Reconstructing Religious Identity: Southern Baptists and Anti-Catholicism, 1870-1920 by David Terrel Mitchel A disertation submited to the Graduate Faculty of Auburn University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Auburn, Alabama December 8, 2012 Copyright 2012 by David Terrel Mitchel Approved by J. Wayne Flynt, Chair, Distinguished University Profesor of History, Emeritus Charles Israel, Asociate Profesor of History David Carter, Asociate Profesor of History Richard Penaskovic, Profesor of Religious Studies ii Abstract This disertation examines how Southern Baptists utilized anti-Catholicism to reconstruct their religious identity from 1870 to 1920. It documents the beliefs, rhetoric, and actions of Baptists as they encountered Catholics both at home and abroad. It is the first manuscript detailing Southern Baptist perceptions of Catholics and Catholicism from the Reconstruction to the end of World War I. It offers a new point of departure for southern religious history by examining how the South?s largest denomination responded to and was shaped by a non-Protestant religious group. iii Acknowledgments There are so many people that deserve recognition. Archivist Laura Botts at Mercer University?s Georgia Baptist History Depository, Lisa Persinger at Wake Forrest Unversity?s North Carolina Historical Collection, and Gilian Brown at the Roman Catholic Diocese of Savannah all generously shared their resources and ideas with me. Bil Sumners and Tafey Hal made my research at the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives a pleasant and productive experience. Commite members Charles Israel, David Carter, and Richard Penaskovic offered useful comments. For his meticulous editing, constructive criticism, and generosity with his time, I am grateful to my director, Wayne Flynt. Researching and writing a disertation from a distance proved chalenging. I am thankful for my sustaining colleagues. Bob Bilinger and Caroline Hoeferle at Wingate University provided teaching asignments that helped financialy. Special thanks goes to Gregory Crider at Winthrop University, who proved to be a mentor and friend. Finaly, I am grateful for a loving and supportive family. My parents, John and Barbara Mitchel, and my sister Angela, provided me with years of encouragement. My wife, Brooke, endured my ?Boo Radley? years with grace and at times, nudged me back on course. Without her, I could not have completed this project. The birth of my son, Carter, has been transformational. He brought joy and hope into my life, making the final stretch of writing the easiest to complete. iv Table of Contents Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................................... iii Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter One ? Gospel Warfare: Advancing Baptist Doctrine Through Anti-Catholicism .................................. 16 17 The Batle Over Ideas ................................................................................................... 18 Rebels with a Cause: Baptists and Religious Authority .............................................. 28 Doctrinal Conflict and the Democratic Impulse ........................................................... 38 Chapter Two ? Identity Preserved: Anti-Catholicism and in Southern Baptist Misions ......................................... 49 Promoting Misionary Zeal ........................................................................................... 52 Mission Work on the Home Front ................................................................................ 65 Organizing Resistance .................................................................................................. 78 Chapter Three ? ?The Cal of the South:? Anti-Catholicism and the Southern Baptist .................................................. 91 An Uneasy Aliance ...................................................................................................... 94 ?A Cal to Baptists in the South? ................................................................................ 101 Progresive Orthodoxy ................................................................................................ 111 Chapter Four ? ?The Great Unfinished Task:? Anti-Catholicism and the Southern Baptist Quest for Moral Reform .......... 125 Preserving the Old in the New South .......................................................................... 127 v A Swell of Immigration .............................................................................................. 131 ?The Two Pilars of Evil:? Rum and Romanism ....................................................... 142 Chapter Five ? The Paradox of Womanhood: Southern Baptists, Anti-Catholicism, and Gender ...................................... 157 Catholic brain-washing ............................................................................................... 158 The Corruption of the Priesthood ............................................................................... 160 Marriage and Family Life ........................................................................................... 166 Rumors, Distortions, and Half-Truths ........................................................................ 169 The Horror of the Convents ........................................................................................ 173 Clas, Gender, and Catholicism .................................................................................. 185 Contested Public Spaces and Gender .......................................................................... 188 Feminizing Catholicism .............................................................................................. 192 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 196 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................... 203 1 Introduction In June 1994, the Southern Baptist Convention pased a resolution caling for Southern Baptists and Roman Catholics to engage in interfaith dialogue. The measure recognized historical diferences in beliefs betwen the two groups, such as religious authority, church practices and rituals, and the nature and means of spiritual regeneration. However, it also established areas of common ground where dialogue might produce improved relations. Although there had been previous atempts at reconciliation, this was the first time since the Fundamentalist takeover of the SBC that Southern Baptists were officialy wiling to extend an olive branch. 1 Although some Southern Baptist intelectuals believed that the ensuing discussions encouraged mutual respect and understanding, other factions questioned the relevance of such activities. Baptist pastor Jerry Moser, who claimed his Louisiana church to be home to a number of converted Catholics, was one of the most outspoken critics. His rationale was that discussions 1 Michael Clark?s thesis is the best scholarly study of the recent relationship betwen Southern Baptists and Catholics. Se Michael J. Clark, "Canonical Issues Emerging in the Southern Baptist - Roman Catholic Dialogue" (Catholic University of America, 2002); se also, Barry Hankins, Uneasy in Babylon: Southern Baptist Conservative and American Culture, Religion and American Culture (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Pres, 2002). ii Abstract This disertation examines how Southern Baptists utilized anti-Catholicism to reconstruct their religious identity from 1870 to 1920. It documents the beliefs, rhetoric, and actions of Baptists as they encountered Catholics both at home and abroad. It is the first manuscript detailing Southern Baptist perceptions of Catholics and Catholicism from the Reconstruction to the end of World War I. It offers a new point of departure for southern religious history by examining how the South?s largest denomination responded to and was shaped by a non-Protestant religious group. iii Acknowledgments There are so many people that deserve recognition. Archivist Laura Botts at Mercer University?s Georgia Baptist History Depository, Lisa Persinger at Wake Forrest Unversity?s North Carolina Historical Collection, and Gilian Brown at the Roman Catholic Diocese of Savannah all generously shared their resources and ideas with me. Bil Sumners and Tafey Hal made my research at the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives a pleasant and productive experience. Commite members Charles Israel, David Carter, and Richard Penaskovic offered useful comments. For his meticulous editing, constructive criticism, and generosity with his time, I am grateful to my director, Wayne Flynt. Researching and writing a disertation from a distance proved chalenging. I am thankful for my sustaining colleagues. Bob Bilinger and Caroline Hoeferle at Wingate University provided teaching asignments that helped financialy. Special thanks goes to Gregory Crider at Winthrop University, who proved to be a mentor and friend. Finaly, I am grateful for a loving and supportive family. My parents, John and Barbara Mitchel, and my sister Angela, provided me with years of encouragement. My wife, Brooke, endured my ?Boo Radley? years with grace and at times, nudged me back on course. Without her, I could not have completed this project. The birth of my son, Carter, has been transformational. He brought joy and hope into my life, making the final stretch of writing the easiest to complete. iv Table of Contents Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................................... iii Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter One ? Gospel Warfare: Advancing Baptist Doctrine Through Anti-Catholicism .................................. 16 17 The Batle Over Ideas ................................................................................................... 18 Rebels with a Cause: Baptists and Religious Authority .............................................. 28 Doctrinal Conflict and the Democratic Impulse ........................................................... 38 Chapter Two ? Identity Preserved: Anti-Catholicism and in Southern Baptist Misions ......................................... 49 Promoting Misionary Zeal ........................................................................................... 52 Mission Work on the Home Front ................................................................................ 65 Organizing Resistance .................................................................................................. 78 Chapter Three ? ?The Cal of the South:? Anti-Catholicism and the Southern Baptist .................................................. 91 An Uneasy Aliance ...................................................................................................... 94 ?A Cal to Baptists in the South? ................................................................................ 101 Progresive Orthodoxy ................................................................................................ 111 Chapter Four ? ?The Great Unfinished Task:? Anti-Catholicism and the Southern Baptist Quest for Moral Reform .......... 125 Preserving the Old in the New South .......................................................................... 127 v A Swell of Immigration .............................................................................................. 131 ?The Two Pilars of Evil:? Rum and Romanism ....................................................... 142 Chapter Five ? The Paradox of Womanhood: Southern Baptists, Anti-Catholicism, and Gender ...................................... 157 Catholic brain-washing ............................................................................................... 158 The Corruption of the Priesthood ............................................................................... 160 Marriage and Family Life ........................................................................................... 166 Rumors, Distortions, and Half-Truths ........................................................................ 169 The Horror of the Convents ........................................................................................ 173 Clas, Gender, and Catholicism .................................................................................. 185 Contested Public Spaces and Gender .......................................................................... 188 Feminizing Catholicism .............................................................................................. 192 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 196 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................... 203 2 encouraged the Roman Catholic Church to sek ?ecumenical convergence and eventual visible unity.? 2 The interfaith dialogue betwen Catholics and Southern Baptists proved to be short-lived. Suspicions sweled in 1999 when the SBC pased a resolution urging the denomination not to abandon its ?historical distinctivities? and ?the unique witnes of Southern Baptists? for the sake of ecumenism. 3 Two years later, Southern Baptist leaders informed the Roman Catholic Church that they were ending official conversations betwen the two groups. Phil Roberts, president of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and director of interfaith relations for the SBC?s North American Mision Board, explained that the justification for the separation was simply the realization that ?We?re not ecumenists. We?re evangelicals commited to sharing the gospel.? Although trite, the response was a marker that offered adherents a sense of common identity and reafirmed what Southern Baptists believed in and also what they stood against. Some Baptists remain hopeful that the SBC wil restart interfaith discussions. These critics depict the collapse of communication as a temporary roadblock to resolving misunderstandings, reducing antipathy, and healing the past. 4 Baptist theologian Bil Hendricks, a long-time participant in the dialogues, pointed out that past eforts have yielded a ?fertile exchange of theological ideas and scholarly concerns and ways in which 2 Bob Alen, ?Southern Baptists Ending Talks with Roman Catholics,? Asociated Baptist Press, 5 April 2001. 3 Ibid. 4 Timothy George, ?The Promise of Benedict XVI,? Christianity Today, June 2005; Bil Leonard, ?Old/New Churches, Old/New Realities, Asociated Baptist Pres News, 21 June 2012. 3 our mutual communities could agree on social ministries and theological afirmations.? 5 In describing why interfaith activities failed, another participant, Timothy George (dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University), had a more fatalistic perspective. George, a long-time advocate for interfaith dialogue, stated that, for Southern Baptists, ?ecumenism is not a high priority.? 6 Both agreed that a smal faction had hijacked control of the narrative by succesfully framing the interfaith discussions as compromising historical Baptist beliefs. The group convinced SBC members that being true believers in distinctive Baptist principles also meant being anti-Catholic. It is a mesage as relevant today as it was a hundred years ago. If, as historian Andrew Moore argues, anti-Catholicism has served as an ?identity marker? for Southern Baptists, at no time was the SBC more in need of such symbols as in the decades after the Civil War. 7 Alabama Baptist historian Wayne Flynt and Georgia Baptist historian James Lester both use the word ?watershed? to characterize the circumstances of Southern Baptists in the 1860s and 1870s. 8 Flynt argues that, faced with an uncertain future, Baptists reformed their theology, focusing more on political 5 Mark Wingfield, ??We?re Not Ecumenists,? SBC Says in Breaking Of Catholic Dialogues,? Baptist Standard, 2 April 2001. 6 Ibid. 7 Although Andrew Moore argues that anti-Catholicism served as an ?identity marker for Baptists,? he also contends that it did not advance a distinctive Southern Baptist identity, claiming instead that Baptists and other evangelicals, ?put aside their own theological diferences to celebrate a universal Protestant heritage that transcended denominational boundaries and regional identity; Andrew Moore, "Anti-Catholicism, Anti-Protestantism, and Race in Civil Rights Era Alabama and Georgia," Journal of Southern Religion 8 (2005). 8 Wayne Flynt, Alabama Baptists: Southern Baptists in the Heart of Dixie (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Pres, 1998), 155; James Adams Lester, A History of the Georgia Baptist Convention, 1822-1972 (Atlanta: Executive Commite, Baptist Convention of the State of Georgia, 1972), 201. 4 activism and religious separatism. 9 Lester emphasizes institutional change, characterizing the period as ?one of regrouping and forging ahead.? 10 Both consider misions to have been an impetus for Baptist transformation. While the two authors might disagree with the nature and extent of change, both agree that Southern Baptists spent the two decades shaping their identity. One of the most profound questions Southern Baptists needed to addres was how best to serve its war-ravaged people. Although historians have found numerous answers to this mater of institutional identity, the points of emphasis remain the same? Baptists focused on evangelization, recommited to sectional identity, and pledged to preserve the South?s social hierarchy. 11 This scholarship has served an important role in developing an understanding of southern evangelicalism. It also provides points of departure for further exploration, alowing future scholars opportunities to either contextualize or chalenge these interpretations. One of the least-utilized topics of research has been the ways in which other religious groups (such as Catholics) either directly or indirectly shaped the religious 9 Flynt, Alabama Baptists: Southern Baptists in the Heart of Dixie, 155. 10 Lester, A History of the Georgia Baptist Convention, 1822-1972, 201. 11 Notable works that addres post-Civil War Southern Baptist identity include John Le Eighmy and Samuel S. Hil, Churches in Cultural Captivity: A History of the Social Atitudes of Southern Baptists (Knoxvile: University of Tennese Pres, 1987); Paul Harvey, Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865-1925, The Fred W. Morrison series in Southern studies (Chapel Hil: University of North Carolina Pres, 1997); Samuel S. Hil, Southern Churches in Crisis, (New York: Holt, 1967); Ted Ownby, Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865-1920, The Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies (Chapel Hil: University of North Carolina Pres, 1990); Rufus B. Spain, At Ease in Zion: Social History of Southern Baptists, 1865-1900 (Nashvile: Vanderbilt University Pres, 1967); Randy J. Sparks, On Jordan's Stormy Banks: Evangelicalism in Misisippi, 1773-1876 (Athens: University of Georgia Pres, 1994). 5 cultures of the South. For instance, outside of a few enclaves, Catholicism had a smal presence in the 19 th century Southeast. 12 Many Southern Baptists had no contact with Catholics and litle personal knowledge of them. Based solely on exposure, Baptists had little to concern them. Yet at the very time their religious culture descended into crisis, Baptists increasingly expended their time, energy, and money batling Catholicism at home and abroad. They constructed an identity that defined them not only based on what they believed but also on what (and whom) they opposed. For Southern Baptists, anti- Catholic rhetoric became a means of raising money and supporting misions, establishing Christian education, promoting orthodox religious beliefs, and enforcing a moral code on southern society. Key to the advancement of evangelical ideals, printed media promoted the most important foundations of post-war Southern Baptist identity. Since Baptists historicaly had been congregational and autonomous, no eclesiastical body beyond the local church could speak for them. Leaders feared that isolation might alow churches to fal under the spel of outside influences. Within these wekly or bi-wekly newspapers and circulars, readers from across the state kept up with the most presing denominational maters, and more importantly, began to fel plugged into a larger spiritual community. Historian Daniel Stowel explains that: ? from the start, denominational leaders understood the important role religious newspapers could play in uniting disparate churches behind the common goal of religious reconstruction. In the pages of these journals, 12 For the most sophisticated study of Catholic institutions in the antebelum South, se Randal M. Miler and Jon L. Wakelyn, Catholics in the Old South: Esays on Church and Culture (Macon: Mercer University Pres, 1999). 6 southern editors proclaimed southern ideals and condemned northern denominations. 13 Even though newspapers helped create a distinct southern religious identity, Southern Baptists simply did not have the publication capabilities to fulfil this need alone. This translated into papers that during many weks carried articles from other sources, both northern and southern. They purchased literature and had their own materials printed by the American Baptist Asociation. In the 1870s and 80s, this meant that Southern Baptists became acustomed to reading northern critiques of the South, but it also exposed them to northern problems and perspectives. As Italians, Poles, and Slavs, al overwhelmingly Catholic, poured into northern cities, anti-Catholic stories trickled into southern newspapers reprinted from northern sources. While the SBC constructed an identity shaped in opposition to an increasingly foreign North, they appropriated northern anti-Catholic stories and asigned these a distinctive role in religious deviation from southern evangelical norms. 14 In the 1890s, the SBC succesfully built its own media conglomerate?the Sunday School Board. By then, its Baptist leaders were solidly in charge of the denomination?s identity. As imigrants arrived in the South in increasing numbers, Baptists didn?t break stride; they knew what to expect and how to exercise their cultural authority. 13 Daniel W. Stowel, Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863- 1877 (New York: Oxford University Pres, 1998), 201. 14 David Jansson argues that one way Americans have asigned identity is by constructing spatial binaries where negative characteristics of another culture help define the positive/opposite characteristics of the ideal. Se David R. Jansson, ?Internal Orientalism in America: W. J. Cash?s The Mind of the South and the Spatial Construction of American National Identity,? Political Geography, 22 (2003), 293-316. 7 Studies of anti-Catholicism in the United States initialy framed it as an American condition, but offered litle analysis of the South. 15 The simplest explanation for this inatention is that historians followed the sources; other areas of the country received far greater numbers of imigrants, so researchers asumed that these areas were more likely to experience tension betwen Protestants and Catholics. Another explanation is that most major Catholic universities supporting research are also outside the South. These universities provided the funding, hired religious historians who specialized in American Catholicism, and collected substantial primary sources. 16 Recent inquiries into the South have revealed a more sophisticated understanding of Catholicism in the region. Many of these historians have focused on the antebelum period, emphasizing early Spanish Catholic roots and their commitment to southern social and political causes. Ironicaly, these studies characterize anti-Catholicism as promoted by northern interests. 17 Although slower to respond, historians of recent 15 As one of the first historians to offer an in-depth analysis of anti-Catholics, John Higham argued that anti-Catholicism bypased the South because Catholic imigrants went elsewhere. Se John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Pres, 1955). 16 Se, for example, Jay P. Dolan, In Search of an American Catholicism: A History of Religion and Culture in Tension (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Pres, 2002); Andrew M. Greeley, An Ugly Litle Secret: Anti-Catholicism in North America (Kansas City: Sheed Andrews and McMel, 1977); Mark J. Hurley, The Unholy Ghost: Anti- Catholicism in the American Experience (Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor, 1992); Donald Louis Kinzer, An Episode in Anti-Catholicism: The American Protective Asociation (Seatle: University of Washington Pres, 1964); Robert P. Lockwood, ed. Anti-Catholicism in American Culture (Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor, 2000); Mark Stephen Masa, Anti-Catholicism in America: the Last Aceptable Prejudice (New York: Crossroad, 2003); Michael Schwartz, The Persistent Prejudice: Anti-Catholicism in America (Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor, 1984); Wiliam M. Shea, The Lion and the Lamb: Evangelicals and Catholics in America (Oxford: Oxford University Pres, 2004). 17 Se, for example, Jef Frederick, "Unintended Consequences: The Rise and Fal of the Know-Nothing Party in Alabama," Alabama Review (January 2002); Miler and Wakelyn, Catholics in the Old South: Esays on Church and Culture; W. Jason Walace, 8 southern religion have added to the narrative of southern Catholics. While these authors have provided a nuanced understanding of the role Catholics played in shaping the southern religious climate, anti-Catholicism receives cursory atention. 18 Andrew Moore remains the exception. His book, The South?s Tolerable Alien: Roman Catholics in Alabama and Georgia, 1945-1970, was published in 2007 and is the first modern history detailing the acrimonious relationship betwen Catholics and Protestants in the post- World War II South. 19 Although his study included Southern Baptists, he chose to lump them together with other Protestants, arguing that church groups abandoned their denominational identity in favor of an American Protestantism devoid of regional identity. Not surprisingly, Baptist historians have remained relatively quiet. Most general denominational histories have detailed their succeses in creating mision fields, fighting for social causes, and protecting religious liberties. They offer scant details about the religious clashes that ensued during the Baptist advance. 20 Baptist histories that have Catholics, Slaveholders, and the Dilema of American Evangelization, 1835-1860 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Pres, 2010). 18 Se, for example, R. Bentley Anderson, Black, White, and Catholic: New Orleans Interacialism, 1947-1956, (Nashvile: Vanderbilt University Pres, 2005); James B. Bennet, Religion and the Rise of Jim Crow in New Orleans, (Princeton: Princeton University Pres, 2005); Danny Duncan Collum, Black and Catholic in the Jim Crow South: The Stuff that Makes Comunity (New York: Paulist Pres, 2006); Amy L. Koehlinger, The New Nuns: Racial Justice and Religious Reform in the 1960s (Cambridge: Harvard University Pres, 2007). 19 Andrew S. Moore, The South's Tolerable Alien: Roman Catholics in Alabama and Georgia, 1945-1970 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Pres, 2007); For an earlier work detailing post-war Protestant/Catholic relations, se Lerond Curry, Protestant-Catholic relations in America, World War I through Vatican II (Lexington: University Pres of Kentucky, 1972). 20 Se, for example, Catherine B. Alen, A Century to Celebrate: History of Woman's Misionary Union (Birmingham: Woman's Misionary Union, 1987); Wiliam Wright 9 acknowledged these anti-Catholic sentiments tend to be more socialy-focused, seing Baptists both as shapers and captives of southern culture. 21 Biographies have added litle to the narrative, the exceptions being those of Baptists J. Frank Norris of Texas, Sidney Cats of Florida, and Georgia?s Tom Watson. 22 Ira Birdwhistel?s unpublished disertation, ?Southern Baptist Perceptions of and Responses to Roman Catholicism, 1917-1972,? is the only previous historical work offering a detailed study of Baptists and Roman Catholics, including sections on misions, political confrontations, doctrinal diferences, and the election of John F. Kennedy. 23 Although the author refrained from characterizing Baptist perceptions as anti-Catholic, his disertation is filed with episodes of hostility and confrontation. It does not, however, acount for the anti-Catholic beliefs of Southern Baptists from 1870 to 1920. Barnes, The Southern Baptist Convention, 1845-1953 (Nashvile: Broadman Pres, 1954); Keith Harper, The Quality of Mercy: Southern Baptists and Social Christianity, 1890-1920 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Pres, 1996); Samuel S. Hil and Robert G. Torbet, Baptists North and South (Valey Forge: Judson Pres, 1964); Lester, A History of the Georgia Baptist Convention, 1822-1972; Arthur B. Rutledge and Wiliam G. Tanner, Mision to America: A Century and a Quarter of Southern Baptist Home Misions (Nashvile: Broadman Pres, 1969); Walter B. Shurden, Not a Silent People: Controversies that Have Shaped Southern Baptists (Macon: Smyth & Helwys, 1995). 21 Se, for example, Eighmy and Hil, Churches in Cultural Captivity: A History of the Social Atitudes of Southern Baptists; Flynt, Alabama Baptists: Southern Baptists in the Heart of Dixie; Harvey, Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865-1925; Spain, At Ease in Zion: Social History of Southern Baptists, 1865-1900. 22 Wayne Flynt, Cracker Mesiah, Governor Sidney J. Catts of Florida, Southern Biography Series (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Pres, 1977); Barry Hankins, God's Rascal: J. Frank Norris and the Beginnings of Southern Fundamentalism, Religion and the South (Lexington: University Pres of Kentucky, 1996); C. Vann Woodward, Tom Watson, Agrarian Rebel (New York: The Macmilan Company, 1938). 23 Ira V. Birdwhistel, "Southern Baptist Perceptions of and Responses to Roman Catholicism, 1917-1972" (doctoral disertation, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1975); Although James Leo Garret also wrote on Baptists and Catholics, he focused primarily on theological diferences: James Leo Garret, Baptists and Roman Catholicism (Nashvile: Broadman Pres, 1965). 10 Because most historians have preferred to characterize anti-Catholicism as aberrant instead of normative, these scholars have focused on the ?peaks? of anti- Catholicism, such as the activities of the 1890s group, the American Protective Asociation, or the 1920s Ku Klux Klan. 24 In ignoring the ?valeys,? past findings have defined the narrative of anti-Catholicism as episodic rather than continual, implying that antipathy faded until another crisis re-ignited tensions. One explanation may lie in defining the term ?anti-Catholic.? Although Collins English Dictionary defines anti-Catholicism as being ?opposed to the principles, practices, and adherents of Catholics,? most scholars have viewed it as overt hostility rather than more general opposition to Catholicism. 25 Practicaly al who read of Tom Watson?s salacious diatribes against the Catholic priesthood and his cals for convent inspections wil agree this constituted anti-Catholicism. His rhetoric clearly exhibited religious antipathy. Fewer may se the anti-Catholic sentiments of a Baptist writer who published a humorous anecdote on the Eucharist or a Baptist leader who speled out legitimate theological diferences. While abstract sentiments are more dificult to qualify than concrete incidents, oppositional manifestations were much more prevalent in the 24 Se, for example, David Harry Bennet, The Party of Fear : From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History (Chapel Hil: University of North Carolina Pres, 1988); Greeley, An Ugly Litle Secret: Anti-Catholicism in North America; Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925; Kinzer, An Episode in Anti-Catholicism: the American Protective Asociation; Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, The Politics of Unreason; Right-Wing Extremism in America, 1790-1970, [1st ed., Paterns of American prejudice series, v. 5 (New York: Harper & Row, 1970); Nancy MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan (New York: Oxford University Pres, 1994); Les Walace, The Rhetoric of Anti-Catholicism: the American Protective Asociation, 1887-1911, (New York: Garland, 1990). 25 ?Anti-Catholicism,? Dictionary.com, Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition, HarperCollins Publishers, http:/dictionary.reference.com/browse/anti-catholicism (acesed: November 03, 2012). 11 South, where there were fewer Catholics and therefore, fewer overt threats to southern evangelical hegemony. Just as lynching and de jure segregation do not fully explain the depth and complexity of the South?s race relations, neither do pogroms nor the rise of the 1920s Ku Klux Klan fully contextualize Southern Protestant/Catholic relations. This study investigates how manifestations of anti-Catholicism infiltrated every part of Southern Baptist life. The primary records that form the basis of inquiry include state Baptist newspapers from Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennese; procedings of Baptist asociations and conventions; personal correspondence; sermons; and the books, pamphlets, tracts, and unpublished works of Baptist leaders. Although the scope of study is limited to four states and omits those with large Catholic concentrations such as Louisiana, the sampling offers a comprehensive look at the perceptions of most Southern Baptists. 26 During the period of inquiry, these states had similar religious compositions, politics, and economies. Among the four there were diferences of course. In 1910, Alabama was the most industrial southern state and had the highest Catholic population, while North Carolina was the most rural and had the fewest Catholics. Every state (except North Carolina) had at least one Catholic enclave: Tennese had Memphis, Georgia had Savannah and Atlanta, and Alabama had Birmingham and Mobile. While this study limits the scope to four states, there is tremendous overlap. Because the SBC is headquartered in Nashvile, Tennese houses state resources and also national convention records. Convention leaders emphasized denominational unity 26 Other studies have limited the scope of their research to these states to draw conclusions about southern evangelicals. Se, for example, Joe L. Coker, Liquor in the Land of the Lost Cause: Southern White Evangelicals and the Prohibition Movement (Lexington: University Pres of Kentucky, 2007); Ownby, Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865-1920. 12 and advocated policy on behalf of the entire South. Preachers moved from state to state, sometimes from region to region. Baptist leader Lansing Burrows was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and spent time in Kentucky, Tennese, Georgia, and Virginia. W. J. E. Cox pastored in Baltimore before moving to Mobile. Alabamians followed Baptist/Catholic relations not only in Mobile, but also New Orleans, Galveston, and Norfolk. Georgia Baptists not only supported their state, but also commited to Italian misions. State newspapers were repetitive. Anti-Catholic anecdotes were pased among editors so often that at times newspapers repeated the same stories. Instead of a viewing anti-Catholicism as a chain of chronological events, chapters have been divided into themes. Each chapter atempts to uncover the relationship betwen anti-Catholicism and other important areas of Baptist life, demonstrating how deeply intertwined ideas about doctrine, misions, education, gender, and social conditions became. There are drawbacks with thematic studies. Ocasionaly, they oversimplify complex isues that may beter be understood within a chronological framework. For instance, there are many explanations for a 1915 anti-imigration sermon, including anxieties over educational control, promoting misionary zeal, and preserving cultural identity. By analyzing it solely through the lens of a Baptist misionary impulse, thematic-based monographs risk ignoring important social, cultural, and intelectual confluences, such as early twentieth-century Progresivism. To minimize reductionism, nearly al chapters in the study utilize chronological elements to explore how Baptist perceptions of Catholics evolved over a span of fifty years. By framing important religious isues within historical periods, such as the rebuilding years from 1870-1885, 13 the denominationaly formative era betwen 1885-1900, or Baptist Progresivism in the first two decades of the twentieth-century, chapter subheadings further echo the approach of analyzing topics through both thematic and chronological considerations. The most apparent downside is redundancy. Prohibition is an example. Religious newspapers are filed with articles about Catholic consumption of alcohol. Baptists viewed this through prisms of misions, education, race, and gender, and re-prioritized concerns year-to-year, decade-to-decade. Another isue, public funding of parochial schools, afected mision programs, distiled Baptists theology, and raised fears about the erosion of southern culture. Chapters overlap, as did Baptist beliefs. Hopefully, the organizational redundancy wil underscore the comprehensive nature of anti-Catholicism. Chapter one lays the foundations for the following chapters by examining doctrinal diferences. Baptist beliefs were central to their denominational identity because they shaped viewpoints and influenced how Baptists atempted to either influence or, in some cases, transform society. Baptists perceived Roman Catholicism as contradicting their key principles such as baptism, the separation of church and state, and religious authority. In advancing their doctrine, Baptist writers advanced religious identity by emphasizing tribalism; they celebrated their distinctive beliefs and diferentiated themselves against Catholicism, a designated out-group. These authors atacked Catholic beliefs and practices, taking isue with such theological traditions as papal infalibility, religious authority, Church hierarchy, the sacraments, the worship of saints, symbols and icons, and the nature of salvation. Chapter two deals with anti-Catholicism in Southern Baptist Misions. In 1870, Italy opened its borders to Protestant misionaries. Civil War and reunification had 14 loosened the tight grasp that the Roman Catholic Church previously held over the Italian region. Through its Foreign Mision Board, the SBC imediately placed a priority on building churches and converting ?pagan? Catholics. In their own hemisphere, they combated Catholicism in Mexico, Brazil, and other South American countries. Through both the Home Mision Board and state mision eforts, Baptists hoped to contain the influence of Catholicism in the South by establishing mision programs for New Orleans, Cuba, and the expanding western frontier. They sent misionaries to key imigration ports such as Norfolk, Tampa, and Galveston. When imigrants finaly came to the inland South, Baptists created city misions in areas of concentration such as Birmingham, Memphis, and Atlanta. Chapter three charts the role of anti-Catholicism in shaping Baptist views on education. Increasingly, Baptists believed that education played a crucial role in maintaining cultural hegemony in a changing South. To achieve their goals, they created their own educational and publishing arm, the Sunday School Board; fortified their seminaries and denominational schools; and promoted their own agenda for public education. Although they clashed with Catholics on a number of educational isues, practicaly al involved maters of control. Baptist writers argued parochial schools were indoctrinating legions, blasted Catholic atempts to educate the Freedmen and American Indians, and openly opposed public funding for religious schools. Chapter four addreses Baptist atempts to preserve southern culture through moral reform. During this period, the most sustained social conflict was over the control of alcohol. Although some Catholics were involved in temperance movements, most opposed Prohibition. Baptists painted Catholics with a broad brush, labeling them ?wets? 15 who were devoid of self-restraint and acused the Church of obstructing atempts to limit alcohol consumption. Especialy after 1900, Baptists were also concerned with Catholic foreigners pouring into the South. Baptists were familiar with New Orleans? Mardi Gras celebration through lurid tales printed in religious newspapers, so they knew that such alien customs would acompany Catholic imigrants. Anti-Catholicism stemed in part from cultural conflicts inherent in religious contests over space; it also owed much to fear of the erosion of southern religious orthodoxy. Chapter five investigates the relationship betwen Baptists? conceptions of gender and anti-Catholicism. Baptists fought hard to protect the sacred image of southern womanhood that they categorized acording to race, clas, morality, and religion. They portrayed priests as mechanisms of a vast Catholic conspiracy that lured women into the faith, brainwashed them, and then violated their purity. They also atacked gendered notions of Catholicism, such as feminine symbols of the Church and the exaltation of the Virgin Mary. They labeled convents ?dens of inequity? and eventualy caled for laws that alowed for convent inspection. These chapters reveal the extent to which Baptist ideas about who they were and what they believed both shaped and were shaped by their impresions of Catholicism. This is a history about faiths, practices, fears, and conflicts experienced betwen Southern Baptists and Roman Catholics. For Baptists, it was, ironicaly, a relationship of dependency, where one?s own identity cannot be fully understood apart from notions of an ?other.? 16 Chapter One Gospel Warfare: Advancing Baptist Doctrine Through Anti-Catholicism When Edgar E. Folk began writing a series of articles to be published in the Baptist and Reflector, he based the stories on personal leters he had writen to his son. The leters encapsulated Folk?s thoughts about basic Baptist principles such as religious liberty, separation of church and state, and regeneration; in al, he printed twenty-six leters. The personal style of father to son correspondence symbolized the importance of families pasing down the verities of their faith lest these be usurped by what Folk referred to as ?the ignorance of this world.? 1 Eventualy, the leters became a book that outlined Southern Baptist doctrine during the twentieth-century. While admiting there were ?a good many books discussing Baptist doctrines of many kinds,? Folk concluded that there were ?very few which discuss the fundamental Baptist principles in a comprehensive form.? 2 The purpose of the wide-ranging book on Southern Baptist doctrine, one supported by the endorsement of the Sunday School Board, was twofold. First and foremost, it was, as Folk explained, a collection of esays that advanced Baptist identity??who they are, where they came from, what they believe, and why they believe it.? Secondly, it was a means by which they measured themselves against a quantifiable 1 Edgar Estes Folk, Baptist Principles, Leters to My Son (Nashvile: Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1909), 4. 2 Ibid. 17 other. Those who stood in starkest contrast were Catholics. In fact, in the very first published letter, ?Loyalty to God?s Word,? Folk set the tone by arguing that although al Christian denominations believed the Bible to be a foundation of faith, when examining the distinctive characteristics of Christianity, ?the greatest contrast is betwen the Baptists and the Catholics.? 3 Out of twenty-six esays, half employed Catholicism as the primary juxtaposition in defining Baptist principles. The theological divide betwen the two groups went much deeper than semantics. Southern Baptists considered Catholicism antithetical to their belief system. Catholics felt the same about Baptists. The Christian Index referred to the contest for souls as ?gospel warfare,? and the Alabama Baptist made its case for ?The Gospel vs. the Roman Church.? 4 To concede a doctrinal point to the other side could cal into question the very foundations of one?s convictions. This was a batle for the hearts and minds of the world, a public debate where Baptist and Protestant teachings corresponded to the philosophies of Jesus and Catholic beliefs did not. The cornerstones of the Baptist faith were reliance on the New Testament as the ultimate authority concerning spiritual guidance, a belief in salvation by faith, the practice of adult baptism, separation of church and state, and adherence to the priesthood of the believer. 5 They believed these principles to be biblicaly sound. As counterpoint, they took aim at Catholic beliefs and practices that they viewed as contradictory to the Bible. These included the emphasis on the sacraments, the centrality of the Pope, and the 3 Ibid, 6. 4 ?The Gospel vs. the Roman Church,? Alabama Baptist, 9 September 1903; ?The Recorder,? Christian Index, 25 July 1878. 5 Rufus B. Spain, At Ease in Zion: Social History of Southern Baptists, 1865-1900 (Nashvile: Vanderbilt University Pres, 1967), 3. 18 religio-political relationship betwen the government of Italy and the Church. As misionary John Eager observed: The real animus of Romanism in Italy is perhaps sen beter in its atitude toward the Bible than in anything else, and I do not hesitate to afirm that it is an atitude of persistent hostility. But, realy, how could it be otherwise? The doctrines of Romanism and the doctrines of the Bible are quite antagonistic. 6 The Battle Over Ideas In 1890, Baptist A. C. Dixon wrote a book entitled The True and the False. This anti-Catholic book revealed how Baptists transmited their religious beliefs to followers. Dixon divided the book into two parts. The first nine chapters focused on the theology of Jesus (?the truth as it is in Jesus?). Baptists would have found much of this appealing, since it represented traditional Reformation arguments against Catholicism, but also because it reasured readers that this was theology as Jesus intended. It stood in stark contrast with the last ten chapters, which purported to examine ?Roman Catholicism in the light of the Bible.? 7 The author?s purpose was to create an adversarial debate where readers could recognize unmistakable distinctions betwen Catholic superstitions and Baptist truths. The chapter titles contrasted diferences betwen Baptist and Catholic beliefs. In one chapter entitled ?The Christ of the Bible and the Christ of Romanism,? Dixon criticized Catholics for regarding the Pope rather than Jesus Christ as head of the church (the Church did not advocate this belief, they regarded Jesus as the invisible head and the Pope as the visible head), questioned the worship of Mary, and chalenged the reverence 6 John H. Eager, Romanism in its Home (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1894), 207. 7 A. C. Dixon, preface to The True and the False (Baltimore: Wharton, Barron, 1890). 19 of saints. 