group had a huge influence on the Religious Right! Not to mention shifting the GOP to accept extremists.
Our special guest for this episode is Dr. Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University. His book is Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right.
Sources:
Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right by Matthew Dallek
Before the Storm by Rick Perlstein
Divided We Stand by Marjorie Spruill
Helpful Guardian article about the Koch brothers and Americans for Prosperity
Christian Reconstruction: RJ Rushdoony and American Religious Conservatism by Michael McVicar
NY Times article about J. Howard Pew’s connections to Robert Welch
Dark Money by Jane Mayer
Discussion Questions
What is the John Birch Society?
Was communism a threat to the country in the mid-1900s?
What would have been the proper way to respond to communism?
What is the impact of conspiracy theories on American Christianity?
There are real conspiracies in the US, like those by Donald Trump and his allies to steal the 2020 election. But a lot of Christians don’t believe these real conspiracies. How has an abundance of false conspiracies numbed our ability to recognize reality?
Are you surprised Tim LaHaye, Phyllis Schlafly, and RJ Rushdoony were affiliated with the JBS?
How can believers maintain their faith even when evangelical culture has been corrupted?
TRANSCRIPT – NOTE: this transcript was generated by AI and may not be 100% accurate.
Chris Staron: [00:00:00] This episode is part of a long series exploring how some evangelicals tied themselves to the Republican Party in the 1970s and 80s. It can stand on its own, but when you’re done, go back and start at the beginning of Season 6, because all of this ties together. This is the John Birch Society.
Darby, Montana is located on the western border of the state, not far from Idaho. The downtown looks like a mixture of Old West and tourist attraction. And in the 1960s, they found themselves with a stack of old Bibles in the school district. They were going to get new ones, but had a question. What is the proper way to dispose of the good book?
A local minister, maybe thinking about how we decommission old flags in this country, maybe? suggested burning them. Again, this was the 1960s, a time of upheaval in the United States. Civil rights marches and protests, Vietnam, drills where school kids ducked under desks in [00:01:00] anticipation of atomic weapons.
The idea of Bibles burning for any reason, to some, was offensive. Perhaps they didn’t hear the part about them being old and needing to be replaced. They just heard Bible burning and got angry.
What followed was a battle that lasted for years, led by the John Birch Society. The John Birch Society is a group of radicals on the far right. They oppose communism, or what they think is communism, and demand pro American messages in public schools. According to Senator Mike Mansfield’s office at the time, these conspiracy theorists were determined to take over school boards across the country.
They wanted approval of textbooks. And in Darby, the school board denied their requests. And then came the thing with the Bibles. Radicals trashed the home of [00:02:00] the superintendent, stalked him, called with threats and then called again. They harassed him until he resigned. Within just a few years, Darby School District lost 16 of its 23 teachers.
using what one historian called scorched earth tactics. Birchers could be anywhere in the 1960s, and their influence reached some of the biggest names in what became the religious right. They picked up existing fears about communism and amplified them. They were a minority, That made a lot of noise and along the way, regrettably influenced modern evangelicalism.
They’re burning anger going far beyond the boundaries of the Bible. You are listening to the show that uses journalistic tools to look inside the Christian Church. We press pause on the culture wars in order to explore how we got here and how we can do better. I’m Chris Sta and this is Truce.[00:03:00]
This season, we’re bouncing around a lot in time. Because, really, there’s no one way to talk about how some evangelicals tied themselves to the GOP and do it in a straight line. Previously, we covered the roles that schools and women played. We also investigated some of the guys who provided the theological backbone for ties to the GOP.
And now, we’re dipping into a few ideas that will help us grasp what’s coming. In the last episode, we discussed how libertarianism shaped economic ideas of the religious right. In the next two episodes, we’ll reference this one. Today, a minor but powerful influence on the ways that evangelicals with large followings Sure, my name is Matt
Matthew Dallek: Dalek, and I’m a professor of political management at George Washington University and a [00:04:00] political historian.
Chris Staron: His book is Birchers, How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right. He’s also written on Reagan’s first political campaign and efforts to hold down the home front during World War II. Let’s turn back the clock a little to see how this kind of stuff is kind of in the American DNA.
Matthew Dallek: So the country was founded in a revolution to overthrow centralized power in the form of the British king. Americans harbored deep suspicions of a concentration of power in a distant place. I think that that has lent itself. to this hyper-individualistic ethic in the country and this deep suspicion of federal authority, of elites trampling on individual rights
Chris Staron: The late 1700s were also an era of conspiracies in Europe, many of which were harnessed by the rich and powerful To stay in power. You can read [00:05:00] more about that in the book, Phantom Terror by Adam Zamoyski.
Matthew Dallek: A second element though, and this is obviously true in other countries as well, but it, but it’s especially true in the United States because the country has grown so much through immigration.
There, I think has long been, especially among native. white populations, conspiracy theories that target immigrants, that target Catholics, Jews, foreign ideas.
Chris Staron: For example, some Americans were afraid of new Catholic immigrants, that their growing numbers would make them into a voting bloc that would then take orders from the Pope.
Or that the Illuminati was going to seize the government.
Matthew Dallek: And they’re bringing left wing ideas. Socialism, anarchism, right, communism. They’re bringing foreign religions.
Chris Staron: One of the early purposes of public school was to homogenize the country so that ideas like this wouldn’t take hold. [00:06:00] Our unfortunate love of conspiracies was already in place before the John Birch Society.
In fact, this episode may make it sound like the JBS was the only thing going. It wasn’t. It was one of hundreds of fringe groups in the country by the late 1950s. It just happened to be both influential and well known.
Matthew Dallek: Yeah, so Robert Welch was a candy manufacturer. He was actually a highly successful salesman. He would go around the country and hawking junior mints. He was the vice president of the company. So he was an executive and he was very well off. I actually wrote a book at one point about the art of the sale.
Chris Staron: This was in the 1930s and forties.
Matthew Dallek: He became a fairly prominent business leader. through the National Association of Manufacturers, one of the largest, most influential industrial lobbying groups [00:07:00] in the United States in the mid 20th century.
Chris Staron: You may remember them from Season 3. They advocated for free market capitalism and actively marketed economic ideas to pastors, a perfect breeding ground for what Welch was about to launch.
Its members were rich industrialists anxious about the New Deal and protections for labor. So some of them tried to market God and country as a way to establish order in the United States. Like, actually market it. In publications, ads, campaigns, sponsoring certain candidates. And one of those wealthy industrialists was Robert Welch.
Matthew Dallek: He, in the 1940s and 50s, became something of a proselytizer on the side. Meaning that, especially by the late 40s and early 50s, he would use his position of authority, of, of wealth, and, and just by dint of his authority as a leading businessman, to, uh, write articles and give speeches and, and [00:08:00] publish books discussing the threat that he saw of a communist takeover of the United States.
Chris Staron: Okay, so, cards on the table, there was an actual communist threat in the United States at the time. The Soviets had stolen plans for the nuclear bomb, and the government did turn up legitimate communist spies. And of course, we were spying on them, too. China and Russia saw tens of millions of deaths of their own people through starvations, gulags, labor camps, and straight up disappearances.
Communism was a threat, as were spies, but there are right ways to combat stuff like this, and there are lots and lots of wrong ways. Which do you think Welch chose?
Matthew Dallek: He was a businessman turned hardline anti communist who, in the 1950s in particular, he wrote a series of books, including a book about how the U.
S. was basically selling out its [00:09:00] foreign policy to the communists. As part of his anti communist fervor, he promulgated a number of conspiracy theories. about the alleged communist threat, the communist conspiracy as he saw it within the United States that had explained in his view why the country was losing the struggle against communist evil.
Chris Staron: He was inspired by guys like Joseph McCarthy, the senator who publicly and wrongfully accused people in the government and military of being spies. Look,
Matthew Dallek: he was not operating alone, but also had allied himself with people like, uh, William Noland, who was a hardline anti communist senator, Republican senator from California.
Robert Taft, a conservative, uh, Republican senator. Ohio Senator was one of Robert Welch’s heroes.
Chris Staron: We’ll talk about Robert Taft soon. He was Mr. Conservative in the 1940s and [00:10:00] super duper anti communist. In that era, the government was going through labor pains. Pains with labor. Unions. In the last months of 1946 alone, There were 4, 985 strikes in the United States, which some of these guys saw as proof that socialism had arrived.
To be clear, it hadn’t. But that didn’t stop them from equating labor unrest Rather than, I don’t know, cleaning up their factories, providing a living wage, or improving safety, the industrialists decided to fight back. One way Welch did this was by serving on the board of the Foundation for Economic Education, a libertarian group, that disseminated scary literature to factory workers on things like taxes and the French Revolution.
They also gave free conservative textbooks to poor schools. Walsh became a popular speaker. He was billed as someone who understood the [00:11:00] wicked ways of communism, and his target audience was well connected businessmen, men of influence who could then change their communities. This led to the founding of the John Birch Society, leading to the question, who was John Birch?
Matthew Dallek: Bill Nolan, the senator from California, who was an ally of Welch, helped Welch get access to files about John Birch. And Birch was an evangelist from Georgia, turned army intelligence officer, who served in China in World War II.
Chris Staron: Birch was murdered by Mao’s Communist army 10 days after the war.
Matthew Dallek: In these files, Welch believed that he had discovered not only that Birch was the first victim of World War iii, of, of communist plot to to take over the world, but he also, his murder had been covered up.
by communists and their sympathizers within the American government. [00:12:00]
Chris Staron: Which played right into the narrative he and McCarthy had already constructed, that the Reds had invaded the American bureaucracy.
Matthew Dallek: But conspiracy theories often take a shard, right, of reality, and they build that into something that’s almost unrecognized.
There’s the illusion that it is, at least in Welch’s telling, that it is based on his extensive research. But the conspiracy theory about the John Birch coverup or even Welch’s later charge that Dwight Eisenhower was a dedicated agent of the communist conspiracy, which really became quite infamous in, in the early sixties, that allegation.
And you know, some of these books are heavily footnoted, but not based on, on real sources, right? Like not based on Or what Welch claims that they, the sources say, don’t really say that. And so no, there was no government cover up, intentional cover up of John Birch’s death.
Chris Staron: [00:13:00] It’s like how people today say they’re going to do their own research on a topic and then read suspicious websites instead of looking for original documents or credible sources.
His research was the 1950s version of that. So there were people who believed that Eisenhower was a communist puppet. Even though, that made no sense. There was an even kookier belief about Senator Taft.
Matthew Dallek: That his death was caused by a radium tube implanted in the upholstery of his senate seat that caused the cancer that had killed him.
Chris Staron: Which is nutty, and based on nothing. And what was Welch’s source?
Matthew Dallek: As has been so widely rumored.
Chris Staron: As has been so widely rumored. He flat out admitted that it was based on rumor, not documented proof. But that really didn’t matter to his fans, who were already hooked. Of course there are genuine conspiracies.
