Religion in the Public Square

This provocative volume brings together three religious leaders that make for an odd grouping: Fulton Sheen, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Jerry Falwell. Politics scholar James M. Patterson argues that these three men strained against the boundary between religion and politics in the United States, which finally collapsed under the pressure placed on church–state separation by Falwell’s religious right. Patterson laments the loss of a Tocquevillian ideal that allowed Christianity to thrive within a liberal democratic order. Patterson’s analysis of Sheen illustrates his argument about the uneasy—but workable—tension that once existed between Christianity and American public life. A remarkably popular television personality, Sheen linked Catholicism with Americanism, suggesting that his church provided the best opposition to totalitarianism. By the end of World War II, political leaders, including many non-Catholics, sought Sheen’s blessing. While Catholicism was hardly democratic, Sheen convinced many Americans that the church promoted a spirit of liberty. The threat of communism elevated Sheen’s profile and played a role in making his faith—long assumed to be hostile to Americanism—a crucial ally in the fight against totalitarianism.

Blessing · Christianity · Democracy · Faith · Opposition (politics) · Political science · Politics · Separation of church and state · Sociology · Theology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Religious studies