8 Other chapters that made adversarial comparisons included ?The Miracles of the Bible and the Miracles of the Papacy,? ?The Lord?s Supper Versus the Mas,? and ?Peter Versus the Pope.? Although such anti-Catholic comparisons were readily available to Baptists, most did not develop their tribal beliefs exclusively from provocative books like The True and the False; the proces was more insidious. Much of Southern Baptists? anti-Catholic sentiment was deeply rooted in theological diferences tracing back to the Protestant Reformation and served as a barometer for Baptist perceptions of Catholicism. For instance, Baptist misionaries to Italy appear to have been well-versed in Reformation history. Charles F. Fox wrote of the ?strange,? feling of being in Rome for the first time. He described his admiration for the city?s rich history and its intoxicating beauty, but reminded himself the historical images and artifacts were of ?The same Rome from where wals depicted the valiant Luther sickened by popish treachery and eclesiastic fraud?.? 9 His words paint a picture of a misionary familiar with Catholic beliefs, practices, and history in Italy. In closing the leter, Fox forecast future stories that would describe ?some of the awful practices of Roman Catholicism here in Italy? the particulars of which would make a Baptist?s ?blood boil.? 10 While Baptists like John Eager recognized that Luther had ?appeared on the scene? and had shaken ?the very foundations? of ?Romanism,? they considered themselves an evolved body of believers wiling to take up the torch and carry it 8 Ibid, 67-76. 9 ?Charles J. Fox, ?Leter,?? Charles James Fox Papers PC148, North Carolina Baptist Historical Collection (hereafter cited as NCBHC), Z. Smith Reynolds Library, Wake Forrest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. 10 Ibid. 20 forward. 11 Baptists believed their principles were distinctive from other Protestants and wel suited to counter Catholicism. When asked if Georgia Baptists would answer the cal to unite with other evangelical branches and implement ?gospel warfare? against the spread of Catholicism in the U. S., the Christian Index responded that ?Baptists are not ?Protestants? as everybody ought to know, and we recognize no authority in ?evangelical branches,?? but the Index nonetheles had an obligation to pas along the information to its readership. 12 For most Southern Baptists, theology was both familial and familiar. Much like E. E. Folk?s intimate leters to his son, Baptist laypersons received their theological instruction through their family and their local church. Additionaly, some supplemented their instruction by subscribing to religious periodicals such as newspapers, books, and tracts. They expected to read religious periodicals that reinforced familiar Baptist themes, ones that transcended generations of fathers and sons. The typical Southern Baptist concerned himself with his personal salvation, moral certitude, and religious orthodoxy sustained through sound doctrine. 13 In order to beter convey orthodoxy, Baptist newspapers printed lesons of faith. Writers shared homilies, testimonies, and sermons that conveyed what it meant to be Baptist and also offered counterexamples that were not in keeping with the faith. One example was adult baptism. In 1874, the Alabama Baptist newspaper extolled the virtues of Baptist beliefs and practices in a series entitled ?How I Became a Baptist.? In one of 11 Eager, Romanism in its Home, 136. 12 ?The Recorder,? Christian Index, 25 July 1878. 13 This is a reference to Southern Baptists? otherworldly theology. Se, Samuel S. Hil, Southern Churches in Crisis, (New York: Holt, 1967). 21 the articles, author F. L. Hearn defended Baptist adherence in adult baptism by arguing that historicaly the apostolic church was composed of adults only (those who had the capacity to understand and believe). Church membership was also adult only. This was why, acording to Hearn, ?infant baptism is not mentioned in the New Testament.? 14 The intent of the article was to justify adult ?believers? baptism against Catholics or other Protestants who had questioned this practice. Although many sister denominations practiced paedobaptism, Hearn explained that ?infant baptism and infant church-membership are among the unscriptural innovations, made by the Church of Rome and which unfortunately were not condemned and discarded in the day of the Reformation.? 15 When state Baptist magazine editors debated baptism with the editors of Methodist and Presbyterian newspapers, they condemned the practice of sprinkling members instead of full imersion, and asociated the practice of infant baptism with Catholicism as a means of sullying the denomination, thus linking it with heresy. In a back and forth with the editor of a Methodist paper, the Southern Christian Advocate, the editor of the Christian Index acused John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, with belonging to the ?High-Church? school of theology and the Methodist Church of possesing ?Romanizing tendencies.? 16 Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention believed the practice of baptism to be important enough that its Sunday School Board published an entire book on the subject. 14 F.L. Hearn, ?How I Became a Baptist, IV,? Alabama Baptist, 3 November 1874. 15 Ibid. 16 ?Ad Hominem,? Christian Index, 6 June 1872. In his disertation, Ira Birdwhistel argues that from 1917-1972, Baptist writers commenting on Catholicism paid litle atention to the sacrament of baptism: Birdwhistel, "Southern Baptist Perceptions of and Responses to Roman Catholicism, 1917-1972," 151-52. 22 Wiliam J. McGlothlin?s Infant Baptism noted that the Catholic Church codified baptism into a sacrament and contended that, ?The whole character of Christian history would certainly have been very diferent had faith-baptism been preserved inviolate.? Furthermore, without infant baptism, Catholic practices such as ?sacramental salvation, compulsion of conscience, bloody persecution and union of Church and State, would have been impossible?.? 17 Ironicaly, McGlothlin parsed his words when condemning infant baptism among Protestants. He implied that when the Reformation occurred, infant baptism had slipped through the cracks; it had not been properly veted for biblical legitimacy. The book examined the history of the practice, questioned the soundnes of the doctrine, and placed the blame squarely on Catholics for creating the tradition. McGlothlin explained that although ?there is much diference betwen the conceptions of infant-baptism as held and practiced by Catholics and evangelical Protestants,? he had a ?very firm conviction? that both were evil and dangerous. 18 Although Baptist writers advanced adult baptism as a distinctive element of their denominational identity, it was primarily a public profesion of faith that followed regeneration. Being ?born-again? was the single greatest evangelical tenet, so evangelicals vigorously defended their doctrine against alternative paths to salvation. The Catholic Church offered such an alternative. E. E. Folk explained the belief, as he understood it: Catholics make no bones of saying that salvation is to be obtained in the church [sic]. They say if you are a member of the church?of the 17 Wiliam Joseph McGlothlin, Infant-Baptism: Historically Considered (Nashvile: Sunday School Board, Southern Baptist Convention, 1916), 4. 18 Ibid. 23 church?you wil be saved, no mater what you are, no mater what you do. If you are not a member of the church, you wil not be saved, no mater what you are, no mater what you do. 19 Baptists argued that the problem with achieving salvation through the Catholic Church was that one could spend a lifetime seking asurance and only realize it at the end of life. Salvation was contingent upon the actions of the atending priest, who performed the Last Rites as preparation for death and the afterlife. For instance, the Alabama Baptist chalenged this tradition: The devout Catholic leans upon the aid of a sinful priest to secure for him pardon of sin, and then upon churchly ceremonies to sanctify his nature, and then upon oil-anointing to prepare him for death, and finaly, upon post-mortem mases to take him out of purgatory?al the while struggling to work out an atonement for sin, al the while uncertain of the eficacy of this or that expedient. 20 On the contrary, ?Protestantism,? wrote the Christian Index, ?placed the personal asurance of salvation at the beginning of the Christian life?a thing which is a present possesion to the believing man?.? 21 While these arguments represented an oversimplified understanding of Last Rites, Baptists writers either lacked the capacity to adequately understand the Catholic ritual or preferred straw man arguments over theological complexities. By publishing anti-Catholic stories about death and salvation, Baptist writers recognized that they could expose insecurities about belief in the afterlife and bolster their own spiritual narrative. One acount described the circumstances of French Jesuit Priest Louis Bourdalue, a man who dedicated his life to his faith and to charitable works 19 Folk, Baptist Principles, Leters to My Son, 117. 20 ?Romanism in Life and Death,? Alabama Baptist, 1 February 1877. 21 Christian Index, 22 March 1888. 24 in his community. The story reads like an Old Testament parable, detailing how the dying Priest requested retirement from the Jesuits in order to prepare spiritualy for his death but was uncertain he was worthy for heaven. Tragicaly, he spent his dying moments unsure of his salvation. The Alabama Baptist editorialized that ?the death of Bourdalue, which occurred soon after, exhibited the same mournful struggle between the fears of the Catholic and the confidence of the Christian [sic].? 22 Another Catholic doctrine that Baptists criticized was the sacrament of the Eucharist, commonly known as Holy Communion. Historian Russel Shaw explains that for Catholics, the Eucharist was ?food and drink, a sacred meal taken at the altar, the table of the Lord.? 23 Performed during Mas and administered by priests, it symbolized Christ?s actions at the Last Supper, where he offered himself ?as spiritual nourishment to his Apostles.? 24 Baptists had few qualms with the symbolic meaning; in fact, during their own communion ceremony (the Lord?s Supper), they shared food and drink and celebrated community in remembrance of Christ?s Last Supper. But they found other components of the Eucharist more troublesome. Catholics believed the breaking of bread and the drinking of the cup had both symbolic and literal meaning. Symbolicaly, it represented remembering the actions of Jesus and his disciples during the Last Supper. It was the literal act, known as transubstantiation, that disturbed Baptists. Catholics believed that during communion, the presiding priest performed a miracle, turning the bread and wine into the body and 22 ?A Dying Catholic,? Alabama Baptist, 10 August 1875. 23 Russel B. Shaw, Our Sunday Visitor's Encyclopedia of Catholic Doctrine (Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor, 1997). 24 Ibid. 25 blood of Christ. Christ literaly became present within each participant. Baptist writers questioned the soundnes of the doctrine. John Eager referred to the ritual as filed with ?superstition, idolatry, delusion, and imorality.? 25 W. J. E. Cox caled it an ?absurd and repulsive doctrine.? 26 Like Baptism, transubstantiation offered Baptists further proof of a distinctive identity measured against Catholicism. While both ceremonies emphasized community betwen God and their body of believers, Baptists treated it as a memorial rather than a spirit-inducing ritual. 27 W. J. E. Cox explained: We do not agree with the Roman Catholics, who teach transubstantiation, nor with the Lutherans, who teach consubstantiation, or even with other Protestants, that a special spiritual blesing is imparted to those who partake of the Supper, which is not received unles it is partaken of. We believe that the Lord?s Supper is a blesing to us only as it reminds us of our Savior?s sacrifice for us and kindles grateful afection toward him. 28 Baptist writers focused much of their scorn on the mystical qualities of the ceremony. They mocked Catholics for blindly subscribing to such delusions. F. H. Sils wrote that ?these ceremonies, like the rest of their work, are their own inventions, and they know it.? 29 Another critic implied that transubstantiation was litle more than sorcery: It is stated that a Baptist church in the South was thrown into confusion by the intrusion of a dog, which, just as the pastor was about to administer the communion, slipped up slyly, laid hold of the loaf of bread and made off 25 Eager, Romanism in its Home, 245. 26 W. J. E. Cox, ?Transubstantiation,? Alabama Baptist, 30 May 1906. 27 Norman Hil Maring and Winthrop Stil Hudson, A Baptist Manual of Polity and Practice (Valey Forge: Judson Pres, 1963), 136-41. 28 W. J. E. Cox, ?Transubstantiation,? Alabama Baptist, 30 May 1906. 29 F. H. Sils, Roman Catholicism Investigated and Exposed (Savannah: Savannah Morning News, 1911), 57. 26 with it. The circumstance gives our Catholic friend in Baltimore [probably the editor of the Miror, a Catholic paper in Baltimore] occasion to say that the bread was only bread after the Baptist minister had pronounced the consecrating words, whereas when a priest pronounces them the bread is miraculously changed into our Lord?s body? We acknowledge no divine Sovereign whom a dog or a rat can devour. 30 Another problem was the role of the clergy during mas. The central complaint was that the Eucharist bestowed too much power on the clergy. Baptists were lery of placing too much authority into the hands of one individual, preferring to place control in the hands of the church body. They viewed transubstantiation as a violation of their principles because it invested in priests supernatural powers, the capacity to perform a miracle. This placed them in a position of extraordinary influence over their congregation. One writer summed up Baptists? concerns: Transubstantiation places a power in the hand of the consecrating priest, which puts him in command of Christ himself. He performs a miracle at pleasure, and transforms bread and wine into the actual Christ, body and blood, soul and Godhead, and gives him literaly to the people; and though our Lord ?offered himself once and for al,? the priest makes an offering of him every time he ?consecrates? the elements, and so it teaches that the death of Christ was not sufficient, but must be repeated by every priest at every communion, and thus it degrades the atonement, puts the faith of the people in a man, and in ceremony wholly under the control of man, and reduces the glorious Christ to a miracle performed by on the material [sic] of a so-caled sacrament. 31 Some Baptist writers had a diferent view of the Eucharist. Put plainly, they argued that many Catholics did not believe in transubstantiation. It was a ritual devoid of meaning where believers went through the motions but placed litle religious value on the ceremony. Baptist misionary A. J. Wal remarked that, A priest told him one day that he had ceased to believe in the eficacy of the sacraments, and the power of the church, for reasons of this kind he 30 ?Splinters,? Alabama Baptist, 14 October 1910. 31 ?Transubstantiation,? Alabama Baptist, 23 January 1883. 27 was caled on one occasion to perform mas, and a large number of people were expected to be present, but only a few communicants came, he being expected to eat al the wafers left, suffered terribly from indigestion. 32 Although Baptist writers took special aim at Catholic Mas, they did not spare other religious customs that fostered both the detached atitude of the clergy and the lack of spirituality in the laity. Some of these criticisms speled out the trivialities of Catholicism. Baptist misionary Hugh McCormick reported that in Zacatecas, Mexico, Priest Feliz Angel conducted a prayer for the local ?horses, goats, fish, etc.,? implying that these animals had souls. 33 McCormick referred to the litany as nothing more than ?animal and devil worship,? further evidence of how Catholicism combined superstition with religion. 34 Although Southern Baptist preachers would likely have prayed for rain, crops, and livestock, al crucial for the survival of a family farm in 1891, they did not view this as superstition. God was a daily presence and an active agent in people?s lives. They did not believe that Christians needed to wear religious jewelry or carry a talisman to enjoy God?s presence. They considered Catholic reliance on religious imagery absurd. W. J. E. Cox wrote extensively about iconoclasm within the Catholic Church. He argued that the use of candles was a contrivance, writing that ?the burning of candles was part of the religions [sic] service of the Pagans and it was strongly condemned by the early Christians.? 35 He contended that religious relics were not only idolatrous, but also ?a 32 Christian Index, 12 August 1874. 33 Hugh McCormick, ?A Roman Catholic Litany. ?Indulgences? for Prayers Addresed to Horses, Goats, Fish, Etc., Etc.,? Alabama Baptist, 2 April 1891. 34 Ibid. 35 W. J. E. Cox, ?Corruption of Worship?Holy Water, Candles, Incense, Mas, etc.,? Alabama Baptist, 27 June 1906. 28 plain violation of the second commandment and utterly contrary to the genius and spirit of Christianity.? 36 Additionaly, he labeled Lent as ?an artificial, sacred season? observed by those who have ?foolishly undertaken to imitate Romish ceremonies? such as Ash Wednesday. 37 Rebels with a Cause: Baptists and Religious Authority Baptists cherished religious autonomy, which they believed to be among the most distinctive characteristics of their faith. One of the primary religious principles to which they subscribed was the doctrine of soul liberty (or Sola Scriptura, meaning the Bible alone), which aserts that each person has the right to read the Bible and interpret scripture for his or herself. 38 Daniel Webster Key explained what the concept meant to Southern Baptists in an 1887 sermon delivered in Wiliston, SC: In maters of religion, let every man be guided by his own conscience enlightened by the Bible or other systems of religion that he may prefer. Equal liberty for al is Baptist [sic]?the individual soul must acept the gospel or reject it when it is preached and the State shal neither help nor hinder. 39 Baptists believed that the source of religious authority was one of the fundamental diferences betwen themselves and Catholics. Like al evangelicals, Baptists believed in having a personal relationship with God, one that included prayer and reading the Bible. They believed al Christians should sek God?s plan in this manner; consequently, they 36 W. J. E. Cox, ?Saints, Images, and Relics,? Alabama Baptist, 20 June 1906. 37 ?Catholic Rules of Behavior,? Alabama Baptist, 6 April 1904. 38 Birdwhistel, "Southern Baptist Perceptions of and Responses to Roman Catholicism, 1917-1972," 146. 39 ?Sermons-Asorted Notes,? Box 1, Daniel Webster Key Papers, Georgia Baptist History Depository (hereafter cited as GBHD), Tarver Library, Mercer University, Macon, Georgia. 29 bristled at religious practices that violated their independence such as the practice of intercesion. The act of intercesion required that a Catholic priest serve as mediator (not in al cases) betwen God and man. Religious proxy was anathema to Baptists. For them, this translated into religious hierarchy and unchecked power, two isues that clearly contradicted their commitment to religious autonomy. The Alabama Baptist carried a syndicated article that labeled intercesion in the Catholic Church, ?the most stupendous fraud ever perpetrated in the name of Christianity,? claiming that priests usurped ?Christ?s office and authority as our sole prophet, priest and king?.? 40 Although the practice of intercesion had no chance of being adopted by Baptists, they felt compeled to denounce it because it interfered with spreading the Gospel. They believed that part of their witnes was to participate in a public (and one-sided) discourse with American Catholics. Baptists did not interpret their misionary work as intercesionary, convinced that they offered people freedom of choice. At times, their cals for religious freedom broke down into hyperbolic, anti-Catholic stories, some of which were almost certainly fabrications. In response to a Catholic Miror statement that ?the Bible has at al times been acesible to Catholics,? the Alabama Baptist published an incendiary acount of Catholic life in Toluca, Mexico. 41 A Protestant misionary on location there claimed that Catholic priests had restricted people?s aces to the Bible, going so far as to intimidate vilagers and burn Bibles. He described the spectacle, The plaza alive with people; in the midst of the excited crowd a number of Catholic priests, and out of the midst of the priestly circle a pyramid of flame and a column of smoke from a pile of burning Bibles! Inquisitorial visits from house 40 ?Christ the Only Priest. The Priesthood a Fraud.,? Alabama Baptist, 3 August 1899. 41 ?Rome and the Bible,? Alabama Baptist, 15 November 1888. 30 to house, threats of penance, purgatory and perdition have extorted from trembling families their copies of the Word of God for the fagot [sic] pile! 42 Baptist writers frequently labeled Catholics as primitive, superstitious, and uneducated, but placed the brunt of responsibility on the Church, not its followers. One of the chief complaints was that it intentionaly kept followers ignorant. Proscribed rituals supplanted personal spirituality. When Reverend John Daley, an asociate priest at Saint Aloysius Church in Besemer, Alabama, publicly condemned the Alabama Baptist Convention for its verbal asaults against Catholics, one writer responded that Baptists needed to give people a voice with which to refute the Church. Catholics had ?reserved the right to speak for its subjects, keeping them in ignorance, and convincing them? that a litle pope in Rome, and cardinals, and bishops, and priests have their souls in keeping?.? 43 Most Baptists believed that Catholics disregarded the Bible completely. The Christian Index offered an explanation as to why Catholics relied so litle on reading the Bible: the Catholic Church claimed to have existed before the New Testament was writen, and that one can receive the gospel ?only as it was authenticated by the Church.? 44 Because of this crucial asumption, ?the Roman church has never cared to have her people read the Scriptures.? Religious scholar Richard Penaskovic argues that it had litle to do with historical precedence. Bishops feared that if every person interpreted 42 Ibid. 43 ?A Ranting Catholic Priest,? Alabama Baptist, 21 May 1891. 44 ?The Catholics and the Bible,? Christian Index, 4 May 1893. 31 the scriptures individualy, the Church would have to continualy addres other reformers like Luther, Calvin, etc. 45 Pastor of the St. Francis Stret Baptist church in Mobile, Alabama, Wiliam J. E. Cox, argued that diferent atitudes toward the Bible were among the most distinguishing features betwen Baptists and Catholics. ?Baptists believe, and Protestants generaly agree with them,? Cox aserted, ?that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the Word of God, and the only infalible rule of religious faith and practice.? 46 Catholics believed that its members must interpret the Bible however the Church deemed because the ?interpretation of the writen and unwriten Word of God by His Holy Spirit keeps the church, that is, the Roman Catholic Church, from commiting error in mater of religious faith and practice.? In addition to disagreements over the role of scripture, W. J. E. Cox took isue with many Catholic beliefs that he believed stood in the way of individual salvation. He argued that ?the so-caled sacrament of penance as taught by the Roman Catholic church? had no scriptural basis and was ?contrary to the fundamental doctrine of the gospel?the sufficiency of the statement of Christ for the sins of men.? 47 The problem with penance, Cox continued, was that it ?teaches that there must be a supplementary atonement by the works of suffering of the sinner himself, thus making the atonement of Christ only partial.? 45 Penaskovic, Richard. Interview with Richard Penaskovic. Personal interview. October 8, 2012. 46 W. J. E. Cox, ?The Atitude of Baptists and Roman Catholics Toward the Bible,? Alabama Baptist, 18 April 1906. 47 W. J. E. Cox, ?Penance and Indulges,? Alabama Baptist, 13 June 1906. 32 Penance raised important questions about religious authority. Catholics believed that only God could forgive sins, using the priest as mediator. Baptists were convinced that confesion to a priest denied the biblical teaching of God?s exclusive power to forgive sins and that no mediator was necesary for atonement. Misionary John Eager claimed that in certain cases, penance alowed priests unlimited power over their flock. For instance, in his book Romanism in its Home, Eager included a short chapter on how Catholics practiced the sacrament in Rome, criticizing it with words such as ?torture,? ?horrible,? and ?Satanic.? 48 He explained that although much of the ?cruel forms of penance? had died out in other parts of Europe, ?this heathen custom is stil sadly practiced in Italy.? Others were more concerned with how penance undermined morality. Although Baptists believed that God forgave those who asked for forgivenes, this was no substitute for possesing high moral standards. Shaped by Calvinist theology, Baptists believed that one?s personal relationship with God sustained righteous living. Conversely, Catholics disregarded virtuosity because penance gave Catholics a license to sin. Like other Protestants, Baptists considered this practice a corrupt bargain betwen the Church and its members, one that could be exploited in a mutualy beneficial manner. The mases could easily atone for their sins via charitable donations, and the Church received needed funding. This was a continuing problem that went back to the days of Martin Luther, Baptists writers argued, when Johann Tetzel peddled indulgences to any wiling person with the financial wherewithal. In Italy, the Christian Index reported, ?the pockets of the poor are continualy drained? by priests driven to fund Church 48 Eager, Romanism in its Home, 77-81. 33 expansion. 49 The mases ?pay the priest to absolve them from their sins? and therefore had no incentive to lead moraly-centered lives. 50 In 1910, F. H. Sils of Savannah, Georgia, published Roman Catholicism Investigated and Exposed. The book focused primarily on theological diferences betwen Baptists and Catholics. Although the author devoted entire chapters to infalibility, baptism, indulgences, purgatory, and matrimony, he explained in the preface that he meant no il wil toward Roman Catholics who respect ?the laws of his country? and ?live an honorable, upright, moral, and Christian life.? Rather, he targeted those ?who disown and disregard the religious, maral [moral], and civil rights of others??such as the Pope and ?other agents of the Roman Catholic Church.? 51 Although difering beliefs absorbed most atention from Baptist critics, the institution of the priesthood was an important secondary target. During the early twentieth century, anti-clericalism ran rampant in religious publications and secular literature alike. 52 Acusations ranged from corruption to licentiousnes. Baptists believed that clergy were soldiers of the Catholic Church responsible for advancing doctrine, rooting out heresy, and exerting dominion over members. T. S. Calaway claimed that in Catholic-controlled countries throughout the world, priests, ?who are supposed to be educated,? were the cause of ?ignorance, iliteracy, and imorality among 49 Richard F. Wilingham, ?Observations of Catholicism,? Christian Index, 12 October 1905. 50 Ibid. 51 F.H. Sils, Roman Catholicism Investigated and Exposed, 7. 52 Lou Baldwin, "Pious Prejudice: Catholicism and the American Pres Over Three Centuries," in Anti-Catholicism in American Culture, ed. Robert Lockwood (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2000), 67. 34 the natives.? 53 The Alabama Baptist described how Baltimore parochial schools indoctrinated children about religious authority. In one exercise, students were asked ?what kind of Christ do they [Protestants] believe? and were directed to respond, ?in such a one of whom they can make a liar with impunity, whose doctrine they can interpret as they please, and who does not care what a man believes, provided he be an honest man before the public.? 54 Baptist writers had plenty to say about Catholic newspapers, especialy the ?editor-priests? who lacked integrity yet controlled the storylines. J. F. Love wrote that the newspapers exhibited a ?coarsenes? that revealed the ?low ethical and aesthetic ideals of Romanism.? 55 In one Sunday flier, he claimed to have counted ?seventen liquor and beer advertisements;? in another there were announcements for ?church dances and church card parties.? Another complaint was censorship. He claimed that Roman Catholic officials kept tight control over their mesage and suppresed outside editorials that questioned dogma. Stil another charge was that the Church distributed ?scurrilous and abusive? propaganda against Protestants. The editors of Baptist newspapers closely followed publications such as the Catholic Standard and Times, the Watchman, the Miror, and the Progres, and looked for opportunities to interject their own doctrinal positions. Because Baptists identified with the American free-pres tradition, they resented that they had litle chance of having their open leters published in their adversaries? publications. Their strategy was to 53 Timothy Walton Calaway, Romanism vs. Americanism: The Roman Catholic System (Atlanta: Index Printing Company, 1923), 81. 54 ?Ultramontanism vs. Protestantism,? Alabama Baptist, 10 June 1888. 55 J. F. Love, ?Religious Aspect of the Catholic Question,? The Home Field, March 1912, 4-5. 35 disect and refute Catholic dogma and to respond to what they viewed as unwarranted, slanderous atacks on Baptist principles. Readers became absorbed in the public discourse and wrote leters expresing their endorsement of Baptist positions. An anonymous leter to the Alabama Baptist reveals the impact that anti-Catholic articles could have on readership. While atending the annual Southern Baptist Convention in Chatanooga, a Baptist claimed to be ?pasing the Catholic church? on his way to convention events when he stopped to hear Father Healy preach on the doctrine of purgatory. Noting the large audience in atendance and the questionable content of the sermon, the Baptist eyewitnes testified that Healy?s sermon ?only goes to show that the Catholics are doing al in their power to proselyte non-Catholics and that the able series of sermons by Dr. W. J. E. Cox are most timely.? 56 Anti-Catholic newspaper articles, books, and pamphlets educated readers on how the Church instiled its notions of authority from cradle to grave. Baptists believed that priests held enormous power over laity, power that jeopardized Baptists? succes in spreading the Gospel. Popular Baptist author Victor Masters branded Catholic priests ?subversive? and suggested ?constant vigilance? against those he considered ?dangerous? to liberty-loving Americans. 57 Ever cognizant of the insidious character of Catholic clergy, the Christian Index encouraged its readers ?? not to commit the training of their children to those who do not believe and teach the Baptist doctrine.? 58 56 ?The Catholic Mision,? Alabama Baptist, 16 May 1906. 57 Victor I. Masters, Making American Christian (Atlanta: Publicity Department of the Home Mision Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1921), 35. 58 Christian Index, 6 August 1896. 36 In Wiliston, Georgia, Daniel Webster Key warned his congregation of the power the Catholic Church possesed. Preaching from the text in Isaiah 54:17, he described how the Roman Catholic Church had used every available weapon? from sword to the marriage of church and state to finaly a clerical asault on science? al with the expresed purpose of weakening the influence of Protestant Christianity in the United States. Most notably, Key delivered the sermon on Christmas Day, 1887. Instead of focusing on the birth of Jesus, as many pastors traditionaly did at Christmas, he chalenged the audience on ?this day, the birthday of Jesus,? to spread ?the gospel and build houses of worship in every civilized nation on earth.? 59 Drawing inspiration from the teachings of the Old Testament and with the word of God thundering in his own voice, Key promised that, like the Israelites before them, ?no weapon that is fashioned against you shal prosper, and you shal confute every tongue that rises against you in judgment.? 60 At times Baptist writers drew inspiration for such anti-clerical sermons and articles from local disagreements with Catholic priests. Religious newspapers were filed with these back and forth exchanges. Rarely did these exchanges produce thoughtful discourse. Neither group tried to understand the other. Mostly, these were personal rivalries where local preachers ?quoted freely? from the available anti-Catholic literature in an atempt to flood the public arena with a preponderance of evidence. 61 Conflicts were contests over space, especialy the opportunity to control the public narrative. Since Baptists were anxious about Catholic incursions in the South, they used every avenue to 59 ?Box 1, Sermons,? Daniel Webster Key Papers. 60 Ibid. 61 Calaway, Romanism vs. Americanism: The Roman Catholic System, 8. 37 exert their own religious authority. In Chatanooga, Tennese, when Francis Sullivan of the St. Peter?s Catholic Church preached a sermon aserting the primacy of the Catholic faith in America, Baptist T. W. Calaway became outraged. 62 Initialy, he devised a series of sermons intended to refute al aspects of Catholicism. Later, he expanded the sermons into a manuscript entitled Romanism vs. Americanism: The Roman Catholic System. Unlike many other anti-Catholic books of the era, it focused almost entirely on the priesthood. W. J. E. Cox experienced a similar experience. During his formative years in the pulpit, he served as pastor in Baltimore, Maryland, a sedbed for Italian imigration and a focal point for Baptist misions. Although his Baltimore experiences were seminal, he rose to ministerial prominence while pastoring a Mobile church. During a Catholic misionary campaign in the city, Catholics encountered unified Protestant resistance led by Cox. One eyewitnes wrote the Alabama Baptist: For the past two weks a Catholic priest has been lecturing in the city on things doctrinal, trying to make Catholics of protestants [sic]. These lectures? elicited replies last Sabbath from a number of protestant ministers in the city. These pastors gave notice that they would tel from their respective pulpits ?Why Protestants are not Catholics?.? My observation is that they [Catholics] can be reached just like other people when your can get them to investigate the other side of the question. The writer [Cox] has baptized some half dozen Catholics during the past five years. 63 Afterwards, Cox expanded his anti-Catholic rebuttal into a series of twelve sermons on the theme, ?Why Baptists are not Roman Catholics.? 64 Frank Barnet, an unusualy wel- 62 Ibid, 5-8. 63 W. J. E. Cox, ?Things Doctrinal,? Alabama Baptist, 14 February 1906. 64 ?Why Baptists are Not Roman Catholic,? Alabama Baptist, 4 April 1906. 38 educated and erudite editor of the Alabama Baptist, requested that transcripts of the sermons be submited to the newspaper for publication. The sermons were so wel-received statewide that Barnet and other Baptist leaders urged Cox to develop the collection into Erors of Romanism, an anti-Catholic book that catalogued theological diferences betwen Baptists and Catholics. 65 Although the book acurately reflected Baptist perceptions of Catholic doctrine during the early twentieth century, not everyone endorsed Cox?s dramatic delivery. The Sunday School Board, the largest publishing vehicle of the Southern Baptist convention, decided that the sermons were too caustic and declined publication, leading him to self-publish his book. 66 The Converted Catholic, an anti-Catholic newspaper edited by a former Catholic priest, reviewed the author?s work, proclaiming him to be ?fully alive to the pretentions of the papal agents in this country, and to the peril to our national institutions involved in them? and an ?authority of the highest kind.? 67 A pastor in Arkansas, G. M. Provence, found the book so important that he ordered five copies. By the first decade of the twentieth century, Cox had become one of the leading Baptist critics of Catholic doctrine in the South. Doctrinal Conflict and the Democratic Impulse Although many afirmations of the doctrine of separation of church and state were overtly anti-Catholic, Baptists believed their criticism served a higher purpose. They 65 This is not a distinctive Baptist principle, but rather a belief asociated with al Protestants. It was a key principle of the Protestant Reformation. For soul liberty among Baptists, se Maring and Hudson, A Baptist Manual of Polity and Practice, 4. 66 Alabama Baptist, 21 August 1907. 67 James O?Connor, ?New Books,? The Converted Catholic, April 1908. 39 were convinced that Roman Catholicism was incompatible with democracy and pointed to Italy as proof. To Baptists, the Pope constituted the ultimate example of how religious hierarchy obfuscated liberty. Aluding to the history of the Church?s theocratic power in the region, a Baptist misionary to Italy labeled the Pope ?ambitious? in his ?desire to regain temporal power? and described the papacy as ?the curse of Romanism in Italy.? 68 Other Baptists also wrote extensively about the Pope and the errors of the papal institution. One concern was the Catholic philosophy of Ultramontanism, which Baptists defined as ?the fundamental principle [that] the church means the Pope.? 69 As the Alabama Baptist explained the doctrine, Catholics believed that, ? their own faith and religious life flow from him (the Pope); that in him is the bond which unites Catholics to one another, and the power which strengthens, and the light which guides them; that he is the dispenser of spiritual graces, the giver of the benefits of religion and the protector of the oppresed. 70 One critic expresed concern about the far-reaching implication of the doctrine. Taken literaly, al instruments of the Church, including those from within the United States, served at the pleasure of the Pope. Baptist writers hamered the Church, leaving readers aghast at the potential ramifications. They chalenged the loyalty of Catholic politicians, acused the clergy of being Roman puppets, and questioned the legitimacy of parochial schools beholden to a Pope who was hostile to public education. 68 D. G. Whitinghil, ?The Curse of Romanism in Italy,? 1329 Pamphlet Collection, Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archive (hereafter cited as SBHLA), Nashvile, Tennese. 69 ?What is Ultramontanism?,? Alabama Baptist, 22 June 1875. 70 Ibid. 40 Some American Catholics were also concerned with papal authority. One group met in Cooper?s Union, New York, and isued a public statement afirming their catholicity as separate from American politics. They pledged loyalty to ?the authorities of the church in maters of religion,? but ?denounced the right of the Pope, propaganda or archbishop to prescribe for American Catholics, lay or cleric, what economic opinions they shal persue [sic] or abstain from.? 71 When he ran for President in 1928, Catholic Al Smith was regularly questioned about his alegiance. Because American Catholics failed to find consensus, John F. Kennedy encountered the same questions thirty-two years later. Papal Infalibility was another point of contention closely linked with Ultramontanism. Critics charged that it had a direct impact on church doctrine. The papacy, which dictated ?dogma by virtue of its authority,? drove Catholic Church doctrine. 72 Baptist S. E. Jones aserted that ?when anyone, Pope or who-ever (human) [sic] sets himself up and his dogmas as authoritative and binding, he justly merits the unqualified censure of al reasonable persons.? Baptists contended that the problem with Papal dogma was that it asumed infalibility, thus inferring that as beyond debate. John Eager testified that he ?? once heard a preacher declare from the pulpit of the cathedral of Florence that there could be no salvation except by submision to the Pope.? 73 The preacher alegedly added that anyone who failed to acept the Pope?s dogma ?? not in part, but altogether, cannot properly cal himself a Roman Catholic.? 74 71 Alabama Baptist, 3 February 1887. 72 S.E. Jones, ?Dogmatism and Liberalism,? Alabama Baptist, 19 October 1904. 73 Eager, Romanism in its Home, 108. 74 Ibid. 41 Not only did Baptists believe that the Bible constituted the sole source of their doctrines, many also maintained that this belief was doctrine unique to them. E. J. Forrester explained that this belief gave them a ?peculiar? identity and offered an ?antipodal position? where ?the Romish church stand [sic] alone at one end, so the Baptists stand alone at the other.? 75 Other Christian faiths fel somewhere in the middle. Forrester displayed a more sophisticated understanding than most Baptists, choosing to se diferences as historical marks of faith. While he believed the doctrine of infalibility to be flawed, its mere existence did not threaten Baptist beliefs, it bolstered them. By marking their doctrine in polar opposition of Catholicism, Baptists validated them as biblicaly sound. In this regard, anti-Catholic writings afirmed Baptist beliefs, distiled religious ideals, and contributed to denominational authenticity as much as they chalenged Catholicism. Other Baptist writers did not share Forrester?s magnanimous approach, but they did agree that history could shed light on infalibility. They explained that throughout the history of the Church, a number of Popes had lacked decency and morality, which raised questions about infalibility. W. J. E. Cox offered numerous examples. He wrote that Pope Stephen had ??rescinded the acts and decrees of his infalible predecesor, Formosa,? and had the former Pope?s body exhumed, tried, and convicted before a court, and thrown in the river Tiber. 76 Cox explained that the christening of Benedict IX as Pope was purchased by gold. Before being expeled by the Romans, ?the boy Pope? was ?said 75 E. J. Forrester, The Baptist Position (Baltimore: R. H. Woodward and Company, 1893), 29. 76 Wiliam J. E. Cox, "Errors of Romanism," (Mobile: n. p., 1907), 62. 42 to have dealt in sorcery and to have sacrificed to demons.? 77 John Eager added to this indictment, ?Innocent III, who founded the Inquisition,? and ?Pius V, who covered Europe with burning funeral piles.? 78 A few writers, not content with the historical record of the papacy, resorted to demagoguery and ad hominem atacks. Thomas Watson was the most notorious of these critics. His numerous books and articles on the Catholic Church shared a common theme: the Pope had a secret plan to infiltrate the United States and take over the government. He claimed that the Catholic Church operated a ?deadly secret society? that had ?compeled our [United States] Government to connect itself officialy with the Italian popes.? 79 Acording to Watson, the result was that Never a Congres expires that does not lavish public money on the pope?s charitable institutions in Washington, and on his Indian schools, in which his teachers wear their religious garb and, practicaly teach the pope?s religion. Never a Congres can come and go, without the pope?s lobby clamoring for more chaplains and more authority to compel non-Catholics to surrender their religious freedom. 80 In 1894, the Atlanta Constitution sparked a firestorm of controversy when it published Dr. James Hawthorne?s sermon on religious liberty. The controversy stemed from the minister?s endorsement of the American Protective Asociation, a fraternal organization whose goal was to exclude Catholics from holding public office. The sermon created a debate among Baptist leaders. Alabama Baptist editor W.B. Crumpton published a ringing endorsement, explaining that although he did ?not know about the 77 Ibid., 63. 78 Eager, Romanism in its Home, 109. 79 Thomas E. Watson, The Italian Pope's Campaign Against the Constitutional Rights of American Citizens, (Thomson: The Tom Watson Book Company, 1915), 4-5. 80 Ibid, 6-7. 43 secrets of the A.P.A. or any other secret order,? as ?long as they are peaceable, and use only the tongue, pen and balot to acomplish their purpose, I have for them no word of censure.? 81 To those who considered it religious persecution to vote against a Roman Catholic for office, he responded that ?this writer glories in being numbered among the persecutors? No Catholic in office by my vote, is a safe creed for every American voter.? 82 Progresive Alabama pastor and future seminary profesor, George Eager disagred. He cautioned against the American Protective Asociation, arguing that although he objected to the Catholic Church?s ?intermeddling with the civil afairs of this nation? and to ?her absurd dogmas and asumptions,? he considered the secretive campaign of the A.P.A. to be contradictory to ?our [Baptists?] Christian principle of absolute freedom of conscience and choice in things religious.? 83 He opposed eforts to bar Catholics from public office, which he believed to be ?un-Baptistic [sic] and unconstitutional, if not distinctly treasonable.? Eager believed that instead of engaging in a political battle or ?fighting the devil with fire,? as the A.P.A. suggested, Baptists should limit their diferences with Catholics to doctrine and ?let the fight with Rome be open and above-board.? As the denomination approached the new century, the editorial banter betwen denominational leaders revealed a dilema for Southern Baptists. They were among the staunchest advocates of religious liberty but sometimes were wiling to deny other Americans basic liberties to protect their own. Reflecting the tenets of Calvinism, E. B. 81 W.B. Crumpton, ?The A.P.A.,? Alabama Baptist, 3 May 1894. 82 Ibid. 83 George B. Eager, ?The A.P.A. Again,? Alabama Baptist, 10 May 1894. 44 Teague aserted that Baptists had the doctrinal pedigree to resolve this American dilema: Protestants hold that the claims of the Church are only to be enforced by argument and persuasion, but even they often in the past, have clung to the supposed right of resorting to penal enactments. Baptists alone, in al their history, have eschewed the use of civil authority, and insisted on total diseverance of state and church. 84 Although other Protestants shared the concern for religious liberty, it had special meaning for Baptists, or so they contended. As the first advocates for separating religion from state control, they believed their history made them special. Additionaly, they considered themselves the progenitors of republicanism? their denomination upheld the religious ideals of individualism and democratic autonomy. 85 Their adherence to republican Christianity marked them torchbearers for religious liberty. Few if any denominations held themselves closer to the nation?s democratic ideals than did Baptists. However, that impulse was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, local churches offered members inclusivenes within the church family; but they also dealt harshly with those who operated outside Protestant communal norms. This helps explain the contentious nature of Baptist history. It also offers insight into their perceptions of Catholicism. 