There were. Like [00:14:00] communist spies stealing nuclear secrets from Los Alamos. But this was not one of them. Welch portrayed Birch as a martyr to the cause. Let’s be clear. He was a soldier at the time, not a civilian.
Matthew Dallek: Many movements, especially extreme movements, need martyrs. They need their narratives, and within those narratives, there are often heroes placed at the center of them, many of whom have sacrificed, given the ultimate sacrifice for the cause.
And Welch really appropriated and elevated this person who, of course, was not alive to protect his identity or his legacy.
Chris Staron: Welch spread the word through a biography of Birch and named his organization after him. Speaking of the organization, It was time to found it. Welch sent out letters, cryptic letters.
Get on a train, but not all together. Pretend you’re someone else, just some [00:15:00] normal businessman on a sales trip. Maybe in December 1958, 11 people, all white, almost all industrial leaders, showed up to a clandestine meeting.
Matthew Dallek: To the home of Marguerite Dice, who was a A member of, she was a minute woman.
Chris Staron: Another anti communist organization. She was already in the far right
Matthew Dallek: world. And Welch sent a letter to these folks saying, I need you for two days in Indianapolis to attend a meeting, but I can’t tell you the subject of it. I want you to stay. At different places. I don’t want you to all congregate at the same hotel.
And if anyone asks, just say you’re in Indianapolis on business.
Chris Staron: And they came. For two days, Welch laid out his plans for the John Birch Society, addressing rumors of a worldwide communist conspiracy. His goal was to take the fight to the communists in the United States.
Matthew Dallek: It would serve as [00:16:00] a kind of shock force.
force or shock troops to go after the alleged conspiracy, whether that was in the public libraries or the local school system or federal and state and local officials, that this movement would be a way to circumvent the parties, the political parties, to try to reach the public directly.
Chris Staron: They were afraid of mainstream media and institutions.
Like any of these groups, They needed to create an echo chamber. Walsh had a lot of ideas that went far beyond the fear of communism. For one, he didn’t like democracy, which he saw as leading to mob rule. The JBS actually handed out stickers claiming,
JBS: This is a republic, not a democracy. Let’s keep it that way.
Chris Staron: shard of truth there, right? Because the U. S. is a republic. We have people who represent us. But it’s a shard of truth that [00:17:00] goes haywire. Our elected officials don’t do everything. We directly vote on stuff like tax levies and whether or not to expand the rec center. Therefore, this is a democracy. So, which is it?
Is the United States a democracy or a republic? As it turns out, the It’s both. The U. S. is a democratic republic, but the Birchers decided to focus on only half of that equation, taking a shard of truth and running with it. See how they did that? This is something we’ll soon encounter with William F.
Buckley Jr., both a distrust of elites in government and the desire to put elites in power to keep the everyday rabble from influencing the country. Okay, so settle in, here’s just a few of the other things that Robert Welch taught. He denounced the civil rights movement and sit ins as a communist conspiracy, instead of, you know, people fighting for their rights.
He led the [00:18:00] charge in anti fluoride campaigns, didn’t like sex education in schools, and advised his members to scour textbooks, believed pro American ideas should be taught in classrooms, He slammed the New Deal and Roosevelt, said that Black people in the South wouldn’t have wanted civil rights if commies hadn’t convinced them of it.
Birchers tried to save the House Un American Activities Committee after it was rife with scandal. He sought to abolish the income tax, and ban products made in communist countries. By now, a lot of that probably sounds familiar to you. You could say that the John Birch Society was libertarian, but as you know by now, Libertarianism is a giant umbrella.
Matthew Dallek: They were libertarian in the sense that they believed in a radical devolution of federal power, right? They, they wanted to really roll back the federal government to a pre New Deal, even frankly pre progressive era [00:19:00] state condition.
Chris Staron: Like so many people we’ve talked about already, to Robert Welch, the New Deal was a no no.
Birchers didn’t like that the federal government was getting bigger and bigger and more involved in the lives of everyday people. That included how federal courts of the time shaped the country. One of their major campaigns called for the impeachment of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Matthew Dallek: The question is, what did they not have against, uh, Earl Warren and the Warren Corps? To the Birchers, Earl Warren was the, one of the architects of the communist takeover of the United States through a series of liberal decisions, starting most famously, of course, with Bush. Brown versus Board of Education, ordering the desegregation of the schools, but extending to establishing rights for criminal defendants, banning, uh, prayer in public schools.
They were [00:20:00] affronts to local individual control. And this actually became, iconic social campaigns or social movements. of the early 60s. I mean, people remember billboards saying impeach Earl Warren. To Robert Welch and to many birchers, that, that campaign had a kind of shock value that, you know, as Welch once put it, you know, we may not win this battle, but by the time we’re finished, the enemy will know we have been there.
Chris Staron: They used harsh tactics against people they didn’t like, including Justice Warren. That’s why I included the story of Darby, Montana at the top of the show, where they drove most of the teachers and the superintendent out of the district. This wasn’t about just getting their voices heard. They could be nasty.
Matthew Dallek: I opened the book with the story of Patricia Hitt, who was a Richard Nixon loyalist, a California Republican, who was running for a seat on a Republican committee in Southern [00:21:00] California. And the Birchers, who hated Nixon, they also did not like Patricia Hitt. And they targeted her by Calling her at home at all hours of the day, calling her a communist, and they called a number of Republicans, of voters in the district, denouncing her as a pinko, using all kinds of epithets,
Chris Staron: harassing people on the phone.
Applying economic pressure. They showed up at all sorts of big events, like the National Women’s Conference of 1977.
Matthew Dallek: Sometimes the Birchers would picket. Earl Warren would, let’s say, give a speech at a commencement speech. And the Birchers would be out front, you know, basically accusing Earl Warren, the Chief Justice, who had been basically a moderate Republican from California.
accusing him of being a communist. They threw eggs at integrated school buses in Boston. At times they ran phone trees where they would basically call people in their homes, [00:22:00] obviously, with a recorded message about the communist conspiracy.
Chris Staron: Since they were secretive, your friends, co workers, and relatives could be members.
And you wouldn’t know. The Burgers had several key texts, many of them deriving from Welch’s writings and speeches. Like his two day talk that he gave over and over and over. He had
Matthew Dallek: written a long letter to a number of his friends, ultimately called the Politician, in which he charged that Dwight Eisenhower was a dedicated agent of the communist conspiracy.
Chris Staron: And FYI, he wasn’t. A second resource came from Welch’s two-day recruiting monologue. It was published as The Blue Book. The guys at the first meeting took tools like these and became apostles of Robert Welch.
Matthew Dallek: These 12 men, including Robert Welch, Went back to their communities, people like Bill Grady from Wisconsin or Fred Koch, who is the father of [00:23:00] the Koch brothers.
Chris Staron: Two of the main donors to the Tea Party in the far right in the last few years. They’re Rothbardian libertarians who put a lot of money into fighting unions. Koch was at that first meeting and became an evangelist for the Birch Society.
Matthew Dallek: They started to put their Their money, and their organizational muscle, and their contacts, their extensive network behind the John Birch Society.
Chris Staron: Spreading these half-truths and all-out lies. They did it through meetings, which were limited to 20 people to maintain secrecy. At first, they targeted people like them. Rich, white industrialists, mostly Christian, and people with high standing in their communities. Mayors, Governors, Doctors, Lawyers Welch didn’t want dissidents, just people who agreed with him.
One catalyzing event happened in 1959, when President Eisenhower hosted Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. It was [00:24:00] billed as an attempt to bring peace during the Cold War, but conservatives viewed the state visit as proof that Ike was soft on communism. They didn’t want peace with Russia, So the Birch Society did what they often did, they started a front group to protest.
It was called the Committee Against Summit Entanglements, or CASE. The Daughters of the American Revolution offered their support, and a petition was circulated to stop this event. Signed by people Jr., founder of National Review. Future GOP presidential nominee Barry Goldwater, libertarian Ludwig von Mises, Pierre DuPont from, you know, DuPont, and of course, Fred Koch.
By now, the Birchers were a known quantity. When Eisenhower discovered that one of his appointees was a Bircher, he had him fired. That’s how renowned this movement was. The sitting president ousted a staffer just for being a member.
Matthew Dallek: And one of the things that [00:25:00] appealed to them is that, as one member wrote, the John Birch Society gives you a chance to fight the communists everywhere that they appear.
I mean, I’m paraphrasing. What I think they meant is that they got to fight the communists at the local level. They got to take the fight to the enemy within their community. And it was a group. As they saw that it was not just about talk and rhetoric, but about action.
Chris Staron: Action, like gaining small offices on school boards and business committees.
They put pressure on people they didn’t like or found suspicious. They placed ads in newspapers, handed out buttons, passed out information at events. Then there were the sneaky tactics. For example, take where I live, Wyoming. Birchers produced a variety of broadcasts that could be syndicated. And in the big cities, they had lots of competition.
But in rural places like Wyoming, they could capture their audience by monopolizing the only radio or TV station in [00:26:00] the region, radicalizing people who had few media options. So people like the pro Birch Reverend Carl McIntyre paid to saturate these rural markets. He gave 1, 000 to the effort. Which probably says a lot about why Wyoming remains so far to the right.
The John Birch Society had the membership. They had money and influence. Soon, they turned their attention to the big show, the presidency. Throwing their weight behind the nomination of one of the most influential people who didn’t become president, but who demonstrated that appealing to the extremes could win the nomination.
The John Birch Society was chasing the highest office in the land. I’ll continue the story after these messages. Why not leave a comment on your favorite podcasting app? It really helps people find the show. Okay, here come the ads.
Welcome back. So far, we’ve [00:27:00] mostly talked about the contributions of men, but they weren’t the only ones involved.
Matthew Dallek: The movement was founded by and run by, in headquarters in Belmont, Massachusetts, almost all by men.
Chris Staron: All the sectional leaders, many of the big donors, men, men, men.
Matthew Dallek: But the women, especially by I think the early 60s, were in many respects the most powerful force, especially on the ground.
Many were upper class and white. As they said, right, they had the time. They, uh, were often well off enough. So, right, they weren’t necessarily working.
Chris Staron: It gave them more agency. Both waves of feminism led women to write letters, petition, protest, and engage in civil society.
Matthew Dallek: Women who viewed themselves as educators, because again, the Birch Society had pitched itself as an education movement above all.
Chris Staron: So the women educated people. Distributing flyers, leading [00:28:00] discussions, and more. By doing this they could literally play an active role in shaping society. See themselves as part of a movement. They gained agency. While also Fighting their own equality.
Matthew Dallek: The idea that we’re policing morals in the community, I think that also appealed to a number of women as well.
Chris Staron: Within the JBS, women worked as secretaries. No surprise there. But many conservative bookstores that doubled as Berkshire distribution sites were operated, if not owned, by women. Sometimes several stores in one city. Los Angeles alone had 36.
Matthew Dallek: One historian likened them to coffee houses for the left.
Chris Staron: Where women led classes and connected people, which made them a powerful political tool.
