The Making of a Catholic President: Kennedy vs. Nixon 1960 [Hardcover]

Shaun Casey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 23, 2009

The 1960 presidential election, won ultimately by John F. Kennedy, was one of the closest and most contentious in American history. The country had never elected a Roman Catholic president, and the last time a Catholic had been nominated--New York Governor Al Smith in 1928--he was routed in the general election. From the outset, Kennedy saw the religion issue as the single most important obstacle on his road to the White House. He was acutely aware of, and deeply frustrated by, the possibility that his personal religious beliefs could keep him out of the White House.
In The Making of a Catholic President, Shaun Casey tells the fascinating story of how the Kennedy campaign transformed the "religion question" from a liability into an asset, making him the first (and still only) Catholic president. Drawing on extensive archival research, including many never-before-seen documents, Casey takes us inside the campaign to show Kennedy's chief advisors--Ted Sorensen, John Kenneth Galbraith, Archibald Cox--grappling with the staunch opposition to the candidate's Catholicism. Casey also reveals, for the first time, many of the Nixon campaign's efforts to tap in to anti-Catholic sentiment, with the aid of Billy Graham and the National Association of Evangelicals, among others. The alliance between conservative Protestants and the Nixon campaign, he shows, laid the groundwork for the rise of the Religious Right. This book will shed light on one of the most talked-about elections in American history, as well as on the vexed relationship between religion and politics more generally.
With clear relevance to our own political situation--where politicians' religious beliefs seem more important and more volatile than ever--The Making of a Catholic President offers rare insights into one of the most extraordinary presidential campaigns in American history.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Almost 50 years ago, the election of a Catholic president seemed unlikely. The smashing defeat of Al Smith, the last serious Catholic candidate, in 1928, revealed the depth of anti-Catholic sentiment. Professor Casey writes an engrossing and detailed account of Kennedy’s campaign, which shattered the barrier and alleviated many of the fears about “Romish” influence upon Catholic politicians. This was no easy obstacle to overcome. The Nixon campaign and Nixon himself publicly discounted any concern over Kennedy’s religion. Behind the scenes, Nixon surrogates joined with prominent Protestant laymen, preachers, and organizations to reinforce fears. Kennedy and his advisors made the decision to confront the religion issue head-on, making it plain that he would accept no counsel from “foreign” institutions. Casey has utilized a variety of sources, many of them previously untapped, to provide an outstanding account of a seminal political campaign. This is a well-written, superbly researched, and timely work of political history. --Jay Freeman

Review

"Here's a retelling of the 1960 presidential campaign that every political junkie will find pure narcotic. Shaun Casey does a masterful job shedding new light on the religious dimensions of JFK's victory in a way that speaks to all the same debates we now have about the role of faith in politics and vice versa: themes from nearly 50 years ago that vibrate with relevance today."--Mike McCurry, former Press Secretary to President Bill Clinton

"Shaun Caseys colorful storytelling and groundbreaking new research shed light on an election that changed forever the link between our secular creed, American democracy, and the faith of our political leaders. This is a fascinating book that will be talked about for years to come." --Senator John Kerry

"Casey, who advised the Obama campaign on matters of religion, here reveals the behind-the-scenes anti-Catholic campaign strategies of Kennedy's opponent in 1960."--Washington Post Book World

"Shaun Casey has made a rich contribution to understanding the critical role religion--and religious intolerance--played in the 1960 presidential election. With extensive research, admirable organization, and a clear style, he describes an extensive and well-organized web of anti-Kennedy activity that was barely mentioned in Theodore White's classic,The Making of a President, 1960. Readers will be surprised by what Casey has uncovered. This is a valuable book for anyone interested in presidential history and the interplay of religion and politics." --William Martin, author of With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America

"In a nation where politics are literally saturated with religious overtones, Shaun Casey's The Making of a Catholic President serves as a poignant reminder of how the 'religion question' can be better served when politicans seek understanding rather than public support from the ecclesiastical community."--Religion in American History

"The Making of a Catholic President contains much new research and presents a gripping narrative, even though we remember how the story turned out in the end."--The Christian Century

"A thorough examination."--The Library Journal

"Casey draws conclusions that are helpful for politicians."--Christian Century

"The story is briskly told in eight chapters and an epilogue, which attempts to draw a few modest conclusions for contemporary students of politics and religion. In the closing pages, Casey also briefly and admirably tackles the question of the nature of Kennedy's Catholicism, making some intriguing observations about American Catholicism in the 1950s."--Catholic Historical Review

"This is an exceptional book which can be appreciated by both historians and casual readers. It is long overdue."--Journal of American History

"Shaun Casey has managed to open up a window on a forgotten aspect of the era, and, astonishingly, to uncover some very significant new revelations.... A model of
historical research."--Journal of American Studies

"Casey has written the best work on religion and politics in the 1960 campaign."--Presidential Studies Quarterly