86 84 Eldridge B. Teague, ?Let Us Avoid Extremes,? Alabama Baptist, 7 June 1894. 85 Harvey, Redeeming the South, 25. Psychologist David Myers argues that when people create factions reflecting the values of their ?ingroup,? individualistic cultures are more likely to hold extreme ?outgroup ?biases than do people in communal cultures; David G. Myers, "Ingroup and Outgroup," in Social Psychology (New York: McGraw-Hil, 1990), 347-49. 86 For more background on the paradox of democracy and exclusion, se, Gregory A. Wils, Democratic Religion: Fredom, Authority, and Church Discipline in the Baptist South, 1785-1900, Religion in America series (New York: Oxford University Pres, 1997); Se also, Ownby, Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865-1920. 45 From the early years of the Republic, Protestants were consumed with fears of a Catholic plot to take over the United States. 87 Baptist writers cited public maters such as schools, politics, and the court system as evidence of a Catholic menace. They believed that their constitutional rights, such as the separation of church and state, were under atack. J. M. Pendleton explained, Now, there are three principles in the constitution of our government which must ever be repugnant to the Church of Rome. These are, the entire separation of church and state, non-sectarian schools, and the right to solemnize marriage by the civil magistrate. To tolerate either of these is to overthrow the entire Catholic superstructure. This Catholics cannot be expected to permit, if within their power to prevent it. They wil, therefore, necesarily continue to wage a biter crusade against these things; and if ever they succed in gaining control of the government, they wil expunge them from the constitution, and so change its whole character. 88 Baptist concerns were not complete fabrications. Starting in the 1870s, Catholic imigrants poured into the United States, increasing the Church?s influence on public maters. They filed lawsuits in support of parochial school funding and ran for public office. They pointed out that Protestants did not practice what they preached; they profesed alegiance to religious liberty, but only because they controlled the public sphere and their beliefs were already interwoven into every aspect of American life. When Catholic newspapers exposed these contradictions, Baptists writers responded, 87 Baldwin, "Pious Prejudice: Catholicism and the American Pres Over Three Centuries," 61. 88 J.M. Pendleton, ?The Atitude of Roman Catholicism Toward Our Government,? Alabama Baptist, 23 March 1882. 46 often oblivious to the privileges they enjoyed. 89 One critic chalenged Catholics to explain Where, in the history of Protestant churches, do you find them endeavoring to gain control of the government and teaching their members to disregard the laws of the United States, to ignore, and finaly refuse, to pay their school taxes, to organize and overthrow this government, to ?persecute al who do not believe with them,? and to establish a government for the Baptists, or the Methodists, or the Presbyterians? 90 Southern Baptists recognized that their world was changing. In the fifty years following the Civil War, they saw dramatic evidence of this. Defining who they were and what they stood for (and against) constituted an important way to preserve their cultural authority. They also recognized that the pen was not always mightier than the sword. Increasingly, they advanced Baptist principles and countered Catholic campaigns through direct action. The Southern Baptist Convention, often the last body to weigh in on controversy, made its position known in 1914 when members pased a resolution that denounced the political ambitions of the Catholic Church and cautioned government officials against becoming too cozy with such an organization: Resolved, that we view with serious alarm and vigorous protest the eforts of the Roman Catholic hierarchy to gain control of our government, and thereby be in a position to fasten either its faith or falacies upon the consciences of a free people. Resolved, that we deplore deeply the presence of a papal legate as the representative of the Vatican at our national capital for the purpose of influencing government afairs. Resolved, that we earnestly protest against the presence of a national representatives [sic] in their official capacity at eclesiastical functions 89 For how southern evangelicals legislated their relgious agenda, se, Charles A. Israel, Before Scopes: Evangelicalism, Education, and Evolution in Tennese, 1870-1925 (Athens: University of Georgia Pres, 2004). 90 ?Roman Catholicism,? Alabama Baptist, 24 April 1889. 47 and the manifest disposition on the part of some of our politicians to show deference to so-caled church dignitaries. 91 Although this resolution did not offer formal recommendations for action, it implied that each Southern Baptist should do his civic duty to protect religious liberty. State conventions expresed concern about Catholic political ambitions even more forthrightly. In Alabama, a southern state with a fast-growing Catholic population, Baptists used every available method to protect their liberty. At the 1903 Alabama Baptist State Convention, mesengers pased a resolution against the appropriation of public funds for any religious work, arguing that such action violated ?? the important principle of religious liberty and trespases upon the rights of the individual.? 92 The resolution foreshadowed decades of public disputes betwen Alabamians over the alocation of public funds to religious institutions. Citing the spirit of religious liberty, the Alabama Baptist questioned public funding for Birmingham?s St. Vincent Hospital and the Catholic Orphanage in East Lake. The editor argued that ?? the principles of church and state, for which our Baptist fathers bled and died, must again be contended for in the twentieth century in a great Protestant state.? 93 A few weks later, John Tyson, Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, spoke at the annual meting of the Alabama Baptist Convention in Dothan, afirming the importance of Baptists and religious liberty. Galvanized by the speech, J. M. Shelburne presented a resolution proclaiming that, ?? the principle of 91 Annual of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1914, (Nashvile: Marshal and Brice Company, 1914), 93-94. 92 ?Have We the Separation of Church and State in Alabama?,? Alabama Baptist 10 July 1907. 93 ?Is the Age-Herald a Roman Catholic Organ, and Has it a Grudge Against Baptists?,? Alabama Baptist, 10 July 1907. 48 separation of church and state, for which we as a people have always stood, is being violated in Alabama in the form of appropriations of public money to the support of sectarian institutions?.? 94 Years earlier, a Catholic priest from Besemer, Alabama, characterized such Baptist conventions as frequently devolving into nothing more than an ?annual howl? against Catholicism. 95 When atendees pased the resolution unanimously, they also confirmed Catholic suspicions: the wolf was at the door. The early twentieth-century was a transitional period for both Southern Baptists and the South?s Catholic population. Both experienced substantial increases in membership. For Catholics, this meant putting down roots?building churches, schools, and hospitals?in a region where Protestants heavily outnumbered them. Southern Baptists? who had become what religious historian Martin Marty ironicaly caled the ?Catholic Church of the South? because of their political and cultural dominance of the region? increasingly acted as majorities often do, wiling to impose their own principles on society regardles of how others might be afected. They fought for truth and liberty, even if the truth was their truth and the liberty seldom considered Catholic interests. 94 ?Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, Rings a Clear Baptist Note on Religious Liberty at Dothan,? Alabama Baptist, 31 July 1907. 95 ?A Ranting Catholic Priest,? Alabama Baptist, 21 May 1891. 49 Chapter Two Identity Preserved: Anti-Catholicism in Southern Baptist Misions In 1875 J. J. D. Renfroe took to task his felow Baptists: ?why is it that Alabama Baptists, who used to give so much to benevolent causes of this Convention, do now give so litle?? 1 He was distraught over the lack of support for Southern Baptist institutions that he saw as instrumental to denominational succes. Funds were low, mision support was waning, and the Southern Baptist Convention was tetering on the brink of extinction. Renfroe, while admiting that the problem afected the entire South, chalenged Alabamians to reach out to the destitute and help their felow neighbors; if they did not, someone else would. Particularly during Reconstruction, Southern Baptists worried about Catholic mission work among the Freedmen. Renfroe saw this as a broader isue. ?Some brethren are much afraid of the Roman Catholics among the negroes? he declared; ?for my own part I am no more afraid of them among the negroes than among the white people.? 2 While Renfroe agreed that Catholics should not be ministering to the freedmen, he suggested that a Catholic presence in the South had wide-reaching consequences. White southerners believed they could control ?their negroes,? as long as the southern social hierarchy remained in place. To Renfroe, misions represented more than simply the saving of souls or social outreach to the poor; misions reached al southerners in direct, 1 Alabama Baptist, 15 June 1875. 2 Ibid. 50 personal terms. It preserved order and re-afirmed social identity in the South. Increasingly, Baptists like Renfroe saw Catholics as interlopers impeding the succes of mision programs and threatening to upset the region?s social balance. Baptists encountered these diferences as they reconstructed their institutions. Since the post-war South was in dire straights, Northern Baptists offered both support and guidance. They sent misionaries South, suggested to southerners how to reconcile with their sinful past, and provided support services such as religious literature to il-equipped Southern Baptists. But the relationship betwen northern and southern Baptists was strained from the start. In February 1870, the North Carolina Baptist newspaper, the Biblical Recorder, carried a story entitled ?Catholics on Color? that reported that ?Catholics are laboring among the freedmen in Baltimore: in their schools and churches white and black sit together.? 3 It informed North Carolina Baptists that ?there are now seventen negroes being educated for priests in one institution in Naples.? The article was actualy writen by the Secretary of the American Baptist Home Mision Society, Dr. Wiliam Simons, as a warning that Southern Baptists, in order to compete for souls, must undergo an ?eclesiastical reconstruction that required studying, reciting, and eating side-by-side with the colored people.? The editorial was typical of the period; it represented atempts by northern religious institutions to reform southern religious beliefs. Like other aspects of Reconstruction, such meddling was met with sharp responses. The editor responded by asking among other things, ?what could negro [sic] students trained in Rome, do in 3 Biblical Recorder, 20 February 1870. 51 America?? 4 If Catholicism was such a menace to southern society, ?how come it to pas that Roman Catholicism has never gained a decent foothold in Africa?? Illustrating the Southern point of view, he declared: ?Let us aid their [Negro] churches, their schools, their enterprises; but never let us open the way for corrupt white men [Catholics] to prowl like wolves among them and lead flocks and families down to corruption and ruin.? The response was clear. Southern Baptists had no intention of negotiating the terms of a religious reconstruction that involved giving up their cultural authority over the freedmen, especialy when the threat stemed from corrupt Catholics. In fact, the language of the North Carolina editor implied the threat of physical force that smacked of Klan-like intentions. If Southern Baptists were to preserve their institutions, it became necesary to stamp out threats to their way of life, no mater their origin. In the New South, the significance of misions was in more than saving souls; it represented a containment policy. Baptists understood that the center of Catholic power was Rome, Italy, and believed that the Pope was pursuing an aggresive campaign to infiltrate America and take over its government, control the educational system, and alter social relations. Understandably, he thus became object of the most vicious atacks from Baptists leaders as an icon representing the Catholic conspiracy. 4 Ibid. 52 Promoting Misionary Zeal During the years when Southern Baptists reconstructed their identity, James Marion Frost was one of the most important leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention. 5 He was a prolific publisher of pamphlets, books, newspaper articles, and sermons on distinctive Baptist principles. From his early career as a minister to his long service as founder and Corresponding Secretary of the Sunday School Board, perhaps no other Baptist leader said more about who Baptists were, what they believed, and who were their adversaries. In 1881, Frost preached a sermon in Stanton, Virginia entitled ?A Glorious Church.? In the sermon, he prescribed the ideals of Southern Baptists institutions. Not surprisingly, he drew paralels betwen the activities in a succesful church with the tenants of ?good-templarism? [sic] that included leadership, felowship, and community outreach. 6 ?The mision of the church,? acording to Frost, ?is intensely radical in its nature? striking with might and efective blows at the very root of wrong.? The avenue for transformation was to be achieved through misions. Using education, Baptists might stamp out heresy; by being charitable, they might reach the dispossessed; and through reformatory measures, the South would be preserved. This action was crucial because it was ?regenerative,? both individualy and institutionaly. An important component to Frost?s cal to arms was dealing with the ?very root of wrong,? the Catholic Church, the institution that ??needs itself to be revolutionized and christianiszed.? [sic] Whether the subject was the ?monstrous abomination? of an infalible Pope, or warnings that The Church was smothering ?the goodnes of civil religious liberty? and impeding 5 For a biographical sketch, se John Milburn Price, Baptist Leaders in Religious Education (Nashvile: Broadman Pres, 1943). 6 Sermons, 1871-1885, Boxes 35 and 36, James Marion Frost Papers, SBHLA. 53 ?advancement and improvement? of society, Frost chalenged Baptists to get involved by participating in and funding misions. Ultimately, he concluded, ?The relations of the individual member to the Church?to this whole subject?Identity Preserved?retarding or helping? shows of the future glory.? This sermon typified the sentiments of early southern evangelical anti-Catholicism. Frost informed true believers that they needed to understand what their community represented and more importantly, what it opposed. In fact, the two concepts were inextricably linked. To become a truly glorious church, Baptists must recognize those institutions that threatened the church and resolve them through misions. The very act of combating heresy meant that at the same time Southern Baptists were preserving a distinctive religious identity they were strengthening their churches and doing the wil of God. Among the most colorful commentators on misions to Roman Catholics was J.R. Graves, leader of the Landmark faction of Baptists (so caled because they believed certain Baptist beliefs and practices dated back to the times of Jesus), and editor of The Tennese Baptist in Memphis, Tennese. 7 Graves used an asortment of epithets such as ?the Beast in the Pit? and ?Whore of Babylon? to refer to the Pope and quoted from Revelations to convey the fear of an apocalyptic end of time. 8 This style of language utilized milennial theology and urged followers to adopt radical positions toward outsiders, particularly those who held religious beliefs foreign to southerners. As a leader in the Landmark movement, Graves was opposed to foreign misions. To Landmarkers, 7 Biographical acounts of Graves include Marty G. Bel, "James Robinson Graves and the Rhetoric of Demogogy: Primitivism and Democracy in Old Landmarkism" (doctorial disertation, Vanderbilt University, 1990); O. L. Hailey, J. R. Graves, Life, Times and Teachings (Nashvile: n. p., 1929); Timothy George and David S. Dockery, Baptist Theologians (Nashvile: Broadman Pres, 1990). 8 Tennese Baptist, 21 February 1885; 19 September 1885. 54 containment meant purifying both southern and American culture from the scourge of Catholicism. 9 This was acomplished by reforming Baptist doctrine and remaining true to the ?old landmarks? of the faith. 10 As the Southern Baptist Convention tried to rebuild its institutions, Landmark Baptists debated the validity of mision programs, garnered strong support in Tennese, Arkansas, Alabama, Kentucky, and Georgia, and forced mainliners to beter formulate their positions on outreach. 11 However, the majority of Baptists strongly supported foreign misions. Leaders portrayed Roman Catholicism as dynamic and ever-changing, not to be conquered merely by saving a few souls in Rome. In 1877, E.T. Winkler, Chairman of the Commite on Italian Misions, reminded atendees at the annual Southern Baptist Convention that ?The existence of the papacy [sic] is not dependent upon the duration of Rome. If the Pontifical city perished, the pope might, if he chose, establish a new Rome elsewhere, as was done five hundred years ago, when, for a nearly a century, Avignon, in the south of France, was the Papal seat.? 12 As evangelicals, Baptists believed they had a mandate to save souls; but the numerous warnings from mision leaders reveal an understanding that converting Catholics would be a dificult endeavor and containing them might offer a more realistic alternative. 9 Se, for example, James E. Tull, High-Church Baptists in the South: The Origin, Nature, and Influence of Landmarkism (Macon: Mercer University Pres, 2000). 10 Early leaders adopted the term "Landmark Baptist" from Kentucky Baptist minister J.M. Pendleton through the publication of James Madison Pendleton, An Old Landmark Re-set by J.M. Pendleton (Nashvile: South-Western Publishing House, 1859). 11 For the best analysis of a post-war, statewide theological debate, se chapters "War and Reunion, 1860-1874" and "Building a New South, 1875-1890" in Flynt, Alabama Baptists: Southern Baptists in the Heart of Dixie. 12 Edwin T. Winkler, Rome, Past, Present and Future: An Addres Delivered Before the Southern Baptist Convention, in New Orleans, on Saturday, May 12th, 1877 (Atlanta: J.P. Harrison, 1877), Pamphlet. 55 Southern Baptists? first mision in a predominantly Catholic country began in 1871, when Italy opened its doors to Protestant misions. 13 Two years earlier, the Foreign Mision Board had isued a report to the Southern Baptist Convention that stated: The desire has been expresed by some, that as Southern Baptists we might take some action looking to the establishment of misions in Europe. It is a mournful fact that the wide prevalence of anti-Christian doctrines and forms of worship, [sic] has rendered many portions of that continent as truly in need of Christian sympathy and misionary enterprise as any portion of the heathen world. Nor is it les true that with our views of the doctrines and ordinances of the gospel, we, as Baptists, are peculiarly qualified to enter and occupy this great field. But especialy is it important to note the wonderful openings for misionary labor which in that field are now presenting themselves? This subject has been brought before the Board, and has been referred to a judicious commite. But the want of funds has thus far prevented any definite action. 14 Both due to lack of funding and interest, the Italian misions program initialy faltered, but after two years the Foreign Mision Board established a permanent location where it could conduct mision activity. The first permanent Southern Baptist misionary in Italy was George Boardman Taylor, who served in that capacity from 1873-1907. Taylor served as a treasurer and superintendent of Italian Misions, al the while providing direction, distributing monies, building churches, and training misionaries. Other distinguished figures were John H. Eager and D. F. Whitinghil, both of whom were prominent leaders notable for their regular contribution to foreign mision 13 On the origins of the foreign misions program to Italy, se J. D. Hughey, "Europe and the Middle East" in "Advance: A History of Southern Baptist Foreign Misions," ed. Baker James Cauthen (Nashvile: Broadman Pres, 1970); Birdwhistel, "Southern Baptist Perceptions of and Responses to Roman Catholicism, 1917-1972." 14 Southern Baptist Convention, Annual, 1869, 55. 56 publications. Al three reported to Southern Baptists the procedings of the Vatican and the dificulties of mision work in Catholic Italy. In 1872, Southern Baptists purchased property in Rome for the purpose of building a church. Although there was enthusiasm for the mision work, obtaining funding was a diferent story. Ultimately, the Foreign Misions Board needed to raise $31,838 to complete the building project, which took until 1878 to complete. 15 This was a monumental chalenge that helped the Italian misions leaders understand how crucial funding was to the succes of the program. Historian J.D. Hughey notes that during the building campaign, the FMB stimulated zeal for financial contributions. Baptist leaders described how inappropriately misionaries administered baptisms because many times washtubs were the only baptismals available and the candidates for baptism wore white see-through robes. 16 These acounts appealed to the emotions of Southern Baptists who upon reading about the unsuitable conditions laced with sexual imagery might contribute to the program. Ultimately, sensational acounts of innocent women, lascivious priests, heroic and/or martyred misionaries, and papal conspiracies filed the pages of the Foreign Misions Journal and every state denominational newspaper. Not al correspondence was so extreme. Personal leters often found their way into the public spotlight. In 1894, Taylor wrote a leter to Dr. E.C. Dargan, profesor at the Southern Baptist Seminary, about the mision field. Evidently Taylor had traveled back to the United States to report on the status of the work and broker support for the cause. Upon hearing of Taylor?s need, Dargan sent him a ?request for misionary 15 Hughey, "Europe and the Middle East," in Advance: A History of Southern Baptist Foreign Misions, 189. 16 Ibid. 57 news.? 17 The correspondence provided Taylor another opportunity to garner support. He described a recent dedication of a Baptist chapel at Miglionico atended by both Taylor and John Eager. The correspondence documented the succes of the dedication: The streets were full of people who eyed us curiously but without apparent hostility; in fact, many men took off their hats. The chapel was crowded with men, women and children, man standing during the entire service. The order was perfect, and the people listened with stil, solemn atention during the dedicatory prayer which I offered, and to the addres of perhaps twenty minutes each of brethren Eager, Piscinni, and myself. At night and for the wek following, the metings continued with undiminished interest. 18 By the 1890s, mision leaders understood the importance of sending back both harrowing acounts of Catholic menace and positive mesages of Baptist succes. Taylor finished the leter with a request of Dargan, asking if ?Perhaps you would kindly let the Western Recorder have the facts of the leter, as it is important to difuse misionary inteligence and yet leters do take time and, at least from me, labor too.? In 1894, Taylor was sixty-two years old and, acording to personal leters, feling the efects of aging. At the same time, his counterpart John Eager was asuming a more pronounced role in Italian misions. That year, Eager wrote the polemical book Romanism in its Home, which was heavily promoted in a variety of Southern Baptist literature. In fact, one of the most recognizable Baptist statesmen of the period, John A. Broadus, felt so strongly about the book that he wrote the introduction. Acording to Broadus, Eager focused on ?the real nature and tendencies of the Roman Catholic system,? and presented his ?careful examination? admirably free from al mere 17 George Taylor Leter, 1.4 in Correspondence, 1882-1895, T-Z, Edwin Dargan Papers AR 795-203, SBHLA. 18 Ibid. 58 sensation and from al exaggeration.? 19 Chapter titles like ?A Religion of Fear,? ?Baptized Paganism,? ?Women and Priestcraft,? and ?Romanism and Superstition? might have led outsiders to question claims of sensation-free journalism, but Baptists embraced his book as an authoritative source on the dangers of Catholicism. 20 Eager became a highly sought after writer and public speaker, extolling the importance of the Italian mision program. Rome was, as he described it, the tap root of Catholicism for those ?who do not want the trouble of thinking for themselves, but would rather be wiling to acept a religion of traditions, of legalism, and of outward forms.? 21 While in Louisvile, Kentucky, speaking at the Southern Baptist Seminary (the premier SBC institution), Eager explained the impetus for writing his book. He purported that ?the evils recounted in the book?s pages serve to put us on our guard against the ensnaring errors of Romanism, to stir our hearts with genuine practical sympathy for the many, both among priests and laity, who are so sadly deceived, and for the few who are so bravely seking to undeceive them.? 22 Although Eager may have had spiritual reasons for writing the book, the timing of its release helps to explain its popularity. Five years earlier, Henry Bowers founded the American Protection Asociation (APA) in Clinton, Iowa. 23 Bowers had been a Mason 19 Eager, introduction to Romanism in its Home. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 ?Scrapbook-Undated Newspaper Clippings,? Lansing Burrows Papers, GBHLA. 23 Se, for example, Kinzer, An Episode in Anti-Catholicism: the American Protective Asociation; ibid.; Bennet, The Party of Fear : From Nativist Movements to the New Right in American History; Lipset and Raab, The Politics of Unreason; Right-Wing Extremism in America, 1790-1970; Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925. 59 and drew upon both fraternal ritual and historic antipathy toward Catholics. By the 1890s, the APA was a national organization whose representatives (many ex-priests) traveled around the U.S. giving speeches, holding anti-Catholic ralies, and recruiting new members. The APA also provided informational tracts to churches and civic organizations. During the height of its popularity from 1893 to 1894, the APA published over seventy newspapers. 24 Because they aligned with the Republican Party in the North, they had litle organizational support in the South, but it is fair to say that the type of literature being produced by both the American Misionary Board and the Southern Baptist Convention drew heavily from secular critiques of the Catholic Church. In 1901, Dexter Whitinghil arrived in Italy to serve as colleague to G. B. Taylor. Whitinghil had been a friend of the family and eventualy married Dr. Taylor?s daughter. Although Whitinghil spent his first few years in Italy building a seminary and teaching, he would eventualy replace Taylor as treasurer and superintendent of Italian misions. During the early years of his tenure, Whitinghil learned from the succeses of both Taylor and John Eager. In his Ph. D. disertation entitled ?Southern Baptist Perceptions of and Responses to Roman Catholicism, 1917-1972,? Ira Birdwhistel concluded that ?Whitinghil?s writings, confined to articles for misionary periodicals and state Baptist papers, generaly reflected a les polemical view of Catholicism than that of Eager.? 25 However, upon further investigation, Whitinghil not only wrote 24 Humphrey Desmond, "The American Protective Asociation," in The Catholic Encyclopedia, ed. Kevin Knight (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907), 26 January 2009 . 25 Birdwhistel, "Southern Baptist Perceptions of and Responses to Roman Catholicism, 1917-1972," 3. 60 frequent anti-Catholic articles, his publications appear to be no les sensational. In an undated pamphlet writen before 1907 titled ?The Curse of Romanism in Italy,? he blasted the ?papal system? in every paragraph. 26 Throughout the first topic, ?An Ugly Brood of Evil,? Whitinghil atacked Catholic priests for a lack of ?moral character;? in ?Romanism and Popular Education,? he acused the Roman Church of encouraging superstition and controlling public education; in ?A Religion Without Morality,? he argued that in America, Catholics were seven times more likely to commit a crime than other Americans; and in ?Persecution,? he contended that ?Romanism has the same spirit now as in the days of the Inquisition. The conditions have greatly changed, but forms of persecution, though les violent, are often succesful.? This tract had great narrative force, hiting al of the right rhetorical notes and certainly places Whitinghil in the same category as others who used anti-Catholic language to promote misions. Denominational newspapers like the Alabama Baptist promoted mision topics and made suggestions to pastors on how to implement them. For instance, mision leaders suggested reading reports from misionaries as part of the Sunday worship service. These leters coincided with other church activities to impose the maximum efect. In 1900, Baptists designated the month of April to emphasize Italian misions. Article titles included ?Dificulties in Mission Work,? which ilustrated obstacles Baptists encountered in a country where ?the Vatican is secretly formenting [sic] distrust of the State;? ?Progres in Mision,? a testimony of the thirty-two native Baptist preachers and more than seven hundred Church members in Italy; ?Muscular Christianity in Rome,? a ?report on joint Protestant mision eforts like those from the Young Men?s Christian 26 ?The Curse of Romanism in Italy,? Pamphlet 1329, Pamphlet Collection, SBHLA. 61 Asociation;? and ?Contesting Italy with the Catholics,? a short historical piece on past atempts to evangelize Italy since the time of the apostles. 27 The combination of anecdotes, statistics, and historical narrative offered local pastors plenty of source material for their Sunday sermons. In addition, the newspaper provided a series of supplements caled ?Study Topics.? These were suggested topics to discuss during Sunday School included ?Paul?s visit to Rome,? ?Rome in the time of Nero,? ?Rome in the days of Constantine,? ?Rome under the Pope,? and ?The hope of Italy? the pure gospel of Christ.? 28 Publicly, the voices of the Italian mision program al echoed the same mesage? succes comes through a combination of financial support at home and evangelization abroad. But privately, some misionaries encountered dificulties that did not make the newspapers. North Carolina Baptist Charles James Fox served in Italy for just three years before retiring. His early leters in 1901 reflect the excitement and optimism of a man at the beginning stages of a journey. Acompanied by his wife, a woman who ?speaks Italian equaly as wel as I do,? Fox beamed about how he had ?learned things about his field that I never dreamed of, like, [sic] how badly Italy does need the gospel.? 29 He remarked how he often worked in conjunction with D.G. Whitinghil? traveling, teaching, and preaching. Fox appeared to have a strong support system that prevented him from lonelines and despair. But by December 1903, he was badly discouraged by his lack of succes, remarking that ?Preaching to Italians sems like throwing so much water on a duck?s back. If they are to be reached, it is to be not so 27 Alabama Baptist, 12 April 2000. 28 Ibid. 29 PC148, Charles James Fox Papers. 62 much through sermons, as through schools and hospitals.? He was very critical of the Italian misions programs, remarking that the policy of the Board was to ?preach, preach, preach, and after thirty years of such methods, we American Baptists have precious litle to show as results.? Giving sermons, supporting an Italian Baptist seminary, and authoring tracts/publications were part and parcel for the Board?s mision strategy. Fox became convinced that ?other methods should be adopted? because the Catholic Church was simply too ingrained in Italian culture and Baptists were wasting time trying to create a Protestant institution in Italy. Fox also had grown to love the Italian people and began to se them les as a symbol of Catholicism and more as simply good people. During his last weks, he preached a sermon on ?Personal Work? that he remarked was ?requested for publication.? Instead of being proud of his work, Fox cursorily promised to send a copy of it back to North Carolina and mentioned nothing else of the notoriety. Perhaps he no longer had the stomach for it. For whatever reason, Fox retired in 1904 with the intention of going to medical school upon returning to the United States. Increasingly, misionaries like Fox reflected new ideas about serving in the field. These ideas were influenced by a reform mentality distinctive to the Progresive Era. 30 Ultimately, Fox?s goal was to go back to misionary service after becoming a physician. For Fox, misions 30 For Southern Baptists and social Christianity, se Alen, A Century to Celebrate: History of Woman's Misionary Union; Eighmy and Hil, Churches in Cultural Captivity: A History of the Social Atitudes of Southern Baptists; Flynt, Alabama Baptists: Southern Baptists in the Heart of Dixie; Harper, The Quality of Mercy: Southern Baptists and Social Christianity, 1890-1920; Harvey, Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865-1925; Spain, At Ease in Zion: Social History of Southern Baptists, 1865-1900. 63 had profoundly shaped him into a more acepting, socialy-conscious Baptist who, after serving in Italy, sounded les anti-Catholic than in 1901. 31 As Wayne Flynt explains: Although southern evangelicals did not succumb to belief that Christianity was esentialy about transforming society (nor, in fact, did most northern advocates of the social gospel believe that concept either), they did sek to apply Christian ethics to society?s problems in a way unprecedented either before or after the two decades following 1900. 32 Not al Baptists acepted the growing emphasis on social Christianity. In the early twentieth-century, the Landmark movement held sway over pockets of Baptists in the Southeast, and quarreled with mainline Southern Baptists over centralization and modernity. They objected to social Christianity, preferring instead to emphasize doctrinal purity, and vehemently opposed foreign misions. Although he was not a Landmarker, Populist leader and Georgia Baptist Tom Watson weighed in on foreign misions. Watson owned his own publishing company, and from his magazine, Watson?s Jefersonian Magazine and in other special publications, he atacked Foreign Mision Board leaders for providing clothes, books, and medical care, claiming that they ?give to the heathen what you deny to your own.? 33 He indicted general secretary R. J. Wilingham and asociates as mismanagers of the denomination?s financial resources, labeling them as ?liberaly-compensated Brethren.? 34 At the same time, Watson was also among the most anti-Catholic figures in American 31 For a scholarly look at how misionaries both shaped and were shaped by foreign cultures, se Wayne Flynt and Gerald W. Berkley, Taking Christianity to China: Alabama Misionaries in the Middle Kingdom, 1850-1950 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Pres, 1997). 32 Flynt, Alabama Baptists: Southern Baptists in the Heart of Dixie, 251-52. 33 Thomas E. Watson, Foreign Misions Exposed, 2d ed. (Atlanta: Pres of the Jefersonians, 1910), 4. 34 Jefersonian Magazine, February 1909, 13. 64 history. He published countles diatribes on the Pope, the Catholic Church, and the clergy. Watson believed strongly in combating Catholicism abroad but was more interested in preventing it from gaining momentum in the South. Watson?s constant critiques damaged the Foreign Mision Board. Edgar Folk, editor of the Baptist and Reflector in Nashvile, wrote to the Board, ?I spoke to Dr. C. W. Pruit about the mater at Louisvile. He said he thought it would be wel for me to reply, as the article by Mr. Watson is doing harm in Georgia, where his magazine principaly circulates.? 35 Southern Baptist leaders responded by launching an advertising campaign in support of Foreign Misions. They looked for ideas on how to make themselves and their work more visible. One pastor suggested emulating the Presbyterians, who included a ?Men and Misions? theme in every paper. 36 The Southern Baptist Convention held conferences to combat Watson, such as the 1910 ?Misions Under Fire? seminar in Atlanta. Mostly, speakers received their information from tracts provided by the Foreign Misions Board. Many were not as eloquently versed as Watson and therefore required the supportive literature. During the annual meting of the Georgia Asociation, Watson took the railroad into Camak, Georgia, to give a speech outside the convention meting. 37 He had atended the asociation metings a year earlier, but by this time, he had worn out his welcome in most Baptist circles. In his speech, he referred to R. J. Wilingham and other board members and how they had ?consumed in Richmond more than thirty thousand dollars.? But by this time, there were hecklers in the crowd, supported by the 35 Edgar E. Folk to W. H. Smith, 27 May 1909, International Mision Board Executive Ofice Records AR 551-3, SBHLA. 36 Wiliam T. Elis to R. J. Wilingham, 8 February 1910. 37 D. W. Key to R. J. Wilingham, 8 September 1911. 65 Foreign Misions Board. One of the chalengers to Watson was D.W. Key. Key interrupted the speech and asked the crowd to consider the historic presence of Georgia Baptists, claiming that Watson had ties to Dr. Jese Mercer, a champion of misions and founder of Mercer College. Watson had atended Mercer College in his youth, and from Key?s acount, the Populist leader appeared to have been taken aback by the argument. Key isued tracts to the crowd which were ?gobbled up? before I had time to distribute it around? It was right in the centre [sic] of Watson?s Kingdom, too, where the people had read his atack on me?? Eventualy, Tom Watson moved on to other isues, atacking Jews, Blacks, Socialists, anarchists, and the United States Postal Service. Southern Baptists weathered his criticisms and remained commited to foreign misions. Mision Work on the Home Front By the 1880s and 90s, Southern Baptists agreed that there was a growing Catholic menace threatening the South. However, they were not in acord as how best to counter the surge. Although foreign misions had its detractors, the biggest debate was over how best to serve their homeland. Many Baptists could unify around providing money to the Foreign Mision Board but were sharply divided over whether to support state mision agencies, a Home Board, or a combination of both. In 1881, the Southern Baptist Convention debated de-funding the Home Mision Board. After a series of discussions, the Executive Board chose instead to relocate it from Marion, Alabama, to Atlanta, Georgia. This administrative move created a renewed focus on Home Misions and also 66 proved to be the catalyst for the creation of the Sunday School Board, the largest and most widespread efort to secure a distinctly sectional religious identity. 38 If Baptists were going to expand their denominational influence over the South, they would need money. The Civil War had left Southern Baptists in a precarious financial situation; limited funds meant that Home and Foreign Misions increasingly competed for support. In Kentucky, Lexington pastor and Recording Secretary of the Southern Baptist Convention Lansing Burrows published ?A Reproach, and some plain words about it? in the state?s Baptist newspaper, the Western Recorder. During 1882, Kentucky sent $952.46 to the Home Mision Board. Burroughs saw this as cause for concern. Could any Kentucky pastor look at those figures without humiliation? Had they forgotten the foundations of Home Misions? Was that not a part of their duty and obligation? Burrows explained that in New Orleans, where $526 of the year?s home mision budget had been alocated, there were but few Baptists. 39 Problem was, they preferred Baptism by sprinkling rather than full imersion, celebrated Carnival and other Catholic holidays, and established confesionals in their churches. ?New Orleans today,? argued Burrows: ? demands an expenditure of misionary activity far in exces of Rome. The same influence in Rome are in New Orleans, but with a deadlier power, as poison is more deadly when wrapped in beautiful forms and fragrance. Romanism in America is more subtle than it is in Rome. 40 38 For a brief description of the home misions controversy, se Rutledge and Tanner, Mision to America: A Century and a Quarter of Southern Baptist Home Misions: 37; Barnes, The Southern Baptist Convention, 1845-1953: 77-78. 39 ?Lansing Burrows-Scrapbook,? Lansing Burrows Papers. 40 Ibid. 67 For Burrows, the mesage was crystal clear. Send your money overseas and you may never see a penny of it benefit the South; but in Home Misions, the results were both tangible and personal. Burrows became such a succesful advocate of Home Misions that he was often asked to speak at churches, conventions, and fundraisers. Dr. W. H. McIntosh, former President of the Home Mision Board and a pastor in Alabama at the time of one such fundraiser, observed that his ?eloquent appeal was listened to with breathles interest, the silence being broken by repeated exclamations of approval. Contributions were caled for, payable before January next, and as Brother Burrows asked the query ?Where wil the first contribution come from,? quickly W.H. Strickland of South Carolina responded, ?The Greenvile church wil give $100 in thirty days.? Responses then were made in rapid succesion?and under the skilful engineering of Bro. Burrows by 11 o?clock the amount asked, $5000, was raised. 41 Garnering support for home misions meant identifying areas of need. In 1885, Vice President of the Home Mision Board (HMB) for Georgia, Dr. J. G. Gibson, interviewed Corresponding Secretary Isac Tichenor about the work. The interview was printed in the HMB?s official publication, The Home Field. The purposes of the full page article appeared to be both educational and promotional. There were sections on misions programs catering to Indians, Negroes, the Frontier (Texas and Arkansas), Florida, Cuba, and Louisiana. Tichenor devoted extra emphasis on both Cuba and Louisiana. In Cuba, he predicted great succes through the purchase of a theatre to be used as a house of worship. 42 He remarked, ?It is the wisest thing the Board has done for Cuba. It gives the people of Havana confidence in the permanency and stability of our work.? When asked how he would pay for it, Tichenor replied he didn?t anticipate trouble raising the money, but ??we need the liberal help of al, and that the money to be 41 ?Lansing Burrows,? Lansing Burrows Papers. 42 Our Home Field, October 1889. 68 raised in such manner as not to interfere with contributions for the general fund.? Not wanting to slight the Southland, he added, By the way, Louisiana is one of our most needy fields, and one of the most promising. About half the State [sic] is without a white Baptist preacher. Last year our Misionaries baptized nearly six hundred in the State and the work is advancing rapidly. 43 Tichenor recognized that promoting the Board was an important aspect of being a misions advocate. His closing advice to ministers was to announce ?facts and figures? from Our Home Field and also once a year, preach a sermon and isue a special offertory collection for home misions. Despite increasingly sophisticated methods, fundraising was not always succesful. In Georgia, some churches preferred to take care of their own and placed the needs of misions as secondary. For instance, in 1886, out of nearly 1400 churches belonging to the Georgia Baptist Convention, only 560 contributed to foreign misions, 450 to home misions, and 440 to statewide misions. 44 Rural churches were especialy prone to neglect misions. As Southern Baptists moved closer to the milennium, the gulf betwen country and city churches widened, and Baptist leaders sought ways to unite the denomination. Immediately following the Civil War, the prospect of becoming the largest Protestant denomination was a fantasy akin to landing on the moon; but by the beginning of the 20 th century, Southern Baptists had undergone a significant transformation. They had established extensive mision programs, created their own publishing arm, and would soon overtake Methodists in membership. No longer were Southern Baptists merely a 43 Ibid. 44 Lester, A History of the Georgia Baptist Convention, 1822-1972, 237-38. 69 loose conglomerate of rural hayseds; they became a powerful force shaping southern culture. They debated the idea of what makes a good society and applied their faith to isues they saw as social problems. As society changed, Baptists hardened their resolve to preserve their southern values. Mision programs tackled changes such as the rising tide of imigration in southern cities. Two major isues in the late 1800s transformed Baptist home misions? economic development and agricultural depresion. In order to fund misions, seminaries, asociations, and other organizations, Southern Baptists recognized that as the South prospered or faltered, so did the society. Starting in the 1880s, many religions leaders supported the ideals of southern industrialization, an economic viewpoint espoused by southern boosters who promised prosperity, progres, and a new spirit of cooperation with the North. 45 Leaders like Richard Edmonds and D. A. Tompkins of the North Carolina-based Manufacturers? Record encouraged northern capitalists to invest in southern economic development? promising an abundance of resources ready to tap. 46 Henry Waterson of the Louisvile 45 For a history of the New South Creed, se C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Pres, 1951); se also Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction (New York: Oxford University Pres, 1992); Dwight B. Bilings, Planters and the Making of a "New South": Class, Politics, and Development in North Carolina, 1865-1900 (Chapel Hil: University of North Carolina Pres, 1979); David L. Carlton, Mil and Town in South Carolina, 1880-1920 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Pres, 1982); Don Harrison Doyle, New Men, New Cities, New South: Atlanta, Nashvile, Charleston, Mobile, 1860-1910, The Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern studies (Chapel Hil: University of North Carolina Pres, 1990); Paul D. Escott, Many Excelent People: Power and Privilege in North Carolina, 1850-1900, The Fred W. Morrison series in Southern studies (Chapel Hil: University of North Carolina Pres, 1985); Jonathan M. Wiener, Social Origins of the New South: Alabama, 1860-1885 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Pres, 1978). 