Men and women alike wanted to change the country, make it in their image. What better way to do that than through politics? There was a major problem, though. Neither of the [00:29:00] political parties really fit the John Birch Society.
Matthew Dallek: But because Robert Welch had run for lieutenant governor as a Republican, he had attended the Republican convention in 1952, was a big supporter of Ohio Senator Robert Taft.
When Eisenhower won the nomination, he called it the dirtiest deal in American political history. And other founders as well. People like Bill Grady from Wisconsin had actually been both a supporter of Joe McCarthy, but also of Dwight Eisenhower.
Chris Staron: But Eisenhower and Earl Warren were Republicans. And according to the Birchers, they were commies.
Could they really belong to the party of Earl Warren? They would try. So they backed a number of Republican candidates in the 1962 midterms.
Matthew Dallek: And then in 1964, they flocked behind Barry Goldwater.
Chris Staron: Barry Goldwater. Someone we’ll cover soon in more depth. He’s credited by historians as pushing Republicans further to the [00:30:00] right and expanding the party to include extremists.
Like, you know, birchers. Even though he lost by the greatest margin of any U. S. presidential election. Lock that away for the future. Most of their successes were in lower offices. Though they sometimes gained prominent positions. Vice President Dan Quayle’s parents were Birchers. But as far as the far right was concerned, neither Bush nor Reagan met their standards.
They certainly did not like Nixon, despite his hardline anti communist stances. The Birchers were suspicious of Republican leaders. They didn’t really have another option.
Matthew Dallek: By 1968, though, they were very strongly behind George Wallace. The segregationist governor of Alabama.
Chris Staron: The third party candidate who said, segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.
And thankfully, Wallace lost. So the Birchers failed to win the big office, [00:31:00] but they did manage to push the GOP. Goldwater, whose first Senate campaign was funded, in part, by Welch, famously demonstrated to Nixon that Southern racists were a demographic that could be targeted by Republicans, nudging him in the direction of his long Southern strategy that I talked about earlier this season.
While they never made it to the big chair, Birchers made waves in other places. Notably, in Christian circles, including some of the names we’ve already mentioned this season. Take a deep breath because some of this might give you a headache. One Bircher sympathizer was R. J. Rush Dooney, the father of modern homeschooling and architect of Christian reconstruction.
His base of operations for a time was in Southern California, where some of his financiers read books by the John Birch Society. This is from a letter Rush Dooney wrote to Robert Welch.
RJ Rushdoony: Let me express my great respect for your work [00:32:00] and for you personally. I regard you as the clearest and most courageous public figure of our day.
Chris Staron: Rush Dooney gave money to the society but didn’t sign on as a member, knowing, of course, that a direct affiliation with them might harm his other work. What about Phyllis Schlafly, the Catholic woman behind the Stop B. R. A. battle in 1977? Her book, A Choice, Not an Echo, was a bestseller among birchers, and was instrumental in the nomination of Barry Goldwater.
She was a member of the JBS, but revoked her membership in 1964. Notably, she also canceled her subscription to National Review Magazine when it criticized Robert Welch. Her connection makes sense when you consider how she ran her organizations. They had a lot in common with the JBS from the way they subverted traditional media to the use of front groups that appeared interested in a single issue, and her [00:33:00] organized grassroots efforts.
Then there is Tim LaHaye, a hugely influential author in evangelical circles, including the wildly popular Left Behind book series. According to Matthew Dalek, LeHay regularly lectured and ran training seminars for the John Birch Society in the 1960s and 70s. He didn’t remain a Bircher, but his later work paralleled Welch’s.
As we’ll hopefully see later this season, LeHay formed the Council for National Policy, whose goal was to fight secular humanism. It’s a shadowy political powerhouse tying religious leaders to big money. One critic described it as
Journalist: A slick, updated, repackaging, birch society philosophy.
Chris Staron: They continue to operate in secret.
One of their members was the late Foster Frese. Now, if you lived in Wyoming, You’d know who I’m talking about. I literally [00:34:00] used to live next door to his investment business, and he funded a classical Christian school in my town. Speaking of deep pockets, there was Joseph Coors, the beer magnate who funded the Heritage Society.
He was pro Birch. And J. Howard Pugh, a wealthy oilman and co founder of the Pugh Charitable Trusts. He was a Presbyterian layman and a major backer of Christianity Today. Which, by the way, feeds ads to this show. His money helped finance Barry Goldwater, Nixon, and Billy Graham. He funded spiritual mobilization, the Foundation for Economic Education, and the Christian Freedom Foundation.
He supported the John Birch Society, though he denied that he was a member. membership. But he was on the editorial advisory board of a Bircher magazine, American Opinion, and was a stockholder in Robert Welch, Inc. So, I’m guessing J. Howard Pugh was okay with Robert Welch. Not only were [00:35:00] some Christians with large followings Birchers or Bircher adjacent, a lot of money that funded evangelicalism in the 20th century came from Birchers.
Okay, so let’s check in. Who here’s still breathing normally? Does it lighten the mood if I tell you that Mad Magazine did a riff on the Birchers? I’ll put up a link for patrons who want to see it for themselves. This brings us to a big question. Why did some religious right leaders dabble in bircherism
Matthew Dallek: They sympathize with a lot of the birch worldview, especially on moral questions, right? The idea that the major institutions in American life were corrupting traditional family values, trampling on the Christian character.
Chris Staron: After all, the Warren Court did end required Bible reading and prayer in the schools.
Matthew Dallek: You remember. Sexual revolution, gender [00:36:00] relations, 60s and 70s, women’s rights, it’s a civil rights struggle, the gay liberation movement. progressive education, right? And this is, I think, a worldview that the Birchers held and that attracted people like Phyllis Schlafly, for example, or Tim LaHaye. They wanted to reimpose or restore what they saw as the lost Christian character of the country.
I don’t know that the Birch Society necessarily defined their trajectory. And then I think the Birch Society also inspired some of their organizing. tactics and their strategies.
Chris Staron: strategies. This is not to say that all evangelicals were or are racists or are against the civil rights movement. There was strong pushback against how fast the world was changing, how big the government was getting, and how involved it was in the lives of everyday people.
And yes, there was a lot of pushback against it. Though they hated the government telling people what to do with their lives, they wanted the government [00:37:00] to tell people what to do with their lives, just in their own way. The John Birch Society saw a deep decline in the 1970s, as it was taken over by people further and further from the mainstream.
It lost some of its influence, but is still going today, spreading propaganda, and we hear echoes of it every time a prominent conservative accuses somebody of being a communist, when they’re probably not. We may never understand the full impact that the JBS had on even juggles in that era, but we do know that Lahaye, Schlafly, Rashtooni, and others shared their negative view of America’s trajectory.
They started powerful organizations of their own that went around traditional forms of media. So they couldn’t get fact checked. Sure, a number of birchers in the 1960s considered themselves Christians. Remember the first episode of the season? When someone calls themselves or a movement Christian, we have to ask ourselves, [00:38:00] what did they mean?
Let’s go back to the beginning of the episode, back to the small town of Darby, Montana. Do Christians run teachers and superintendents out of a school district for replacing old Bibles? Who knows? Would Jesus harass someone over the telephone? Do true followers of Christ terrorize their neighbors? No.
Instead, we should be on the lookout for secret societies that claim to have all the answers. And then, expose them. Finally, Should Christians delight in gossip and rumors? Can we participate in spreading conspiracies as the Birchers did? It’s often done today on social media and around the water cooler and seen as harmless, but it’s not.
Listen, we need to reconcile with the fact that when we spread lies, we are liars. Conspiracy theories are not cute. And they’re not fun. They besmirch the name [00:39:00] and witness of God’s church. And yes, there are actual conspiracies in the world. But can we achieve our outcomes by hitching our wagon to dubious organizations?
To lies. When we partner with extremist groups, we do something far worse than looking silly. Or spreading lies. We tarnish the name of God.
Special thanks to Matthew Dallek. I first heard about his book, Birchers, on NPR’s Fresh Air back when I was driving a school bus. And the book is quite good. Other sources can be found on the website or in your show notes, including Before the Storm by Matthew Dallek. by Rick Perlstein. If you want to keep me working on this program instead of driving a school bus like I used to, consider giving a little money each month to help me out.
One other Christian podcast is exploring the [00:40:00] legacy of the John Birch Society. I mean, really? This is important stuff, and the reason I can cover this kind of thing is because I’m an independent, for profit company. If I were running a non profit, I’d be too scared to call out the shenanigans of wealthy financiers I’d be chasing their money.
I want to run this show with 10 to 20 a month coming from a lot of individual donors, instead of by the grace of a few major backers. This gives me journalistic independence that other ministries don’t have. If you want to be a part of this crazy and original project, visit truespodcast. com slash donate.
There you can also learn about bonus materials, like more of my conversation with Matthew Dalek, including how the John Birch Society. laid the groundwork for the Trump era. That’s trucepodcast. com slash donate. Thanks to everyone who gave me their voices for this story, including Jackie Hart and Bob Stevenson.
As usual, I’m indebted to my brother, Nick, and my small group for helping me process this information. Truce is a [00:41:00] production of Truce Media, LLC. God willing, we’ll talk again soon. I’m Chris Starin, and this is Truce.
Jesse Eisinger on why the ultra-wealthy barely pay any tax at all
How do ultra-wealthy people avoid paying taxes? It seems like a strange subject to bring up when discussing why some evangelicals are drawn to the Republican Party. But many of the ties between evangelicals and the GOP have to do with money. So, let’s take a little side trip and explore the tax loopholes of today. More importantly, let’s try to understand why so many Americans are tax-averse. Could it possibly be because we, deep down, know that someone else is getting a better deal than us?
Buy, Borrow, Die
One tactic used by the ultra-wealthy is “buy, borrow, die”. They avoid “income”, instead opting for assets like stock and real estate they can borrow against. Borrowed money is not taxed. Then they either pay back those loans with other loans (often with interest rates that are much lower than their tax rates would be) or they fail to pay back the loans. Then… they die.
Jesse Eisinger is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter with Pro Publica. Chris first heard about him from his book (pardon the language) The Chickenshit Club and met him when he appeared at a live event in Jackson, WY hosted by the Teton County Library, the Center for the Arts, and the Jackson Hole News and Guide.
The shocking true story of how a school board meeting in West Virginia embodied a debate over textbooks
In 1974, Alice Moore was a member of the school board in Kanawha County, West Virginia. The board met to hear the recommendations of the textbook committee and approve them. But Alice protested when she read a portion from the Autobiography of Malcolm X, which thanked Allah for preventing Malcolm X from being a black Christian. From there they uncovered a number of potentially offensive texts, some because of language, others because of discussions of rape. Race was likely a factor as well, though Moore denied it.
A disagreement about textbooks becomes a war
Local pastors decried what they saw as secularism and humanism creeping into public schools. Parents blocked school buses, and others kept their children at home. Soon, there were fights, and dynamite was used to blow up school buildings. What started as a disagreement over books erupted into an all-out war. One that echoed in other parts of the country at the same time as families wrestled with changes in education.