"Historians and political scientists alike will find this book useful given its sound research and good writing. For liberals, it is an interesting look back at a time when prominent Democrats opposed a Catholic nominee with vigor, not because of policy differences, but simply because of the nominee's Roman Catholicism."-- ournal of Interdisciplinary Studies

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (January 23, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195374487
• ISBN-13: 978-0195374483
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,194,104 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Religious Political History at its Best, June 5, 2009

By 

David M. Pence (Mankato, MN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The Making of a Catholic President: Kennedy vs. Nixon 1960 (Hardcover)

This 200 page book characterizes the 1960 presidential campaign between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon as a battle pitting Protestant personalities and institutions against what they perceived to be the threat of foreign hierarchical Catholic power infiltrating democratic Protestant America. The author, Shaun Casey, is an Associate Professor in Christian Ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary and director of an educational Washington Semester program for seminarians. He played some role as an advisor in President Obama's campaign. His book is a masterly blend of careful research and narrative that does not include his own political worldview, until the epilogue.

Any student of religion and politics or practitioner in the art of elections will benefit by studying Casey's assemblage of characters and primary sources. He does not impose the sensibilities of our own times on the picture he draws of a broad based Protestant animus against a Catholic president. Liberal Protestants (who preferred Adlai Stevenson), and popular preachers (Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peale) joined the anti Catholic tract producing POAU (Protestants and other Americans United for Separation of Church and State) in mounting arguments against the ascendancy of a Roman Catholic as President. Understanding American republican institutions as the civic manifestation of the religious exodus of free Protestant churches in the role of Israel waging bloody war against the monarchical Babylon of Catholicism was not a story developed in the 1960s simply to fight off JFK. The American republic was a child of the newly formulated ecclesiastical communities of the Protestant reformation. To trust the command of the military of the most powerful Christian nation in history to a practicing Catholic would cause a deep foreboding in any man with a sense of God's work in history amidst the nations.

Casey never anachronistically labels such concerns as bigotry. There were plenty of Vatican and Catholic hierarchy statements about "error having no rights" and the undesirability of separation of church and state in states where the Catholics were a majority. If a Catholic candidate obeyed his bishop or the pope on national policy issues, then electing a Catholic was in effect electing a bishop or pope as president. These arguments were made by Protestant high clergy like Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam as well as Paul Blanshard, the general counsel for POAU. Bishop Oxnam ("America's Protestant cardinal") was president of American Methodist bishops as well as a founding member of POAU and the FCC-a precursor to the National Council of Churches. Blanshard was a tireless effective political organizer at state and federal levels in alerting free Protestant America to the steady rise of Catholic political power and their encroaching claims on portions of the public purse. POAU was founded to counter the rising power of Catholic immigrants in big city political machines. POAU enjoyed wide support across the Protestant spectrum.

Casey explains that a key strength of Kennedy was his willingness to meet face to face with his strongest opposition. Kennedy in fact met with both Blanshard and Bishop Oxnam. The Bishop introduced him in April 1959 to a meeting of 51 Methodist bishops a group no less hostile than the Houston Ministers Association who Kennedy would meet the next year in Texas. Kennedy met with the best of his opposition for dialogue and debate--this made him sharper in formulating his message and more formidable as a leader willing to defend himself in any environment however hostile. Like Kennedy himself, Houston ministers and Methodist bishops respected manly engagement with hostile groups. For all of them a decade after WWII, the character needed to initiate such engagement evidenced a necessary virtue for the Presidency. It may be hard for those younger than forty to appreciate the unusual nature of Kennedy's direct approach to his ideological foes who were not formal candidates and opposition. JFK's approach was actually more dramatic but still analogous to a black candidate representing the "godless Democrats" accepting a direct interview debate moderated by a white prolife evangelical Christian.

Casey paints the organized Protestant opposition to Kennedy as the real roots of the religious right and the birth of a Republican southern strategy. At the same time he relates the high tone civil discussion by Protestant "liberals' at Christianity and Crisis which could see contemporary American Catholics through a different lens than papal statements of the 1870's condemning democracy, liberalism, and the secularization of the nations. He concludes the story of the election with a fascinating tale of the heroic honesty of conservative Baptists in Texas. On Nov. 2, an editorial in the Baptist Standard advised that Baptists "vote your convictions" pointing out that it was Protestants Lodge and Nixon not the Roman Catholic Kennedy who were "evasive and ambiguous" about federal aid to parochial schools.

This book allows many unfiltered voices to be heard from 50 years ago. It will be a valuable resource in understanding the difficulty for Catholics or Mormons to win current presidential Republican primaries (Mitt Romney, Bobby Jindahl and Sam Brownback should all read this book). The book also marshals a beginning counter narrative to the neoconservative portrayal of JFK as the instigator of the naked public square. Kennedy, a man faithful to his religious obligations to worship and his civic obligation of military duty, was emphatic that the public policy statements of Catholic clergy would not bind him in performing the duties of his office. In another useful example of Casey's exploration of original sources he includes letters and insights from Kennedy's most important cleric confidant (more than the amiable and loyal Richard Cushing) Bishop John Wright. Bishop Wright, a religiously orthodox, culturally conservative, politically liberal clergyman, shows a much more profound understanding of Kennedy as a "structural Catholic" than today's young "orthodox" Catholic critics.