46 Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913, 147. 70 Courier-Journal urged the South to forget the past and embrace the opportunities of a New South. 47 One of the problems southerners faced was that economic development and northern capital threatened to change southern cultural distinctivenes. New industry meant an increased demand for labor, but questions remained about how best to supply the work force. Increases in prosperity offered the South a beter life but also had the potential to create a more secular society. The modernization of southern cities offered more choices, but also brought the threat of moral depravity. To add insult to injury, southerners were in the midst of an identity crisis brought on by the end of slavery and their so caled ?way of life.? Whites looked to the past to create a new identity, one steped in mythmaking and legend. But within this new society materialism, manual labor, and other modern values semed to have replaced decency, community, and gentility. In order to hold on to the verities that white southerners cherished, they pledged their alegiance to ?the Lost Cause,? an idyllic reference to the good old days when life was simple and everything had a place. 48 Southern Baptists initialy looked at industrialization with suspicion. They desperately needed their members to succed financialy and tithe acordingly, but many 47 Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction, 20-21. 48 For an explanation of how white Southerners created the myth of the Lost Cause, se David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge: Belknap Pres of Harvard University Pres, 2001); James C. Cobb, Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Pres, 2005); David R. Goldfield, Stil Fighting the Civil War: The American South and Southern History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Pres, 2002); Rollin G. Osterweis, The Myth of the Lost Cause, 1865-1900 (Hamden: Archon Books, 1973); Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920. 71 pastors recognized that progres came with a price. Salvation came, not from God, Henry Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, semed to argue, but from the New South Creed. 49 The term originates from a speech that Grady delivered in 1886 to a group of northern philanthropists. He offered investors limitles financial gains brought about by promises to deliver a cheap, compliant labor force, diversification of agriculture, improvements in transportation, infrastructure, and quality of life, sectional reconciliation, and racial harmony. This was an agreement that promised economic prosperity and, at the same time, preserved the ideals of the Old South, especialy its racial, economic, and social hierarchy. White Southerners embraced the potential for prosperity that industrialization promised. Led by Southern Baptists and other conservative groups, they advocated for the romance of the Lost Cause and enforced a strict moral code that shunned progresive theology, radical labor unions, demon rum, feminism, racial equality, and imigration. The New South Creed alowed Baptists to reconstruct their institutions and, at the same time, construct a distinctively southern religious orthodoxy. 50 Historian James Cobb argues that, southerners constructed an identity that was ?simultaneously both ?one?s self and not another?.? 51 Baptists typified a group that defined themselves in terms of contrasts. They became crusaders for the cause, promoting industry by stresing southern values such as thrift, hard-work, sobriety, and humility, while at the same time 49 For a detailed explanation of the New South Creed, se Paul M. Gaston, The New South Cred: A Study in Southern Mythmaking, (New York: Knopf, 1970). 50 Charles Reagan Wilson argues that Southerners reconstruct their society by using symbols of the Lost Cause in Wilson, Baptized in Blood: the Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920. 51 Cobb, Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity, 3. 72 criticizing Republicans and northerners as corrupt, imoral, liberal, foreign, and radical. 52 It was a tacit agreement that meant Baptists believed their role was to identify society?s needs, convert sinners, and purify the South. As long as southern social relations remained proper, southern religious culture could be synchronized like a locomotive on the Louisvile and Nashvile railroad. One of the cornerstones of southern industry was the recruitment of a new labor force. In the Piedmont area of the Carolinas, Georgia, and Alabama, textile industrialists recruited a native, poor-white workforce and created an environment where the entire family worked as a single unit. 53 This system had several advantages. First, it utilized a segment of the southern population to which no one objected. Second, because of the workers? conservative values, they tended to eschew organized labor and instead preferred dealing with work in more direct, personal terms. And finaly, most workers either were evangelicals or had been exposed to evangelical sects, making them more maleable to paternalistic religious practices and the gospel of southern industry. 54 As poor whites trickled out of Appalachia for secure textile jobs in the Piedmont, the timber industry created work camps that atracted blacks, poor whites, and imigrants. In Birmingham, Alabama, the coal and iron industry tapped into foreigners 52 Flynt, Alabama Baptists: Southern Baptists in the Heart of Dixie: 191-92. 53 For an analysis of the southern textile industry and the workers? world, se Bilings, Planters and the Making of a ?New South:? Class, Politics, and Development in North Carolina, 1865-1900; Wayne Flynt, Poor but Proud: Alabama?s Poor Whites (Tuscaloosa: Univesity of Alabama Pres, 1989); Jacquely Dowd hal et al., Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mil World, The Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies (Chapel Hil: University of North Carolina Pres, 1987). 54 Liston Pope argues that religion functioned as a control mechanism that alowed textile mil owners to dictate the lives of their workers in Liston Pope, Milhands & Preachers, A Study of Gastonia, Yale Studies in Religious Education. (New Haven: Yale University Pres, 1942). 73 immigrating into Alabama possesing both the trade skils and, more importantly, the wil to work in this dangerous environment. Unlike the native workers in textile mils, many of the foreigners recruited into states like Alabama, Georgia, Tennese, and North Carolina were not Protestant. Italians and eastern European imigrants tended to be Roman Catholic and brought with them their customs and religious practices. Southern Baptists viewed the first wave of imigrants with both skepticism and resolve. Since Baptists shaped their identity by contrasting imagery, Catholics served as the perfect example of the unconverted. They were poor, il-educated, idolaters who consumed alcohol, were controlled by a foreign Pope, and their dark complexions added an element of racial inferiority. By the 1880s, there was an increase in anti-Catholic stories printed in the state newspapers. Immigration was a new chalenge for misions but one Baptists believed they could manage, much as they had combated northern ideas and institutions. In fact, Home Mision Board leader Isac Tichenor was heavily involved in the recruitment of imigrants. 55 Tichenor?himself a self educated metalurgical engineer who had surveyed the Bibb and Shelby country coal fields?wrote a promotional manual entitled Alabama As It Is: The Immigrants and Capitalists Guide Book to Alabama. 56 The book, published in 1888, reflects the sentiments of a New South booster by offering information on the favorable climate, busines atmosphere, available education, and transportation networks. Tichenor became one of the most influential figures in shaping 55 For a detailed acount of Issac Tichenor and his role in driving Southern Baptist prosperity in a New South economic climate, se Michael E. Wiliams, Isaac Taylor Tichenor: The Creation of the Baptist New South, Religion and American Culture (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Pres, 2005). 56 B. F. Riley, Alabama as It Is or, The Immigrant's and Capitalist's Guide Book to Alabama, 2d ed. (Atlanta: Constitution Publishing Company, 1888); Flynt, Alabama Baptists: Southern Baptists in the Heart of Dixie, 202. 74 Southern Baptist identity by promoting the value of southern industry to religious bodies and also recognizing that Baptists should play an important role in adapting their institutions to shape a New South. 57 In the early days of the New South movement, some Baptists believed that southern capitalists could be selective about the type of imigrants they recruited, choosing Protestant workers from Northern Europe over Catholics from Italy. The Alabama Baptist ran an article that commented favorably on a movement in which Welsh mining organizations were offered a $35 incentive for each worker who migrated to America. The migration would relieve an overcrowded labor market in Europe, provide a new specialized labor force to Alabama, and maintain southern Protestant religious hegemony. Caling upon the state?s industrial leaders, the editors wrote, We cal atention of the mine owners of Alabama to this movement, which through correspondence with Liverpool, could be turned in this direction. These experienced and hardy Welshmen are familiar with work upon the kind of coal which underlies our whole state. They would contribute an important element to our laboring population. Among them are Baptists and Methodists who would serve as a nucleus for churches in the mining districts. A field of good Alabama coal worked by Welsh miners would be an excelent investment and the site of a thriving community. 58 This preference for ?Anglo-Saxon? workers went hand in hand with Southern Baptists? obsesion with maintaining their distinctive character. It also indicates that southerners endorsed Social Darwinism to help bolster their identity. An editorial writen by John Christian for distribution in Home Misions publications lauded the achievements of Anglo-Saxons in the United States, but warned that if the race were to continue its pre-ordained rule in America, it needed to ?continue wel grounded in the 57 Flynt, Alabama Baptists: Southern Baptists in the Heart of Dixie, 203. 58 Alabama Baptist, February 20, 1879. 75 truth [Christianity].? 59 Ironicaly, the article even quoted Charles Darwin, who said, ?There is apparently much truth in the belief that the wonderful progres of the United States, as wel as the character of the people, are the result of natural selection.? 60 White southerners prided themselves on being of the purest Anglo-Saxon stock and were interested in preserving the racial makeup of the South. Even when they were not able to selectively recruit imigrants, New South busines owners often were concerned about the spiritual welfare of their employees. Many businesmen believed that Christian workers were more obedient, reliable, les apt to join unions and strike, and shared a Protestant work ethic. On the other hand, Catholic imigrants during the same period were often told to go elsewhere for work. One Alabama industrialist predicted that ?A large number of the population of Ireland wil certainly leave their native land during the coming spring and summer months,? but they need not look in Alabama. Instead, Irish Catholics should look to the ?wide expanse of productive land in the West stil awaiting cultivation.? 61 In industrial Birmingham, where imigration had occurred in more significant numbers than in southern states with a more rural population, such as North Carolina, Baptists were les certain about the benefits of foreigners compared to the costs. ?They [Alabamians] have sen a lot of beer-guzzling, Sabbath-breaking Germans,? the Alabama Baptist noted, ?or some other tribe, in some places, and their hearts have sickened at the thought of the demoralizing efects of such a clas [of imigrants] upon our Southern 59 ?What is Coming,? Mision Journal-1895, Box 21.7, Una Roberts Lawrence Collection. 60 ?Anglo-Saxon Race.? 61 Alabama Baptist, April 22, 1880. 76 society.? 62 Baptists could ?pray [for] God to forbid their coming? but ultimately, they had litle choice but to acept the fact ?that imigration is coming.? ?Brethren and sisters,? the Alabama Baptist editors wrote, we live in an important age, the work done by us in the South during the next ten years wil largely shape the condition of society, church and State, for the next century, yea, possibly for ages to come. Shal we fail? We cannot afford to falter (sic). He who said to Israel, ?Go forward,? wil open paths for us through al seas and level every mountain. 63 In 1888, a group of businesmen and legislative officials coordinated an imigration meting in Hot Springs, NC. The purpose was to recruit a new labor force in the South, built partialy on imigrant workers. Many secular newspapers supported the meting, but, denominational leaders were outraged over the possibility of Roman Catholics migrating to the South. The Alabama Baptist wrote: With eagle eye the Roman Catholics have watched every quarter of the world, and as the tide of development turned to a certain section, they were quick to plant their forces, to take charge of the spiritual afairs of the town or city. Now they se the south is coming to the front as it has never come, and they propose holding an imigration meting at Hot Springs, NC?whose aim it is to plant colonies of their people in every Southern state?. We think if our public men and journals would study something of the perils to our free institutions by the imigration of Roman Catholic subjects they would understand more about the situation, and would give wiser care in aiding these imigrants. 64 Although the demand for imigrants as laborers at the time was high and the push was coming from busines and government leaders, there were some Baptists who believed this to be the conspiratorial work of the Pope and his priests. North Carolina Baptist leaders acused a Roman Catholic Bishop in Virginia of forming imigration 62 ?Immigration, and What the Church Has to Do With It,? Alabama Baptist, 17 February 1887. 63 Ibid. 64 Alabama Baptist, 5 April 1888. 77 societies and ?building meting houses and organizing churches within his jurisdiction? for the purpose of atracting imigrants. 65 Other Baptists feared that the Pope, whom they believed was seizing upon opportunities granted through imigration, was exerting his influence in order to take over government and busines. Eldred B. Teague, a popular Alabama Baptist minister, warned denominational members about the coming problems asociated with the Hot Springs movement, where industrialist met in the resort town of Hot Springs, North Carolina and discussed strategies to atract imigrant labor into the South. Teague was concerned that Catholic priests had conned these industrialists into trusting imigrants and then ??seized the opportunity and bounced astride the governors and other men interested in this work, and formed everything into a huge imigration society.? 66 Teague exhorted Baptists to be wary and ?watch every interest, or Catholic Rome wil soon place its foot upon our necks.? 67 Despite the promises of New South boosters, not al Southerners benefited from the changes brought by industrialization. By the 1890s, industrial laborers also encountered the realities of a laissez-faire economy. C. Vann Woodward found that in North Carolina, textile mil workers? wages did not keep pace with profits. This was partialy due to the extent that women and children were used as a cheaper, more compliant source of labor. 68 Working conditions in the mils were monotonous and long, cities suffered from public health isues and poor sanitation, and the work could be dangerous. When workers complained about the working conditions or sub-standard pay, 65 Biblical Recorder, 25 August 1880. 66 Alabama Baptist, 23 May 1888. 67 Ibid. 68 Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913, 224-26. 78 their requests were ignored or denied. Some atempted to organize, and in a few cases, strikes ensued. Instead of negotiating with laborers, industrialists hired strike-breakers to intimidate workers, brought in black workers to be used as scabs, and recruited imigrants to take factory jobs. Both Blacks and imigrants were also les likely to stir up trouble and negotiate for beter wages. As a consequence, the white working-class began to question the ideals of a New South creed. If this was prosperity, why were they working harder for les money? What happened to their autonomy? How could their bosses give their jobs away to blacks and foreigners, two groups that were at the bottom of the southern social hierarchy? 69 Southern labor searched for answers and found it in an unsuspecting place. Organizing Resistance During the boom years of the 1880s, farmers found it increasingly dificult to survive. Furnishing merchants alowed farmers to buy on credit, but in return, demanded that farmers plant cash crops to repay loans. 70 This system led to an overproduction of 69 For how White Southerners feared a loss of status in their society, se Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R, (New York: Knopf, 1955). 70 On the Southern Farmers' Aliance and Populist movement, se Lawrence Goodwin, Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in History (New York: Oxford University Pres, 1976); Sheldon Hackney, Populism to Progresivism in Alabama (Princeton: Princeton University Pres, 1969); Steven Hahn, The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850-1890 (New York: Oxford University Pres, 1983); Robert C. McMath, Populist Vanguard: A History of the Southern Farmers' Aliance (Chapel Hil: University of North Carolina Pres, 1975); Bruce Palmer, "Man over Money": The Southern Populist Critique of American Capitalism (Chapel Hil: University of North Carolina Pres, 1980); Elizabeth Sanders, Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877-1917, American Politics and Political Economy (Chicago: University of Chicago Pres, 1999); Barton C. Shaw, The Wool-Hat Boys: Georgia's Populist Party (Baton Rouge, LA: 79 cotton and drove prices into the ground. From the 1870s to 1900, white land ownership declined, crop prices declined, and debts increased. 71 Farmers looked for answers in their own communities and for national leadership to combat the power and corruption of big busines. They backed a graduated income tax, asked the federal government to free up soft money and supported the Greenback Party?s eforts to reform the monetary system, and endorsed government oversight of the transportation industry in hopes of obtaining uniform rates for pasenger and freight trafic. In 1880, James Weaver of Iowa ran for President of the United States as the representative of the Greenback Party and only received 3% of the national vote. 72 Such a dramatic defeat provided evidence to some farmers that industry was in control of not only the economy, but also the government. That same decade, many farmers joined the Southern Farmers? Aliance, a self- help organization aimed at educating its members through a combination of speechmaking leadership, distribution of printed media, and social networking. The organization utilized methods learned in their churches and communities. Acording to Robert McMath, ?[The lecturer] was to the aliance what the circuit rider was to Methodism.? 73 This was a political movement that disafected Baptists could relate to, primarily because people saw the isue in moral terms. The South needed to be purified of corporate corruption, greed, and the social problems industrialization created in its wake. In Alabama, state Aliance president and Baptist minister Samuel Adams Louisiana State University Pres, 1984); Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877- 1913; Woodward, Tom Watson, Agrarian Rebel. 71 Sanders, Roots of Reform: Farmers, Workers, and the American State, 1877-1917, 116-17. 72 Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913, 244. 73 McMath, Populist Vanguard: a History of the Southern Farmers' Aliance, 12. 80 denounced the national banks and proclaimed the Farmers? Aliance to mirror the tenets of Christianity. 74 Georgia Baptist firebrand Thomas Watson railed against imoral northern industrialists who profited ?by our toils and alowed the legislation of this land to drift into the infamies of the tarif and the banking laws, and the chartered exemptions of special enterprises from the burden of the government which protects them.? 75 Since Baptists already had institutions in place to restore distinctive southern religious culture, they actively shaped the Farmers? Aliance and Populist platform to include morality isues such as the consumption of alcohol. 76 Temperance and prohibition dominated Southern Baptist dialogue in the 1880s and 1890s. They viewed alcohol as an asault on their communities, partialy because they saw first hand the efect that abusing alcohol had on the breakdown of families. They also linked the use of alcohol with corruption, gambling, promiscuity, lynching, and Catholicism. Southern Baptists grew particularly hostile to imigrants who brought with them paterns of alcohol consumption that ran counter to Baptists? beliefs. ?Immigrant? increasingly became a code word to Baptists, meaning Catholic. In Georgia, the editors of the Christian Index informed its readers that although they did not completely agree with the ??cause of the American League [American Protective Asociation] to the full extent of its purposes?,? Americans ?were waking to a sense of their danger in alowing 74 Flynt, Alabama Baptists: Southern Baptists in the Heart of Dixie, 205. 75 Atlanta Constitution, 14 September 1888, in Woodward, Tom Watson, Agrarian Rebel: 134. 76 Joe Creech argues that the evangelicals that filed Populist member lists largely adhered to restorationist Christianity, a belief system that emphasizes a reform movement intent on restoring traditional Christian values in society; Joe Creech, Righteous Indignation: Religion and the Populist Revolution (Urbana: University of Illinois Pres, 2005). 81 the foreign Catholic element especialy to get control of the government.? 77 Acording to groups like the APA, Roman Catholicism threatened to undo the progres Americans had made on prohibition. Other southern states were swept up in the xenophobia of the 1890s as wel. In Alabama, the Alabama Baptist carried an editorial from John Christian suggesting that the answer to the swel of ?Romanism? in America was to freeze imigration for twenty years so that mision programs could evangelize heathens already in the United States. 78 The same year, he also wrote to the Mision Journal detailing the responsibility of the American Anglo-Saxon race to the United States. 79 Christian chalenged felow believers to ask, ?Shal not the necesity of self-preservation, as wel as the high motive of giving the gospel of Jesus Christ to every creature, inspire every Baptist to more earnest and substantial support of our home mision interests?? 80 In spite of the cals for limiting imigration, foreigners migrated to southern cities such as Birmingham, Memphis, Atlanta, Louisvile, and New Orleans. Stil, most southerners did not personaly encounter hordes of imigrants. Baptists were familiar with Catholicism based on what they read in the newspapers, the sermons their pastors preached, and the stereotypical images that parents handed down to their children. Many of these images of Catholicism came from past anecdotes gleaned from corruption charges in Tamany Hal, the anti-Catholic Know-nothing Party of the 1850s, and sensationalist portrayals of both the Pope and clergy. Although Southern Baptists were 77 Christian Index, 30 November 1893. 78 Alabama Baptist, 29 August 1895. 79 ?The Anglo-Saxon Race,? Mision Journal 1895, 21.7, Una Roberts Lawrence Papers AR631, SBHLA. 80 Ibid. 82 divided over whether to promote temperance or fully support the prohibition of alcohol sales, they were united in trying to keep it out of the hands of the moraly deficient. Other isues in the 1890s divided Baptists and complicated home misions. Women increasingly became involved in social reforms. They joined the farmers? revolt in the 1880s and 1890s, campaigned for both temperance and prohibition, and pushed for inclusion in Baptist programing. But the male leadership struggled to decide what role women should serve in Baptist life. They eventualy agreed to the Women?s Misionary Union as an auxiliary mision program to the Southern Baptist Convention, primarily because the organization submited to the hierarchical demands that the denomination made of them. 81 The WMU mirrored the mision programs of the Southern Baptist Convention, serving both home misions and abroad. Much like misionaries from the HMB and FMB, women addresed their social concerns by using anti-Catholicism when reaching out to its membership. They sought funding and competed for resources much like state, Home, and Foreign Mision Boards. An important component of WMU succes was its print media. For instance, the Georgia WMU publication, The Mision Mesenger, ran a set of articles on ?women?s work among the colored people.? 82 Included among population growth statistics of ?Colored Catholics? in the major southern cities was a short headline that read ?What a Romanist Thinks.? In the article, American Catholic Archbishop John Ireland was quoted as proclaiming ?We can have the 81 Se Alen, A Century to Celebrate: History of Woman's Misionary Union; Catherine B. Alen, Laborers Together with God: 22 Great Women in Baptist Life: Biographical Sketches of the Oficers who Guided Woman's Misionary Union, Auxiliary to Southern Baptist Convention, for the First 100 Years (Birmingham: The Union, 1987); Fannie E. S. Heck, In Royal Service; the Mision Work of Southern Baptist Women (Richmond: Foreign Mision Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1913). 82 "What a Romanist Says," The Mision Mesenger, January 1897. WMU of Georgia, Periodicals, Mision Mesenger, 1895-1900, Box 5, GBHLA. 83 United States in ten years; and I wish to give you three points?the Indians, the negroes [sic] and the public schools.? Betwen the two articles, readers could infer that it was the duty of Southern Baptist women to turn back the tide of Catholicism through misions. Statistics proved that the North was no longer the only cause of the onslaught on southern religious life. In bold words, Baptist women read of a conspiracy to infiltrate misionary fields and contest the South for souls, propounded by one of the most public Catholic figures in the United States. In Southern cities such as Baltimore, Norfolk, and New Orleans, Catholics threatened to tear apart the South like Ulysses Grant?s march down the Misisippi Valley. This cal to arms implored Baptist women to get involved with misions or suffer the consequences. Another mater that divided Baptists in the 1890s was their involvement in the Populist Party, a fusion of the Farmers? Aliance with organized labor. Populists became a national third party with intentions of defeating the corrupt major parties. Many pastors who promoted the New South creed represented the largest and most powerful Baptist churches in the South. They came from urban environments, had litle in common with rural radicals or blue-collar workers, and although some sympathized with farmers who lost their livelihood, they criticized Populists for their economic demands, their afiliations with radical labor unions, and their wilingnes to include blacks and Republicans in their organization. Although the Populists had brief succes in Alabama and North Carolina, the party suffered a series of backbreaking defeats, and by 1898, the Democratic Party regained its position as the single party of the South. There were still wounds susceptible to reopening, particularly the gulf betwen urban and rural churches, but as the century ended, white Southern Baptists regrouped and forged ahead. Although 84 the Populist revolt was short-lived, it left a lasting legacy. Historian Keith Harper argues that Baptist activism left the remnants of a ?movement culture.? 83 Joe Creech contends that the righteous indignation of its supporters served as a superb model for Southern Baptists? role in other early twentieth-century reforms. 84 Both se Baptists? involvement in Populism as a springboard to the twentieth century. The first two decades of the 1900s were fruitful years for Baptists, who imersed themselves in mision work reflecting a growing sense of societal responsibility. One of the ironies of the New South was that the progres that helped Baptists rebuild their institutions also brought imigration and with it, threats of alien theology, moral decay, and the loss of southern cultural distinctivenes. So they sought ways to apply their Christian ethics to social problems in broad terms. The period, known as the Progresive Era, represented an unparaleled atempt to reform southern society, and at the same time, to hold on to traditional customs that preserved their way of life. 85 During the early 1900s, an important component for Baptist succes was centralization. Although many churches were skeptical of too much denominational control, Baptist leaders laid the groundwork for collective identity and bridged gaps in the ranks by finding common ground on theological isues, clas conflict, and even 83 Harper, The Quality of Mercy: Southern Baptists and Social Christianity, 1890-1920: 12-13. 84 Creech, Righteous Indignation: Religion and the Populist Revolution. 85 Se Dewey W. Grantham, Southern Progresivism: The Reconciliation of Progres and Tradition, Twentieth-Century America Series (Knoxvile: University of Tennese Pres, 1983). 85 geographical diversity. 86 Baptist historians Arthur Rutledge and Wiliam Tanner view this period as, ?an era of exhilarating growth and expansion. Receipts increased dramaticaly, permiting the undertaking of new types of work and the appointment of additional misionaries. Cooperation with the state conventions and asociations continued, and soon hundreds of ?cooperative misionaries? were being reported. 87 New mision programs in Appalachia, the Southwest, and southern cities demonstrated the growing commitment Baptists had to evangelizing their neighbors. These new points of emphases were spearheaded by key leaders who pushed for Baptist growth. 88 They believed in a distinct southern religious culture and utilized the bully pulpit to garner support for misions. Leaders railed against the threat of imigration wherever they could. Although historian Paul Harvey notes that ?the specter of rising foreign imigration to the South? was ?largely a figment of overheated southern evangelical imagination,? the fact that southerners believed that their world was under atack made the numbers of imigrants irrelevant. 89 Home mision leader M. M. Welch informed readers of Our Home Field that a considerable portion of the HMB budget went to ?centers of population? because ?The city has been recognized as the seat of danger,? adding: ?As cities dominate the country, politicaly and commercialy, they influence the 86 Harper, The Quality of Mercy: Southern Baptists and Social Christianity, 1890-1920, 28. 87 Rutledge and Tanner, Mision to America: A Century and a Quarter of Southern Baptist Home Misions, 45. 88 For the role of denominational leadership in advancing social Christianity, se "Preachers and Prelates, Southern Baptist Leadership and the Emergence of a Social Ethic" in, Harper, The Quality of Mercy: Southern Baptists and Social Christianity, 1890-1920. 89 Harvey, Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865-1925, 202-03. 86 religious destiny of the country. This is unaceptable. If we save the cities, we save the country.? 90 Welch was among many denominational leaders who used anti-imigrant language to unify Baptists. Even though Baptists used anti-Catholicism as a tool to integrate Baptist mision eforts in the South, there were stil cracks in the mold. Alabama pastor Richard Hal wrote an article in the Alabama Baptist entitled ?The Country Church and the Home Mision Board,? where he reported on a conversation he had with state mision board director, W.B. Crumpton. Hal was concerned after learning that Alabama was $4000 behind in its total contribution to home misions in 1904, and as a rural pastor himself, he felt compeled to cal on his asociates to support the cause. When it came to mision funding, rural churches were notoriously stingy. Their congregations were much poorer and les educated than in urban centers, their theological beliefs had anti-institutional tendencies, and many were so disconnected that they believed cities should solve their own problems. Hal asked rural Alabama pastors to recognize ?the importance of the work of the Home Mision Board? in combating ?nearly a milion emigrants [who] landed on our shores last year, most of them from the least desired, that is, the least civilized sections of Europe.? Unlike in the 1870s and 1880s when practicaly al imigrants were setling in other parts of the county, Hal informed Alabamians that times had changed. He warned that more than 100,000 were coming through the southern port of Baltimore and many of those, ?are coming [South] in increasing numbers every year?.? With increased numbers came the threat of increased Catholic influence in New Orleans, St. Louis, and Memphis, where he acused imigrants of dominating 90 ?Home Field Excerpts 1909-1915,? Box 10.6, Una Roberts Lawrence Papers. 87 public life. City populations had exploded, and acording to Hal, Baptists were ?comparatively weak in numbers and social influence.? In order to restore social order, rural areas needed to invest in their denominational institutions. ?The Home Board,? Hal contended, ?offers the chief agency, in many cases the only agency by which the country churches can help their brethren in the cities in this life and death struggle.? 91 Denominational leaders were wel-aware that in order to amalgamate rural and urban churches, the Southern Baptist Convention needed a clear and concise mesage. Few of these leaders shaped Baptists? role in preserving a distinctive southern religious culture more than Victor I. Masters. Masters served as Superintendent for Publicity in the Home Mision Board, a position that carried with it imense power to shape the direction of home misions. Under his direction, the Home Mision Board published books, tracts, newspapers, and educational literature. Masters was also a prolific writer, authoring books that addresed relevant topics of the day. The Country Church in the South addresed the responsibility that rural churches had in shaping southern culture. Masters criticized these churches for their underwhelming support of city misions, but praised them for being the truest reflection of an Anglo-Saxon South. 92 His most popular book was The Call of the South, a jeremiad for al white Southern Baptists to preserve their institutions by asuming their role as cultural warriors intent on turning the tide of imigration and maintaining control over ?the Negro.? 93 One of his last books, 91 Alabama Baptist, 13 April 1904. 92 Victor I. Masters, Country Church in the South (Atlanta: Publicity Department of the Home Mision Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1916). 93 Victor I. Masters, The Call of the South: A Presentation of the Home Principle in Misions, Especially as it Applies to the South (Atlanta: Publicity Department of the Home Mision Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1918), 17. 88 Making America Christian, argues that home misions inextricably linked Baptists to the succes of the United States. 94 An underlying theme that Masters promoted in al of his books was faithfulnes? to misions, local communities, the South, and America. At the same time, he urged Baptists to think in terms of ?solidarity,? arguing that by preserving and strengthening the South?s cultural distinctivenes, Baptist were performing a patriotic service to their country. 95 Although Southern Baptist mision board leaders like V. I. Masters competed for funds, there was an understanding betwen foreign and home misions. The fear of a growing Catholic menace in the United States, fueled by an exploding imigrant population, meant that Baptists would have to combine their eforts and cooperate. No Baptist figure ilustrated this link beter than Joseph Plainfield. Born Guiseppi Francesco Piani in the hils of Northern Italy, he grew up in a strict religious environment. 96 His oldest brother, Wiliam, became a Catholic priest and later archbishop of the Philippines, and it was asumed that Giuseppi would follow in his older brother?s footsteps. Piani did indeed commit to the clergy and eventualy agreed to become a misionary and join the faculty of the College of Sacred Heart of Jesus in Brazil. In 1904 Piani befriended Soloman Ginsburg, a converted Jew and Southern Baptist misionary. Both became caught up in the ideological clash betwen Catholics and Protestants in the territory of Pernambuco, Brazil, and Piana eventualy converted and became a Baptist. 94 Masters, Making American Christian. 95 Masters, The Call of the South: a Presentation of the Home Principle in Misions, Especially as it Applies to the South, 17-19. 96 Joseph Frank Plainfield, ?Memories in the Life of Dr. Joseph F. Plainfield,? unpublished autobiography, Joseph Frank Plainfield Papers AR 821, SBHLA, se also Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists, Volume IV, (Nashvile: Broadman Pres, 1982). 89 Because of his background in the Catholic Church and his outspoken dedication to the cause of misionary work, Baptists made it possible for Piani to return to the United States and atend one year of English study at Wiliam Jewel College in Misouri. This led to a succesful education that ended at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he graduated with the Th.D. degree in 1911. In seven years, Piani had been transformed from Catholic misionary to Baptist theologian. To complete his Americanization, Piani changed his name to Joseph Plainfield. After much convincing from leaders within the denomination, Plainfield wrote a book that addresed the importance of both Foreign and Home misions in reaching the imigrant, aptly entitled The Stranger Within Our Gates. Plainfield warned Baptists that while imigrants would indeed flood into the South and take jobs in the industrial economy, he urged them to keep in mind that ?Europe is our old home and Americans are but transplanted Europeans.? 97 Plainfield embodied the patriotism of the Progresive Era when he wrote, the only limit to the South?s full development and future influence for good in America came, not from the lack of material resources, but from lack of spiritual resources, and its concern should rather be what manner are men being developed to guide the homeland during the coming years?. 98 Arguably, it was not Plainfield?s writings that interested Baptists; it was his symbolism as a transformational figure. Plainfield offered Baptists a shining example of the conversion potential of mision work and the hope that Southern Baptists would be able to hold on to the sacred and familiar. 97 Joseph Frank Plainfield, The Stranger Within our Gates (Atlanta: Southern Baptist Convention, Home Mision Board, [n. d.], 40. 98 Ibid., 36. 90 As the second decade of the 20 th century ended, Southern Baptists had grown into the largest and most powerful Protestant denomination in the United States. But this meteoric rise was not foreordained. It was a systematic efort that owed its succes, in part, to the misionary movement. In foreign misions, Baptists adopted a policy of containment designed to educate foreigners with American values and religious beliefs, convert the infidels, and stop the influx of imigrants pouring into the country. On the homefront, Baptists promoted a policy of theological orthodoxy whereby they rigorously sought converts, enforced moral discipline, applied Christian ethics to social problems, and rooted out alien theology. Driven by dynamic leadership, organizational forethought, and the funds to act decisively, Baptist misions programs helped the denomination grow by defining who they were, and more importantly, who they were not. 91 Chapter Thre ?The Call of the South:? Anti-Catholicism and the Southern Baptist Educational Crusade In December 1905, Edwin M. Poteat traveled to Raleigh, North Carolina to addres the State Baptist Convention. In his speech ?Christian Education Esential to Civilization,? he chalenged Baptists to envision a symbiotic relationship betwen religion and education. 1 Although he supported secular public education, claiming that the separation of Church and State was a ?fundamental principle of the Republic,? he also aserted that education was ?an interest of both government and religion.? Since education was fundamental to a strong civil community, and neither an entirely secular educational system such as ancient Greece nor a religiously-controlled arrangement as those under the control of the Roman Catholic Church had succeded in building an ideal civilization, he urged the Convention to consider the relationship betwen religion and education. ?State education,? he argued, ?requires to be supplemented by education that is controlled and saturated by religion. In a word, the [Baptist] Church must enter the field of education in the interest of the State.? As President of Baptist-afiliated Furman University, Poteat was responsible for promoting Christian education while at the same time reafirming social institutions such as the South?s system of public education. His vision of separate but interdependent 1 Edwin M. Poteat, ?Christian Education Esential to Civilization: Addres to the Baptist State Convention in Sesion at Raleigh, North Carolina, December 6-10, 1905,? in Box 3.366, PCMS 335, Bernard Washington Spilman Papers, NCHLA. 92 ?spheres? of government and religion reflected those of many Southern Baptists leaders, who supported the separation of Church and State when the threat to liberty was Catholic or Jewish, but at the same time alowed for Protestant concesions for the sake of American civilization. Alabama Minister John W. Dean went further when he advocated denominational education. Writing nine years after Poteat, Dean pointed his Baptist brethren to what he believed misionaries had long known: denominational schools were among the first establishments created when expanding into a new mision field. 2 ?If we, as a church se that the denominational school is one of the first esentials in Christianizing the heathen in the foreign field?,? Dean argued, then why not support denominational schools to Christianize the milions of imigrants who arrived on American shores each year, a priority that was in his opinion a ?hundred times more important.? 3 He had originaly intended his ideas to be summed up in a promotional tract that would garner support for the East Alabama Baptist Academy, but after J.M. Frost, the Corresponding Secretary of the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board, requested that Dean publish his thoughts to a larger audience, he felt encouraged to expand the scope of the project into a full-length book. His publication, Christian Education, argued for Baptists to take an active role by confronting society?s problems. The threat of imigration and the disintegration of southern religious culture could be curtailed through proper education. He predicted that if Baptists failed to take education seriously, the consequences could be dire. He warned that they were in jeopardy of relinquishing power to Roman Catholicism. He believed that unlike Baptists, Catholics had been much more succesful in educating their own 2 John Wiliam Dean, Christian Education (privately printed, 1914), 48. 3 Ibid. 93 while Baptists had become complacent or, as he characterized, ???at ease in Zion.?? 4 For Dean, reform and xenophobia worked in concert. Especialy during the Progresive Era, reform-minded Baptists saw education as potentialy having transformative powers, but they sought to manage and manipulate it whenever and wherever it suited. Dean believed this transformation could best be administered by denominational schools. Other Southern Baptists had alternative views of how education could best serve them, but practicaly al believed it served an important role in southern society. Although Edwin Poteat and John Dean might have quibbled over the condition of education in the South, there was consensus on the role Catholics played. Both regarded Roman Catholicism as counter to progres; Catholics threatened evangelical culture in both public and private spheres. Publicly, Baptists were concerned with what they viewed as an aggresive Roman Catholic campaign to gain a foothold in public education. Privately, they had anxieties about the possibility of losing souls. And so the two went hand in hand? if Catholics succeded in controlling education, they might use it to convert Baptist children into Catholics, placing the very soul of the South in jeopardy. From 1870-1920 Baptists clashed with Catholics on a variety of educational isues, many of which addresed maters of control. 5 Driven not only by civic concerns 4 Ibid., 49, 33. 5 For aspects of social control in educational reform, se Wilbur. J. Cash, The Mind of the South (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1941), 171-74, Grantham, Southern Progresivism: The Reconciliation of Progres and Tradition, J. Morgan Kousser, "Progresivism-- for Middle-Clas Whites Only: North Carolina Education, 1880-1910," Journal of Southern History XLVI, May (1980); Woodward, Origins of the New South, 1877-1913, 400-06; Wiliam Link counters that too often scholars have focused on paternalistic and social control models to explain educational reform in the South, arguing that emphasizing only clas and racial dominance "is ultimately reductionist;" Wiliam A. Link, The Paradox of Southern Progresivism, 1880-1930, The Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies (Chapel Hil: University of North Carolina Pres, 1992), 125. 94 and evangelical conviction but also by religious identification, Baptists viewed education as an avenue to build up its institutional foundations and exert influence over southern society. 6 An Uneasy Aliance From Reconstruction through the Progresive Era, the link betwen Catholics and southern education evolved into a significant concern among Southern Baptists. Ironicaly, northern religious writings provided the original impetus for southern evangelical anti-Catholicism, especialy concerning the topic of education. As Baptists increasingly became ?self-aware? of the need for their own institutional identity, they initialy relied on northern problems to help shape their distinctive character. 