What did you think of the passage from “Soul on Ice”? Should it be read by senior students headed for college? What about other students?
Who should decide what gets taught in local school districts? How about nationally?
How did Alice Moore and others act appropriately? How about inappropriately?
The KKK and John Birch Society show up a few times this season, often opportunistically. Does their appearance automatically smear all participants as racist?
What else was going on in 1974 that could have escalated the panic of the era?
Transcript (Note: Transcripts may not be accurate)
This episode is part of a long series exploring how some Christians in the US tied themselves to the Republican Party. It can stand on its own, but when you’re done, go back to the beginning of season six for more context. Also, in a few minutes I’ll be discussing a book that contains violence toward women. It won’t be graphic, but it may not be appropriate for the little ones. We will also mention public school education about reproduction. Hint hint. Okay, here goes.
What could be more banal than a school board meeting?
On April 11, 1974, the school board assembled in Kanawha County, West Virginia1. That day, their goal was to approve a slate of new textbooks and supplementary materials for the 125 public schools in the county2. Four members of the board were men, one was a woman. That was Alice Moore.
She ran for a seat on the school board after, according to her, she discovered that the district’s comprehensive sexual education course wasn’t just about sex ed. It discussed how to think, feel, and act, and questioned kids about their relationship with their parents3. Despite her complaints, the superintendent didn’t make any changes. So she ran for the job and won.
Here she was. At a hearing about books. A group of experts had been established with the goal of bringing in more diverse ideas and opinions. Alice looked over their recommendation… and something stood out. A call for “dialectology”, encouraging students to speak naturally and in their own dialect in the classroom4. Alice found this objectionable, saying she would not tolerate “dem” and “dat” being used in place of “them” and “that”5. Kanawha had a combination of towns and rural areas, places where people may not speak proper English. In her mind, “dialectology” was another way to bring liberalism into the schools6.
Still, when the vote came around, she agreed to approve the books.
The timeline is a bit fuzzy, but according to Moore, at the meeting, her husband approached her to show what kind of books she had just approved. One, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, contained this phrase:
MALCOLM X: “All praise is due to Allah that I moved to Boston when I did. If I hadn’t, I’d be a brainwashed black Christian.”7
Moore was shocked. What had she just approved? That short quote packs a real punch. First, praise to a god different than the one worshipped by the religious people of the area. It also referred to black Christians as brainwashed. It both denigrated Christianity and African Americans who believe in Jesus. Alice objected, saying she wanted all of the approved texts delivered to her house. Something like 300 books8.
What followed went far beyond a disagreement. Within months, the county was in an uproar. People boycotted the schools, snipers fired on school busses, and buildings were dynamited. This battle over words on paper touched something deep in the American psyche, something that had been building for years. Posing big questions. When, if ever, should students be exposed to objectionable material discussing rape? Murder? Moral relativism? Or differing opinions about religion or the founding of the United States?
This was Kanawha County. And it was about to go to war.
You’re listening to the show that uses journalistic tools to look inside the Christian Church. We press “pause” on the culture wars in order to explore how we got here and how we can do better. I’m Chris Staron. This is Truce.
This season we’re taking a look at how some evangelical Christians in the United States tied themselves to the Republican Party. One thing I’ve noticed over the last year or so reading about this topic is that people tend to look for a silver bullet. That one moment or topic that catalyzed Christians around the Republican Party. It’s about race, or backlash against feminism and gay rights, reliance on conspiracy theories, societal tumult, fear of the end times, tax breaks, who gets to educate our children or economics. The only problem is… there isn’t one easy answer. In truth, each of those things contributed, often at the same exact time. Each of them warrants exploration. So for the next several episodes, we’re going to pull apart these different forces. Because they are all important. You’ll notice that it will be hard for me to go in chronological order because many of these movements happened in the same decade – the 1970s. So we’re going to go through them topically and then tie it all together.
Okay, so let’s begin with a little brain exercise. What is the purpose of public schools? Seems easy, right? To teach kids how to read, write, learn history, do math. But what are our greater goals as a society? One thing is that an educated populace creates jobs and allows us to compete with other nations. As I covered earlier this season, that’s why we invested so heavily in colleges, universities, and community colleges in the 1950s and 60s. To beat the communists. But there are other advantages, right? In a democratic republic like the US, we want our citizens to have a basic understanding of how their government functions. What we are as a country. Those kids are going to grow up and vote someday.
Others would argue that it prepares young people for adulthood. It lifts poor people out of poverty, thereby decreasing the number of people seeking government aid. It also teaches us to be citizens of a nation. Maybe even to learn our founding myths, which builds patriotism. That patriotism leads some to serve their country in the military or by holding political office. There are all kinds of reasons why we do what we do. If you think of more, find the show on social media and let’s discuss.
Public schools in the US were advocated for by the early Puritans. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington all called for them9. But by the 1840s there were only a handful open, and only in communities that could afford them10. That doesn’t exactly work with the American ethos of equality, where anyone from any background can rise to do great things. Advocates pushed for decades to establish free schooling to every child, but it wasn’t until 1918 that schooling was mandated for all children through elementary grades11, though they were still allowed to be segregated. Imagine that! Kids in the US have only been required to get an education for just over a hundred years. I think the timing is integral. It was right at the end of the progressive era in the United States, where women would get the right to vote, prohibition was in the air, the pure foods movement, labor laws. The country in the nineteen-teens was caught up in this desire to make our world better through legislation.
But as we covered last season, there were other forces at work as well. Premillennialism and dispensationalism took off, telling certain Christians that history trends toward destruction, but so does the church. Instead of, “we can make the world better through good laws”, this interpretation of the Bible predicts some pretty heinous persecution for Christians. To boot, their interpretation of Revelation 13 predicts that an evil being is going to rule over a one-world government in the end times. That person will persecute Christians.
REVELATION 13:7: “It was also given to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them, and authority was given to him over every tribe, people, language, and nation.”12
That may seem tangential, but remember that premillennialist dispensationalists at this time are on the lookout for a one-world government, which makes some of them distrustful of government in general. It might be worth noting once more that this does not go for all Christians. Not even all evangelicals take this interpretation. But it was spreading. Two years after the law for all kids to attend school, the League of Nations was created, the precursor to the United Nations13. You know…a united body bringing together lots of world powers. To some Christians, not all, this looked like a one-world government. And the American government was expecting more and more of its people now that it required them to educate their children. The government was entering the household and impacting children.
It wasn’t until the Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of 1954 that all public schools were supposed to be integrated14. Though, this turned out to be difficult to enforce, especially in racist areas. Then in 1962, the US Supreme Court made it illegal to offer a prescribed prayer in public schools (we covered that last episode) and one year later it did the same for Bible reading15. Among some evangelical Christians, including Alice Moore, it seemed that the United States was trying to push God out of the public square. This just two decades after God was added to the money, our pledge of allegiance, the founding of the National Day of Prayer, the National Prayer Breakfast, and the erection of monuments to the Ten Commandments. It seemed like public Christianity was on the outs.
Mix that with the tumult of 1974. When the school board reconvened to hear objections to the book chosen in Kanawha County. It was the middle of the Watergate scandal. Two months before Nixon’s resignation. The aftermath of an oil crisis. The Troubles in Ireland. Airline hijackings. Rising crime.
That’s important to understanding what’s about to happen at this school board meeting. Sometimes all of these changes, these pressures, build up. Waiting for a moment of catharsis.
On June 27, 1974, when they reconvened during a heavy downpour, the world was going through a lot of major changes16. About 2,000 people tried to squeeze into the building, but many stood outside in the rain17. Two thousand people for a school board meeting! A preacher friendly to Alice Moore spoke against a book that was chosen for high school seniors, Soul on Ice, by Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver. By the way, this next section discusses the topic of rape.
I want to read a section of the text to you. Because out of context it will seem like Alice Moore and her supporters are racist hicks wound too tightly. By getting a little taste of this, it may deepen your understanding of what they were working with. Okay, so, early in the book, Cleaver writes about Voltaire and learning to hate capitalism thanks to the writings of Karl Marx. Already a red flag for conservative people engaged in the Cold War. One page later, he writes about his past of sexual violence18.
ELDRIDGE: “Somehow I arrived at the conclusion that, as a matter of principle, it was of paramount importance for me to have an antagonistic, ruthless attitude toward white women.”
CHRIS: He continues a few lines later…
ELDRIDGE: “I became a rapist. To refine my technique and modus Operandi, I started out by practicing on black girls in the ghetto– in the black ghetto where dark and vicious deeds appear not as aberrations or deviations from the norm, but as part of the sufficiency of the Evil of a day—and when I considered myself smooth enough, I crossed the tracks and sought out white prey.”
CHRIS: A little further down…
ELDRIDGE: “Rape was an insurrectionary act. It delighted me that I was defying and trampling upon the white man’s law, upon his system of values, and that I was defiling his women.”19
CHRIS: Okay, how do you feel about this? To be clear, Cleaver goes on to repent for what he did20. It’s a meditation on unchecked hatred, for which he seeks forgiveness. But… do you want your high school senior reading about a man purposefully going out and raping women because of their race? Saying that its easier to rape black women? This depends on the stuff we talked about earlier. What is your idea of the purpose of public education?
Let’s look at a more liberal viewpoint: For a lot of Americans, high school is the last formal education they get. Where else can they have frank conversations about race, anger, violence, and redemption? Or how a person can be so angry at an oppressor that they want to lash out and do something terrible? But you can see how parents, conservative or liberal, might want to limit the degree to which their kids learn about violence and this kind of animosity toward another race. Alice Moore objected because she thought this was not a fair representation of the black experience. A public radio documentary on this battle included an interview with a local pastor named Ron English, who agreed that some black people in that area saw it as anti-Christian and anti-American21.
Another pastor in Kanawha denounced Soul on Ice. While he did that, Alice Moore kind of cross-examined him. What about a textbook that featured the story of Androcles and the Lion? This is the story of a slave who runs away into the woods. There he encounters a lion, but the lion doesn’t chase him because the beast has a thorn in his paw. Androcles takes the thorn out and the two part ways. The slave is caught and sentenced to be thrown to the lions. But, guess what? The lion he encounters is the one he saved and all is well22. It doesn’t hurt him, and the slave is set free.
It’s one of Aesop’s fables. How could anyone object to Aesop? One textbook urged students to compare and contrast that story with Daniel in the lion’s den from the Bible. The pastor’s objection? Comparing a myth by Aesop with Scripture makes Scripture look like it didn’t happen23. Like it too is just a moral fable. Maybe you can kind of see that, right? Remember, daily Bible readings and school prayer had been outlawed in schools just a decade earlier. So it became much harder to make the case for the Bible because of the law, but one could still offer a critique of the text or present it as a myth. Nothing particularly illegal about that.
