Public Confessions: The Religious Conversions That Changed American Politics PDF
Preview Public Confessions: The Religious Conversions That Changed American Politics
Public Confessions This page intentionally left blank Public Confessions The Religious Conversions That Changed American Politics Rebecca L. Davis The UniversiTy of norTh Carolina Press Chapel Hill © 2021 Rebecca L. Davis All rights reserved Set in Miller and Walbaum types by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Manufactured in the United States of America The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003. Jacket photographs: (left to right) White House Special Counsel Chuck Colson, ca. 1969. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons; Claire Boothe Luce speaking at Republican National Convention, 1944. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, NYWT&S Collection; and Muhammad Ali at a National Islam meeting, 1966. Photo © Roger Malloch / Magnum Photos. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Davis, Rebecca L. (Rebecca Louise), 1975– author. Title: Public confessions : the religious conversions that changed American politics / Rebecca L. Davis. Description: Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lCCn 2021010003 | isBn 9781469664873 (cloth) | isBn 9781469664880 (ebook) Subjects: lCsh: Conversion—History—20th century. | Religion and politics—United States—History—20th century. | United States— Politics and government—20th century. Classification: lCC Bl2525 .D4235 2021 | DDC 322/.10973—dc23 lC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021010003 Portions of chapter 4 first appeared in American Jewish History 100, no. 1 (January 2016): 25–50. Copyright © 2016 The American Jewish Historical Society. Letter from Erich Fromm to Thomas Merton quoted with permission of the Thomas Merton Center and the Erich Fromm literary estate. For Jonathan and Hannah This page intentionally left blank Contents PrologUe Faith in Democracy 1 ChaPTer 1 A Catholic Message for America 12 ChaPTer 2 Cold War Disclosures 43 ChaPTer 3 The Fear of False Belief 67 ChaPTer 4 A Kind of Oneness with the Jewish People 92 ChaPTer 5 I Know the Truth 121 ChaPTer 6 Redemption 143 ePilogUe Authentic Politics, Passing Faiths 175 Acknowledgments 181 Notes 187 Bibliography 211 Index 243 Figures Clare Boothe Luce, 1944 15 Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, 1952 23 Clare Boothe Luce in McCall’s, 1947 33 Elizabeth Bentley, 1951 50 Whittaker Chambers, 1948 53 Marilyn Monroe’s certificate of conversion, 1956 97 Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher, with Rabbi Nussbaum, 1959 101 Sammy Davis Jr. and May Britt, 1960 108 Muhammad Ali at the annual Saviour’s Day celebration in Chicago, 1974 140 Susan Atkins at her trial, 1969 144 Poster for the Born Again film, 1978 164 Prologue Faith in Democracy Picture the scene: The towers of Rockefeller Center cloak the gray stones of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in afternoon shadow as a car slows to a stop by the curb. Clare Boothe Luce, an acclaimed playwright, member of Con- gress, and wife of publisher Henry Luce, alights. Fashionably lean and expensively attired, she ascends several steps to a small plaza and passes through a massive bronze door. On this Saturday in February 1946, a few weeks shy of her forty-t hird birthday, she stands on the threshold of a new chapter in her storied but privately troubled life. She has experienced too much loss to be idealistic, but she now believes in redemption, for herself and for the world. Pain and hope led her to this cathedral and to the man facing her. In moments he will cast out her demons, consecrate her con- version, and baptize her a Roman Catholic. Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen is as meticulously clothed and coiffed as Luce is. A silk skullcap covers his immovable black hair; his deep- set eyes seem to blaze with intensity. For occasions such as this Sheen wears his formal vestments: a floor- length black cassock and a long, narrow stole that drapes downward from his shoulders. Famous for converting ex- Communists, several world-r enowned musicians, and business titans including Henry Ford II, Sheen is minutes away from his most celebrated conversion of all. Luce and Sheen: even their names glow.1 Clare Boothe Luce was one of the most admired women in the mid- twentieth- century United States, even if little remembered after her death in 1987. Her actions that February day at St. Patrick’s Cathedral made international news. Conversion to Roman Catholicism from Prot- estantism was the consequence of her most intimate struggles, but she and Sheen deliberately transformed it into a public confession of political resolve. At a time when a majority of Americans suspected Roman Catho- 1 lics of being unpatriotic, Sheen and Luce insisted that their faith provided the best defense against Communist persuasion. They argued that the truths of Roman Catholic theology upheld democracy. To her critics, Clare Luce’s Catholic conversion was outrageous. It was especially audacious coming from the wife of Henry Luce, the notably Presbyterian son of missionaries and the publisher of Time, Life, and For- tune. Surely, Clare was the victim of nefarious, authoritarian priests who co- opted her free will. The barrage of irate letters she received in response to the announcement of her conversion—an announcement she ampli- fied in an article published across three spring issues of McCall’s maga- zine in 1947—indicated how much her public expression of personal faith pushed the acceptable boundaries of religious identity. So hostile were so many of these letters that she even lost a deal with McCall’s to write a regular advice column. The vitriol directed at Clare Luce presaged the up- heaval that greeted other controversial religious converts in the decades after World War II. The religious conversions of certain well-k nown writers, entertainers, athletes, and politicians elicited frenzied responses. The importance of these conversions extended beyond questions of why certain faiths ap- pealed to a particular individual or how believers experienced their spiri- tual journeys. Some notable converts described how they discovered their “real” self when they changed or discovered religion. Others spoke of spiritual transformations. In doing so, they offered ways for other people to imagine the outer limits of self- invention. Yet religious conversions in the decades after World War II equally raised fears as well as hopes. They provoked unsettling questions about the survival of individual au- tonomy amid a seeming surge of mass conformity. Had a person truly transformed, or were they “passing” or even brainwashed?2 Consider the example of Whittaker Chambers, a former Soviet spy. Chambers rose to national notoriety in 1948, when he identified Alger Hiss, a former State Department official with a sterling reputation, as a member of the Communist underground. Over two trials that became emblematic of domestic anti- Communist fervor, Hiss swore that he had no connection to Communist espionage activities, but he was found guilty of perjury and spent eight years in prison. For his part, Chambers cred- ited his newly adopted Christian faith with inspiring not only his rejec- tion of Communism but also, he privately confessed, the end of his sexual interest in men. Liberals who defended Hiss were unconvinced. They cir- culated rumors that Chambers was a “queer” and sought proof that his 2 Prologue
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