7 For southerners, problems such as Catholic/Protestant disputes over public school funding evolved into symbols of the very worst qualities of northern society? institutions compromised by imigrants, social deviants, and Republican radicalism. The ?corrupted northern educational system? provided Baptists with a symbol that represented a negative reference point from which to frame their separate identity. 8 In the 1870s and 1880s, the response was to emphasize denominational education instead of public education. 6 Charles Israel argues that Tennese evangelicals saw education as more than reading and writing; it was a proces by which culture was transmited from one generation to the next: Israel, Before Scopes: Evangelicalism, Education, and Evolution in Tennese, 1870-1925, 11. 7 Robert Andrew Baker, The Southern Baptist Convention and Its People, 1607-1972 (Nashvile: Broadman Pres, 1974), 257; Se also, Harper, The Quality of Mercy: Southern Baptists and Social Christianity, 1890-1920, 15-16. 8 For analysis of the "negative reference point" in creating a distinctive southern identity, se Cobb, Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Pres, 2005), 3-4. 95 At the end of the Civil War, most Southern Baptists worried litle about Catholics in the public schools. While imigrants arrived in northern port cities looking for a beter life, most white Southerners faced a bleak future. They were more interested in survival than in social control. During this time, the American Baptist Misionary Society sent misionaries south to build schools and churches for both whites and Freedmen. Initialy, southern religious bodies were open to asistance. Saly McMilen argued that when it came to religious education, sectional identity initialy did not supersede necesity. She wrote that ?For a while at least, southerners welcomed northern asistance, putting their children?s future far above sectional questions.? 9 Although northern religious groups provided aid and offered opportunities for religious reconstruction, they often did so with a strong sense of paternalism, feling contempt for those they deemed to be corrupt southern religious leaders and the hopelesly misguided institutions they led. 10 Religion had played a key role in defending slavery and bolstering secesion, so southern evangelical leaders had to answer for much. Northern church leaders who had supported the Union felt vindicated and often reminded their southern counterparts how God had rendered judgment. 11 Southerners needed northern support, but as the intent of Republican rule became clear, they became suspicious of and eventualy hostile to Reconstruction. Likewise, Southern Baptists 9 Saly Gregory McMilen, introduction to To Raise up the South: Sunday Schools in Black and White Churches, 1865-1915 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Pres, 2001). 10 Stowel, Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863-1877, 56- 57. 11 For the role of northern churches in supporting the Union cause, se Reid Mitchel, The Vacant Chair: The Northern Soldier Leaves Home (New York: Oxford University Pres, 1993); Philip Shaw Paludan, "A People's Contest:? The Union and Civil War, 1861- 1865 (New York: Harper and Row, 1988). 96 needed the publication and organizational resources of northern Baptist groups, but as the SBC retooled and began laying the foundations for a post-belum existence, it had litle interest in reunion. 12 One of the main reasons for separate identity was that Southern Baptists intended to construct their own models of race relations based on concepts that were detached from the interests of outsiders. Slavery no longer defined the southern way of life, but white southerners had no intention of relinquishing power. As Paul Escott explains, ?To whites within North Carolina? the evolving egalitarian views of the North only provoked biter resentment and hardened the intense determination to resist change.? 13 Northern misionary societies built schools and organized other social services for the South, while white southerners looked on with fear that with education, radical change would follow. 14 They did everything in their power to block change and hold on to their cultural authority. One educational isue in particular concerned southerners? the education of Freedmen. 15 Although southerners were concerned about al northern misionary entities, they were particularly anxious about Catholics educating blacks. In 1870, The Biblical 12 Wayne Flynt argues that in Alabama, "Baptists rejected reunion with northern Baptists for sectional, racial, and theological reasons" in Flynt, Alabama Baptists: Southern Baptists in the Heart of Dixie, 168. 13 Escott, Many Excelent People: Power and Privilege in North Carolina, 1850-1900, 131. 14 Edward J. Blum, Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Pres, 2005), 54. 15 James Anderson offers an extensive asesment of the education of ex-slaves in, James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 (Chapel Hil: University of North Carolina Pres, 1988). 97 Recorder informed its readers that Catholics were educating the Freedmen in Baltimore. 16 The editors of the paper noted that during these mision projects, blacks and whites shared clasrooms. Catholic priests explained these interracial encounters by noting that in Catholic doctrine, ?God makes no distinction, and the church cannot.? Black Baptists also employed anti-Catholicism in order to curry educational support from Southern Baptists. A group referring to themselves as the ?Colored Baptists of Alabama? acknowledged that in tough times, Catholicism was an option blacks were wiling to entertain if necesary. 17 They appealed to Alabama Baptist readers for asistance ??in educating our ministers.? ?The question,? the article stated, ?is who wil help us, the South or the North?? ?Roman Catholicism feds on ignorance,? the group claimed, and ?Either our people must be educated, or they must become followers of the Pope. Which shal it be: ignorance and Popery, or inteligence and pure Christianity?? 18 This tactic was somewhat succesful in garnering financial support from white Baptists (though their own financial needs as wel as their racism and paternalism limited their support of black schools) because it tapped into the imagery of a northern, Catholic presence wiling to step up in the event that Baptists declined to asist. It was a sectional appeal that spoke to southerners who feared the loss of social control. A survey of the South?s state Baptist newspapers confirms that in spite of pervasive sectional rhetoric during the late 1860s and 1870s, a collaboration of necesity prevailed. Southern Baptists simply lacked denominational infrastructure sufficient to educate parishioners in a separate sectional identity during the 1870s and 1880s. North 16 Biblical Recorder, 23 February 1870. 17 Alabama Baptist, 27 January 1876. 18 Ibid. 98 Carolina?s Biblical Recorder, Georgia?s Christian Index, and The Alabama Baptist all syndicated Sunday school lesons and educational stories of interest writen by American Baptist newspapers. Understandably, northern Baptist newspapers carried stories that their leaders were personaly invested in. In September 1869, a move by city officials to merge Cincinnati?s public and parochial schools led to claims by local newspapers of a Romish conspiracy to remove the Bible from public schools. 19 Because Southern Baptists read northern publication materials, they learned about the ?Cincinnati Bible War? in state denominational newspapers. During the 1870s, throughout northern urban centers such as Cincinnati, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, Republicans exploited old anti- Catholic prejudices to promote national unity. Religion and public school funding became the staging ground for this national spectacle. 20 One would asume that when it came to Catholic/Protestant isues, Southern Baptists sympathized entirely with northern Protestants, but when the decade of the 1870s began, Southern Baptists were ambivalent about the role of Catholics in public education. Commenting on the controversy in New York City, editors of the Alabama Baptist proclaimed that they were not concerned with Catholics in the state, but they were ?wel-convinced that it (Catholicism) ought to be watched.? 21 If there was ?one point to guard at present,? it was the public schools,? but even so, there was no cause for alarm. 19 Ward McAfe, Religion, Race, and Reconstruction: The Public School in the Politics of the 1870s, State University of New York Series, Religion and American Public Life (Albany: State University of New York Pres, 1998), 27-28. 20 McAfe details how northern Republicans used anti-Catholicism and the public school isue to preserve the nationalistic ideals of Reconstruction in, Ibid. 21 Alabama Baptist, 13 April 1875. 99 Although these Protestant/Catholic conflicts semed foreign to their own culture, Southern Baptists followed events closely. In 1875, The Christian Index published an article on ?Public vs. Sectarian Schools? that reported how Roman Catholic officials in New York City were applying for public funding to support their parochial schools. 22 The author framed the isue as a debate in which ?Extreme views are being advanced by both sides; both the religious and secular pres are [sic] devoting considerable space to the discussion?.? Catholic leaders detested the public school system because they believed it protected and promoted Protestant culture. The Freman, a Catholic paper opined, ?If our bishops do not forbid Catholics sending their children to godles schools, in fifty years from now the Catholic church in the United States wil be a shriveled and ghastly skeleton, a dry waste? a scatered flock that false shepherds fed and fatened on, and left unsheltered from the wolves.? Although some southern ministers saw the potential for uplift in public education, many elite southerners had historicaly opposed it. During Reconstruction, Republicans had raised taxes which they used to build schools for both white and black children. In North Carolina, this led to a backlash. Governor Wiliam Holden caled in federal troops to quel widespread disent, to curtail Ku Klux Klan activity, and to protect the fragile state government. But this move hardened the resolve of the state?s white population to cast out the occupying Republican government. 23 The Biblical Recorder drew a paralel when it informed readers that in other areas of the country, Catholics were ?removing Bibles from public schools? and were demanding and receiving ?a fair division of the 22 The Christian Index, 22 April 1875. 23 Se chapter 6, "Change and Represion" in Escott, Many Excelent People: Power and Privilege in North Carolina, 1850-1900. 100 school funds?.? 24 The author of the article had not been swayed by the fear of a Catholic menace. On the contrary, Catholics simply believed that ?children belong to their parents,? not the ?governors and superintendents of public works who crush the independence of teachers and dictate text-books [sic].? Acordingly, Catholics who opposed public schools were ?hard to argue? against. These perceptions were a far cry from those later espoused by editors of The Biblical Recorder, but the sympathetic slant reveals a greater concern about an occupying federal menace than threats from Catholic schools. For Southern Baptists, education was les controversial so long as the right groups had control. Charles Israel argues that Protestant/Catholic clashes like the Cincinnati conflict eventualy made an impresion on the southern psyche. 25 Although Catholics had a very smal presence in Tennese, the state?s Baptists and Methodists increasingly feared a secularized school system. They were acutely aware that Catholicism had the potential to threaten the local educational establishment just as it had in northern urban areas. Even as they fought to maintain symbolic control of public education, some of these evangelicals stil sent their children to denominational schools. Since southern evangelicals viewed education as more than ?learning the basic skils of reading, writing, and arithmetic,? Israel explains that ?Education was instead the whole proces of transmiting culture from one generation to the next.? 26 Many Baptists questioned whether public education could serve this role. In Alabama, the ?Reverend Dr. Cutting? 24 The Biblical Recorder, 2 February 1870. 25 Israel, Before Scopes: Evangelicalism, Education, and Evolution in Tennese, 1870- 1925, 28. 26 Ibid., 11. 101 urged Baptists to reject the ?sectarian appropriations of money? for a state school system. 27 He stresed that Alabama citizens should not worry about their children receiving an education, for ?The common religious sentiment wil expres itself in the moral elements of education, training children to truth, virtue and honor, and to the reverence of God and his laws.? Local control of the schools? or ?local rule,? ensured southerners that their children not be exposed to alien ideas that would threaten the South?s cultural norms. ?A Call to Baptists in the South? During the 1880s and 1890s, white southerners firmly regained control of their institutions, consolidated their power, and ?redeemed? themselves from northern interference. Southern Baptists exemplified this culture of redemption. Immediately following the Civil War, they had welcomed both spiritual support and financial aid, but by the 1880s the spirit of cooperation waned. In hindsight, they never seriously considered reunion but instead worked together with northern groups as a means to an end. Historian Daniel Stowel argues that southern churches used these resources to expedite the reconstruction of southern religious identity through denominational education and the expansion of Sunday schools. 28 Both institutionalized white southern religious culture through teaching and training. This was important especialy when the national identity was changing so dramaticaly. 27 Alabama Baptist, 20 March 1876. 28 Se "Educating Confederate Christians: Sunday Schools and Denominational Colleges" in Stowel, Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863- 1877, 114-29. 102 Not only had the North failed to transform white southern society, but as more imigrants poured into northern cities, there were serious questions whether northerners could even preserve ?traditional? American culture. Catholics had become more influential in northern urban politics and threatened to overturn the power structure of Protestant-dominated education. For instance, in 1878 The Christian Index carried an article from a northern paper, The Christian Instructor, that informed readers that ??there are now in the United States at least 35,000 girls of Protestant families who are being educated at Catholic schools, and that at least one-tenth become Catholics?the remainder being more or les prejudiced for life against Protestantism.? 29 A few months later, the Alabama Baptist carried the same story with an additional twist. Not only were Protestant school girls at risk, but the great Civil War General Wiliam Tecumseh Sherman, a symbol of northern exceptionalism, had falen prey to the mounting Catholic presence. He had enrolled his son in Georgetown College, in Washington, D.C. and upon graduation from the Jesuit college, Sherman?s son had decided to become a Catholic priest. Acording to the Alabama Baptist, the religious conversion had taken place ?without his father?s approval, sanction, or consent.? 30 Articles such as these alarmed Baptists that Catholics were coming to the United States and endangering the old verities of Protestant America. Furthermore, these stories raised questions as to whether Southern Baptists should take seriously how changes in the North might afect the South. Sherman?s son provided the perfect example of just how efective Catholic colleges were in capturing souls. 29 Christian Index, 16 May 1978. 30 Alabama Baptist, 22 August 1878. 103 In 1892, the Christian Index re-published an article from the Boston, Masachusets based Watchman in which the author was concerned about northern Christian colleges, which he caled ?one of the weakest points in our modern Protestantism.? 31 He further commented that ?Christian colleges should be as loyal to the ends for which they were founded as Roman Catholic schools are to their faith.? The editors of the Christian Index used this story as a moral leson on education. The North had grown increasingly modern, secular, and multifarious; its people had lost their way. For Georgians, this was justification for denominational education, ?? the kind of education needed to make up for the unchristian education given in the public schools. It can be best obtained in our denomination colleges.? Although Southern Baptists became more concerned with sectional identity during this period, when it came to their initial concerns about Catholicism, they perceived it as a Northern isue that had the potential to creep into the South. An examination of Southern Baptist religious literature confirms that in the 1880s, anti- Catholic articles increased dramaticaly. Stil, almost the entirety of these articles dealt with conflicts that occurred outside of the South. A few collegial Southern Baptists reached out to addres inter-denominational isues such as how churches dealt with social change. In 1881, Baptist scholars from al over the United States organized an annual conference caled The Baptist Congres to addres theological and social isues that were important to their constituents. 32 From 1882-1912, this international organization exchanged ideas on everything from 31 Christian Index, 31 March 1892. 32 For a general overview of the Baptist Congres, se Wiliam H. Brackney, "The Frontier of Free Exchange of Ideas: The Baptist Congres as a Forum for Baptist Concerns, 1881-1913," Baptist History and Heritage 38 Summer/Fal (2003). 104 church/state relations to education, temperance, and gambling. In 1888, Philip Moxom, Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Boston, spoke to the organization on ?Common vs. Parochial Schools.? Public schools afected al Protestant-Americans because, as Moxom suggested, ??the proces of social asimilation which goes on in the Common School is of imense importance in this country, where the population is annualy increased by the arrival? (of) imigrants.? 33 On the other hand, he argued that ?The purpose of the Parochial Schools is not the education, but to make loyal and obediently docile Roman Catholics.? Northern Baptists had been engaged in Protestant/Catholic conflict since the end of the Civil War, and here was a venue where public speeches could advance anti- Catholic sentiments beyond their community. Southern Baptists who participated in the Baptist Congres were exceptional individuals who were more likely to be receptive to the free exchange of ideas and wiling to transmit their experiences into denominational life. Such Baptist luminaries as Lansing Burrows, Southern seminary profesor Wiliam O. Carver, Southwest seminary profesor and editor of the Baptist Standard James B. Gambrel, and editor of the Western Recorder Thomas T. Eaton al participated in the Congres. While these leaders held religious beliefs that did not always paralel those of the average layman, they were very influential in shaping Baptist identity. Al four eventualy made public statements acknowledging that Catholics threatened to upset the social fabric of the South. Higher-education became increasingly important for Baptist identity as were the Sunday Schools that educated children and provided religious instruction to church 33 Folder ?1888,? Baptist Congres Procedings Collection, AR40, SBHLA. 105 goers. 34 Georgia Baptist Samuel Boykin was a leader in this field. Boykin had been the editor of The Christian Index and became interested in the Sunday School movement during the 1860s. Starting in 1872, he published and edited Kind Words, a periodical writen for the promotion of Sunday Schools. Long before Southern Baptists had any real publishing apparatus, this litle publication had great succes as an extension of the Sunday School movement. Although Sunday Schools were not created for the sole purpose of stopping the spread of Catholicism, they were a primary reason for Baptists to sek more control over their religious literature. Control over publication materials was a controversial isue within the Convention that led Baptists to use Catholic imagery to either preserve or reclaim their identity. When the Sunday School Board was de-funded in 1873 due to insolvency and the inability to compete with northern preses, Baptist leader J.R. Graves warned his followers that ?The strength of Roman Catholicism is increasing in this country,? and yet ??(the) only publication interest on this continent that could efectively resist the encroachments of this enemy?? was the American Baptist Publication Society. 35 Acording to Graves, unfortunately ?That Society is under the management of men,? many of whom are ??destitute of moral courage.? This left the Southern Baptist Publication Society as the only ?safe reliance? capable of meting 34 For the importance of the Sunday School movement in the South, se Anne M. Boylan, Sunday School: The Formation of an American Institution, 1790-1880 (New Haven: Yale University Pres, 1988), Harvey, Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865-1925, McMilen, To Raise up the South: Sunday Schools in Black and White Churches, 1865-1915, Stowel, Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863-1877. 35 The Baptist (Memphis), 23 May 1874. 106 ?Catholicism on this high ground? and combating ?its boastful advances to supremacy and power.? Although there were some peripheral leaders such as Graves who advocated a Southern Baptist publishing arm, most state denominational bodies were satisfied with the American Baptist Publication Society. 36 It had a few distinct advantages. The organization was fully mature and had the strength of financialy-stable northern Baptists supporting it. Many states had established relationships with both field representatives and the publisher that they did not want to abandon. Finaly, the society produced an abundance of quality materials that generaly met the needs of its customers. American Baptists not only benefited from the busines they did with the South, but by producing their own material, American Baptists influenced curriculum and in some cases, advanced their causes. This was the reason for the abundance of anti-Catholic books, pamphlets, and tracts that were advertised for sale in southern religious newspapers. Although the Sunday School Board folded after the Civil War, the idea of a separate institution did not die. While most Southern Baptists were pleased with their publication choices, there were a few problems that continued to divide Baptists North and South. The most important isue was race. 37 From the conception of the Southern Baptist Convention forward, Northern Baptists were highly critical of southern race 36 For an analysis of the debate over Southern Baptist publication autonomy and the creation of the Baptist Sunday School Board, se Harvey, Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865-1925, 28-31. 37 Notable works that demonstrate the importance of race as a dominant theme in southern religion include Blum, Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898; Eighmy and Hil, Churches in Cultural Captivity: A History of the Social Atitudes of Southern Baptists; Flynt, Alabama Baptists: Southern 107 relations. Although the Society hired southern writers and both denominations cooperated on isues such as foreign misions or jointly promoted traditional Baptist ideals such as the separation of Church and State, each group was acutely aware of their diferences. As Southern Baptists grew and aserted their independent identity, talk of a new Sunday School Board became more prevalent. The movement was spearheaded by James Marion Frost, a pivotal figure in the denomination?s history. Frost was a dynamic preacher and an acomplished writer, with an entrepreneurial mind. He was a native of Kentucky and spent several years as a minister in Alabama, Tennese, and Virginia. Historian Paul Harvey noted that while in Virginia, Frost used the Religious Herald, the state denominational paper, as a busines model and eventualy ?proposed the creation of a separate agency, owned and controlled by the denomination, to publish ephemeral religious literature for southern Baptist churches.? 38 From 1885 to 1891, Frost tirelesly advanced the idea. Meanwhile, the Society atempted to block any atempts by Southern Baptist institutions to publish autonomously. Baptist historian Wiliam W. Barnes argues that in addition to identity isues, there was also a significant amount of money at stake: The storm that had been gathering over the years broke, at last. The American Baptist Publication Society? Southern in its origin in 1824 and early support, and a friend to the South since the war? was not ready to relinquish the territory which furnished receipts ranging from $30,000 to Baptists in the Heart of Dixie; Harvey, Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865-1925; Christine Leigh Heyrman, Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt, (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1997); Hil, Southern Churches in Crisis; Spain, At Ease in Zion: Social History of Southern Baptists, 1865-1900; Sparks, On Jordan's Stormy Banks: Evangelicalism in Misisippi, 1773-1876; Stowel, Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863- 1877. 38 Harvey, Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865-1925, 29. 108 $50,000 a year. The Society strengthened its organization in the South and prepared to contest the new venture of the Convention, in the later?s territory. 39 The Society claimed that it had created the market for Baptist publications and therefore owned the exclusive rights to serve southern churches. As Frost described the controversy, Society officials ?chalenged the right of the Convention to publish Sunday school periodicals.? 40 This isue created one of the most biterly contested internal conflicts within the Southern Baptist Convention. Frost later referred to the juncture as a time of ?growing pains? when Southern Baptists ?were coming to their own in heritage and responsibility.? 41 In 1891, the Convention approved the resurrection of a new Sunday School Board, and Frost?s publishing company competed head to head with the Society. Paul Harvey argues that one of the imediate consequences of the Board was that it reinforced conservative doctrine and traditional southern values, that the average Board publication was ?devoid of intelectual depth and full of religious pabulum,? and that the Board constructed the simplistic ?kind of stories and homilies that Reader?s Digest and other publications later so efectively employed. 42 However, it is worth noting that this was a continuance of the practices of the Society, not a sudden departure in curriculum. Baptists constructed the Sunday School Board much like other southern industries that rose out of the ashes of the Civil War. 39 Barnes, The Southern Baptist Convention, 1845-1953, 89. 40 James Marion Frost, The Sunday School Board: Its History and Work (Nashvile: Sunday School Board, Southern Baptist Convention, 1914), 11. 41 Ibid., 12. 42 Harvey, Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865-1925, 30. 109 Taking a page from Henry Grady?s ?New South Creed,? Frost and his organization created a busines model that rewarded thrift and eficiency, while at the same time it appealed to symbols and traditions of an idealized South. Their objective ?to out Yankee the Yankees? was a smashing succes. Within a short time, the Board became a juggernaut within the South and was the ultimate symbol of a transformed denomination, one that overtook Methodism as the dominant Protestant religion in the South. Frost and his staf appealed to southern churches to support the Board instead of giving busines to the Society, claiming that ?The Source of Opposition? was undercutting its competition by slashing prices on literature and had even made claims ?to be Southern in itself [sic], to be equal with the Sunday School Board in rank and relation to our organized work.? 43 The Board responded by offering profesional but unoriginal Sunday school materials, hymnals, books, and other materials that mirrored their northern rivals. One of the initial complaints of the Society concerned intelectual property; they argued that if the institution were approved by the Convention, the Sunday School Board would simply inherit the Society?s customer base and co-opt their publication materials. This turned out to be the case. With both the Society and the Board competing for the same customer base, both published practicaly identical children?s Bible stories, promoted the work of the Foreign and Home Mision Boards, and advertised tracts that addresed social isues like temperance, education, and imigration. Roman Catholicism was a popular topic, whether it appeared in doctrinal identity tracts such as ?The Baptist Position: A Tract for the People,? which defended adult 43 Frost, The Sunday School Board: Its History and Work, 81. 110 baptism against Catholics who practiced the ?unscriptural practice of sprinkling and pouring,? or in misionary tracts such as ?Christianize the South,? a cal for Baptists to stop ?the internationalizing of the nation? by Catholic imigrants.? 44 Competition for readership fanned the flames of fear and paranoia. Spurred on by the national anti- Catholic climate primarily incited by the American Protective Asociation, the Sunday School Board fed the demand for educational literature. E. A. Burke, Superintendent of the Madison Avenue Baptist Sunday School in Covington, Kentucky, personaly wrote to J. M. Frost expresing his dificulty in promoting Sunday school education ?? in the midst of a strong Catholic part of the city.? 45 After explaining his problem, Burke asked for a donation of fifty New Testament Bibles, reminding Frost that they did in fact patronize the Sunday School Board whenever possible. Under Frost?s direction, the Board made dramatic inroads in the South by offering profesional literature and more importantly, by appealing to sectionalist sentiments. In 1910, the American Baptist Publication Society raised the white flag and withdrew from the South. In only nineten years, James Madison Frost?s vision was realized. Sunday School Board asets grew from $53,000 in 1900 to approximately $760,000 by 1920. 46 Succes was due in part to embracing conservative doctrine, but wedge isues such as Roman Catholicism also boosted the Board?s sales figures. 47 44 J. F. Love, ?The Baptist Position: A Tract for the People,? Pamphlet 3649, Pamphlet Collection, SBHLA; W.J. McGlothlin, ?Christianize the South,? Pamphlet 729. 45 Leter to Frost, Catholics 1.14, Correspondence (B) May 1893 ? May 1895, James Marion Frost and T.P. Bel Papers, AR795-109, SBHLA. 46 Harvey, Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865-1925, 30. 47 While I agree with Paul Harvey that one of the Sunday School Board?s misions was to re-afirm social conservatism, I emphasize that orthodoxy was only part of the story. 111 Fueled not only by an increasing responsibility to preserve southern social institutions but also a competitive zeal to produce relevant, profitable educational publications, the Sunday School Board became the most powerful institution within the Southern Baptist Convention. Through its educational arm, it not only afirmed Southern Baptist identity, it engineered it. Progresive Orthodoxy During the first two decades of the twentieth century, Southern Baptists encountered familiar isues, but they experienced these isues in more personal ways. Immigration that had previously bypased the South was now dramaticaly changing southern cities. Baptists commented on the advanced guard of imigration in the 1880s and 1890s. In 1880, North Carolina?s Biblical Recorder published an article entitled ?Why North Carolina has Had No Immigration.? The editors? explanation was that ?? with our homogeneous and conservative population, we have been very choice [sic] as to the clas or character of imigrants that was available.? 48 They were clearly positioning the State for industrial development and proposed measures to recruit ?men and women of character? who wil identify themselves with our state and its prosperity?.? In Birmingham, Alabama, Italian imigrants were increasingly atracted to industrial labor Also important was the Board?s solvency and in the early days of its existence, it adopted a very pragmatic approach to the publication of literature. One of the best ways to gain a readership was to appeal to the base through social identity. So the Board focused on wedge isues like temperance, social dislocation, and public education not only to promote conservative values, but also in the simplest terms?to sel educational materials. In fact, the returns from utilizing these tactics led to increasingly virulent rhetoric in the literature. One of the consequences was that Southern Baptists were swept up by their succes?a feding frenzy of anti-Catholicism. 48 Biblical Recorder, 28 January 1880. 112 opportunities that the iron and coal industries offered. The increased population of Catholics in Birmingham created opportunities for conflict. The Alabama Baptist sensationalized the growing divergence when it described how ?Physical force [was] stil the Catholics argument when he can safely ply it. For instance, in Birmingham a Catholic and a Protestant had a dispute about religion, when Mr. Catholic, to defend his holy creed, took a chair and floored his opponent.? 49 A few weks earlier, while commenting on parochial education, the newspaper had alerted readers that ?Alabama wil soon learn what Kentucky has thoroughly learned, that is, that Rome is planting herself in our borders to stay.? 50 Areas afected by industrialization experienced these changes in the decades leading up to the twentieth century. For the rest of the South, the early 1900s were the pivotal years of change. Unlike the remote conflicts betwen Protestants and Catholics that happened outside the South? conflicts that Southern Baptists merely read about? twentieth-century imigration offered a direct threat to their newly-realized power. As the tide of imigration turned toward the South, Southern Baptists were in a state of transition. During the 1870s and 1880s, the denomination was at odds over the role of public education in southern society. Many Baptist leaders understood the benefits but were unwiling to properly fund them. Others took the more traditional southern view that public education was not a guaranted right and should not be supported by the state. Neither side worried about losing control to imigrants; they were much more concerned about Northern interference and ?home rule.? 49 Alabama Baptist, 10 May 1888. 50 Ibid, 26 April 1888. 113 By 1900, Baptists were comfortable with their institutional identity and enthusiasticaly embraced public education. North Carolina quickly gained a reputation among southern states as a standard-bearer for public schools. Its Baptist leaders promoted the cause and believed that it was the civic duty of al North Carolinians to provide sound financial support for beter instruction. Wake Forest College President William L. Poteat encouraged Baptists to se education as more than a means for individual advancement; it was also an instrument to reform society?s ils. Historian Randal Hal argues that Poteat (both a Baptist minister and a Ph.D. in Biology) sold the idea of Progresivism to wary Baptists who were uncertain of endorsing an overtly defined Christian social ethic. 51 In a conservative environment like North Carolina, Poteat had dificulty creating consensus. This was due in part to the state?s demographics. In 1900, North Carolina was among the most rural southern states and had a homogeneity not found elsewhere. Textiles and tobaco were transforming the state?s citizenry into a compliant, blue-collar workforce. African-Americans made up a third of the population and were stil stinging from the repercussions of the Wilmington race riot and disfranchisement. Furthermore, there were fewer Catholics than in any neighboring state. 52 The editors of the Biblical Recorder stresed the continuity of North Carolina?s society in an article titled ?The Religious Paper and Public Afairs.? The author defended the paper?s involvement in the political arena by arguing that ?to the Christian no work is secular, no duty is secular, no 51 Randal L. Hal, Wiliam Louis Poteat: A Leader of the Progresive-Era South, Religion in the South (Lexington: University Pres of Kentucky, 2000), 77. 52 For an early history of Catholicism in North Carolina se, Jeremiah Joseph O'Connel, Catholicity in the Carolinas and Georgia: Leaves of Its History, 1820-1878 (New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Company, 1879). 114 moment is secular?,? while countering that dividing life ?into secular and sacred? was merely semantics created by the Roman Catholic Church. 53 North Carolina?s Baptists had no intentions of giving up their birthright? power and privilege in a closed society. Progresivism reflected Baptists? newly gained sense of confidence. They had abundant resources, charismatic leaders, and believed they were responsible for controlling the social order. Baptist leaders spoke of how educational training programs were promoting progres, eficiency, and conformity in southern society. The editors of the Baptist World argued that Baptists lived in an era when problems within society could best be addresed by education and rational leadership: The eficient preacher is one of the needs of the time. The demand is for an al-round man who can preach, visit, raise a collection, take his share of public service in the community, inspire and educate the people. Too much cannot be said as to the cal for the eficient preacher. He is the key to the progres of the church. God give us the eficient preacher. 54 Although Baptists often editorialized that the separation of Church and State were pilars of their institutional identity, in practicaly al southern states, evangelical leaders began ?legislating religion into the schools.? 55 They encouraged reading the Bible in the clasroom and appointing preachers as educators in public school systems. In Tennese, Baptists acused the Catholic Bishop of Nashvile of responding to the increased religiosity of public schools by forbidding ?Catholic parents from sending their children to public schools on penalty of excommunication.? 56 The editors of the Baptist and Reflector wrote that had the bishop ?? follow[ed] up this order with another 53 Biblical Recorder, 4 April 1900. 54 Baptist World, 2 May 1912. 55 Israel, Before Scopes: Evangelicalism, Education, and Evolution in Tennese, 1870- 1925, 98. 56 Alabama Baptist, 21 September 1904. 115 forbidding Catholics from teaching in the public schools he [would] at least be consistent.? 57 In Georgia, Baptist leader M. L. Duggan was appointed in 1911 as ?one of three original State Supervisors of Schools? that had direct influence on seting public policy, hiring teachers, and modernizing the school system. 58 Baptist Rufus Weaver served in a variety of capacities? he preached, served as a member of the Sunday School Board, taught religion at Vanderbilt University, and eventualy moved to Georgia and became a member of the Georgia State Board of Education. He believed in promoting the value of public education while at the same time educating Baptists about ?the common purpose of saving the American cities? from ?the Roman Church.? 59 ?The parochial school,? Weaver wrote, ?is a menace to American institutions, for the future American citizens are taught in these schools that the pope of Rome must be obeyed because his commands are more binding that the statutes of the states.? 60 Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry spearheaded Alabama?s public school movement and eventualy became identified with a larger southern education movement when he became secretary of the Peabody Fund. On one hand, Curry had very democratic principles about public education, stresing that the state had an obligation to provide this universal right to al children. 61 Yet, he viewed Catholics not as potential recipients of public education but as usurpers of liberty. 57 Ibid. 58 Lester, A History of the Georgia Baptist Convention, 1822-1972, 328-29. 59 ?How Many Cities Be Rescued,? AR99, Box 1.1, Rufus Washington Weaver Papers, SBHLA. 60 Ibid. 61 Flynt, Alabama Baptists: Southern Baptists in the Heart of Dixie, 228-29. 116 Progresivism yielded contradictory consequences for Southern Baptists. Historian Wayne Flynt argues that in Alabama, education served as means of advancing the New South economy, combating child labor, and augmenting Social Christianity. 62 Keith Harper argues that Southern Baptists reached out to the poor and dispossesed, demonstrating a genuine concern for the welfare of others. 63 Catholic imigrants certainly fit that category. In 1901, Manley J. Breaker of the Christian Index emphasized to readers that the foreigner ?must be saved,? emphasizing that ?God has sent him here for that purpose. He [God] kept him [the foreigner] away from our country until we had strengthened our religion and our morals, and then He sent him to us.? 64 On the other hand, Southern Baptists? ascendancy coincided with the threat of significant cultural shifts in southern society. In 1912, Livingston Johnson wrote about this when he looked back on ?Ten Years of Progres in North Carolina.? 65 Johnson noted that the State had experienced rapid industrial growth, shifting demographics, and ?a great educational awakening.? But progres came with a price. From 1890-1906, North Carolina and six other southern states experienced increases in Roman Catholic Church membership that outpaced their Protestant counterparts. Although Johnson supported economic growth and cultural development, he measured the costs: We are building new school-houses, employing a large number of teachers, and gathering the children into these places of learning. We have our journals teling the world of the wonderful development of our State and inviting people to come and take up their abodes within our borders. 62 J. Wayne Flynt, "Disent in Zion: Alabama Baptists and Social Issues, 1900-1914," Journal of Southern History 35 (Winter 1969). 63 Harper, The Quality of Mercy: Southern Baptists and Social Christianity, 1890-1920 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Pres, 1996), 13-14. 64 Christian Index, 05 September 1901. 65 Biblical Recorder, 24 January 1912. 117 These things are al right, but are we Christian people going to sit stil and say there is nothing more to be done religiously for North Carolina because it is an old State and therefore needs nothing more in the way of evangelization? There is nothing that our good old State needs so much as the religion of our Lord. Cotton mils, banks, railroads, and school-houses are important but they do not compare in importance with the Kingdom of Christ. We need to work and pray for the coming of the Kingdom in our State. 66 Livingston Johnson, like most other Progresive Era Baptists, saw education not only as a vehicle for reform but also as a symbol of Baptists? societal influence. 67 Much of their anti-Catholic rhetoric came from the fear that with an increased southern Catholic presence, Baptists might lose their grip on authority. Mobile, Alabama experienced Catholic power when the state government pased prohibition laws. Alcohol had been one of the most dependable sources of school tax revenue, so the county proposed a tax increase to fund local education. When it failed to pass, W. J. E. Cox wrote that ?Poor old Mobile? was ?biting off her nose to spite her face,? noting that ?the county voted about two to one in favor of the tax and the city nearly four hundred against,? mainly because of the Roman Catholic vote. 68 In Savannah, Georgia Baptists criticized the considerable Irish Catholic population for complaining ?? about our public schools, first, because they have the 66 Ibid. 67 Numerous historians argue that southern evangelical reform in the Progresive Era may have improved aspects of southern society, but the intentions were to resist change: Kenneth Kyle Bailey, Southern White Protestantism in the Twentieth Century, (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), Eighmy and Hil, Churches in Cultural Captivity: A History of the Social Atitudes of Southern Baptists, Hil, Southern Churches in Crisis, Spain, At Ease in Zion: Social History of Southern Baptists, 1865-1900, James J. Thompson, Tried as by Fire: Southern Baptists and the Religious Controversies of the 1920s (Macon: Mercer University Pres, 1982). 68 Alabama Baptist, 10 June 1908. 118 Bible; and then complain, if we yield that point, because religion is excluded.? 69 Since the 1870s, Catholics had sought public funding for Savannah?s parochial education system. This led to more dramatic conflicts than most southern cities experienced. Two Catholic schools in Savannah eventualy did receive funds from the Chatham County Board of Education, leading many Georgia Baptists to protest that this was a violation of Separation of Church and State. 70 Eventualy a coalition of Baptists and Methodists appealed to the State Superintendent of Schools for an investigation. Atorney General Cliford Walker determined that the Savannah schools were in violation ?of the law that forbids the aid of the State to sectarian institutions? and filed a lawsuit against the county. 71 Compared to the rest of the South, coastal cities such as Savannah, Mobile, and New Orleans had considerably more Catholics. These groups originated from earlier Spanish, French, German, and Irish migration and were more likely to contest the local power structures and asert their autonomy. The continuous conflict prompted local Savannah Baptist F.H. Sils to publish his expos?, Roman Catholicism Investigated and Exposed. The book modeled other clasic anti-Catholic publications from decades past. 72 Sils atacked al aspects of Catholicism, including its doctrinal positions, the political aspirations of its members, and ?Their Desire and Efort to Destroy Our Free Schools.? 69 Christian Index, 05 August 1875. 70 Ibid, 09 November 1916. 71 Ibid. 72 Important northern Anti-Catholic publications that addresed education include Daniel Dorchester, Romanism Versus the Public School System (New York: Philips & Hunt, 1888), Prescott F. Hal, Immigration and the Educational Test (New York: North American Review, 1897), ???, Immigration and Its Efects Upon the United States (New York: H. Holt, 1906), Howard B. Grose, Aliens or Americans? (New York, Toronto: Young People's Misionary Movement Pres, 1906). 