Alice Moore said that liberal school bureaucrats intended to attack religious conviction…
ALICE MOORE: “…by compelling their children by law, to be in that classroom, and then undermining everything they believed in.”24
She also cited a text that described Freud’s Oedipus complex where young girls are sexually attracted to fathers and boys to mothers. Alice knew she was going to be accused of being narrow-minded because of her religion, and seemed to resent that, as well as the content of these books that encouraged kids to explore moral relativism25. Or the idea that one person can have a different moral compass or truth for everyone else. That’s relativism.
A parent named Mike Winger defended the books, arguing:
WINGER: “To summarize, this is the only world in which we live. We cannot hide it from our children. We can only determine when they will find it and where they will find it. Let them find it today rather than tomorrow and let them find it here in our schools rather than on some street corner in New York or some rice patty in Vietnam.”26
The points were put forth. The crowd packed in. Once again, the board voted. This time, Moore was the only person who did not vote in favor of the adoption of the textbooks. As she stepped out of the room and into the downpour, she was greeted by her supporters as a sort of Christian hero. She stood up against moral relativism and gritty violence. What followed would be weeks of protest, danger, and violence as coal miners and the national media joined the fray. Could the people of Kanawha County come to a peaceful decision? Or would this struggle over who gets to teach children explode even further?
I’ll continue the story after this short break.
COMMERCIAL BREAK
Alice Moore, or “Sweet Alice”27 as she was known locally, was not the only person pouncing on textbooks. She was in touch with two people well-known in conservative circles for reviewing textbooks. Mel and Norma Gabler. Last season we discussed an interesting phenomenon that took off in the 1800s in Christian circles – the rise of parachurch organizations. This is when an organization that is not a church comes alongside the church in order to serve a church-adjacent function.
Think about the youth movements we discussed earlier. They were driven in part by organizations like Youth for Christ or Campus Crusade. They are para-church organizations. The same is true for organizations like Focus on the Family, Christianity Today, or… really… this show. But its important to note that anyone can start one and there is no real oversight, which is where parachurch organizations can get tricky. Because an organization that is wacky or behaving poorly can be seen as “the church” doing something, when it may just be a few people in an office or someone’s basement. Or in my case, recording in the VBS storage room in my church.
Got it? Okay. Mel and Norma Gabler had their own para-church organization to study textbooks. They said they were helping Christians, but, again, no real accountability.
According to the Gablers28, they became interested in the subject when their son came home confused by what the founding fathers of the country stood for. This clip is from the show “Firing Line”29.
MEL GABLER: Then he asked if he could bring his textbook home, and I said “of course” and before he handed it to me he had his finger in a certain place. And he said to me, “Dad, tell me what the framers of the constitution had in mind when they wrote the constitution, and I told him…
Simple enough, right? Honest question from his sixteen-year-old son. Listen closely to what Mel told him because it’ll give you a pretty good idea of what he and Norma believed in.
MEL GABLER: I told him they wanted a limited government with power enough to keep the states together for common defense, but to leave the rights, the privileges, and powers as much as possible up to the individuals, the local governments, and the states. And he said, “not according to my book. My book’s teaching me we have a dictatorship in Washington.”
This incident, combined with a later one where they discovered that an encyclopedia had left God out of the Gettysburg Address, encouraged the Gablers to get involved.
MEL GABLER: So then he asked us the question: “Dad and mom, if a young person’s textbooks are slanted, and his reference materials is slanted, where can a young person go to find he truth?” And this is what we’ve been doing ever since.
They formed Educational Resource Analysts out of their home and raised money to champion their cause30. The Gablers, as maybe you inferred, had a decidedly specific view of government. They favored small government and decried any textbooks that showed warmth to the United Nations or the New Deal. You may remember, some conservatives were afraid of the New Deal because they considered it a stepping stone to socialism31, something that is hard to substantiate now that we’re 80 years removed and still not a socialist country. They were uneasy about the UN for reasons we already discussed – thinking it was a nudge toward one world government. They were also set that the US be depicted as God’s chosen nation, a popular notion today despite the US not being mentioned the the Bible, and in the text Israel being called God’s chosen people. They did not like it when Confederate generals were disparaged in books, or the founding fathers shown to be deists32. By the way, you can hear an episode about the real and imagined faith of the Founding Fathers in season three. The Gablers won a requirement in Texas that textbooks discuss evolution as one of many theories33. Texas was vitally important to textbook publishers because it was the largest purchaser of textbooks and other states followed its lead34. The Gablers had a big impact right from their home.
When Alice Moore, the school board member in West Virginia, reached out, they told her that liberal secularists used “morbid” “negative” or “depressing” tones to communicate their ideas, citing Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado”, in which a man murders another without showing remorse35 or facing consequences. They cited the Ten Commandments and the Bible as the ultimate judge of morality. Another book they didn’t like was called Communicating. In it, students were asked to break into small groups and discuss “Jack and the Beanstalk”. You remember, Jack goes up the beanstalk and takes stuff from the giants in the sky. The discussion questions asked: Is it okay for a person to steal? Asked them to consider “What difference there is between a rich man and a poor man stealing?” That clashes pretty clearly with the Ten Commandments, which says “thou shalt not steal”. There are not qualifications there that its okay for some and not for others36. The Gablers gathered their materials and headed to West Virginia37.
Alice Moore’s battle was far from the only one. There were other notable disruptions in Boston, Virginia, and Connecticut38. Things were heating up in Kanawha. Mis-information stated coming out, including a flyer that claimed to be a copy of textbook demonstrating how men should put on a condom, complete with a graphic image. The picture was not from any of the approved textbooks39. It was a copy of an image from the public library, not one in schools, a forgery meant to stir trouble. A young preacher with a dimpled chin named Marvin Horan called for a boycott of the schools40. There were calls to burn books. Rarely a good look, by the way.
Parents were faced with a serious question of whether or not to send their children to school. Was it even safe with this many hostile people in the region? On September 3, the first day of class, about 20% of the children stayed home.
A protest was on. Kanawha County was coal mining country, and they were used to going on strike. Women went to the mines to convince men to join the boycott. Solidarity was big there. If one group protested, they all did. Soon, people from the chemical plant and municipal bus drivers joined in41. Parents in Dickinson blocked the buses from leaving the bus yard, so students didn’t have access to transportation. Those who drove their children to school had to cross a picket line, avoiding eye contact with their neighbors. Schools were closed for three days to conduct another review42.
The superintendent was quoted in the New York Times:
SUPERINTENDENT: “Considering the fact that the county is bordering on lawlessness, I feel it is best to curtail all school activities for the weekend.”43
Things continued to spiral out of control as the Reverend Ezra Graley spoke to a crowd with demands that no school board could agree to, like reinstatement of coal miners who had been dismissed for wildcat picketing.44 The school board was not in charge of coal miners, but that was what he demanded.
Bomb threats were telephoned in45. Parents in a neighboring county joined in and blocked their school buses as well46. On October 12, a car exploded outside of a woman’s home. She’d been jailed for blocking school buses. Nobody was hurt47.
Reporters from as far away as London settled into the hollers of West Virginia48. One was stomped almost to death, though his crew managed to get away from the angry mob.49 On November 13th, a state police car was fired upon with a sniper rifle while escorting a school bus full of children. Three other police cars had already been shot50. On October 6th, two preachers set up an illegal rally in front of the school board offices. They were then represented by the Heritage Foundation, a New Right organization that we’ll cover more in-depth later this season.51
Reverand Horan said:
HORAN: If we don’t protect our children we’ll have to account for it on the day of judgment.”52
The next day he was arrested along with 20 militants who sabotaged school buses. Twelve hours later, two elementary schools were firebombed53. A first-grade classroom was destroyed by a dynamite explosion. Soon the school board offices were dynamited as well54. And an all-out fistfight broke out during a board meeting, complete with a woman discharging mace55,.
Another common theme we’ll see this season is that certain groups of extremists loved to show up and cause a stink. Not the least of which was the KKK. Alice Moore had been adamant that this was not an issue about race, but other argued that it certainly was. The area had long been racist, though, according to one source, it no longer is today to the same extent. 56 Still, despite the money spent to denounce the racist groups by the protestors, many black people felt that the whole purpose of the event was race. Having the KKK show up likely didn’t help.
A second group of opportunists was the John Birch Society. They are a somewhat secretive group that was started in 1958 by a candy manufacturer famous for making products like Junior Mints.57 They are known for their conspiracy theories, seeing communist plots in everything from the UN to adding fluoride to water. They want to add patriotic texts to schools and libraries and ban sex education. They and the Klan kind of operate in the background of several episodes this season, from this one about school books to a future pro-family rally. They seem to me almost opportunistic in these moments – waiting until there is blood in the water and then showing up when they weren’t invited in order to grab media attention.
The theatrics continued. A man named Delbert Rose confessed to throwing the dynamite into the school. During his interrogation, he revealed a plot to hook a blasting cap to the gas tank of a car. They would then wire it to the brake pedal. The goal was that when the driver tapped the brakes, it would blow up the whole car. Thankfully, the plot wasn’t carried out. But 6 people were indicted for conspiracy including the Reverend Marvin Horen, the guy who called for the school boycott.
Horen had given the crowd what he considered to be justification for their violent actions. Proverbs 3, which tells us that there is a time for peace and a time for war. He was convicted and sent to prison for 3 years58.
The controversies subsided after his trial. But it took years for the intermittent protests to end. The school board eventually came to an agreement that parents could be involved in choosing which books were used in the schools59. Now, Kanawha County is closely associated with this moment. If you search it online, this story pops up. It’s a long shadow for them to get out from under.
The textbook war demonstrates the kind of madness in the air in the 1970s. The pent-up anger and frustration. Change was everywhere as people reeled from the effects of the ’60s and folks of different backgrounds obtained more attention from society. It turns out that change is really hard for humans to deal with, especially those of us who have a fixed way of thinking about the world, or those who pine for some bygone age where life was simpler.
The Kanawha County Textbook War, as it’s called, left a mark on the nation. It demonstrated the deep feelings, resentments, hurts, and fears of people who felt left behind in the public square. Again, two decades earlier public expression of the Judeo-Christian worldview was everywhere. School prayer, Bible reading in the classroom, the National Prayer Breakfast was started, God was added to the money and the Pledge of Allegiance. Sure it’s good to represent other cultures and ideas… but what about the old majoritarian ideas? What happens to them?
Which, again, brings up an interesting question from the beginning of the episode. What is the function of public education and who gets to decide what is taught? It turns out that there really isn’t a simple answer to that question. Or who gets to teach kids about scary or complex ideas? Because you’d have to imagine that the children of those schools learned some hard lessons while riding in a school bus that was under fire.
For a lot of Americans, high school is the last formal education they get. What are the things we want to leave them with? Should it be a broad understanding of different cultures, or a strong grasp on tradition and what made them what they are today? Or both? A sense of patriotism, to honor the fallen soldiers who gave their lives for the country, or an understanding that the United States like so many countries has an ugly history of racism and oppression? Or both? Should children leave the classroom with an understanding of morals, respect for others, and right an wrong? Or should we account for past injustices and social norms?