Today's young Catholic critics of Kennedy have substituted a kind of Canadian Lutheran propositionalism for the lived orthodoxy of Catholic worship and civic duty which instructed the life of our first and only Catholic president. Kennedy's language from Houston to Berlin strikes the Roman cadence of duty and office invigorated by the Germanic oaths of warrior blood covenants. When he discusses being Catholic, it is not a voluntary choice but the liturgical fact of infant baptism. When he discusses American military obligations, it is not a choice but a watch duty assigned by history. His critics speak in the language of applied morality flowing from joint declarations of principles. As Bobby Kennedy once said of Eugene McCarthy (who nominated Stevenson in 1960) "he thinks because he quotes Thomas Aquinas, he is a better Catholic than us."

When Kennedy spoke against heeding the clerical line on narrow "Catholic issues" of sending an ambassador to the Vatican or granting federal aid to parochial schools he generally followed with overtly religious rhetoric. When he rejected Catholic sectarianism he never followed by rendering the public square naked but in fact fully clothed his deeper vision of "the real issues before the nation" in religious-military dress. After evoking the fortress of the Alamo and the bloody battles in the Pacific Ocean and German heartland, he ended his speech to Houston ministers with the presidential oath-"so help me God." Young intellectuals who read Kennedy with the neutered eyes of propositional morality have never really heard "so help me God" in the deep masculine voice of a free man representing a biblical nation in a life and death war with a godless foe.

Casey offers a rich selection of Kennedy's words and a careful recalling of theological nuances in different religious journals (the Protestant Christian Century and Christianity and Crisis as well as the Catholic Commonweal and America). All of these sources point to a very different interpretation of Kennedy as a warrior-chief of a nation under God. While Casey in his epilogue states his own doubt that such a civil religion is still possible, this does not stop him from presenting Kennedy in his own words and time. An honest reading of this book by conservative Catholics may help them reexamine the "structural religion" of imposed duties and high ritual which make Kennedy quite unlike modern Catholic Democrats. Understanding the fundamental religious difference between John Kennedy as the President and John Kerry as a candidate or Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House instructs both neoconservatives at First Things magazine and evangelical counselors to President Obama. This book's diligent gathering of sources is excellent history precisely because it can instruct men with very different sensibilities about the role of a direct forceful masculine personality willing to dialogue with friend and foe alike while articulating the obligations and aspirations of the American civic tradition.

5.0 out of 5 stars The Making of a Catholic President by Shaun Casey, January 1, 2012

By 

Joan - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Making of a Catholic President: Kennedy vs. Nixon 1960 (Hardcover)

A very interesting book. I had read "The making of a President " by Theodore White many years ago and he hardly mentioned the religious issue which according to this book was all consuming. It made me realize how mcuh Kennedy had to overcome and for the first time I realized his victory was bigger than Obama's. Also our country has come a long way since that election and because of Kennedy it is a better country. It also made clear that Kennedy never renounced his religion as so many conservative Catholic 's try to say today.

4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The religion side of a famous presidential election, May 2, 2009

By 

Dwayne Phillips (Reston, VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Making of a Catholic President: Kennedy vs. Nixon 1960 (Hardcover)

Shaun Casey is a friend of mine. Early in 2009, I heard that Shaun had a book published. I found a copy online. This is the type of book that I would never buy off the shelf in a bookstore. This, however, was a different situation. A friend had written the book - now the title and subject matter intrigued me. I ordered a copy and anxiously awaited for it to arrive.

I was two years old when Nixon and Kennedy faced one another in the general election of 1960. What I know I heard from movies (unreliable) and snippets of news coverage (only slightly more reliable). There was intrigue with the mafia, labor unions, and voter fraud in that election. Still, it was one of the most narrow victories in a Presidential election in our history.

Shaun didn't write about any of those matters. Instead, he wrote about the letters, meeting, "tracts" (some of us old south conservative Christians know what a tract is), small Bible colleges, and so on. These played roles in that close election. Shaun brings those stories and those people to life in his book. There is some serious research in here. When did Shaun have the time to do that. He was working inside the Obama campaign through 2008.

I liked this book. I am glad Shaun wrote it or I would have never read it. The stories are interesting. I recognize the names of some of the places, people, and publications. They all influenced the outcome of that election.

Nixon and Kennedy had religious backgrounds. That seems strange to write. Kennedy cheated on his wife, invaded Cuba unsuccessfully, and succeeded at involving the United States in Southeast Asia. Nixon pulled the U.S. out of Southeast Asia, cursed blue streaks in the Oval Office, and ordered illegal break-ins during a landslide campaign. Still, these two men had religions and understood how religion could influence the outcome of their race. Shaun Casey helps bring these two Presidents to life in a manner that I understood them.

Thanks, Shaun.