119 These anti-Catholic books and pamphlets were published by a variety of sources; some came from the Sunday School Board while others were self-promoted. While the Sunday School Board controlled mainstream Southern Baptist literature, the most radical educational publications were independently-published. Most came from northern authors, although there were also southerners who were every bit as fanatical. Denominational newspapers often advertised these in the back of their magazines along with various nerve tonics, ointments, and self-help publications. Southern Baptist leaders normaly kept their distance from extreme figures, referring to their opinions as peripheral to mainstream Baptists. Among the most radical of these peripheral figures was Georgia Baptist and United States Senator Thomas Watson, who published the anti-Catholic magazine The Jefersonian. In addition, he printed a number of pamphlets that targeted Roman Catholicism, such as ?The Italian Pope?s Campaign Against the Constitutional Rights of American Citizens.? Railing against the ?human hordes? that did ?not imbibe Americanism,? Watson aserted that Catholic ?children are separated by the priests into the pope?s own parochial schools, where they learn hatred of ?heresies,? and servility to the foreign potentate whom they are being trained to serve.? 73 It is hard to measure the influence of this literature, but there is no question that it affected Southern Baptists. Based on the number of leters that denominational newspapers received and re-printed in their wekly publications, many subscribers read these books and tracts, and some of the anti-Catholic literature ended up in Sunday sermons. Baptist W.D. Siler of Uptonvile, Tennese wrote to the Baptist and Reflector, 73 Thomas E. Watson, The Italian Pope's Campaign against the Constitutional Rights of American Citizens, (Thomson: The Tom Watson Book Company, 1915), 9. 120 testifying that he had ?just finished reading ?Thirty Years in Hel, or From Darknes to Light,? a book exposing Catholicism, writen by an ex-priest,? and encouraged al Tennese Baptists to read it. 74 The Christian Index received numerous complaints from its readership when Tom Watson questioned why the Baptist newspaper had been advertising a Roman Catholic Encyclopedia in its ?Book Notices? column. ?We have not been acustomed to noticing any charges brought against us from the source whence emanated this one,? the editors responded, ?but as a number of our friends sem to be disturbed in their minds, we take this means of giving them the facts.? 75 The editors claimed they advertised the Encyclopedia to educate its readership on the history, doctrine, and practice of Roman Catholicism; but instead, the isue had become personal and caused the editors to proclaim: The Encyclopedia has received ten times as much notice through the atack made on us as it ever would have received from our litle notice; and we may add that the suggestion implied or expresed that we are, or ever had been, in the least degree favorable to Roman Catholicism, is so absurd as to make it a mater of wonder that anybody would pay atention to a person making it. 76 The dust-up betwen Watson and Georgia?s Baptist leaders heightened anti-Catholic articles in the Index by stimulating orthodoxy. Part of being a good Southern Baptist meant standing against imigrants and Catholicism; any endorsement, conciliation, or neutral comment toward Catholicism compromised that identity. Historian Glenn Feldman argues that this was a time when ?anxiety turned to paranoia,? which led to 74 Baptist and Reflector, 12 January 1905. 75 Christian Index, 18 July 1912. 76 Ibid. 121 increasingly radical rhetoric aimed toward imigrants. 77 These hostilities eventualy morphed into fraternal organizations that protected ?American? institutions such as public schools and enforced a specific moral code. Baptists joined groups such as the Guardians of Liberty, the True Americans, and the Ku Klux Klan because they saw these organizations as protectors of their faith. Although some joined external organizations to combat societal ils, most Southern Baptists continued to focus their eforts on misions and education. Since the 1870s, denominational education had played an important role in establishing foundations. Theological training had been a crucial element in the preservation of Baptist identity, not only because it trained and educated the newest generation of leaders, but because it established bases of Baptist power from the sheer physical presence of these schools, much like the Sunday School Board did for Nashvile. One Baptist leader noted how the seminary ??made [Kentucky] much stronger from a Baptist point of view, and how the establishment of the Southwestern Seminary at Fort Worth had proven to be a wise investment for kingdom ideals?.? 78 Out of this mindset, Baptists looked for other locations to spread its influence. For many years, Baptist had identified New Orleans as an important mision field. In 1849, the first Baptist misionary to the city wrote to denominational patriarch Basil Manly, Sr., suggesting the creation of a Baptist college to be located in the city, but nothing resulted from the discussions. 79 During the late 1800s, Baptists made limited 77 Glenn Feldman, Politics and Religion in the White South, Religion in the South (Lexington: University Pres of Kentucky, 2005), 13. 78 Christian Index, 21 January 1915. 79 Barnes, The Southern Baptist Convention, 1845-1953, 209-10. 122 strides in sending evangelists, building churches, and collecting funds for a home misions drive. The eforts failed to gain any significant citywide membership. P.L. Lipsey, editor of Misisippi?s Baptist Record, suggested that the establishment of a theological seminary in New Orleans might have a similar efect on Louisiana as had those in Kentucky and Texas. Louisiana Baptist G.H. Crutcher noted: It has been a mater for cheap wit for many years that the Baptists of Louisiana were largely Negroes. May I not insist that at least in part the explanation of the large number of Negro Baptists in Louisiana is due to the splendid Negro Baptist school in New Orleans that has been training young Negroes, equipping Negro preachers who have gone out to teach and to preach al over Louisiana and have ground their people inteligently in the faith of our fathers? 80 White Baptists believed that indoctrinating southern Blacks with religious education led to a more stable society. Crutcher used the analogy to make a wider asertion that ??such an institution in New Orleans would give us a supreme advantage in our work among the foreigners throughout the whole Southland, as New Orleans is supremely the most important city in the South from the viewpoint of imigration.? 81 Garnering denominational support for the seminary worked identicaly to funding misions? in order to sel the idea, supporters of the seminary had to emphasize the need, often by evoking anxieties about imigration and Catholic power. Even though New Orleans had always had a strong Catholic presence, with the new tide of imigration reaching southern port cities, the idea of New Orleans becoming the right arm of the Vatican threatened more than the bayous of southern Louisiana; it threatened the entire South. In 1917, the Southern Baptist Convention met in New Orleans for its annual meting. Joint commites approved resolutions regarding the establishment of the Baptist Bible 80 Christian Index, 21 January 1915. 81 Ibid. 123 Institute, which opened a year later. In 1954, denominational historian W. W. Barnes looked back on the impact of the seminary: Before the Baptist Bible Institute was opened, there were only six struggling Baptist churches in that city, and there was [sic] no Baptist churches West, on the Southern pacific [sic], for more than 125 miles. The spiritual destitution was tragic. Al of this has been changed under the tremendous spiritual impact of the teachers and students of that mighty misionary force witnesing in one of the most chalenging mision fields in the South. Today, through South Louisiana, Baptist churches and misions abound. 82 The seminary represented the culmination of over sixty-five years of mision work directed at Catholic New Orleans. This was Baptist Progresivism realized through denominational education. It erased the many failures of past misionary eforts and gave Baptists comfort that in the midst of a changing South, institutions not only persevered, they dominated. From 1870-1920, Southern Baptists spent much of their time grappling with isues that linked education and religious identity. In many of these conflicts, Catholicism marked the intersection betwen the sacred and the secular. Baptists encountered Catholic reconstructionists who intended to educate the Freedmen; they read about Catholics in the North taking over the public schools, which in turn bolstered southern sectionalism; they mimicked the anti-Catholic rhetoric of northern religious publications as they competed for publishing busines; they applied Progresive ideals to public education and used religious institutions such as the Sunday School Board to expand their influence in southern society; and they expanded denominational education to supplement the deficiencies of public schools. Baptists believed that education was a crucial element in their institutional identity because it supported churches, trained 82 Barnes, The Southern Baptist Convention, 1845-1953, 211-12. 124 misionaries, converted unbelievers, and reafirmed sacred values. Anti-Catholicism resulted from Baptists? understanding that because education had the potential to transform society, in the wrong hands that transformation could have devastating consequences. 125 Chapter Four ?The Great Unfinished Task:? Anti-Catholicism and the Southern Baptist Quest for Moral Reform In 1891, the Arkansas Baptist alerted its readership to be watchful for ?a Catholic priest who walked the streets of Litle Rock, with a bottle of whiskey in his hand and stream of profanity and vulgarity pouring from his mouth.? 1 The vivid picture of a drunken priest stumbling out of control left litle to readers? imaginations. Here was a Catholic leader living in an urban seting, walking and intermingling with southern evangelicals, a man whom Baptists depicted as a threat to local customs. Such stories augmented cals for evangelicals to go beyond converting souls and nurturing the personal spirituality of its members. Although many historians of southern religion have emphasized the importance of personal spirituality in southern evangelicalism, Southern Baptists increasingly became interested in isues that turned their focus outward to combat what they viewed as a moraly-depraved society. 2 From the 1870s through the 1920s, Baptists emphasized institutional initiatives that reconstructed their denominational identity and preserved their cultural values. As their denomination grew and their identity matured, Baptists had both the power and the confidence to dictate social norms and shape southern culture as they imagined. During 1 Published in the Alabama Baptist, 25 November 1891. 2 Samuel Hil's thesis that southern evangelicals focused on personal salvation, often at the expense of religious reform and social justice, is stil a useful interpretative model: Samuel S. Hil, Southern Churches in Crisis, (New York: Holt, 1967), 4-5. 126 this period, a growing Catholic presence in the South, coupled with an increased public awarenes of such presence, stimulated Baptists to take a more active role in purifying the region. In some ways this purification was proscriptive and aimed at social control of the conduct of blacks, poor whites, and imigrants (prohibition, anti-prostitution). In other ways, it was progresive (child labor, convict-lease, and penal reform). For a variety of reasons, many Protestant ?reformers? perceived Catholics as a barrier to moral reform, which intensified their anti-Catholicism. Many (though not al) of the same forces that created the reformist Southern Sociological Congres also produced virulent anti- Catholicism. 3 Although Southern Baptists felt more at ease in Zion, they increasingly were anxious about cultural shifts they perceived to be the result of northern interference, southern industrialization, and changing paterns of imigration. They believed that they occupied an important role in protecting those social and cultural institutions that they deemed central to southern civilization. They resurrected a set of mythological Confederate ideals? symbols of a Lost Cause that glorified former Civil War generals, turned old batlefields into holy land, and promoted a distinct civil religion. While Baptists had one foot in the past, they also clearly embraced the promise of a New South by expanding their reach and emphasizing social reforms such as temperance and prohibition. As they expanded their influence on a changing South, they encountered roadblocks such as an increasingly visible Catholic presence, especialy in southern cities 3 Se, for example, James Joseph Boshears Jr., ??The Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man?: The Social Gospel Interracialism of the Southern Sociological Congres? (doctoral disertation, Auburn University, 2012). 127 where imigrants found work. The foreign customs and culture of Roman Catholicism not only threatened to change the traditional folkways of the South, but also stood in the way of Baptists intent on remaking society. Preserving the Old in the New South The Baptist, a Memphis paper, published ?A Leter from New Orleans? that described the city?s atmosphere during Mardi Gras. ?The carnival of Mardi Gras has been succeded by a dead silence,? a local New Orleans Baptist misionary reported. Reading much like a travel diary, the leter served as a window, alowing evangelical readers to peek inside the flamboyant, sinful world of Catholic culture. Among the festivities, the ?Rex? parade was ?a pageant of the most briliant sort? with participants wearing ?golden armor and helmets,? acting out a ?poem of folly, fun, and pleasure.? In addition, ?there were shameful exhibitions on the streets,? and one Baptist preacher described the event as an ?apotheosis of vice.? 4 Although New Orleans was the largest city in the South and southerners were vaguely familiar with the region?s Catholic culture, explicit stories detailing such strange customs, like the one printed by the Baptist, had an impact on its readership. In addition to the parades, the misionary described how Catholics paid homage to the Grotto of the Lady of Lourdes, where ?more than 100,000 Catholics from France and England paid pilgrimage to this grotto last year.? Acording to the report, Catholics believed that the grotto?s public fountain had medicinal properties and claimed that there were ?more than 1000 cases [of healing] under Catholic authority.? The Archbishop of New Orleans had 4 ?Leter from New Orleans, Baptist (Memphis), 28 March 1874. 128 recently ?consecrated a statue of the Lady of Lourdes in the cathedral of the city [New Orleans], and stil another has been set up in the Dryades Street Catholic Church.? 5 The report noted: Any one paying their devotion at these shrines is granted an indulgence of sixty days. To cap the climax of this folly, the said Archbishop, together with the Catholic Archbishop of New York has undertaken to organize a pilgrimage to ?our Lady of Lourdes and to Rome,? from the United States, to start from New York not later than the middle of next May. 6 To Catholic Louisiana, this statue meant that the same ritual enjoyed in Europe would be available to locals in New Orleans and surrounding areas. On the other hand, Baptists and other evangelicals believed this was an example of Catholic mysticism and superstition that could infiltrate popular culture; his was an encroachment on Baptists? control of public spaces and evidence of growing Catholic power in the South. New Orleans and the rest of the Coastal South had a history of Catholicism that southerners had long acepted. 7 The region?s Irish, French, and Spanish Catholics had supported slavery during the antebelum period, and as long as their cultural anomalies remained peripheral to southern identity, southern Protestants tolerated them. 8 The 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Much like their Protestant brethren detailed in both Christine Heryrman's and John Le Eighmey's research, Randal Miler argues that Catholics were culturaly captive to the social norms of the Old South: Miler and Wakelyn, Catholics in the Old South: Esays on Church and Culture; Eighmy and Hil, Churches in Cultural Captivity: A History of the Social Atitudes of Southern Baptists; Heyrman, Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt. 8 There was a brief period in the 1850s when the Know-Nothing Party ran a national anti- Catholic campaign and made inroads into southern states such as Alabama. Se, Jef Frederick, "Unintended Consequences: The Rise and Fal of the Know-Nothing Party in Alabama," Alabama Review (January 2002): 3-33; J. Mils Thornton, Politics and Power 129 transformative point in Catholic/Protestant relations came post Civil-War, when a crisis of identity caused cultural fears and antipathy toward Catholics. Charles Reagan Wilson explains: Southern Baptists, fearing their own loss of separate status, struggled throughout the late ninetenth century for a distinctive identity apart from the dead slavery isue, which had been the crystalizing factor in their emergence. This fear in fact existed in the other Southern churches, and it focused especialy on the North? its churches, its religious movements, its imigrants, its power in the American nation?as the underminer of Southern religious hegemony. 9 Without the unifying slavery isue, Catholics had litle hope of participating in the construction of a New South. Indigenous Catholic populations such as those in New Orleans, Mobile, and Savannah found themselves on the wrong side of a number of southern causes. Baptist acounts such as ?A Leter from New Orleans? helped shape Baptist perceptions of Catholics and fanned the flames of anti-Catholicism. Ironicaly, while Baptists ridiculed the practice of Catholic iconoclasm, they (along with other southern evangelicals) constructed their own symbols and rituals that supported a southern civil religion. 10 Faith in these symbols reflected their uneasines with their status. Adherence to religious orthodoxy was the key to the preservation and in a Slave Society: Alabama, 1800-1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Pres, 1978). 9 Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920, 9-10; Se also, Eighmy and Hil, Churches in Cultural Captivity: A History of the Social Atitudes of Southern Baptists, 74, 95. 10 Although Baptists helped shaped a distinctively southern civil religion, Wilson emphasizes the leading role of Episcopalian leaders as shapers of a Lost Cause religion: Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920; From 1865- 1920, Baptists supported the myths of the Lost Cause but were les enthraled with other aspects of Old South culture. Baptists and other southern evangelicals transformed the South into a more homogenous society. Se, for example, Ownby, Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865-1920. 130 promotion of southern culture and provided protection from outside, alien traditions. Southern Baptists saw themselves as part of this distinct group of southern evangelicals, but they also believed that they held a special place in God?s kingdom. Their identity was heavily influenced by how they viewed themselves in comparison both to the North and to other southern evangelicals. They fashioned a denominational character in complete opposition to an increasingly secular and Catholic North, while at the same time drawing distinctions betwen themselves and other southern evangelical denominations. Baptists believed that infant baptism and hierarchical structures within the church were evidence that other denominations had been influenced by Catholic traditions, while they had distinctive traditions that gave them license to preserve the southern way of life. Although Gulf Coast Alabama had a fairly significant Catholic presence (in fact, the oldest Mardi Gras celebration in the United States occurred in Mobile), Catholics did not have the same power as they had in New Orleans. An Alabama state senator from Montgomery introduced a bil in 1880 that would have made Shrove Tuesday (now known as ?Fat Tuesday?), a festival introducing the Lenten season, a public holiday in Montgomery and Mobile. Edwin T. Winkler, editor of the Alabama Baptist, caled upon Baptists to defend their religious heritage, insisting that this was a separation of church and state isue: ?We hope that our Legislature wil pas no such bil, its members not elected for the purpose of imposing the festivals of any church upon the communities of Alabama.? 11 Commenting on Lent, he continued: In our country, there is not even this poor excuse for the holiday. And the history of the carnival in other countries does not encourage its transplantation to our country under the auspices of our public authorities. The working of such public holidays upon the character and the industries 11 Alabama Baptist, 25 November 1880. 131 of a people is painfully manifested in al Roman Catholic countries. The fewer of them we have in America, the beter. 12 Although Winkler and other Baptists tried to contain public expresions of religion that did not coincide with Protestant beliefs, Catholic culture unquestionably endured in Alabama, as it did in other parts of the South. Indigenous southern Catholics quietly practiced their faith, and the region?s new imigrant population employed traditional cultural values and manners in adjusting to a new country and a new industrial society. The 1880s had been a period of uncertainty for imigrants and Baptists alike; the former dealt with adapting to a new land, the later with how these new imigrants would be acepted. Both groups discovered how increasingly dificult it was to find common ground. 13 A Swel of Immigration While the preservation of an orthodox southern culture was an important component to the Baptist mesage, so too was the gospel of progres. Henry Grady?s vision of an industrialized New South curried favor with Baptists interested in economic prosperity and organizational viability. The denomination found ways to reconcile the past with the present. They modeled much of their institutional growth from a busines model of eficiency and competition while honoring Confederate symbols and 12 Ibid. 13 James R. Baret, "Americanization from the Bottom Up: Immigrants and the Remaking of the Working Clas in the United States, 1880-1930," Journal of American History 79 (December 1992): 997-98. 132 emphasizing the traditional verities of the Baptist faith. But it was a path filed with landmines. Among the most dificult subjects Southern Baptists grappled with was imigration and its efects on the social and cultural climate of the South. North Carolina?s Secretary of Agriculture, Leonidas Polk, wrote an article for the Biblical Recorder promoting the recruitment of imigrants for agricultural work, noting that North Carolina wanted its share of investors and capitalists, but also ?the artisan, the mechanic, the farmer, and the dairyman, to evoke new industries, and to swel the volume of our productive interests.? 14 Eight months later, the editors of the denominational paper warned North Carolina?s Baptists that in neighboring Virginia, real estate speculators caught up in the seling of the South were peddling unproductive land to imigrants, ?mostly Romanists.? 15 Acording to the editorial, there was litle concern that Roman Catholics would make inroads among Protestants (except for ?a few excedingly high churchmen who have depreciated mentaly and financialy?), but there was consternation that non-Catholic imigrants who had moved to the South were open to conversion. By the 1890s, the impending consequences of imigration concerned Southern Baptists. In a leter to the Alabama Baptist, C. O. Booth, State Misionary in Jackson County, summarized the primary concern: These people [imigrants] who have been flocking to our shores in such vast number have not yet turned their mighty currents toward the South; they are in the North, infusing into the soul of that section a form of mental life very diferent from that which possesed and controlled the pilgrim fathers. These strange people, with their strange views of God and 14 ?Why North Carolina has had No Immigration,? Biblical Recorder, 28 January 1880. 15 Biblical Recorder, 25 August 1880. 133 of government wil, when once they turn upon the South, change the soul of the South also, yes, and also the material conditions. 16 Since Catholics were a perceived threat to the southern establishment, they became the target of constant harasment, and at times, white evangelicals provoked violence against them. Angry mobs and vigilantes lynched Italians in Misisippi, the Carolinas, Arkansas, and Florida. In New Orleans, a mob lynched eleven Italian Catholics on March 14, 1891. 17 Baptists blamed the pogrom on the local Catholic- influenced mafia, whose ?nefarious deeds led to the riot.? 18 ?There is no place in America for such an organization,? the editors of The Baptist and Reflector opined, ?and no where else, perhaps, except in the corrupt atmosphere of New Orleans, could it flourish. Such a growth, however, is not very extraneous to Roman Catholic soil such as New Orleans.? 19 As a denomination, Southern Baptists criticized lynch mobs as an antiquated solution to social conflict that was left over from antebelum customs, one which did not reflect wel on an enlightened New South. On the other hand, Baptist leaders recognized that individuals had traditional ideas about personal honor and adhered to a strict southern social code. 20 Southern values traditionaly required retribution to bring the 16 C. O. Booth, ?The Foreigner, the Negro, and the South,? Alabama Baptist, 18 March 1897. 17 Silvano M. Tomasi and Madeline H. Engel, The Italian Experience in the United States (Staten Island: Center for Migration Studies, 1970), 50. 18 The Baptist and Reflector, 7 February 1895. 19 Ibid. 20 Se, for example, Ownby, Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865-1920; Bertram Wyat-Brown, Honor and Violence in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Pres, 1986). 134 social order back into balance. Catholics had violated the sacred code of behavior, even if it had occurred in New Orleans. Southern writer Wilbur Cash referred to the South?s propensity to invoke violence as a form of social control as the ?savage ideal.? 21 Other historians have writen about numerous Baptists and Methodists who participated in local Ku Klux Klan groups, so violence was certainly a component of the way they sometimes maintained control over society. 22 In addition to their own encounters, imigrants were aware of the violent reputation of southerners from the numerous lynchings targeting southern blacks. These acounts were often reported in northern newspapers and throughout Europe. The Vatican was wel aware of the circumstances Catholics faced, and the Catholic Church appealed to the United States government for protection. These requests met cursory responses, leaving few options for imigrants. The climate became so bad that the Italian government restricted pasports to Italians who planned to emigrate to the South; nevertheles, by the early 1900s, they increasingly came to southern cities looking for work. 23 21 Cash, The Mind of the South. 22 For Klan violence targeting Catholics, se, for example, Hurley, The Unholy Ghost: Anti-Catholicism in the American Experience; Greeley, An Ugly Litle Secret: Anti- Catholicism in North; Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925; Kinzer, An Episode in Anti-Catholicism: The American Protective Asociation; Lockwood, ed. Anti-Catholicism in American; Nancy MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan (New York: Oxford University Pres, 1994); Justin Nordstrom, Danger on the Doorstep: Anti-Catholicism and American Print Culture in the Progresive Era (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Pres, 2006); Shea, The Lion and the Lamb: Evangelicals and Catholics in America. 23 Frank Joseph Fede, Italians in the Dep South: Their Impact on Birmingham and the American Heritage (Montgomery: Black Belt Pres, 1994), 14. 135 Many of the new imigrants that came from Italy and Eastern Europe tended to congregate in cities that already had an imigrant presence. For instance, in 1900 Savannah had Georgia?s largest Catholic population, which had been established by Irish imigrants much earlier. Because of the established Catholic presence, southern evangelicals had a much harder time imposing their wil on the local imigrant populace. In 1895, the anti-Catholic American Protective Asociation sent an ex-priest and his wife (a former nun) to lecture in Savannah. Acording to one report, the members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians organized a Catholic protest against the lecture. Opponents petitioned the mayor to stop the speech, but he ?declined to do so upon the advice of the city atorney that free speech was guaranted by the constitution.? 24 The night of the engagement, a mob estimated at betwen four and five thousand Catholics demonstrated around the asembly hal, throwing rocks, breaking the windows of the hal, and injuring people inside. The mayor sent in the police to escort the speaker, Mr. Slatery, to a safe location. The next night, Catholics sent a crowd inside the asembly hal to prevent the A.P.A. from meting. This incident revealed three things about southern society. First, local officials could protect victims from an angry mob. Unlike New Orleans, where Italian imigrants were lynched, Savannah?s government was able to control a large, angry mob. Second, Catholic/Protestant tensions had much to do with contests for local control of public institutions. Coastal cities like Mobile, Savannah, and New Orleans were examples of what happened when imigration was able to take root in southern soil. In Savannah, evangelical backlash led to the establishment of a local chapter of the A.P.A. The Baptist 24 Baptist and Reflector, 07 March 1895. 136 and Reflector argued, ?If ever there was any doubt about the need of such an organization, this incident would show it.? 25 In the eyes of evangelicals, the disorder was evidence of a Roman conspiracy, and the ?only reason why Mr. Slatery did not suffer the tortures of the inquisition was simply because he was in America and not in Italy or Spain?.? Whether it concerned free speech, parochial school funding, or questions about religious liberty, religious conflict continued to be a theme in Savannah through the early 1900s. Third, where the critical mas of Catholics was sufficiently large and politicaly active (as in Savannah in 1895 or Birmingham in 1905 when they actualy constituted the city?s largest religious group), they could protect themselves. Religious conflicts carried connotations of power. Evangelicals became angry when people upset the delicate balance of power betwen clases, races, and cultures. One of the most famous instances of conflict occurred when in July 1900 a race riot broke out in New Orleans. North Carolina Baptist M.F. Vann told his eyewitnes acount to the Biblical Recorder. 26 Acording to reports, Robert Charles, a black laborer, shot and kiled Captain Day of the New Orleans Police Department. 27 At the funeral procesion, the presiding Catholic priest caled ?for a speedy revenge.? 28 The city put out a $250 reward for Charles and rioting broke out in the streets. Blacks fled to their homes and a white mob that Reverend Vann described as consisting of mostly Catholics ?kiled 25 Ibid. 26 Biblical Recorder, 15 August 1900. 27 For a full description of the 1900 New Orleans race riot: Wiliam Ivy Hair, Carnival of Fury: Robert Charles and the New Orleans Race Riot of 1900 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Pres, 1976); se also, Bennet, Religion and the Rise of Jim Crow in New Orleans, 2005. 28 Biblical Recorder, 15 August 1900. 137 almost as many whites as colored.? The mayor caled for five hundred men to volunter to put down the mob; one thousand eight hundred ?of the best men in New Orleans reported for duty. These 1800 Anglo-Saxon men were Southerners and the best friends of our people.? What struck Reverend Vann was how white southerners had organized not only to preserve order, but to protect the city?s black population?a group that the white establishment was known more for terrorizing than protecting. ?The real Southern white man had done some fighting,? Vann remarked, ?but it was to protect our [white] people.? In this extraordinary case, Protestant whites had protected blacks from being lynched and atempted to maintain the peace; and it was Catholics who had upset the hierarchical order. Blacks had not resorted to violence or retaliation; those responsible for mob rule represented not only a rowdy Catholic presence, but also threatened to destroy the harmony of southern race relations. Racial hierarchy was an important component of anti-Catholic sentiment. At times, Baptist misionary literature played heavily on themes of racism and xenophobia, stoking fears while asking for money and support for mision programs. In 1902, a misions pamphlet entitled ?Louisiana Misions? alerted readers of ?The Practices and Extravagances in Worship of our Negro Baptist Brethren.? 29 Author E.O. Ware wrote that in Louisiana, many Negro Baptist churches ?forgot their Sabbaths,? instead clinging to social customs such as sprinkling instead of full-imersion baptisms, favoring infant baptism over adult baptism, and asigning god-parents to newly born children. The news that Catholic customs were taking root in black churches implied far-reaching 29 ?Louisiana Misions.? Pamphlet 1325, Pamphlet Collection. 138 consequences. White Baptists were alarmed because it threatened to upset the balance of social hierarchy. Baptist leaders understood that rural churches, both white and black, were, acording to historian Paul Harvey, ?repositories of regional culture.? 30 At times, poor, un-educated congregations of both races shared similar worship customs. Southern Baptist leaders acepted the experiential nature of African-American churches in the South by characterizing blacks as emotional or child-like; they were les forgiving of white churches that shared this style. Denominational leaders tolerated it mainly because local churches had autonomy and, more importantly, because white rural churches were highly-regarded for their simple, respectable social mores, which included strict Jim Crow customs and anti-saloon sentiments. 31 For Baptists, evidence that Catholicism had made inroads in black churches meant that African-Americans might be more apt to chalenge social customs. It also meant that rural white churches might eventualy be afected by Catholicism. This was particularly troubling because they were aware that Catholics did not share the same strict social codes that prohibited alcohol, gambling, and other ?sinful? forms of recreation. By the early 1900s, the Catholic Church reached out into the Protestant community by promoting social ministries. The succes of this venture provoked W. B. Crumpton to publish an editorial in the Alabama Baptist warning about the growing influence of Catholicism in Alabama. He was concerned with their mision work, which 30 Paul Harvey, Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865-1925, The Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies (Chapel Hil: University of North Carolina Pres, 1997), 78. 31 Ibid., 79. 139 Crumpton dismised as ?nothing more than protracted metings, in many of the smaler towns of the State; the object being profesedly to explain their doctrines to the non- Catholics.? 32 Additionaly, Catholics had established charitable hospitals in Birmingham, Mobile, and Montgomery. Since most of their patients would be Protestants, Crumpton questioned their real purpose: If their cases are hopeles, probably before they breath[e] their last, they wil be baptized (!) into the Catholic church (sic). If they recover, during their convalescence, they wil be asked to read tracts and books of Romish belief. If they are not converted, the most of them (sic) go out as apologists, if not defenders, of the Catholic Church because they were treated kindly?. 33 Crumpton left litle room for fence-riding sentimentalists. ?Catholicism,? he claimed, ?is a friend to nothing on this earth except to the Romish Church.? In addition to skewering the state?s Catholic institutions, he framed the isue as one that could only be sen in black and white. No real Baptist who believed in separation of the church and State should stand idly by while Catholicism marched on Alabama. Historian Charles Reagan Wilson argued that Southern Baptist identity had largely been shaped by how they defined themselves against the North. However, during the first two decades of the twentieth-century, Southern Baptist leaders changed the way they addresed the growth of Catholic imigration in the South and, in turn, how they viewed themselves. No longer did they define the Catholic menace exclusively as a product of Northern society or something that could be contained in the North; they 32 Alabama Baptist, 22 April 1903. 33 Ibid. 140 increasingly saw this as a global phenomenon. V. I. Masters, corresponding Secretary of the Home Mision Board for Southern Baptists, explained their position: At the present rate of increase, about seventen per cent of the population of the country may in ten years be expected to hail from the low clas people of efete civilizations. If al these folks remained at the North, they would yet present a problem for Southern Christianity. We are one nation and the South must, in the future, suffer with the North in any problem that these imigrants may bring. But they wil not remain in the North. Already they are coming into our own Southern country by the thousands and tens of thousands. In the end, either these people wil be lifted to the level of American Christian people, or American Christian people wil sink to their level. 34 This departure from the traditional sectional language Baptists so often employed did not mean that sectional identity was dead. In fact, Masters? 1918 book, The Call of the South, maintained that the South stil had a ?sectional consciousnes? and was stil a distinctive land because ?of war experiences which shook our entire social order to its foundations, and of the preservation of this section from any significant influx of strange people.? 35 Masters believed that the South was no longer the region identified with guilt and shame, but rather the one full of God?s providence and blesings. To preserve the soul of the South, Southern Baptists were caled by God ?to serve the spiritual mision of America.? 36 During the first two decades of the twentieth century, Southern Baptists promoted their objective by joining fraternal and patriotic organizations, which strengthened their resolve and organized them with other like-minded Americans. The Christian Index, for instance, encouraged its members to consider joining ?A Society to Preserve our 34 The Christian Index, 22 April 1909. 35 Masters, The Call of the South: A Presentation of the Home Principle in Misions, Especially as It Applies to the South), 17. 36 Ibid., 18. 141 Liberty.? This society, The Guardians of Liberty, was formed on June 9, 1912 ?in response to the belief in Rome?s aggresion? gathering to counsel as to the best action to counteract what they regard as a real danger.? 37 Originaly, the GOL addresed the growing imigrant population in New York, but it gained national popularity by espousing moral reform, encouraging patriotic zeal, and stirring up xenophobia. It succeded because the organization efectively convinced Americans that imigration was not simply a New York problem; it was spreading to the entire United States. Betwen 1910 and 1920, anti-Catholicism became a national phenomenon, spearheaded by the emergence of fraternal organizations that emphasized white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant values. Earlier centers of conflict became more divided. Birmingham experienced increased imigration in greater numbers than practicaly any other southern city, so it was a hub for anti-Catholic sentiment. Building upon the ideals of the Guardians of Liberty, A. J. Dickinson, pastor of First Baptist Church in Birmingham, organized localy the True American Society to stop imigration and Catholicism from expanding in Alabama?s most industrial city. 38 The peak of the anti-Catholic movement came when the Ku Klux Klan was reborn. In 1915 at Stone Mountain, Georgia, Wiliam Simons held a white supremacist meting that brought back the Klan by playing on familiar themes of moral reform, racism, and fear of foreigners. Although Southern Baptist leaders publicly criticized mob violence often asociated with the Klan, the emphasis on public morality struck a chord with evangelicals, who had been promoting moral reform for the past thirty years. 37 The Christian Index, 8 August 1912. 38 Flynt, Alabama Baptists: Southern Baptists in the Heart of Dixie, 302. 142 Georgia was a prime location for the re-birth of this organization. Atlanta had experienced imigration, but more importantly, it was the headquarters of Georgia?s Tom Watson, a former Populist leader turned anti-Catholic spokesman. Through his writings, Watson had famously incited the lynching of Leo Frank, a Jew acused of raping a Protestant white woman. Additionaly, D.W. Grifith?s Birth of a Nation, a film romanticizing the role of the Klan as guarantors of moral order, had recently debuted in the city. The Klan was not distinctively Baptist, but since this was the largest Protestant denomination in the South by that time, it is safe to say that their membership numbers were significant. 39 From 1870 to 1920, the focus of conflict remained remarkably consistent: whether it was Mardi Gras, religious imagery, public schools, or alcohol, these were contests over control of public spaces. Baptists gained new power in shaping southern society, but then again, so did a growing imigrant population. Southern Baptists, who emerged from the Civil War intent on preserving the past, spent the first two decades of the twentieth century trying to perfect the present. ?The Two Pilars of Evil:? Rum and Romanism Many historians have argued that no isue exemplified Baptists? quest for moral reform and social control more than alcohol. 40 Joe Coker contends that from 1880 to 39 Nancy MacLean argued that in Athens, Georgia, Klan membership was comprised mostly of middle clas Baptists, Methodists, and to a leser extent, Presbyterians; MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan. 40 For Southern Baptists and temperance/prohibition, se Coker, Liquor in the Land of the Lost Cause: Southern White Evangelicals and the Prohibition Movement; Flynt, Alabama Baptists: Southern Baptists in the Heart of Dixie; Harper, The Quality of Mercy: Southern Baptists and Social Christianity, 1890-1920; Harvey, Redeeming the South: 143 1910, the southern anti-liquor campaign succeded because ?evangelicals succesfully tied prohibition to these larger concerns with southern society?.? 41 Central to Coker?s thesis was that Baptists pased prohibition laws by linking alcohol to racial fears. 42 While the efects of alcohol on African-Americans certainly were a crucial element in garnering support for prohibition, so too was the asociation that people made betwen alcohol and Catholicism, which Coker fails to point out. Antipathy toward alcohol evolved much like Baptist views of Catholicism. During Reconstruction, other isues trumped sobriety. However, starting in the 1880s, Baptists increasingly saw alcohol as not only a threat to the sacred space of the home, but as a corruptor of society. As Baptists became more concerned about limiting the consumption of alcohol in their communities, their opposition increasingly contained anti-Catholic rhetoric. For many Southern Baptists, alcohol and Catholicism were inextricably linked??Rum and Romanism? were two pilars of evil that had to be stamped out. Religious Cultures and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865-1925; Israel, Before Scopes: Evangelicalism, Education, and Evolution in Tennese, 1870-1925; James D. Ivy, No Saloon in the Valley: The Southern Strategy of Texas Prohibitionists in the 1880s (Waco, TX: Baylor University Pres, 2003); Ownby, Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865-1920; Spain, At Ease in Zion: Social History of Southern Baptists, 1865-1900. 41 Coker, Liquor in the Land of the Lost Cause: Southern White Evangelicals and the Prohibition Movement, 2-3. 42 Although Liquor in the Land of the Lost Cause is among the latest scholarship on the relationship betwen southern evangelicals and prohibition, Coker overemphasizes the significance of race as the determinant for pasing prohibition, while at the same time he fails to mention the role anti-Catholicism played. Race may have been the primary motive within the Anti-Saloon League, where Baptists shared power with other southern evangelicals; but for Southern Baptists, other social concerns including imigration and the spread of Catholicism were also important variables. 144 For Americans, the popular link betwen Catholic imigrants and alcohol went back to the 1830s and 1840s when Irish imigrants began pouring into the Northeastern United States. Anti-imigrant groups sprouted up almost overnight and with them, stereotypical literature that purported to expose Catholic ?nefarious behavior.? ?Lecherous priests, secret tunnels betwen seminaries and convents, and the babies who resulted from these unholy unions slaughtered and buried in basements? were, as historian Robert Lockwood describes, ?typical publication topics? in anti-Catholic publications. 43 Other stories depicted the Irish as drunks and the Catholic Church as enablers of the problem. During the antebelum period, literature linking Irish Catholics and alcohol stemed almost entirely from northern sources. Southerners did not experience the same influx of imigration that their counterparts did, but they were aware of anti-Catholic literature. Publications did litle to sway southern sentiments about drinking, which were the most liberal in the nation. On the one hand, most Southern Baptists believed that consumption was a personal mater. On the other, they opposed drinking because they asociated it with public drunkennes, which they deemed as both sinful and dishonorable behavior. One isue that did not help southern temperance was that early movements to curb the sale and consumption stemed from groups outside the South that were often linked to abolitionism and women?s suffrage. 44 These asociations kiled any chances that Southern Baptists might identify with such an organized movement. 43 Robert P. Lockwood, "The Evolution of Anti-Catholicism in the United States," Lockwood, ed. Anti-Catholicism in American Culture, 30. 44 Spain, At Ease in Zion: Social History of Southern Baptists, 1865-1900, 175. 145 During the 1870s and 1880s, Southern Baptists became increasingly concerned about the efects of alcohol on the general welfare. Because of their congregational nature and uneasines with the outright prohibition of alcohol, they focused first on temperance? the idea that by winning souls and teaching people about the evils of alcohol, Baptists could moraly persuade imbibers and eliminate the desire. To set good examples, congregations enacted strict rules on their members that made alcohol sinful and enforced the moral code through peer networks. 