I started out by saying there is nothing more boring that a school board meeting. But is that the case? The truth is that education is tricky. Doing anything for society is tricky. At this point, the forces of Evangelical Christianity were still dispersed, driven in large part by disconnected para-church organizations, each with their own goals. Soon those special interests would coalesce, not around a bunch of fragmented goals, but around an almost party platform. Education, fighting feminism, love of the traditional family, and conservative visions of economics. But its important to remember that these things happened to real people and real people had to suss it out on the ground.
When we ourselves are confronted with change, what will we choose? To disagree, sure. But hopefully, we agree that the textbook war was the wrong way to go. Dynamite, conspiratorial preaching, threatening children who just want to go to class. How will we react to changing times? Will it be with grace and dignity, or will we search through the Bible until we twist something together to justify our actions?
CREDITS
I used a lot of different sources for this story today. You can find a complete list on the website at trucepodcast.com. While you’re there, consider giving a little bit each month to help me make this show. It takes so so many hours to produce and I also have a full-time job as a school bus driver. I’d like to do this show full time and you can bring me one step closer to doing just that. Help via Patreon, Paypal, check, Venmo… however you can. Www.trucepodcast.com/donate. Also, be good to your school bus drivers!
If you want to know more about this battle in West Virginia, I recommend “The Great Textbook War”, an audio story from Us and Them that won a Peabody award. It’s excellent and you can hear the voices of the people who were involved, including Alice Moore. I’ll have links in your show notes and on the site.
Thanks to everyone who gave me their voices for this episode, my friends Chris Sloan and Jackie Hart, and Markus Watson of the Spiritual Life and Leadership podcast.
I have five other seasons worth of episodes for you to enjoy! Feel free to go through the archives. Like and subscribe the show and follow me on social media so you get every new episode as its released. Thanks as always to my brother Nick for listening to me go on and on about this. He’s a big help.
Truce is a production of Truce Media LLC.
God willing, we’ll talk again soon.
I’m Chris Staron. This is Truce.
1Us and Them radio episode “The Great Textbook War” (4:10)
2Us and Them radio episode “The Great Textbook War” (3:50)
So many people define their faith by what they believe about Donald Trump. How can godly Christians return to the gospel to get us back on track?
In this round table discussion episode, Chris is joined by Pastor Ray McDaniel of First Baptist Church in Jackson, WY, and Nick Staron to prepare us for the season.
Topics Discussed:
What is Christianity?
The importance of forgiveness and going to those who are angry with us
Why is it important to cover things like the Watergate scandals of the 1970s in a Christian podcast?
The need for humility in our lives
The gospel in 10 words or less
Do you have a gospel message in 10 words or less? Find Truce on social media and let us know!
The Grim Reality of the Watergate Scandal: Billy Graham’s Loyalty Tested – guest David Bruce
Have you heard these myths about Billy Graham’s continued support of Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal? Myth 1: Graham blindly supported Nixon without question. Myth 2: Graham’s support of Nixon was solely based on their personal friendship. Myth 3: Graham’s support of Nixon undermined his credibility as a religious leader. In this episode, our guest speakers, David Bruce and Frances Fitzgerald, will shed light on the truth behind Graham’s actions and provide valuable insights on navigating the delicate relationship between religion and politics.
In this episode, you will be able to:
Gain insights into the complex relationship between American evangelicals and politics, revealing the challenges and opportunities for engagement.
Examine the concerns surrounding the influence of religious groups in politics, cultivating a greater understanding of the potential implications and the need for discernment.
Discover the powerful role played by Billy Graham in shaping national policies and how his approach to faith and politics still resonates today.
Uncover the parallels between the Watergate scandal and current political corruption, shedding light on the importance of ethical leadership and its impact on religious communities.
My special guests are David Bruce and Frances Fitzgerald
David Bruce is the Executive Vice President of the Billy Graham Library and the new Billy Graham Archive and Research Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. With over 40 years of experience working closely with Dr. Billy Graham, David brings a wealth of knowledge and insight to the podcast. His expertise and firsthand experience make him a trusted source when exploring the complex relationship between religion and politics, specifically in relation to Billy Graham’s continued support of Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. David’s unique perspective offers a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by American evangelical leaders and their engagement with political figures. Get ready for an engaging and thought-provoking conversation with David Bruce on this episode of Truce.
The key moments in this episode are: 00:00:00 – Introduction
00:00:27 – Reverend Harold Ockengay’s Controversy
00:01:19 – Pope Pius XI and Mussolini
00:02:59 – Catholicism and the 1960 US Presidential Election
00:08:11 – Billy Graham and Politics
00:15:41 – Billy Graham’s Support for Nixon
00:16:42 – Nixon’s Civil Religion
00:17:57 – White House Church Services
00:19:35 – Graham’s Influence and Criticisms
00:21:42 – The Watergate Scandal
00:30:40 – The Importance of Prophetic Distance
00:31:41 – Franklin Graham’s Support for Trump
00:32:27 – Strange Bedfellows and the Separation of Church and State
00:33:22 – Humility and Proximity to Power
00:33:44 – Acknowledgments and Resources
Sources
“The Surprising Work of God” by Garth M. Rosell
An article from The Atlantic about the Pope and Mussolini
“The Popes Against the Protestants” by Kevin Madigan
Was Billy Graham being a good friend by supporting Nixon after Watergate?
Should religious leaders maintain a certain distance between themselves and people of power?
Why do we like to see our governmental leaders as religious people?
Was Nixon’s church service in the Whitehouse wrong to be a gathering place of the rich and famous?
How bad was the Watergate break-in? How does it change your mind about Nixon to know about the other criminal activity?
Transcript (generated by AI)
00:00:00 This episode is part of a long series exploring how some American evangelicals tied themselves to the Truce Podcast. This episode can stand on its own, but when you’re done, go back and start at the beginning of season six. In 147, the Reverend Harold Ockengay went on a tour of Italy. He was part of a delegation of religious leaders viewing the destruction after World War II. Upon returning home, he argued that the devastation was the result of Europe turning its back on God.
00:00:27 And for a second there, it seemed like Akangei might bring some of that destruction home. First, there were the accusations. Supposedly, while in Europe, he attended the opera, purchased cigarettes, and then resold them. That was the whole controversy. This may seem quaint, but Akangei’s background was in the holiness movement, where Christians were to be holy, pure, undefiled by the things of this world.
00:00:52 All the rumors hinted that the famous minister from Boston was living a double life in the process. Akangei had to admit that while his character was upright in Italy, he did indeed sometimes go to the movies with his wife. The cigarettes he was seen with had been given to him for free, and so he passed them on to someone else. That there was the entire American hullabaloo. Yet in Italy, Protestants were upset with Akingay for another reason.
00:01:19 Akange, along with other members of the clergy, had met with Pope Pius XI. Pius XI was an interesting guy. His predecessor, Number eleven, openly criticized Hitler and the secularization of Germany. Not a good thing for Hitler, who was trying to expand his influence. So when eleven died and Number twelve was brought in, Hitler and Mussolini wanted to cozy up to him.
00:01:42 And they had plenty in common. Hatred of communism, a distrust of democracy. Mussolini had been fiercely anti cleric, but once he got to the Italian parliament, he gave a speech calling for intertwining Italy with the Catholic Church to make it a Christian nation. No separation of church and state. And why?
00:02:01 The better to gain power if an influential group is behind you. In the early 19 hundreds, Protestantism spread to Italy, in part because Protestants were focusing their efforts on reaching the poor. Italians who immigrated to the US might return to the old country equipped with a new faith. After World War I, Italians grew uneasy with the power held by Americans and the British, and also that Protestantism was spreading to Europe even as Catholicism waned in the fall of the Austrian Empire. Their solution?
00:02:33 Use the power of the Italian government to persecute Protestants and stifle the wave of evangelism. That is why Italian Protestants were upset about Akingay and other religious leaders visiting with the Pope. Because that very pope was persecuting Protestants. This whole mess trickled down to something you may never expect. The US presidential election of 1960, when a Roman Catholic, John F.
00:02:59 Kennedy, was a serious contender for the highest office in the land. Books and articles like this one cropped up. When we raise the question, should a Catholic be the President of the United States? We should not be accused of bigotry. It is a legitimate question, and to deny us the right to raise it smacks of the intolerance of which the questioner is accused.
00:03:19 This is from an article published on August 15, 1960, in the Church of God’s Evangel magazine. It’s a question that haunted some Christians in that time, Americans in general. Can the United States have a Catholic president? To our modern ears, as the author suggests, that seems like a bigoted question. In 1960, though, there were other considerations.
00:03:41 When we consider these limitations, religion is not the basic issue. Rather, it is the political action of the Roman Church. Religion is the means used to demand the loyalty to put the political action into operation. What if, say, John Kennedy is president of the United States and then gets the call from Rome that he has to use his power to benefit the Church or silence Protestantism, as Pius XI and Mussolini had in Italy? Now, today, that sounds crazy, but it was very much in the air in 1960.
00:04:12 This was not the first or the only publication to question Kennedy’s suitability as candidate for public office. In June of 1960, Akankay himself gave a speech at his Boston church asking just that. Could a Catholic president separate his official duties from his beliefs? Or would that constitute a failure of separation of church and state? In the separation of church and state argument?
00:04:37 Who is being protected in the deal, the church or the state? Or both? It depends on who you ask. A decade later, when the United States found itself embroiled in scandals involving bribes, wiretapping, illegal searches, and a break in at the Watergate Hotel, the most famous evangelist in the country found himself backing a corrupt president. Billy Graham had done plenty to encourage the head of state to identify as Christian.
00:05:05 Now, would his efforts to mix church and state backfire on the US with the church? You’re listening to the show that uses journalistic tools to look inside the Christian Church. We press pause in the culture wars in order to explore how we got here and how we can do better. I’m Chris Staron, and this is truth.
00:05:30 Okay, so we need to spend a little more time with Billy Graham. I did a whole episode in season three, but we need one more. Look, Lord, do with me as you will. That was Graham’s prayer early in his career, before he became pastor to presidents and before the big crusades. And, of course, out of that then would come the final parts of his education, his call to preach in a local church as a pastor, and then eventually to feel the pull of the Holy Spirit, to become an itinerant preacher of the Gospel.
00:06:03 By the way, this is David Bruce. I’m the executive vice president of the Billy Graham Library and the new Billy. Graham Archive and Research center in Charlote, North Carolina. He’s been with the organization for something like 40 years. Mr.
00:06:17 Bruce toured and worked closely with Dr. Graham and was a lot of fun to talk to. So this young preacher, Billy GraHam, goes on to do these huge rallies during the 1940s. That notoriety, that ability to preach in so many places, put Mr. Graham in to the national psyche.
00:06:37 And soon he met Mr. Truman. He’s consulting for presidents of the United States. It would often begin with his knowledge of them as friends before they ever either ran for public office or certainly ascended to the presidency. It was that way with Dwight Eisenhower, who was a general when they met.
00:06:56 He met Ronald and Nancy Reagan in the 1950s, he met Mr. Reagan’s actor. This notoriety, as we’ll see, was a blessing and a curse, pushing Billy to walk a tightrope between politics and faith. So these things happened not by design, but often by the. We would call it the backstroke of.
00:07:15 His life by simply doing ministry, attracting large audiences. Over the course of time, people are going to want to get involved. That’s what David Bruce says. And, you know, this is coming from someone who works at an organization bearing Graham’s name. To balance that out, let’s read what one biographer said of Billy Graham.
00:07:33 Billy Graham enjoyed proximity to power. He liked being able to have a hand, or at least a finger, in shaping national and international policy, in helping a friend gain and remain in the White House, in abetting the defeat of those whose religious and political views he believed to be mistaken. This is the story of a guy walking a tightrope. One of the founding members of the National association of Evangelicals, which, if you’ll remember from last episode, was designed to lobby for neo evangelicals to gain access to radio waves, military chaplaincies, and similar things. Graham was not a political, and he didn’t quite chase power, either.
00:08:11 Instead, he used his notoriety to do things like lobby for evangelicals. He would end up, over the course and arc of his own life and his own life history, meeting 14 different presidents, 14 successive administrations, from Mr. Truman. To Mr. Trump, quite a career, though not all of those guys were upstanding.
00:08:33 He met Mr. Nixon very interestingly in the Senate dining room very early on in Mr. Nixon’s Senate history, Richard Nixon. Served as Senator from California. Funny enough, Graham actually met Nixon’s parents.
00:08:48 First, but they really began as friends. They spent a lot of time together. The Grahams and the Nixons sometimes played golf. From 1953 to 1961, Nixon served as vice president under Eisenhower. Ike wasn’t a fan of Nixon, nor the prospect of Nixon being president.
00:09:04 In their eight years in the executive branch, Eisenhower never invited his VP to visit the residents. Biographer William Martin wrote about the Nixon Graham friendship in his excellent book A Prophet with Honor. Here is an actor reading from it. Billy always found fewer faults in his friends than others, managed to see if they liked him. He liked them and was inclined to think the best of them and to regard patent shortcomings as little more than a failure to let the sterling character he was sure they possessed manifest itself with sufficient force.
00:09:35 He wanted to believe the best of his friends, and Nixon was his buddy. That optimism would blind him to the man’s true character. Graham showed his support for Nixon’s 1956 bid for president, and Nixon attended Graham’s 1957 rally in Yankee Stadium. Billy nudged Nixon to demonstrate faith so that the voters could see and hear him, though he was often hesitant to do so. Graham said, there are many, many reasons.
00:10:01 Why I would strongly urge you to attend church regularly and faithfully from now on. I am convinced that you are going to have the backing of the overwhelming majority of the religiously minded people in America. It would be most unfortunate if some of your political enemies could point to any inconsistency. Nixon generally declined to demonstrate his faith in public. Meanwhile, Graham did more than just give religious advice, going so far as to suggest a VP nomination or to urge him to meet with Dr.
00:10:28 Martin Luther King, Jr. Nixon declined to meet MLK, possibly because of his Southern strategy, which we’ll cover next time, but also out of a bit of bravado. He didn’t think that black people would leave the party of Lincoln. After all, in 1956, 60% of the black vote went for the Republican Eisenhower. Why wouldn’t they choose him, too?
00:10:50 Nixon’s first run for the big chair was against the Catholic JFK. Protestants of many stripes worried about Rome’s potential control over Kennedy. In fact, the pamphlet read to you at the beginning of the episode was written by the director of the National association of Evangelicals, an organization that Graham helped to found. They also released a letter to evangelical pastors drumming up concern about the dangers of Roman Catholicism and, of course, communist infiltration. Public opinion is changing in favor of.
00:11:20 The Church of Rome. It is time for us to stand. Up and be counted as Protestants. Similar concerns were expressed in Christianity Today, which Graham also helped to establish and in full disclosure, serves ads to this podcast. The Billy Graham Evangelistic association put out a flyer in the first edition of Decision magazine reminding evangelicals, we Christians must work and pray as never before in this election, or the future course of America could be dangerously altered and the free preaching of the Gospel could be endangered.
00:11:51 Even theologically, liberal leaders, like those of the Federal Council of Churches showed fear. According to William Martin, Graham himself waffled down his opinions. He urged Eisenhower in a letter to support Nixon, because if Kennedy in public, Graham all but endorsed Nixon, often saying things along the lines that he was the man for the job but never quite making an official declaration. Of course, Nixon lost his bid for the presidency in one of the closest elections in US history. And opposition to Catholics dissipated with Vatican II, the Vatican Council, from 1962 to 1965 that determined that the Roman Catholic Church would now be more tolerant of other faiths, including Protestantism.
00:12:53 Billy Graham had the ear of presidents, sometimes to give advice and sometimes to offer spiritual guidance to those on both sides of the aisle, even JFK. This elevated position meant not only holding rallies with tens of thousands in attendance, but also bending the ear of those in charge. But walking that line is just not easy. Soon, his public stances, his career in political circles, would have him backing a criminal, a man partially responsible for steering the party of Lincoln away from African Americans whose team was involved in spying, corruption, bribery, money laundering, and breaking into the offices of the Democratic National Convention. I’ll continue the story after these messages.
00:13:42 Welcome back. This episode, we’re talking about Billy Graham, who spent much of his life close to power. Yeah, he kind of had to walk a fine line, which, as you said earlier, kind of nipped him in the backside a few times. Well, it did, because we’re all human. And so every one of these presidents is a sinner, like I am and you are.
00:14:00 Some were, of course, saved by grace, and others were still trying to find a spiritual meaning to their lives. But the common denominator in those 14 administrations was Billy Graham. That’s an important thing to keep in mind as we get into some hard stuff. Those in power are people, too. It doesn’t excuse their crimes, if there are any, but they need spiritual guidance as much as anybody else.
00:14:24 Like, for example, President Johnson. Johnson wrote him a letter after he left office and that letter is here in our archives. He says rather poignantly, Billy, you will never know how you lifted my burden by your visits. Well, that’s poignant. We don’t really know what all that means down inside, those men had conversations we’ll never know about.
00:14:46 But to hear the president say, you’ve lifted my burden, you’re helping me, that’s a remarkable thing. President Johnson attended a crusade, this one in Houston in 1965. Though Johnson apparently was a little distracted, Graham blasted Vietnam protesters, much to the president’s delight. He supported Johnson’s Great SocieTy measures, which provided aid for Americans, programs that would be disassembled by Nixon and Reagan. Graham was nothing if not all over the place when it came to party platforms.
00:15:15 As close as he was to the JOhnsons, he still believed that Nixon was the man of the hour. Around Christmas 1967, Nixon invited the evangelist to vacation with him in Florida as he considered whether or not to run again. Despite having pneumonia, Graham flew down. They studied the Bible, watched football, and walked on the beach, hashing out Nixon’s next move. At the end of the visit, Nixon said, you still haven’t told me what I ought to do.
00:15:41 And Graham responded, well, if you don’t. You’Ll worry for the rest of your life whether you should have, won’t you? According to Martin, more than anyone else, it was Graham who convinced Nixon to campaign a second time. Again, Billy dodged and weaved when the press asked him who he was going to support. Still, it’s hard to deny what side he was on.
00:16:01 At a Portland cRusade, he said, there. Is no AmerICan I admire more than RIChard Nixon. He offered the prayer at the Republican National Convention after Nixon was nominated, then attended the meeting to choose the vice president. Graham’s choice was not picked. Instead, Maryland Governor Spiro Agnew got the job.
00:16:19 Though he’d served only one year as governor, he’d caught Nixon’s eye after ruthlessly putting down urban riots. Neither man had patience for protests. Graham also stated in an interview that he cast his absentee ballot for Nixon. Again, not an official endorsement, but, you know, an endorsement. RiChard Nixon’s presidency ushered in a new era of civil religion.
00:16:42 With the usual prayer breakfasts and such, the president expressed his desire to see the Ten Commandments read in schools, things to signal to the public that the government is seeking the face of God. The flip side of civil religion, of course, is that events like these open opportunity for leaders to play church while currying political favor. For example, Richard Nixon was the first President of the United States to institute a weekly church service in the White House. It began his first Sunday in office with Billy Graham preaching. It became much less about piety and more about creating another it place to see and be seen.
00:17:20 Charles Coulson, special counsel to the president, was instructed via memo of the president’s request, that you develop a list of rich people with strong religious interest to be invited to the White House church services. Future attendees included presidents and board chairs of companies like At T GE, General Motors, PepsiCo, Republic Steel, and more. Of course, those people need to know about Jesus as well. But it’s in defiance of James, too, which commands us not to offer the seat of honor only to the wealthy. NonVIPs, like wives of POWs were limited to 25% of attendees.
00:17:57 Preachers were instructed to keep things light, not act like a prophet. They were sometimes invited for political quid pro quo, like with Fred Rhodes, who sought the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention. A visit to the White House would make him seem like an important man, while also giving Nixon a bump with the 12 million members of the SBC. All of this to support a man with shaky credentials. When it came to faith, Nixon, according to an advisor, didn’t even believe in Christ’s resurrection.
00:18:28 Still, it gave Graham access. Remember, he liked being close to political power, and this access did not go unnoticed. Members of the liberal clergy criticized him for not urging Nixon to end the Vietnam War fast enough. Graham went a long stretch without speaking about Vietnam until Reverend Ernest Campbell of New York’s Riverside Church publicized an open letter to Graham calling on him to use his influence. We believe that the only way you or any of us can minister to the troops and inhabitants of Vietnam is to prophesy to the Pentagon and the White House.
00:19:02 In the tradition of Micaiah, son of ImLA, and you, our brother, have been and will be the prophet summoned to those halls. Graham often responded that he was not a prophet like Nathan of the Old Testament, but he did use his influence. Some modern writers critiqued the evangelist, saying he didn’t do enough for African Americans, though he did push for integration at some of his crusades and arranged a meeting between Nixon and a group of black ministers. Apparently, they let Nixon have it for three and a half hours. So went their relationship, helping each other.
00:19:35 Apparently, though, Graham was not aware of Nixon’s true character, the side of the president that, with the benefit of hindsight, we all know well. Remember, like most Americans, nearly all Americans, so much of that was hidden. And while things began to unravel for them and there was a reflection in this country of the duplicity in that office. Mr. Graham, of course, was heartsick.
00:20:01 On June 17, 1972, a security officer named Frank Wills was working the graveyard shift at the Watergate complex. He noticed something fishy. He found tape over the door locks. Wills called the police, who turned up a group of five men. They had lock picks, door Jimmies, $2,300 in cash, 40 rolls of unexposed film, tear gas, guns, and a short wave radio.
00:20:25 The break in was significant already, but what drew national attention is that these men had links to the re Election Committee of President Richard Nixon. In the following months, a litany of charges that’s almost too long to believe came to light. We generally think of the break in as the main event, but it was far from the only immoral act. There were lesser infractions, like just icky shenanigans, stuff like buying up thousands of copies of the Washington Post to fake votes in a poll for the paper. Then there were more serious charges.