45 Because of their evangelical spirit, Baptists believed that both their ideas and values should be shared beyond the local congregation. These evangelical activities led to encounters with Catholics both at home and abroad. They believed the mesage of Jesus Christ could transform entire societies; more importantly, they believed they were representatives of God bringing universal good news. Put in these terms, it is easy to understand why those who opposed misionary eforts were labeled ?infidels? and mision fields were often describe as ?batlegrounds.? Due in part to na?vet? and in part to arrogance, Baptists found their misionary eforts in Catholic countries to be surprisingly dificult. Misionaries chronicled their frustrations in leters home and more importantly, in detailed reports that were printed in Baptist publications. Misionary reports describing exotic cultures that were published in denominational newspapers often painted Catholics (and other religions) in les than flatering terms. Frequently, the articles linked alcohol with the idea of a Catholic Church that was either so out of touch with civilization that the clergy simply did not care about its efects, or too corrupted by secular values to bring about change. Misionary 45 Ownby, Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865-1920, 11. 146 Curtis Le Law described Mexico in 1866 as a land where ??the people know absolutely nothing of the spiritual religion of our Lord.? 46 This was a culture of vices that he described as being dominated by Catholicism: Drunkennes and prostitution are the acompaniments of so-caled religious services. The Bible and its teachings have no place in the lives of the people. The religious teachers, who are priests of the Romish Church, have, by their example and teaching, led these people to the most ignorant, degraded and imoral state. 47 A corrupted state was the subject for the tract, ?The Curse of Romanism in Italy,? which alowed Southern Baptists to se Italy through misionary D. G. Whitinghil?s eyes. Whitinghil described Italy as completely overrun by Catholicism. ?The very teachers of religion themselves,? he remarked, ?for the most part have a reputation of living unchaste lives?. Within the past few days here in Rome the civil authorities have arrested and put in prison two priests, one for drunkennes and the other for ?bad conduct in a disorderly house.?? 48 As Baptists concentrated on spiritual piety, personal salvation, and righteous living, they viewed Catholicism as counter to these values. ?How can there be a high moral standard,? Whitinghil wondered, ?when the example set for the people is so bad?? 49 While such acounts in foreign lands may have given Southern Baptists some of the first acounts of the relationship betwen Catholicism and alcohol, the most disconcerting acounts came from the United States. Home mision journals and general 46 Curtis Le Laws, ?Mexico? (Baltimore: Maryland Baptist Mision Room) Pamphlet 1866, Pamphlet Collection. 47 Ibid. 48 D. G. Whitinghil, ?The Curse of Romanism in Italy? (Baltimore: Mision Literature Department of the Southern Baptist Convention) 1902, Pamphlet 1329. 49 Ibid. 147 articles printed in denominational newspapers shaped public perceptions of Catholics. The Alabama Baptist reported that ?? 65 per cent of the manufacturers of alcoholic liquors for beverages in the city of Philadelphia are Roman Catholics, and of the brewers 75 per cent are Roman Catholic communicants and pay revenue to the Roman Catholic [Church].? 50 Many Baptists adopted the idea that control of public spaces offered the best opportunity to enforce their authority on southern society. Evangelical conversion brought not only the winning of another soul for Christ, but an advocate for moral reform. Sen in this light, Home Misions was one solution for curbing alcohol consumption. Baptist leader A. C. Dixon argued that Baptists needed to plant their seds before the onslaught of imigration enveloped the South. ?Let us of the South take for Christ our growing cities, while they are young,? he wrote, ?before the evil days shal come, when the devil, infidelity, liquor, and Romanism have taken possesion.? 51 Dixon was particularly concerned about increasing funding for home misions in New Orleans and Baltimore, two of the largest imigration areas in the South. Louisiana Baptist leader E. O. Ware agreed that his state was an important Baptist mision field. In 1902, he argued that Catholics? long history in the state had made them the dominant adversary in converting imigrants and controlling alcohol. He wrote, ?Here we have French, Italian, Spanish misions?foreign fields at our doors.? 52 Among the most dificult things for Baptist misionaries to overturn, Ware contended, were the 50 Alabama Baptist, 24 January 1895. 51 Christian Index, 05 October 1893. 52 E. O. Ware, ?Louisiana as a Mision Field? (Alexandria, LA: Chronicle Publishing Company), 1902, Pamphlet 1325. 148 saloons and the cultural authority of Catholicism, although ?more and more the saloon is being outlawed.? 53 J. F. Love, Secretary of the Foreign Mision Board, SBC, wrote of his concern with the rapid growth of imigration in the Southwest and the chalenge Baptists faced there. Acording to Love, growth: ? has semingly taken al but the Roman Catholics and the saloon- keeper by surprise. Take St. Louis, for example, the first city we ever undertook to evangelize. While we have some strong churches and truly great and faithful preachers in it, there are in St. Louis 140 saloons to every Baptist church, and, if conditions prevail there which prevail where this writer has made observations, each saloon handles more men during any day in the wek, Sunday excepted, than enter any church building in St. Louis during the whole wek. 54 Love touched on a harsh reality. Although Baptists realized that while reaching out and converting the mases might curb consumption, new imigrants would constantly strain any atempts to control consumption through moral suasion. St. Louis was an example of what could happen without due diligence: here once was a prime candidate for moral regeneration; however, by the 1880s it was dominated by the saloon and a growing beer industry. The Catholic Church was acutely aware that intense imigration was creating anti-Catholic sentiments, so leaders made atempts to improve their image. Some Catholics had actualy joined the temperance movement. While promoting a temperance campaign, Beverley Carter wrote in the Alabama Baptist about their succeses, noting that even Masons, Muslims, Colored Baptists, and Catholics were participating, 53 Ibid. 54 James F. Love, ?A Great Unfinished Task? (Atlanta: Publicity Department of the Baptist Home Mision Board) Pamphlet 3175 C.2. 149 remarking that she had heard of a ?Roman Catholic Archbishop [who had] forbidden Catholic Churches in his diocese to retain in their membership any saloon keeper.? 55 Optimistic anecdotes involving temperance and Catholicism, however, were rare, and Baptists were skeptical of the legitimacy of these claims. They did not coincide with other familiar acounts of Catholicism they had read. In 1895 at a Catholic temperance meting in New York City, leaders pushed for a resolution condemning the monks at St. Vincent?s Abbey in Beatey, Pennsylvania, for brewing and seling beer. The resolution failed, but the publicity convinced the monks to discontinue beer production. Catholics explained that there was ?no harm in itself in brewing beer, but for a religious community to do so shocks public opinion in this country, and to avoid scandalizing fifty milions of people the Benedictines wil probably abandon the busines.? 56 Unconvinced, E. E. Folk, editor of the Baptist and Reflector, responded to the story, pointing out that ?Catholics do not regard brewing beer or seling it as anything wrong in itself, but simply out of deference for public opinion in this country [sic]?? abandoned the trade. Acording to Folk, to Baptists, alcohol was a sin; to Catholics, alcohol was a publicity campaign. If Catholics could sway public perceptions, they could resume their brewing practices. By 1885, many Southern Baptists had come to the conclusion that temperance had too many limitations and threw their support behind prohibition. However, much like the debates over control of public schools, prohibition divided them over the proper extent of political activism. Denominational leaders debated amongst themselves isues such as religious liberty, personal duties to the community, and the responsibility of government 55 Alabama Baptist, 01 December 1887. 56 Baptist and Reflector, 26 September 1895. 150 to shape morality. Ultimately, the debate boiled down to whether prohibiting alcohol should be administered at the local level, the state level, or by federal mandate. Initialy, most Baptists supported local option because they believed they could be much more efective in influencing local politicians and civic leaders than at state or national levels. In order to manipulate lawmaking, Baptists understood that they needed control of the public space. From the 1890s through the 1920s, denominational newspapers were filed with public statements either endorsing local candidates for their stance on alcohol or denouncing them as a part of the ?Rum and Rome? conspiracy. ?I wil never knowingly cast a vote for a constitution of either Rum or Rome,? wrote Ms. R.M. Hunter. 57 As a strong advocate for prohibition, Hunter?s editorial played on readers? anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic sentiments: There is a full-blood Roman Catholic running for one of the highest offices in one of Alabama?s richest counties. He boasts that every Catholic?and there are many in the city?and every Jew?and there are legionswil vote for him; and many a Baptist, doubtles. 58 Many local and state laws that prohibited alcohol pased during the first decade of the twentieth century. In 1907, prohibitionists were surprised that Birmingham citizens had voted to support statewide prohibition. The main reason for such skepticism was that Birmingham experienced a tremendous increase in Italian and German imigrants who were flocking to the area?s coal and stel industries. One observer of local politics commented, incorrectly in so far as the origins of its population: For Birmingham was not a city naturaly expected to go for prohibition. It is a city of mils and furnaces, a city of work and industry. Its population 57 Alabama Baptist, 16 April 1896. 58 Ibid. 151 was largely born and largely recruited from the foreign elements of our own American population. 59 Although state prohibition laws eventualy gained support in areas like Birmingham, once in place, they had a limited efect on curbing consumption. One problem that Alabama?s evangelicals did not expect to encounter in their local and statewide alcohol bans was a lack of enforcement. Especialy in southern states where taxes were low and enforcement resources scarce, local officials often chose either to selectively target ?problem areas? such as saloons, to use prohibition primarily as a social control mechanism applied to Blacks and imigrants, or to refuse to enforce prohibition at al. Birmingham pastor Alfred J. Dickinson argued inner cities were a landscape ?where the commerce in crime and vice is granted protection from the law and is ?regulated? by the police.? 60 These acounts of police corruption caled into question the efectivenes of state and local mandates. A year after statewide prohibition pased in Alabama, evangelical leaders were concerned that Mobile would simply choose not to comply with the new law. There was good reason for anxiety. For one, Mobile had a large, established Catholic population that strongly objected to prohibition. More importantly, local newspapers in Mobile had printed a series of editorials suggesting that Mobile secede from Alabama because it disliked the recently pased state prohibition law. These editorials ignited a firestorm of controversy betwen the city and the state?s evangelical leaders. The argument developed into a rivalry that had populist overtones. Editors of the Alabama Baptist informed its readership that ?Some of our good (?) [sic] citizens of Mobile have used al 59 Alabama Baptist, 13 November 1907. 60 Alfred J. Dickinson, ?Baptist Problems in Large Cities,? Our Home Field, January 1914. 152 sorts of epithets in speaking of the up-country people. Such terms as ?red necks,? [Governor] ?Comer?s piratical crew,? ?county Jakes,? ?japs,? etc. have been used.? 61 Baptist leaders responded by caling into question Mobile?s commitment to law and order, arguing that city leaders were entrenched and corrupt. Combative politics was not exclusive to Alabama. In Tennese, prohibitionists waged a war with ?wets? from the late 1800s through 1909. One prominent casualty of this feud was Nashvile American editor and state prohibitionist leader Edward W. Carmack. 62 He was an outspoken critic of Governor Malcolm Paterson and his corrupt political machine, which had fought statewide prohibition. Although the conflict in Tennese was not specificaly betwen Catholics and Protestants, the fight resembled other contests over public space. To evangelicals, Paterson?s organization more closely resembled the Democratic Party of Tamany Hal than that of the Lost Cause. In November 1908, Carmack was asasinated on the streets of Nashvile by an asociate of Paterson. The murder shocked the entire state, bolstered the state prohibition campaign, and spawned the reformist Southern Sociological Congres. For prohibition forces, this created a martyr and encouraged cals for retribution. Two months after the asasination, O. L Hailey, pastor of the Corsicana Baptist Church in Corsicana, Texas, wrote a leter to E. E. Folk, editor of the Tennese Baptist and Reflector, encouraging him to continue fighting for prohibition: ?I am keeping up with 61 Alabama Baptist, 22 April 1908. 62 For a more complete acount of the prohibition campaign in Tennese and the Carmack asasination, se Coker, Liquor in the Land of the Lost Cause: Southern White Evangelicals and the Prohibition Movement, 72-75; Israel, Before Scopes: Evangelicalism, Education, and Evolution in Tennese, 1870-1925, 90-91. 153 Tennese, and am greatly delighted with much that is being done.? 63 He went further, implying that prohibitionists might have to use violence in order to succed, much like the vigilante farmers in Western Tennese were doing. ?The Night-Riders are geting justice, I think. Now if the asasins of Carmack can be brought to justice, I shal fel that my old state is coming into her inheritance.? 64 To make maters worse, Paterson both pardoned Carmack?s asasin and vetoed the 1909 state prohibition law within six months. Baptists viewed the governor?s actions as part of a larger power struggle betwen the powerful, outside liquor interests and the honest, decent citizens of Tennese who were intent on reforming society. Paterson created a backlash that split the Tennese Democratic Party and emboldened the state legislature to override the veto, alowing for statewide prohibition. Texas Baptist J. B. Gambrel wrote to E. E. Folk commenting on the recent adoption of statewide prohibition: Dear Brother: I rejoice with you and heartily congratulate you on the pasage of the Prohibition bil by the Tenn. Legislature. It is glorious. I do not doubt that the kiling of Carmack helped to clear the atmosphere. Splendid man he was. Texas is coming, Fraternaly, J. B. Gambrel. 65 By 1915, nine southern states had pased statewide prohibition laws, but for many Baptists, these laws were not sufficient. Nevertheles, they recognized that any atempts at national prohibition required the support of the Democratic Party, and southerners were wel-aware of the influence Catholics exerted, particularly in the power centers of Northeastern cities like Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City. In addition to Irish 63 O. L. Hailey Folder 1.77, Edgar. E. Folk Papers AT663, SBHLA. 64 Ibid. 65 J. B. Gambrel Folder 1.74, E. E. Folk Papers. 154 Catholics connected with the Party, misionary B. C. Henning warned Baptists of the growing influence of Italian imigrants: ?A more potent reason for apprehension unles we evangelize these peoples, is their growing influence in the Economic, Political, Social, and Religious life of our Country.? 66 Particularly during the Progresive Era, Southern Baptists increasingly believed that they were in a unique position to remake society and preserve the American character. In this context, prohibition preserved American values against foreign invasion. ?Politicaly, socialy, and religiously, our cities are to define the making and future character of the nation,? wrote C. J. Thompson of Atlanta. 67 Commenting on the important victories gained during the prohibition campaign in Atlanta, he continued: ?It is very evident that the succes in evangelizing our country with the milions that are coming to us wil depend on what we can make of our great cities religiously. City evangelization is our task to save the nation and the world.? Progresive Era conceptions of citizenship revolved around ideas of public morality, which made anti-alcohol campaigns a natural extension of progresive reform. ?Prohibition is but the combined efort of patriotism and Christianity to get rid of a trafic that is doing more to pauperize and degrade our people than al things else,? wrote P. S. Montgomery of Ashvile, Alabama. 68 He added, ?I want Christianity and patriotism to 66 B. C. Hening, ?The Threefold Field: Foreigners, Indians, and Negroes? (Atlanta: Publicity Department of the Baptist Home Mision Board) Pamphlet 520. 67 C. J. Thompson, ?Home Board Evangelization Solving the City Problem,? Our Home Field, February 1909. 68 Alabama Baptist, 22 July 1886. 155 pervade every part of politics, entering the campaign and legislative hal, giving us true and competent men to legislate.? 69 Stories of corruption and indiference that weakened local regulations were part of a progresive platform to nationalize prohibition. World War I provided a diferent problem that ilustrated the limitations of state laws. In 1917, as young men went into training camps for World War I, Profesor W.J. McGlothlin of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary spoke before the Southern Baptist Convention at New Orleans about his concerns that the evangelical Christian values of southern soldiers might be negatively influenced by the efects of imigration: They [the soldiers] wil be subject to temptations as never before? temptations to low living, to irreligion, to profanity and blasphemy, to drinking?. Again we in the melting pot [sic]? Now, the question before us is, Shal [sic] the gospel of Jesus Christ be one of the main ingredients of this new social order? The Southern Baptists must, in predominant measure, answer this question for the South. 70 Acordingly, national prohibition symbolized evidence of Protestant Christianity?s power over society. Ratifying a constitutional amendment banning the sale and manufacture of alcohol at a time when Catholic imigrants were arriving in the United States in record numbers was intended to be a public profesion of civic Christianity and national identity. Dr. Charles Bal, Profesor at Southwestern Theological Seminary, encouraged Southern Baptists to ?make real a Christian civilization in America.? 71 In order for this charge to succed, Bel believed that the 69 Ibid. 70 W. J. McGlothlin, ?Christianize the South? (Atlanta: Publicity Department of the Baptist Home Mision Board) 1917, Pamphlet 729. 71 Charles T. Bal, ?Home Misions Must Met Unprecedented Neds,? Home Field- Excerpts 1909-1915 Folder 10.6, Una Roberts Lawrence Papers. 156 Home Misions program must focus on ?Christianizing patriotism,? writing that ?Christianity can conquer North America and the forces here that are re-making civilization and political ideas?.? The prohibition campaign ultimately succeded in pasing a national law banning the sale of alcohol. This campaign vindicated southern evangelicals intent on redeeming the South?s rightful place as the nation?s moral compas. In doing so, Baptists set their sights on Catholics as the public face of the opposition. Key to the movement?s succes was a carefully constructed anti-Catholic rhetoric that motivated Southern Baptist churches to suppres their apprehension against endorsing political campaigns and raly against an organized, highly political Catholic Church. It succeded because Baptists and other evangelicals capitalized on fears of a foreign element taking control of America. Although some historians argue that prohibition was ?the central element of the evangelical vision of a truly redeemed South,? when viewed as a corollary of anti- Catholicism, prohibition was an integral part of a larger reform movement intent on creating a distinctive southern evangelical identity. 72 Threats to southern religious hegemony, whether they came from Carnival celebrations, chalenges to the entrenched racial hierarchy, imigration from southern and eastern Europe, or the consumption of alcohol, had a compounding efect in undermining the social order. As a singular cause, Catholic resistance to prohibition might have warranted a harsh response from evangelicals. The fact that Baptists and Catholics fought over so much more? control of public schools; control over public spaces; imigration?all worked together to amplify anti-Catholic sentiments. 72 Coker, Liquor in the Land of the Lost Cause: Southern White Evangelicals and the Prohibition Movement, 256-57. 157 Chapter Five The Paradox of Womanhood: Southern Baptists, Anti-Catholicism, and Gender Although anti-Catholicism was motivated by a number of isues, gender played a pivotal role. Anti-Catholic sentiments were inextricably linked to the evolving roles of women in both the secular world and the sacred community. Baptists often portrayed white women as innocent victims of an insidious Catholic power that lured women to the faith, gained mental, spiritual, and physical power over them, and then used/abused them as the Church saw fit. Mostly men interested in elevating and protecting white womanhood in southern society perpetrated this form of anti-Catholicism. Even though patriarchy was the primary motivation in gender-based anti- Catholicism, it was not the only justification. White southern women shared the antipathy for Catholics and increasingly served on the front lines, fighting against the influence of Catholicism. They shaped anti-Catholic sentiment by advancing their reformist agenda?they served in church misions, promoted temperance and prohibition, and advanced Baptist doctrine?al of which put them in direct conflict with Catholics. Catholic women had their own agenda to reform the South. Acording to legendary Baptist misionary Annie Armstrong, Catholic women were so succesful with their mision work that they ?rivaled Jesuits? in their influence on the region. 1 1 Annie Armstrong, ?A Ned for Female Misionaries,? Pamphlet Collection, GBHLA. 158 While white southern evangelicals fought hard to protect their sacred images of womanhood, the same could not be said about their respect for Catholic imagery. More specificaly, Baptist writings referred to the Roman Catholic Church as the ?Whore of Babylon,? acused Catholics of ?Mariolatry? (the deification and worship of the Virgin Mary), and referred to convents as ?dens of inequity.? Simply stated, Baptists asaulted gendered forms of Catholic imagery with surprising irreverence because they believed Catholics held perverted views of women. Herein lies the paradox of womanhood. Baptists elevated white southern women on a pedestal, protecting them as sacred symbols of southern culture. For one to qualify for this honor, the woman had to be white, middle- or upper-clas, chaste, and Protestant. Baptists treated other white, southern, middle and upper-clas women with irreverence, and in some cases, hostility, simply because they were Catholic. Although underemphasized by historians, religious identity was a powerful force that forged a connection betwen gender and anti-Catholicism. Catholic brain-washing In March, 1875, D. B. Jutten wrote to the editor of New York?s state Baptist newspaper, the Examiner and Chronicle, informing readers that the Roman Catholic Church had abducted a tenage girl. Southern Baptist newspapers reprinted the story. Teresa (the name of the alegedly abducted) had recently renounced her Catholic faith and joined the Sixtenth Baptist Church when her parents both unexpectedly died. Her extended family (who were Catholic) sought custodial care of Teresa and, acording to Jutten, ?made constant eforts to induce her to leave the [Baptist] family with whom she 159 was employed, and making her home with them, to return to Mother Church.? 2 Furthermore, the Catholic relatives were wiling to lie in order to restore Teresa?s Catholic faith. Acording to Jutten, her aunt informed Teresa that her uncle had died. The next day, Teresa traveled to his home in Fordham, New York, ?to find that not only was her uncle not dead, but that she was to be held a close prisoner until she should renounce her faith and return to the Catholic Church.? 3 He reported that when a group of Teresa?s Protestant friends (probably members of the Sixtenth Baptist Church) learned of Teresa?s whereabouts, they petitioned the local courts to isue a writ of habeas corpus to search the family?s home and return the captive girl. With the support of local public officials, Baptists rescued her ?from the living death of a convent life,? and acording to Jutten, ?a happier girl never trod the pavements of this city than she on her return.? The Alabama Baptist reported a similar forcible ?conversion? twenty years later in 1895. This incident involved a woman in New York City who had recently left the Catholic Church and who the article claimed to have suffered ?outrageous persecution from those who have sought, but failed [sic] to win her back.? 4 The woman complained that she received ?daily leters and cards from unknown people full of vulgarity and threats,? having encountered those wielding ?stones and knives.? Catholics responded that the woman had exaggerated her claims, but editors of the Alabama Baptist came to the defense of the New York woman, remarking that ?the persecution by Catholics of 2 Alabama Baptist, 13 April 1875. 3 Ibid. 4 Alabama Baptist, 20 June 1895. 160 those who leave their church is so common that we had not thought it would be denied, at least with the expectation that the denial would be acepted by inteligent people.? These anti-Catholic anecdotes reflect Protestants anxiety over losing control of gender and family relations. Acounts such as Jutton?s were exceptional in that they insinuated that Catholic power threatened to invade the private, sacred sphere of family. These acounts envisioned Protestant women as the primary victims of Catholic deception; but other acounts involved entire families. Teresa testified that she had asked her family why they had lied, and her aunt replied that ?the priest told me it was no harm to tel a lie to save your soul.? 5 Both Teresa and her aunt, acording to Jutten, were victims of a religion that had the power to influence and, at times, even brainwash them. Once under the power of the Church, women served an important role in spreading ?the Catholic menace.? The Corruption of the Priesthood Foremost to gender-driven anti-Catholicism was the threat that priests posed to women. Southern Baptists believed that Catholic priests held positions that aforded them tremendous control over their congregations. This power led to a multitude of concerns that practicaly al Protestants held against Catholic clergy. Because of their historic doctrines favoring local congregational control and their opposition to hierarchical church authority, Baptists were particularly bothered by what they saw as the overreaching power of the priesthood. These beliefs made Baptists receptive to testimonies about clerical abuses ranging from the spiritual to the sexual. 5 Ibid. 161 For instance, the Catholic Church required that priests remain unmarried and that they take vows of chastity. Southern Baptists publicly questioned both the doctrinal soundnes of this arrangement and its practicality. They argued that the Bible offered no clear directive on celibacy and aluded to the fact that this system of living ignored the inherent weaknes of man. ?Celibacy,? the Christian Index opined, was among the first historicaly distinctive atributes of Catholicism. 6 The problem was that it imposed ?such an unscriptural, unnatural, and moraly dangerous restriction? on the priesthood. Put plainly, priests had no mechanism to relieve their biologicaly-motivated drive for sex/procreation. Baptists also believed that Catholic priests had problems controlling their use of alcohol and that Catholicism tolerated, perhaps even promoted excesive consumption of liquor. Baptists concluded that drinking led to social deviancy and crime. Catholics, particularly those who were recent imigrants, were puzzled at southern sensitivities about alcohol. In their cultural tradition, both men and women imbibed; generaly, they did not regard alcohol as a threat to decency. 7 To them, alcohol embodied an important representation of the faith. Wine symbolized the blood of Jesus Christ during Holy Communion, and it was often consumed at social functions. In Europe, Catholic monasteries had a history of brewing their own beers that dated back to the Middle Ages. Beer historian Randy Mosher explains that this tradition has persisted to the present where in Belgium, ?Monks of the Cistercian order, founded in the twelfth 6 Christian Index, 2 January 1893. 7 There were Catholic women who joined temperance organizations such as the Catholic Total Abstinence Union of America; they tended to be asimilated Irish-American Catholics. Stil, this represented a smal portion of the American Catholic population. Se, for example, Joan Bland, Hibernian Crusade: The Story of the Catholic Total Abstinence Union of America, (Washington: Catholic University of America, 1951). 162 century, place special emphasis on vocation as part of their religious observance, and the production of beer and other foods such as cheese has a central role.? 8 During periods of fasting, beer was the ?liquid bread? that provided nourishment when regular food was not alowed. Although the American Catholic Church did not have the same tradition of brewing as Europeans, by the ninetenth century some monasteries within the United States practiced this ancient tradition. Because the Catholic Church permited drinking, Baptists believed that the Church turned a blind eye to the indecent behavior alcohol caused. Concerned about lax morals, the editor of Tennese?s Baptist and Reflector wrote, ?Rum invades our homes and Rome stands by and sanctions.? 9 This troubled many Southerners, especialy men whose own experiences with alcohol were more often linked to hunting, gambling, fighting, and other forms of masculine behavior. 10 To them, alcohol was a conduit for wildnes; often, men consumed alcohol to lower inhibitions and arouse feral behavior. Grain alcohol, primarily whiskey made from corn, was a southern man?s drink of choice, best enjoyed during male-centered activities, not inside the sacred space of the home. Unlike beer and wine, grain alcohol was easy to make yet dificult to drink in large quantities. It burned while going down, and if consumed too quickly, would come up just as quickly. Men admired those who could both consume large quantities and 8 Randy Mosher, Radical Brewing: Recipes, Tales, and World-Altering Meditations in a Glass (Boulder: Brewers Publications, 2004), 122. 9 ?Roman Catholicism,? Baptist and Reflector, 12 September 1895. 10 While the relationship betwen masculinity and alcohol consumption was not exclusively southern, Ted Ownby argues that southern notions of gender made it distinctive: Ownby, Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865-1920. 163 weather the consequences of overdrinking. By consuming distiled spirits strong enough to ?put hair on a man?s chest,? men garnered honor and respect among their peers. 11 Not surprisingly, southern women who tolerated or even encouraged male intoxication were considered to be poor, the result of ?improper breeding,? or moraly degenerate. 12 Reputable women did not put themselves in a compromising position by asociating with drinking men. Men whose wives reflected the values of the Southern lady rarely brought alcohol into the home. Alcohol consumption was compatible with neither the purity of womanhood nor the sanctity of home life. In southern cities with large Catholic communities, temperance and prohibition debates made Baptists more aware of how this component of Catholic culture threatened families. In rural areas and cities without a Catholic presence, most southerners became familiar with these social customs by reading the print media and hearing mision reports in their local churches. For Southern Baptists, the idea of Catholic priests mixing alcohol with flawed religious practices must have appeared like a recipe for moral disaster. Some complained publicly that the Catholic clergy drank while on the job and knew ful wel the implications of their behavior. One Alabamian pointed out that the potential for family abuse was obvious: ?drinking is one of the habits of these ?unmarried fathers,? and parents who send their girls to Catholic convents may as wel confront the fact, that 11 Although the origins of this phrase are unknown, it was a popular masculine colloquialism in American folk culture. For additional examples, se Newbel Niles Pucket et al., Popular Beliefs and Superstitions: a Compendium of American Folklore: From the Ohio Collection of Newbel Niles Pucket, 3 vols. (Boston: G.K. Hal, 1981). 12 While the relationship betwen masculinity and alcohol consumption was not exclusively southern, Ted Ownby argues that Southern customs made it distinctive. Se, Ownby, Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865- 1920, 88. 164 these are the spiritual(?) [sic] guides of their girls!? 13 Much like the stereotypes against African-American men, alcohol could transform priests into seducers of young women or worst of al, into rapists. In addition to fears of priestly sexual abuses atributable to their use of alcohol, many Baptists also believed the priests utilized Confesion (known by Catholics as the Sacrament of Penance, Confesion, or Reconciliation) to seduce women. Reverend A. C. Dixon argued that the confesional represented a represive element in Catholicism, referring to it as ?a litle inquisition in our midst.? 14 Confesing one?s sins privately to a priest was an idea that originated as a Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation. During the Council of Trent, the Church sought the means to make the Catholic experience more spiritualy-satisfying, transforming confesions of sin from a public ritual to a private, anonymous activity. This proved to be a popular reform for the Church. While Protestants also believed that repentance was a necesary component in asuring salvation, they believed that confesing to a priest created a gulf betwen the believer and God. Since priests were human and therefore falible, placing the forgivenes of an individual?s sins in the hands of an imperfect religious leader semed to jeopardize one?s salvation. Southern Baptists discussed a variety of possibilities by which the confesional compromised the modesty and sanctity of womanhood. Noted Baptist misionary Annie Armstrong wrote that ?in the confesional everything must be told, no family secrets, no confidences of any kind withheld. Under such conditions, ruined homes as wel as 13 Alabama Baptist, 26 November 1888. 14 A. C. Dixon, The True and the False (Baltimore: Wharton, Barron, 1890), 162. 165 bondage of souls are also part of the great cost.? 15 A leter writen to the Catholic Bishop of Montreal, signed by forty-six women who converted to Protestantism and left the Church, summed up the concerns that Armstrong and other Baptists held: ? we [former Catholic women] believe it to be our duty to say a word to you on the abominations of the confesional. The abominations are such, however, as you know, as it is impossible for women to think or speak of without shame. How is it that among men who cal themselves civilized and Christians al the rules of chastity are completely forgotten in the atempt to force, under penalty of eternal damnation, women and girls to go and reveal in the ear of an unmarried man al their most secret thoughts, their most guilty desires and most hidden action? Must not your priest carry brazen faces to appear in public after hearing the revelations of misery which it is impossible for a man to hear without becoming himself corrupted? It is impossible for a woman to recount them without forgeting al laws of modesty and chastity. 16 Once priests possesed the deepest secrets of young women gleaned from confesion, they then might persuade these women to commit imoral acts. Anti- Catholic writer F. H. Sils of Savannah wrote that the confesional took ?? the reins off from the priests, and they have al kinds of opportunities to engage in the most gross and grevious [sic] fornication, vice and crime.? 17 Continuing with this line of atack, he added, ?Just think of a father and mother alowing their daughter to go to private confesion with a young, pasionate priest, and there have him compel her to pour out before him al her life and secret thoughts! Is it not just as dangerous as it looks?? 18 15 Armstrong, ?A Ned for Female Misionaries,? Pamphlet Collection, GBHLA. 16 ?Painful Disclosures,? Alabama Baptist, 3 August 1875. 17 Sils, Roman Catholicism Investigated and Exposed, 32. 18 Ibid. 166 Marriage and Family Life Priests also undermined family life. Part of the problem was that the clergy was controlled by a foreign element that did not represent southern values. Acording to the Alabama Baptist, the policies of the Roman Catholic Church facilitated Italy?s rampant bigamy. The newspaper explained that the Church would not ?recognize civil marriage; the state does not regard a church marriage as binding?. The result is that large numbers of unscrupulous men take two wives, one in the eyes of the church and one in the eyes of the state.? 19 In 1898, A.W. Briscoe, an Alabama Baptist pastor and champion of Prohibition, informed readers that in Italy, the Pope had advocated a new law ?for the regulation of the institution of marriage.? 20 Starting on Easter Sunday 1909, the new marriage law held that ?no marriage, in the estimation of the Catholic church [sic], wil be valid as betwen a Catholic and a Protestant unles it is performed by a Catholic priest in the presence of two witneses.? Americans should beware, Briscoe warned, because as more Italian imigrants came to the United States, the Pope?s dominion over religious custom, civil law, and marriage could spel trouble. Briscoe expresed several concerns with the Italian marriage law. It left the definition of matrimony in the hands of the Church and gave priests dominion over al Italian families. But foremost, he feared that it would inspire American Catholics to sek a similar law in the United States even though the idea was blatantly ?un-American.? 21 He argued that it ignored, 19 ?Bigamy in Italy,? Alabama Baptist, 24 March 1898. 20 A. W. Briscoe, ?A New Law for America: By What Authority Doest Thou These Things?,? Alabama Baptist, 30 October 1907. 21 Ibid. 167 ?the right of civil government to say what shal constitute a valid marriage and who shal have the authority to perform the ceremony. It further snubs every Protestant pastor and virtualy lodges against every couple not married by a Catholic priest the charge of unlawful cohabitation and brands their offspring as spurious. 22 Southern Baptists had reason to be concerned. Immigrants were flowing into the United States in increasing numbers, thereby increasing Catholic influence. American Baptist I. M. Halderman wrote a tract entitled ?The Scarlet Woman or the Revival of Romanism,? arguing that liberal theology had fractured distinctly Protestant American values. 23 In their place, the Catholic Church had replaced Protestants as the defender of Holy Scripture, conservative values, and was ?rapidly rising as the bulwark of the family, the champion of the home.? 24 An example of this advantage was the Catholic policy against divorce, which stated that a ?? priest wil not marry, baptize or receive into communion those who are living in open defiance of the law and testimony of God.? 25 Halderman believed that increasing divorce rates resulted from the ambiguity that had crept into twentieth-century Protestantism, an ?excuseles? trend made worse by the fact that Catholics, not Protestants, were leading the fight against divorce. By offering Catholicism as a 22 Ibid. 23 In the late ninetenth century, Protestants dealt with modernist conflicts, but the American Catholic Church was les divided. Jay Dolan argues that the Church was more succesful in resisting modernist ideas because of the Catholic tradition that Church teachings were ?definitive, indeed infalible.? Se, Jay P. Dolan, In Search of an American Catholicism: A History of Religion and Culture in Tension (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Pres, 2002), 77. 24 I. M. Haldeman, ?The Scarlet Woman or the Revival of Romanism,? Pamphlet 5099, SBHLA. 25 Ibid. 168 comparative example, Halderman used a combination of sexism, xenophobia, and anti- modernism to raly Protestants to take back America. There was no top-down set of guidelines about divorce that the Southern Baptist Convention circulated to its churches. Baptist leaders preferred the traditional patriarchal family model but also understood that men (and women) did not always engage in honorable behavior. Pastors had enough experience with spousal abuse, alcoholism, gambling, and adultery to understand that some marriages could not withstand the strain. Congregations struggled to answer questions such as whether or not divorced church members could remarry, retain church membership, and serve in church offices. 26 As Baptist women took more active roles as misionaries, reformers, and leaders, the availability of divorce reminded men that their dominion over house and home was being chalenged. On several occasions, Catholics publicly blamed Protestants for the divorce epidemic. A Catholic newspaper in San Francisco declared that divorce was a consequence of the Protestant Reformation. Taking a page from the anti-Catholic, sensationalist literature of the period, the newspaper argued that ?it was the corrupt heart of the monk [Martin Luther] who had broken his vows and married a nun who had broken hers that first legitimatized divorce.? 27 The editor of the North Carolina?s Biblical Recorder bristled in response: ?We suppose most of the sins of the modern world are placed by Catholic hands upon Protestant heads.? 28 26 Flynt, Alabama Baptists: Southern Baptists in the Heart of Dixie, 183. 27 Biblical Recorder, 20 March 1912. 28 Ibid. 169 Baptists countered that the Catholic Church was hypocritical. While in Rome, misionary D. H. Whitinghil reported that clergy led contradictory lives; they preached about how the Catholic laity should honor family life but priests did not uphold these values. Instead, some ignored their vows and took wives, while others employed concubines to satisfy the demands of their ?unchaste lives.? 29 Although some Protestants had gone on record that the Catholic Church?s stance on divorce was pro-family, Southern Baptists atacked it as another mechanism by which the Church maintained control over the family, especialy women. The Louisiana Baptist reported about ?an outrage perpetrated by a Roman Catholic priest at Mobile [Alabama], upon a Methodist lady.? 30 The woman had been married to a Catholic man for several years, but ?could not be persuaded to adopt the faith of her husband.? When the woman became il, her husband employed the local Catholic priest to solicit her permision to be baptized in the Church, but she refused. Eventualy, the woman became il enough that she lost consciousnes, and in her ?state of half sensibility, the priest came behind where she lay in bed, made the sign of the cross over her and sprinkled her with holy water, mumbling the Latin ceremony.? Rumors, Distortions, and Half-Truths In their enthusiasm to contain Catholicism, Baptists seldom scrutinized their sources. For instance, in 1919 an article circulated entitled ?Catholicism and Politics? acused President Woodrow Wilson of colluding with the Pope. Baptist newspapers across the country reprinted the story, evidently without verifying its validity. Although 29 Whitinghil, ?The Curse of Romanism in Italy.? 30 ?Unwiling Baptism,? Christian Index, 20 May 1869. 170 its origins are unknown, Protestant newspapers atributed the article to ?The National Catholic Register,? a tabloid reportedly located in Toronto, Canada. When a group of concerned Catholics began fact checking the story, they uncovered the hoax: The editor of the Banner-Herald said he got it from the Christian Index, Atlanta, and promised to investigate it, later on admiting that there was some mistake, but saying he stil believed the article represented the sentiments of Catholics. The editor of the Index said that the article had appeared in the Baptist paper Word and Way, published in Kansas City, one of whose editors, a Mr. Maiden, had gotten it from Mr. Stickland, editor of the Railway Mail Clerks? Asociation?A complete tracing proved that there was no such paper as ?The National Catholic Register? in the United States?. 31 Many times, stories like this were set in foreign countries where the details were dificult to corroborate. Misionary acounts of Catholic misdeeds in particular were often printed verbatim and without verification. For instance, Hugh McCormick wrote from Zacatecas, Mexico, about an incident betwen a local Presbyterian congregation and the area?s Catholic population. The author claimed that one of the local Catholic priests, ? excited the faithful to a frenzy of Catholic fury, then with his brother led them, armed with pistols, knives, and stones, to the Presbyterian church? where the mob ransacked the church and reportedly kiled a man?. It is said that litle Protestant child was literaly torn in pieces by these ?Catholic? women in their latest ?crusade.? 32 Mision stories focused on innocent women and children because misionaries understood that such stories generated emotional reactions and financial support. In the 1890s, Alberto Jose Diaz, a Cuban and misionary for the Southern Baptist Convention?s Home Mision Board, reported to the Convention that he was building a great Baptist 31 Bishop Benjamin Keily Papers, Catholic Laymen?s Asociation Folder, ?Meting 1919,? Savannah Diocese Archives (hereafter cited as SDA), Savannah, GA. 32 ?Another Bloody Page in the History of Roman ?Catholicism,?? Alabama Baptist, 29 May 1890. 171 church in Cuba, one that would serve as a mision control for Cuban outreach. By 1901, the Baptist Church of Havana, Diaz claimed, was host to ?over 2782 members, with 8000 candidates awaiting baptism.? 