00:20:58 Destruction of evidence that tried to frame JFK for the assassination of a South Vietnamese president. Or when a defense intellectual named Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, they broke into a psychiatrist’s office to dig up dirt on him. This was the work of the notorious plumbers, Nixon’s hatchet men. Vice President agNew, himself a hatchet man, became the White House’s attack dog against liberals, lambasting the Watergate Committee for McCarthy tricks and for acting on, quote, unquote, the misguided zeal of a few individuals. Well, it turns out that as governor and Baltimore county executive, he’d accepted literal bags of cash in exchange for government contracts, a habit he continued while vice president.
00:21:42 These men ran on law and order. Yet Agnew was given only one reduced charge of income tax evasion. He spent no time in jail and got a $10,000 fine, even though that was less than the IRS said he owed in taxes. On the graft he’d taken from a single Maryland building contractor, the vice president was knee deep in bribes and walked away with a slap on the wrist. That angst you feel about that?
00:22:09 Imagine how it felt at the time. Trust in government crumbled. You could get more serious charges by breaking a window during a protest. When called to testify, Pat Buchanan, then a speechwriter for Nixon, revealed tactics used by the campaign. One mission was to ensure that Nixon ran against the weakest Democrat, who they judged to be George McGovern.
00:22:30 He admitted to arranging fake demonstrations against Democratic candidates, planting letters to the editor in newspapers, having fake protesters duck into photographs with opponents to make it look like there was a demonstration going on when it was just one guy with a sign. Nothing illegal about that, perhaps, but it certainly erodes one’s confidence in the electoral process. Then there was the way they financed the burglary. Some of it was laundered through a Mexican bank, and $199,000 was paid to G. Gordon Liddy for supplies.
00:23:01 Money was hidden in wads of $100 bills stuffed into lockers and airports, hotel rooms and telephone booths. John Dean, White House Counsel, testified about his attempts to shut down the FBI’s investigation of Watergate and arrange payoffs for defendants to perjure themselves. Nixon was found to have hidden profits from a land sale. He claimed California as his voting residence, but paid no state taxes there. Republicans, including Ronald Reagan, went on the warpath after all the negative coverage and blamed the Eastern press establishment, not unlike recent attacks on the mainstream media.
00:23:36 Chuck Colson went so far as to threaten to revoke the broadcast licenses of the major networks if they didn’t comply with what he considered balanced coverage, I. E. Coverage that didn’t make the criminals look so bad. And the list continues. The president’s personal attorney, Herbert Kumbach, pled guilty to setting up fake political committees in 1970 to launder Senate campaign contributions.
00:23:59 Then there was Nixon’s obstruction of justice, one of the articles of impeachment leveled against him. As you know, he had an audio recording system in the Oval Office. And the president stalled and stalled when handing over the tapes, offering edited transcripts instead of the originals, eventually leaving out entire sections or covering them with a buz. Archibald Cox, a Harvard law professor, was in charge of the investigation, and Nixon ordered his attorney general and deputy attorney general to fire Cox. But both men resigned instead.
00:24:30 The next attorney general followed the order, and then less than a half hour later, the White House sent the FBI to close off the offices of the special prosecutor, an incident known now as the Saturday Night Massacre, when the president ordered the end of an investigation of himself. The list goes on and on. My point here is to impress upon you how bad this was and how drawn out was. The process from the break in to Nixon’s resignation was almost two years and two months. Imagine the kind of mental burden that was on the country.
00:25:01 I also want to dwell on the depth of the corruption because there are people out there who want to downplay this event. Nixon himself believed that the chief executive could do stuff like this simply because he was the chief executive. There’s a fascinating moment from an interview with David Bruce after this whole affair was over. Where Nixon says something remarkable. He plays up the difficulty of the era.
00:25:22 Airline hijackings, intelligence agencies not working together, bombings, student protests, all of these stresses against national security. And what follows here is a recreation. The interviewer tries to clarify what, in. A sense, you’re saying is that there are certain situations, and the Huston plan, or that part of it was one of them, where the president can decide what’s in the best interest of the nation or something, and do something illegal. Well, when the president does it, that means it is not illegal by definition.
00:25:53 Exactly. If the president. If, for example, the president approves something, approves an action because of the national security, or in this case, because of the threat to internal peace and order of significant magnitude, then the president’s decision in that instance is one that enables those who carry it out to carry it out without violating a law. I know that’s kind of a jumble of words, but in Nixon’s opinion, if the chief executive deemed it a matter of national security, a president should have orders carried out without fear of breaking the law. The president, in other words, in Nixon’s opinion, is above the law.
00:26:32 The Nixon administration entered us into a constitutional crisis where the executive branch tried to deny the other branches the right to check its power. It was more than just a break in. It was an attempt to assert control. Some notable figures stood with Nixon. One was Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, and we’ll get to him later this season.
00:26:53 The other was the REverend Billy Graham. He didn’t participate in WAtergate, and there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that he was aware of any of it before the public was. But he was still supportive of Nixon until it was all but impossible. As things began to break, Mr. Graham tried to reach out to his friend.
00:27:12 He was basically cut off from Mr. Nixon in the final months of his presidency. He couldn’t get a call through. They didn’t call him. He would later believe that they were trying to shield him in some way.
00:27:23 So the president did not return calls. Graham’s remembrance of this changed over time. White House logs actually show that the two men talked four times in the last months of Nixon’s presidency. He never condoned what Watergate was. He always dealt with it as it was.
00:27:39 It was a sin. It was a transgression in this country’s history. It was a rip and a tear in our fabric. But Mr. Graham never lost his friendship.
00:27:47 One of the peculiar bits of this story is how Graham reacted in public to the transcripts of the Oval Office tapes which were published in newspapers. Many accusations of wrongdoing were made clear by then, and according to Martin, what he found there devastated him. He wept, he threw up, and he almost lost his innocence about Richard Nixon. Graham’s response was visceral at first and then OD in the process. Rather than talk about Nixon’s crimes, he focused on his use of salty language and taking God’s name in vain.
00:28:17 It seems OD to us that Graham was shocked by Nixon’s use of foul language. But many other commentators picked up on the same thing. Graham wasn’t the only one, and the fallout from Graham’s continued support is somewhat up for debate. I asked Frances Fitzgerald about this. She’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of several books, including The Evangelicals.
00:28:38 That relationship with Nixon was one that was fraught with some difficulties and certainly seems to have maybe hurt his public image. Yes, it did. Certainly in the end, because he kept with Nixon right through Watergate. He really thought he had to save Nixon, and he believed that Nixon never done any of these things again. He was trying to keep a middle ground, and Nixon was sort of promising him that.
00:29:10 But then along comes Watergate, and it destroys Nixon, but it also really destroys Graham as a moral force for a while, and he goes off on crusades abroad. He spends a lot of time abroad after Nixon. In 1980, while other evangelical leaders were vocal supporters of Ronald Reagan, Graham held back, probably because he’d been burned before, and we’ll get there soon. He continued to participate in major crusades as well as officiate at national events like the memorial Service for 911. Graham was on the list of Gallup’s most admired men 41 times from 1955 to 1998.
00:29:54 If he lost any credibility from his friendship with Nixon, it’s hard to quantify. It seems that Graham did have some thoughts about his entanglements with power later in life. He told Christianity Today in 2011, I. Would have steered clear of politics. I’m grateful for the opportunities God gave me to minister to people in high places.
00:30:13 People in power have spiritual and personal needs like everyone else, and often they have no one to talk to. But looking back, I know I sometimes cross the line, and I wouldn’t do that now. He regretted when he crossed the line, and I think we can cut him some slack from time to time. I mean, if you were asked to give spiritual guidance to a person in high standing, wouldn’t you? I mean, presidents, queens, kings, dukes, and members of Congress, all need Jesus as much as the next person.
00:30:40 Of course, if that crosses into doing politics or endorsing morally questionable candidates, that tends to get one in trouble. As a guest on this show said in season one, godly people should maintain prophetic distance when ministering to those in power, like Daniel refusing to eat the King’s food. We have to keep separate when we’re talking to those in high status or risk being unable to see the truth and call them out on it. It seems, for the most part, Billy Graham figured that out. At the same time, Graham’s son Franklin has not.
00:31:14 As ongoing investigations reveal more about President Donald Trump and his administration, Franklin looks a lot like his father during Watergate. When Fox News tweeted about the verdict against Donald Trump in his sexual assault case last spring, Graham responded by writing, it is a disappointment that our illegal system has become so politicized. Pray for our nation, he called out. The old chestnut from the Nixon years. When the court system prosecutes your crimes, speak out against the judicial branch.
00:31:41 Now here’s a different one. From April 9, 2021, Donald Trump became president not to make money, but to do his best to preserve the great things about this nation for future generations. He put America first. I’ve never seen anyone work harder. Thank you, President Trump, for your service to this nation, or this one from March 20, 2023 we need to pray for our country and where it is headed.
00:32:03 The left in Washington and across the country just can’t get their fill of attacking Donald Trump. They are so paranoid of him. The onslaught against him is continual. There is no question the media and the left manipulated the last election, and they are scared to death of Donald Trump’s possible return. This brings me back to the beginning of this episode where I discussed the role the Catholic Church played in persecuting Protestants in Italy in the 1940s.
00:32:27 What did American evangelicals say was the problem there? The failure to separate the church and the state. The Roman Catholic Church tied itself to a dictator in order to accomplish its goals. While nobody claims that Graham wants to wipe out another Christian movement, as the pope did in the 1940s, politicians and preachers make strange bedfellows, a theme we’ll see a lot this season. Yet we also kind of want preachers to speak out on injustice, as the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
00:32:55 Did. We ask them to walk a tightrope, to be involved in politics without also getting soiled by their proximity. What do we really think about the separation of church and state, and when does it apply? When we’re confronted with hard truths about those in power, like Harold Ockengay was when he visited the Pope? Are we going to fixate on details like whether or not he did or didn’t attend the opera, or are we going to be honest about the bigger issue?
00:33:22 If a politician we back is caught red handed, will we humble ourselves or get distracted by their dirty language? Are we seeking righteousness or are we really looking for proximity to power?
00:33:44 Special thanks to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and David Bruce. You can hear more of our interview by going to patreon.com Slash Trucepodcast and giving a little each month to help me make this project. For a list of my sources, check your show notes or the website at www.trucepodcast.com There you can sign up for the email list, listen to old episodes, and find out how to help via Venmo PayPal check or whatever. I relied heavily on the Evangelicals by Francis Fitzgerald, who was also kind enough to join me for an interview. I also recommend a prophet with honor, the Billy Graham Story by William Martin.
00:34:17 It’s well-written and a great resource. Thanks also to all the people who gave me their voices for this episode. My friends Chris Staron, Jackie Hart, and Marcus Watson of the Spiritual Life and Truce Podcast is a production of Truce Media, LLC. I’m Chris Staron and this is Truce.