33 In addition, Diaz alegedly ran a Baptist school for Cuban children, profesing that he was winning Cuban children to Christ. For years, the HMB supported Diaz, printed his reports in mision journals, and published his story of Cuban misions in a tract titled ?Cuba for Christ.? Eventualy, other Cuban misionaries suspected that Diaz exaggerated his work. When HMB executives visited Diaz in Havana, students he recruited from the local Catholic school pretended to be Baptist school children. Because Baptist officials did not speak Spanish, his fraud went unnoticed. Critics also discovered that the Baptist hospital in Cuba was equaly fraudulent; Diaz had taken photos of children lying in cots and printed with captions claiming they were patients of the hospital. In an incredibly frank asesment of the scandal, misionary E. Cordova reflected on the irony of the Diaz scandal: Diaz thought that al his readers were low herd ignoramuses [sic], on whose prejudices he could play? I have heard him in the most withering manner, picture the Romish Priest, following the human soul from birth to the grave, in its helish greed for money? in his harsh arraignment of the Romish Priesthood he has drawn a faithful picture of himself, except that he does not charge for baptism, confirmation, and to get out of purgatory. 34 Frustrated and embarrased, Cordova concluded that Baptists had been blinded by their ambitions and too trusting of this Catholic turned Baptist misionary. He told an unidentified Southern Baptist official that ?you may fel like kicking the Home Mision 33 ?Diaz Problems,? Diaz, AJ-Correspondence 1898-1934- 6.21, Una Roberts Lawrence Papers. 34 Ibid. 172 Board? for employing Diaz for so many years, but ?before you do any kicking take yourself out and give yourself a good kicking, for Diaz has deceived you and he has deceived me and he has deceived us al?.? The narrative of misionaries fighting Catholicism abroad in benighted landscapes appealed to readers partialy because it connected to a genre of popular literature of the period related to gender and changing sexual roles. In England, authors of the late Victorian period wrote about the romance of exploration within the British Empire. These stories became quite popular not only among English but also American readers. Because of technological advances, travel became more acesible and people became more interested in the exotic world around them. Misionaries occupied the front lines of exploration, spreading their gospel. Both Empire and misionary stories explored the darknes of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, introducing readers to the primitive and the savage. Fiction writers skilfully capitalized on readers? fascination with the ?other.? While many stories told of overseas exploration, others focused on the domestic Empire. If placed abroad, the ?primitive foreigner? was a quaint curiosity; but how would the British experience the forces of the dark and unenlightened at home as a new foreign element setled in their own land? For sensationalist writers, this meant exploiting the fear of outsiders. Bram Stoker?s Dracula is the clasic example. First published in 1897, it is the story of a foreigner who invades the sacred space of the home and preys on virtuous women. 35 The novel underscored familiar themes of gender, modernity, and religious paranoia that were also present in the anti-Catholic literature of the period. 35 Bram Stoker, Dracula (New York: W. R. Caldwel, 1897). 173 The Horror of the Convents Convent horror stories were the most prominent and the most scurrilous in anti- Catholic literature. In the United States, convent horror stories go back to at least the 1830s. The most famous convent story in American history is the ?Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery of Montreal," or, as it is more popularly referred to: "The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk." 36 First published in 1836, the fictitious story was based upon the testimony of Maria Monk, who had become a nun while atending a Catholic school in Canada. In the most scandalous versions of the publication, the foremost responsibility of nuns was to sexualy serve Catholic priests. The offspring of sin?the ilegitimate children birthed in this environment?were murdered by priests and buried in a secret grave in the convent?s celar. Monk testified that she had been impregnated by a ?Father Phelan? and fled the convent to protect her unborn child. As one might imagine, images of young women being sexualy molested and children being murdered sent shockwaves throughout the United States. Historian Robert Lockwood argued that the publication ?? created an imediate storm. It was enormously succesful, received rave reviews in the contemporary Protestant pres, and was cited as an acurate picture of convent life.? 37 36 Maria Monk, Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk: or, The Hidden Secrets of a Nun's Life in a Convent Exposed (Manchester: Milner, 1836). 37 Robert Lockwood, ?Maria Monk,? Catholic Heritage (November/December 1996), 19- 21. 174 Today, scholars often refer to ?Awful Disclosures? as the Uncle Tom?s Cabin of American anti-Catholicism. 38 Although the story was proven to be a hoax, it has had incredible longevity. Lockwood estimates that milions of copies have been sold, and it presently remains in print. It was extremely popular during the 1850s when the Know- Nothing Party advanced its anti-Catholic agenda, seling an estimated 300,000 copies. 39 Georgia Baptist and noted anti-Catholic Thomas Watson printed a version in 1917 to stimulate Catholic antipathy in the South. 40 The foreword, writen by Watson himself, described ?Awful Disclosures? not only as heart-rending history, but also as an acurate characterization of the early twentieth-century South. 41 Maria Monk provided a harrowing testament as to why southern men must protect their women from the sedy grasp of Catholic priests. Such stories have their roots in sensationalist fiction steming from both the Gothic and Victorian periods in England. 42 Baptist newspapers reprinted many of these 38 Charles R. Morris, American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America's Most Powerful Church (New York: Times Books, 1997), 57; Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin (London: Piper Brothers and Company, 1852). 39 Morris, American Catholic: The Saints and Sinners Who Built America's Most Powerful Church. 40 Thomas E. Watson, Maria Monk and Her Revelations of Convent Crimes, (Thomson: Jefersonian Publishing Company, 1917). In 1927, Watson?s granddaughter, Georgia Le Brown Watson released a 2 nd edition of Maria Monk. She and her husband, Walter Johnson Brown reprinted many of Thomas Watson?s original publications and sold these via mail-order. 41 Ibid, 12. 42 Susan Grifin?s work is the most recent atempt to analyze anti-Catholic fiction writen betwen the 1830s and the turn of the century in both Britain and America. She focuses on how anti-Catholicism provided both Americans and English Victorians with a narrative through which they defined themselves as Protestant. Drawing upon a litany of notable writers such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry James, and Charlotte Bronte, Grifin highlights the various atempts by these authors to construct a Catholic Church 175 tales either verbatim, or in some cases, updated the stories slightly. In 1891, the Alabama Baptist carried a story first printed by the London Times. On the surface, the purpose of the story was to offer asistance to those who had family members in convents and were trying to contact them. Acording to the article, there were reports that convents were refusing outside visitors, and those who had appealed to the authorities had gotten nowhere. The real purpose of the story was to stoke fears of convent life. Convents, the paper claimed, were holding women against their wil and doing unspeakable things to the hostages. The police had been unsuccesful in locating the women. Acording to the article, a group of London solicitors sent ?? a representative to remove a woman whose family had atempted to remove her from the convent unsuccesfully, and were now writing ?the firm? asking for their help in freeing the young woman.? 43 After visiting the convent and being asked to leave, the representative forced his way in and ?found four nuns surrounding Mis ____ [sic], trying to stop her screams. They had pulled off her cap, torn her dres, wrenched off the cross of the order, and were apparently trying to wrestle her down to the ground.? The man rushed to the aid of the young woman and rescued her from the grasp of the nuns. The genre of literature depicted convent life as a variant of the peonage system then current in the South, where vulnerable people were held against their wil. with which Protestantism might be compared: Susan M. Grifin, Anti-Catholicism and Ninetenth-Century Fiction, Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture 141 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Pres, 2004); Se also, Ray Alen Bilington, The Protestant Crusade, 1800-1860: A Study of the Origins of American Nativism (New York: The Macmilan company, 1938); Jenny Franchot, Roads to Rome: The Antebelum Protestant Encounter With Catholicism, The New Historicism 28 (Berkeley: University of California Pres, 1994). 43 ?The Rescue of a Nun,? Alabama Baptist, 15 October 1891. 176 Because they could not marry, the Alabama Baptist warned that those who considered sending ?their girls to Catholic convents [must] confront the fact? that these institutions were led by unmarried priests. 44 Southern families who considered entrusting the Catholic Church with their daughters? religious and moral instruction would be wise to consider that lecherous priests were the ?spiritual guides of their girls.? Implicit in these warnings was the threat that once priests gained spiritual control, they would exert physical/sexual control over their subjects. In 1880, a northern Presbyterian writer publicly criticized a Baltimore Catholic convent for its treatment of women. Local priests condemned the atack and spoke in favor of the nuns who operated the facility. Alabama Baptist editor E. T. Winkler defended the atack, arguing that the Catholic Church had no reason to protest. Holding true to the convent horror story, he wrote, ?What we say to the priestly ?fathers? is: You treat your ?angelic daughters? outrageously; and every convent?s high wals and grates and bars and black veils and wan faces substantiate the asertion.? 45 ?The Priests,? Winkler argued, ??ensnare credulous young women into nunneries, where they are subjected to a life-long imprisonment and an arbitrary and degrading despotism?.? Families wishing to visit ?these religious penitentiaries, unlike the secular, are closed against the inspection of any persons save those who are interested in concealing or, it may be, perpetuating their abuses?? He added that the Catholic Church consigned its ?angelic daughters? to a fate ?more sad than that to which the laws of a land condemn its felons who are estemed unworthy to live in the society of men.? 46 44 Ibid, 26 November 1891. 45 ?The Priest and the Nun,? Alabama Baptist, 9 December 1880. 46 Ibid. 177 Utilizing language laced with sexual imagery and innuendo, Tom Watson condemned the Catholic clergy, claiming that ?these modern male Virgins of Rome [who] are almost invariably corpulent, sensual, gross; with thick, red lips, with dew-lap necks, with bulging eyes, and with sweling abdomens?,? were not only a spiritual threat, but presented a physical threat to the purity of womanhood. 47 This type of language left litle to the imagination. Watson had gained a reputation for melodramatic speeches when campaigning as a populist, but his anti-Catholic rhetoric went farther. In fact, on June 3, 1912, he was arrested for violating federal obscenity laws while engaged in an anti-clerical diatribe. Editors of the Baptist and Reflector condemned the actions of the government, claiming that ??it is not Mr. Watson who is realy on trial. It is Roman Catholicism. In bringing this suit against Mr. Watson the Roman Catholics have only advertised to the world their own shame.? 48 Even though many publications printed by his Jefersonian Publishing Company were regarded as either obscene or un-American and banned by the United States Postmaster General, public demand for the anti-Catholic literature remained high. 49 Another Atlanta busines, the Index Printing Company, was les controversial and had the capacity to influence the region?s readership. As one of the largest printing companies in the southeast, the company printed history books, political memoirs, and 47 Ibid, 14-15. 48 ?Watson on Trial,? Baptist and Reflector, 2 December 1915. 49 Watson's isolationist views led to his frequent criticisms of President Woodrow Wilson and the United States? entry into World War One. This criticism violated the Espionage Act of 1917 and was the primary reason that the United States Postmaster General banned the Jefersonian newspaper from circulating through the mail: C. Vann Woodward, Tom Watson, Agrarian Rebel (New York: The Macmilan Company, 1938). 461. 178 public records. Arguably, the busines served as litle more than a vehicle of power for Atlanta?s wel-connected. In 1916, a competitor acused the company of insider bidding and filed a lawsuit ?on the ground that at the time of the bids for the contract were applied for, submited, and opened, the Atorney General, the state school commisioner, and the solicitor general for the Toombs judicial circuit were al stockholders in the Index Printing Company.? 50 Index won the lawsuit by re-purchasing the stocks from politicaly-compromised stockholder and eventualy won the Georgia public printing contract. The company also printed Baptist religious publications, including the Christian Index, and published anti-Catholic books and pamphlets. 51 Even though most of these publications were writen by religious figures, they blended political ideology with fervent religious convictions. One example was T.W. Calaway?s Romanism vs Americanism: The Roman Catholic System, which mirrored the sensationalist literature of the early 1800s. 52 In fact, the author noted in the preface that his book was ?a compilation of historical facts, and litle originality is claimed.? 53 In his book, Calaway portrayed Catholicism as the foreign element intent on conquering the United States through deception. The book was based on a number of Calaway?s anti-Catholic sermons preached in Chatanooga, Tennese, during the early 1920s and described in meticulous details why Catholics were not one hundred percent Americans. 50 The Southeastern Reporter, vol. 92, West Publishing Company, 1917, p 61. 51 Mrs. Wiliam H. Felton, My Memoirs of Georgia Politics (Atlanta: Index Printing Company, 1911), 16. 52 Timothy Walton Calaway, Romanism vs. Americanism: The Roman Catholic System (Atlanta: Index Printing Co., 1923). 53 Ibid, 5. 179 During the second decade of the 20 th century, Southerners continued to be exposed to a toxic mixture of yelow journalism, sensationalist fiction, and religious demagoguery. Catholics fought back but struggled to overcome the onslaught of bad publicity. They published pamphlets that questioned the veracity of sensationalist literature. To anti-Catholic writers who published anonymous acusations, the Church claimed that ?a man who is afraid to put his name to a libel is a coward, unworthy of notice.? 54 More disconcerting were the newspapers and publishing companies that specialized in anti-Catholicism such as Watson?s Jefersonian and The Menace. Catholics especialy targeted Wiliam Lloyd Clark, publisher of the Railspliter Pres, as a criminal who ?on October 20, 1911, was convicted in Peoria, Ill., for sending obscene literature through the mail.? 55 They skewered Maria Monk, ?the ?escaped Nun,? who when near her death admited she had never been a Nun. She was a thief and a prostitute who died in jail.? They debunked the story of Evangelist L. J. King, who claimed to be a reformed ex-priest of the Roman Church. Acording to the Catholic expose: He was arrested in Huntington, Va., August, 1909, as a ?public diseminator of verbal filth,? and expeled from the town. A few months ago, the Methodist mayor of Phoenix, Arizona, ordered him out of town because of his indecent diatribe against Protestant as wel as Catholic women. In Los Angeles, California, on April 20, 1912, he was forced to admit that he never was a priest?. 56 They also publicized the arrest of Thomas E. Watson, whose sensationalized and salacious anti-Catholic expos?s were banned from the mail as ?imoral literature.? They 54 ?The Slime of the Serpent: The ?Menace??A Journalistic Reptile,? Pamphlet 3820, Pamphlet Collection, SBHLA. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. 180 noted that, ?The Jury said that his writings were so imoral that, contrary to the custom of the Court, they should not be spread in full in the indictment.? 57 Although the asertive responses by Catholic writers may have reasured other Catholics, it did litle to disuade Watson and his audience. Eventualy, he was acquited of the charges against him and redoubled his atacks on Catholicism. In fact, his sway over public perceptions remained so strong that Benjamin Keiley, Bishop of the Savannah Diocese, created the Catholic Laymen?s Asociation, an information bureau specificaly designed to counter the acusations and lies that Watson spread through the media. Public outrage about Georgia convents was the first isue that the CLA addresed. Following a year-long campaign by Watson, the Georgia legislature in 1916 voted 138 to 22 in favor of a convent inspection law. The Veazey Bil (named after its sponsor, Georgia senator Prior Gardner Veazey) alowed for ?state inspection of al such institutions as sanitariums, convents, monasteries, and so caled ?Houses of the Good Shepherd.?? 58 The purported reasoning behind the suspension of Habeas Corpus was to protect Protestant children (especialy young girls) from being ?hidden away in convents and Papal nurseries.? 59 57 Ibid. 58 Watson?s Magazine (also known as Watson?s Jefersonian and The Jefersonian), vol. 23, No. 5 (September 1916), 292. In addition to serving in the Georgia state senate, Prior Gardner Veazey was a Southern Baptist preacher who pastored Powelton Baptist Church in Powelton, Georgia. He was active in the Georgia Baptist Convention and was a close friend of Tom Watson. Se, Bertram Wyat-Brown, "Tom Watson Revisited," Journal of Southern History 68, no. 1 (2002), 3-30. 59 Watson?s Magazine. 181 The law sparked imediate controversy. Two Georgia newspapers, the Augusta Chronicle and the Tifton Gazete, imediately condemned the new law. When Bishop Keiley wrote an editorial that defended the southern womanhood of the Sisters of Charity, the Atlanta Constitution refused to print it. After the first convent inspections began, a number of New South newspaper editors from Greenvile, South Carolina to New Orleans, panned the law. Some believed it was bad for economic development. Others worried that it confirmed the worst stereotypes of the South. One writer remarked that ?Georgia was walowing in the mire of ignorance and iliteracy.? 60 Although the newspapers vigorously debated the merits of the law, Georgia Baptists were almost entirely of one mind. The Christian Index offered its full support for the Veazey law: It sems to us a bad sign when an institution of any sort does not welcome the closest inspection by the officers of the law. If everything in any kind of a school, convent, orphanage or home is as it ought to be, the closest scrutiny would be welcomed?. There must be a skeleton in the closet of some of these Catholic institutions, and Bishop Keiley must know that it is there and is afraid it wil be discovered. 61 M. Ashby Jones, progresive pastor of First Baptist Church of Augusta, was the only prominent Baptist minister to go on record against the measure. In a sermon preached on August 6, 1916, he blasted the law as a violation of the separation of Church and State and concluded that it was ?shamefully? directed ?at the Roman Catholics.? ?If there had been the slightest suggestion made that the Baptist orphanage Hopevile? he 60 Veazey Bil Scrapbook, Bishop Benjamin Keiley Papers. 61 Christian Index, 9 November 1916. 182 said, ?or the Methodist school at Macon, should be searched for possible crime, no Legislature would have dared pas such a Bil.? 62 Bishop Keiley mobilized an interesting strategy to oppose the new law. He wrote newspaper articles atributing the law to the ?notorious Tom Watson? and caling it ?an insult to the inteligence and decency of Georgia? 63 In a leter to the Augusta Chronicle, Keiley even turned the argument for the protection of white womanhood upside down, writing that he ?must confes, a strange and unexpected experience to find myself living in a State where the elected representatives of the people vote for a measure atacking the character of southern women.? 64 The nuns in Georgia performed similar acts of community service (temperance, education, poverty relief) to their Baptist counterparts, held themselves to the highest standards of moral purity, and were white, middle-class women; so how could they be considered anything les than the ideal example of the southern lady? The preliminary convent inspections uncovered no violations. Aided by United States? entry into World War I, the Veazey Law fel out of favor with most secular newspapers in the state. By 1918, the CLA claimed to have curbed the ?frequent flings at Catholics,? if only for the moment. 65 Succes came via a publicity campaign that became known nationaly as ?The Georgia Plan.? This consisted of a three-part propaganda program that included obtaining newspaper space speaking against anti-Catholicism (advertisements, newsleters, and editorials), circulating educational pamphlets, and by 62 ?Veazey Bil Scrapbook.? 63 Ibid. 64 Augusta Chronicle, 19 August 1916. 65 ?Meting 1918,? Catholic Laymen?s Asociation, Bishop Benjamin Keiley Papers. 183 directly writing leters to editors demanding corrections to mistatements. In its executive report, the CLA claimed that the result was ?not a paper in the State? that stil ?frequently contains editorials or new mater designed to misrepresent Catholics and their beliefs.? The initial succes of the CLA was short-lived. Within a few years, both Alabama and Florida elected governors who ran on overtly anti-Catholic tickets. The Ku Klux Klan established a beachhead at Stone Mountain, Georgia, and grew rapidly during the 1920s, focusing on racism, xenophobia, and the protection of white womanhood. In addition to Georgia, Arkansas, Alabama, and Florida al pased similar convent inspection laws. By the 1920s, the print media wielded enormous power over southern society and had succesfully used gender to amplify anti-Catholic sentiments. The popularity of convent inspection laws demonstrated two important points about southern religious culture. First, white southerners were wiling to implement extreme measures to protect their women, even if it meant encroaching on religious liberty and people?s personal rights. Second, southern womanhood was not based entirely on moral purity; it was also shaped by religious identity. 66 Catholic women did not qualify for the respect and reverence aforded Protestant women. Southern Baptists invested much efort into the preservation of white womanhood but perceived that being Catholic was much like being African-American in the South?it automaticaly excluded their women from inclusion in ?southern womanhood.? To Baptists, nuns were first and foremost Catholics; their identity as middle-clas women 66 In a chapter entitled "'Cleaning Up' Morality: The Politics of Sex and Age," Nancy Maclean argues that, in Athens, Georgia, the Klan emphasized moral purity as a means to establish a distinctive identity: MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan, 99. 184 was secondary. They were adversaries in the fight for control of southern society; therefore, they were not to be treated as ladies. It is no acident that some Protestants had long denounced Catholicism using a phrase from the book of Revelation: ?Whore of Babylon.? The diference betwen the images of the southern lady and the gendered symbols of Catholicism constituted a striking feature of Southern Baptists? anti- Catholicism. This symbolic language was at the same time apocalyptic, obscene, and gendered. In the introduction of his xenophobic publication, ?The Scarlet Woman or The Revival of Romanism,? I. M. Halderman explained that the Bible forewarned Christians about ?a scarlet-clad woman? who was ?drunken with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.? This image, he added triumphantly, was ?? the picture of a universal, a catholic [sic], church.? 67 Other Baptist leaders made the same connection. After his close analysis of the Bible, Liberator magazine editor J. A. Scarboro concluded that the symbolic Biblical language ?Incarnation of Satan? and ?Mother of Harlots? referenced the Roman Catholic Church. 68 T. W. Calaway of Chatanooga, like Haldermann, used the term ?The Scarlet Woman,? to refer to the Catholic Church; misionary John Eager caled it ?the siren;? and F. H. Sils referred to it as ?The Romish Lady.? 69 These demeaning descriptive terms, al feminine, represented a nuanced way of contrasting positive concepts of Protestant southern womanhood with corrupt images of a church polluted, soiled, and ruined. 67 Ibid. 68 J. Lewis Smith Smith, notes to Romanism Routed, or the False Claims of Romanism Refuted (Magnolia, AR: Liberator Pres, 1913). 69 Calaway, introduction to Romanism vs. Americanism: The Roman Catholic System: 120; Eager, Romanism in its Home; Sils, Roman Catholicism Investigated and Exposed. 185 Southern Baptists believed that Catholicism was a dishonorable religion. When measured against the standards of southern womanhood, it did not mater that Catholic women could be charitable, family-centered, and chaste because the offspring of a ?Whore? could never become aceptable in southern society. Class, Gender, and Catholicism Class perceptions contributed to gendered representations of anti-Catholicism. A smal number of Catholic women came from the South?s gentry. Ironicaly, they enjoyed the respect of belonging to families enshrined in Lost Cause mythology. Southern Baptist misionary John Eager wrote many articles about the evils of Catholicism in Italy, but he cautiously characterized elite women, particularly Italian royalty. In describing Queen Margherita of Savoy, Eager noted, ?like most Italians, [she] is a Catholic, but unlike most of them, is pious and devout.? 70 He also emphasized how her feminine qualities complemented her position, writing that ?amidst her many duties and pleasures she does not neglect the claims of her church, and it is to be hoped that she is truly a Christian.? When Baptists displayed anti-Catholic sentiments toward lower-clas Catholic women, they based it more on cultural superiority than personal antipathy. Much of the misionary zeal of the period reflected what Rudyard Kipling caled ?The White Man?s Burden.? 71 These imigrants and natives of foreign lands were poor, uneducated, uncivilized; if they had any experience with Christianity, generaly this had come from 70 ?From Kind Words, The Queen of Italy,? Alabama Baptist, 17 April 1884. 71 Rudyard Kipling, "The White Man's Burden," McClure?s Magazine, 12 February 1899). 186 exposure to the Catholic Church. Rarely were they targets of Baptist hostility; instead, they were the recipients of aid and were considered candidates for conversion. Misionary Marie Buhlmaier was stationed in Baltimore, where many Catholic imigrants arrived from overseas. Working at the port of entry, she focused her eforts on poor women and children, whom she believed were ignorant but receptive. In a mision tract titled ?After Many Days,? she described a succesful misionary encounter she had with a sick imigrant: Feling great sympathy for her, we tried to bring her cheer and comfort by visiting her at the hospital at least once a wek? She was connected with the Roman church [sic], and it was hard for her to find her way out. But we felt sure there was a work of grace going on in her heart and faithfully we continued to minister to her needs both physicaly and spiritualy, constantly sowing the gospel sed. 72 Because of this mision work, the imigrant woman would later become a Baptist. The key to succesful conversions was imediate contact; imigrants were more maleable upon arrival. Buhlmaier wrote, ?The imigrant needs our Christian ministries at the port of entry? To wait til he is able to understand our language would be fatal, in many instances.? 73 Most female Baptist misionaries were like Marie Buhlmaier, part of the educated middle clas. They were an important component of the Progresive Era reform impulse, believing that their work uplifted the poor and uneducated. A female Baptist misionary identified only as Ms. Edwards taught the tools of domesticity to Cuban women. Acording to the mision report, ?she had [sic] fed them, clothed them, given them 72 Marie Buhlmaier, ?After Many Days,? Pamphlet 765, Pamphlet Collection. 73 Ibid. 187 comfortable quarters and good moral and literary training? She has [sic] taught them to be neat and tidy; to be splendid housekeepers; to sew, to wash, iron, bake and cook.? 74 The language training and the domestic skils that the Cuban women acquired made quite an impact in the community, enough that it caught the atention of the local Catholic priest, who found it ?a pity? that a Baptist misionary, ?not a good Catholic,? was giving young girls English lesons. Whether or not this acount in a contemporary Baptist newspaper is an acurate reflection of the Catholic priest, it certainly is a reflection of the evangelical impulse to utilize social ministries to convert Catholic women. Much like their Baptist counterparts, Catholic women in the South participated in mision programs that were shaped by a domestic ideology and reformist spirit. For these mostly middle-class, Irish Catholics, the family was the center of life, blesed by God, and equipped to negotiate the modern world. The Catholic Church supported this demographic because by the twentieth-century, these Catholics were more likely to understand southern evangelical religious culture and thus succed in planting the seds of Catholicism. In 1894, the Alabama Baptist simply reprinted an excerpt from Catholic newspapers Church Progres and Catholic World, but the intent was to mock the content. The article was a devotional that emphasized the importance of St. Joseph. 75 As patron of the universal church, St. Joseph had special powers over ?the entire Holy Family,? that provided ?graces for domestic life.? Although Baptist considered such beliefs to be ?idolatry,? Catholics emphasized similar domestic qualities to those of southern 74 ?A Noble Work by a Woman in Cuba,? Christian Index, 28 February 1901. 75 ?Roman Catholic Idolatry,? Alabama Baptist, 1 March 1894. 188 evangelicals. Acording to Church teachings, women?s function was domestic and home bound? purity, eficiency, and piety? each of which helped to establish a solid foundation for the home. 76 Charity was also an important aspect of domestic virtue. Catholics joined confraternities (organizations with specificaly religious purpose), which were devoted to a particular saint, especialy honoring Mary, mother of Jesus. Participation in these groups resulted from a mixture of religious ritual and social activism. For women, activism offered a chance to serve the les fortunate through programs that benefited education, healthcare, imigrant needs, and child welfare. These programs also gave the Church the opportunity to expand its influence in the United States. Such eforts paraleled work by contemporary Protestant women. Contested Public Spaces and Gender Some of the most heated anti-Catholic rhetoric directed at women resulted from contested public spaces. Protestants operated from a disadvantage over public space. Deply divided about whether churches should engage in social ministries, they encountered Catholic nuns with no such reservations. Reform-minded Protestant women clashed with reform-minded Catholic women for control over southern society. Baptists were suspicious of any charity work performed by Catholics. They criticized the Church for having a veneer of charity, but with litle substance. Misionary Sarah Hale testified that while in Mexico, she witnesed a Catholic woman (who was il) return home with her two young children to sek charity from her community. She enrolled her daughter in 76 Dolan, In Search of an American Catholicism: A History of Religion and Culture in Tension, 87-88. 189 the local Catholic convent school and her son in a Jesuit school. The misionary claimed that the Church, aware of the woman?s circumstances, took advantage of her misfortune by charging so much for tuition that she had to remove her children from school. Hale and other Protestant misionaries eventualy cared for the woman?s health and her children?s care, while the woman ?talked to us about the charities of the Catholics.? 77 Frustrated by the power the local Church had over the woman, Hale lamented that Catholicism was so entrenched in the woman?s psyche that their eforts to minister were ?al for nothing.? 78 Noted Baptist misionary Annie Armstrong was pasionate about foreign misions and, at times, could also be asertively anti-Catholic. In a pamphlet produced by the Foreign Mision Board, she presented her case that the Catholic Church in Mexico enslaved the poor by exploiting their superstitions and stealing their money. Acording to Armstrong, financial exploitation was ?by no means the greatest price which [was] paid?? but rather the ?loss of spiritual blesings which come through enlightenment of the Bible, and a true conception of Jesus Christ as Savior?.? 79 Curiously, such arguments were later utilized by secular socialists and communists against the Catholic Church in Latin America. In ?Field Notes,? the Alabama Baptist mirrored Armstrong although the seting was a national scandal in New York. The newspaper reported that Heires Caroline Merril bequeathed ?some $390,000 to Cardinal McCloskey and other Catholics.? 80 77 ?The Charities of Catholics,? Baptists and Reflector, 2 November 1905. 78 Ibid. 79 Armstrong, ?The Cost of Being Catholic in Mexico,? Pamphlet Collection, GBHD. 80 Alabama Baptist, 29 November 1877. 190 Merril was Protestant but lived under the care and ?influence by a Catholic nurse and priest during her last days of imbecility.? 81 Relatives contested the wil on the grounds that Merril was not of sound mind when she signed her wil; instead, the Catholics manipulated her while she was sick and secured their place in her wil. Although this event did not occur in the South, it implied that purportedly nurturing Catholic women had a hidden agenda. Editors of the Baptist and Reflector showed contempt for Catholic ministries to the poor and the sick. ?Nothing delights Catholics more than to furnish nurses for the young children in our homes,? the Reflector warned. The newspaper contended that Catholic nurses had ulterior motives in their charity: We al know the efect and influence of a kind nurse upon the child?s mind. They try to talk and act like their nurse in everything. What beter chance could they wish to make impresions upon the childrens? minds, when they often se no one for a whole day at a time, except the nurse. Instead of being taught by mother upon retiring at night to lisp [sic] the prayer, ?Now I lay me down to slep,? they are taught by nurse the ?Hail Marys,? and the counting of beads, and that almost before the mother is aware of it. 82 The Sisters of Charity was the dominant Catholic organization that focused on service to the lower clases, especialy to the sick. Devoted to Mary and inspired by St. Vincent de Paul, the patron saint of charity, this vast organization had representatives in al southern states. Annie Armstrong, in an appeal for female misionaries, noted that the Catholic Church owed much of its succes in retaining its hold upon the lower clases ?due to the power of the ?Sisters,? who constantly visit from house to house. If women?s influence is thus atracted to error, surely it may be made a greater power in drawing 81 Ibid. 82 ?Roman Catholicism,? Baptist and Reflector, 12 September 1895. 191 hearts to the Truth of the gospel.? 83 This summons to Baptist social services for the poor as a way of countering Catholic social ministries had only mixed succes. Alarmed at the growing power of the Sisters of Charity in Tennese, the Baptist and Reflector warned its readers: ?They open schools everywhere that they may control the education of their sex. They establish orphanages and hospitals. They take the hand of the friendles that they may win their confidence, and stand by the sick and dying that they may gain their ear?.? 84 ?The Sisters,? the Reflector stated, had two driving principles behind their actions: ?devotion to Rome and hatred to Protestants.? The only way to counter this Catholic encroachment on southern public space was by recruiting ?Protestant sisters? who would ?win a way for the gospel where like influences have won a way for error.? In Birmingham, controversy sweled over alowing Sisters of Charity to manage a charity hospital. Many evangelicals were concerned that if alowed to operate the facility, Catholics would use it as a mechanism for conversion. A concerned Baptist layman warned that the Sisters brought with them the full power of the Catholic Church: We [Baptists] do not intend to in any way underestimate the benevolent and often times Christian spirit of these self-sacrificing Sisters of Charity, but they are under the control and direction of Jesuitical priesthood, and that means anything else than even tolerance of other Christians. That means that the Birmingham hospital wil shut out al other pastors, and al other Christian workers, from visiting the patients. That every efort wil be made to proselyte Protestants to Catholicism. [sic] 85 On the other hand, Baptist women did not volunter to create and operate a charitable Baptist hospital for the community?s poor. 83 Armstrong, ?A Ned for Female Misionaries,? Pamphlet Collection. 84 ?The Armies of Rome,? Baptist and Reflector, 4 July 1895. 85 Alabama Baptist, 24 March 1887. 192 Feminizing Catholicism Although Baptists had many public squabbles with confraternal groups, they considered nuns the most adversarial of Catholic women. 86 While nuns operated in a highly patriarchal environment, they were formidable opponents. They were educated, commited to the Catholic Church, and efective at converting Protestants. More importantly, they operated in a protected world outside the realm of evangelical hegemony and influence. From numerous anti-Catholic stories, Baptists learned of convents and the women who dweled in these ?Catholic prisons? and who did the evil bidding of the Church. As convent horror stories demonstrate, nuns were emblematic of the fear of the unknown?the stranger that operated outside the normative. Nuns had a mystical quality about them that Baptists simply did not comprehend. There was no measure of comparison within Protestantism. For instance, in southern society, tremendous importance was given to marriage. The idea of dedicating one?s life, both spiritualy and physicaly, to the Church was perplexing. Many Baptist misionary women were independent and cared litle about marriage, but they also understood that their service to the denomination was peripheral to marriage. 87 Southern womanhood demanded this of them. On the other hand, southern Protestant definitions of womanhood excluded nuns. To Protestants, they represented an enigma. One could not help but admire their dedication; but the sexual mythology of convent life left many Protestants skeptical about 86 MacLean argues that anti-Catholics considered nuns to be "pasive victims of priests, who exploited their social power to gain sexual aces." Se, MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan, 119-20. 87 Jean E. Friedman, The Enclosed Garden: Women and Community in the Evangelical South, 1830-1900, The Fred W. Morrison series in Southern studies (Chapel Hil: University of North Carolina Pres, 1985), 32-33. 193 how devout these women realy were. By detailing the particulars of aleged sexual servitude behind convent wals, the stories implied that these women were anything but chaste and devoted. To Catholics, they were an important symbol in the Church, representing chastity and motherhood. They were distinctive figures who served a sacred caling. To Protestants, they were at best ambivalent models of true southern womanhood. Most importantly, nuns served as a symbol of Mary and the miracle of the Virgin Birth. They lived lives of chastity and acted as matriarchs of the Church. Catholics paid reverence to Mary through religious iconoclasm, communal celebrations, and special devotions. The sheer quantity of symbols and rituals that Catholics established to honor the Virgin Mary bafled Protestants. Southern Baptists often criticized Catholicism for misguided doctrine (they believed Mary had a routine sex life after the birth of Jesus and that his siblings were in no way divine in origin) and were particularly disturbed by Catholic obsesion with Mary. The Alabama Baptist published an article titled ?Mariolatry? to explain this phenomenon to its readership: Rome has not only placed Mary as a mediator along with Christ, thus making her church a church of Mary, instead of a Christian church, but she places Mary above Christ as a savior, and this placing of Mary above Christ is not for the ignorant and unlearned, it is for the wise and learned. 88 Although Baptists believed that Mariolatry was bad doctrine and people who ?worshipped Mary? were misguided, they did not dare belitle the image of the mother of Jesus. Instead, they focused their disapproval on those who esentialy transformed her into an idol, arguing that the Catholic Church had perverted the significance of Mary. 88 Alabama Baptist, 24 April 1890. 194 Baptist I. M. Halderman claimed that in Rome, the practice of Mariolatry could be found in the most notable churches such as St. Peter?s Cathedral: There are churches specialy [sic] devoted to the worship of the virgin, her images are covered with gold and silver tributes. In one church the image is piled about with crutches and almost hidden under the offerings of those who believe themselves to have been healed or blesed by her interposition and intercesion. Before that stony figure, men and women and litle children kneel in rapt adoration. It is idolatry?pure and simple. 89 Baptists pointed to Catholic icons of the Virgin Mary as evidence of idolatry. The Lady of Lourdes devotion was one example. This ceremony, originating in France, alegedly offered devotes supernatural powers. Many Catholics believed that the water from this French shrine had healing properties, and they had it shipped to the United States, where it became wildly popular. To American Catholics, this devotional symbolized the life-giving qualities of the mother of Christ and linked their lives to one of the important centers of Catholic culture. To Baptists, it smacked of superstition more apt to come from medieval Europe than modern religion. As Catholic historian Jay Dolan explained, ?It clearly marked Catholicism in the United States with a foreign stamp.? 90 Southern Baptists considered Catholicism?s gendered symbols biblicaly unsound and alien to their culture. For critics, these easily ridiculed symbols demonstrated another manner whereby Baptists could contrast their beliefs against Roman Catholicism. To protect their idealized images of ?southern ladies,? Southern Baptist men abandoned their code of chivalry to level atacks against feminized symbols of the Catholic Church, 89 Haldeman, ?The Scarlet Woman.? 90 Dolan, In Search of an American Catholicism: A History of Religion and Culture in Tension, 87. 195 including acusations of idolatry and sexual deviancy. Baptist women did their part, countering the Catholic institutions, beliefs, and practices that they believed threatened their southern cultural status. Both Baptist men and women invoked anti-Catholicism whenever they needed to protect their gendered notions of white southern evangelicalism. 196 Conclusion In 1914, J. M. Frost looked back on the short history of the Southern Baptist Convention?s Sunday School Board. He compared its growth to a vine he had watched climb the magnolia tree that stood outside his Church Street office window. Although he never saw the vine grow, day by day it crept higher, ?climbing by the inherent forces it carried within itself, clinging to the tree for its support?.? 91 Like the vine growing on the tree, in order for the Board to succed, it needed to establish roots and find opportunities for growth. Frost believed that the answer was found in embracing the power of the periodical. Modeled after the American Baptist Publication Society?the gold standard of Protestant publishing in the United States?the focus on periodicals had given ?life and power? to distinctive Southern Baptist principles. 92 The denomination had come a long way, he explained, from ?the severe struggle of our fathers in those far-away years? to the leading southern religious institution. 93 During his nearly two decades of service, he transformed the Board into a powerful shaper of Baptist identity. By the 1920s, one of those identity markers, anti-Catholicism, had sweled into a national concern. Because of its asociation with the Ku Klux Klan, the tendency has been to view anti-Catholicism as having burst upon the fragile psyche of the American public in that decade, only to disipate by the end of the decade. Acording to Nancy 91 Frost, The Sunday School Board: Its History and Work, 85-86. 92 Ibid., 87. 93 Ibid., 9. 197 MacLean, one of the primary motives of her book, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan, was not only to understand this ?far right? organization, but also to explain how it convinced others to join in their crusade. The fact was, Baptists needed litle convincing about Catholics. Due to the comprehensive coverage of Catholicism in previous religious periodicals, anti-Catholicism was already a familiar topic of contempt. From 1870 to 1920, Southern Baptists spent a great deal of time contemplating Roman Catholicism. Baptist writers atacked Catholic doctrine because they believed it contradicted the Bible. Periodicals printed numerous articles that analyzed the biblical soundnes of papal authority, the sacraments, and the symbolic elements of the Church. In their criticism, some writers claimed that although al Protestant doctrine difered from Catholicism, Baptists? doctrine positioned their denomination most diferently from Catholicism. One Baptist leader described it as an ?antipodal? relationship, with Baptists at one end, Catholics at the other, and al other Protestants fiting somewhere in the middle. 94 Anti-Catholicism was a mechanism that alowed Baptists to refine their own beliefs, emphasize their republican religious virtues, and promote themselves as the most loyal adherents to biblically-sound principles and as protectors of religious liberty. Historian Ira Birdwhistel argues that Southern Baptists shaped ?their perceptions primarily in isolation from Roman Catholics.? 95 This was particularly the case during the 1870s and 1880s, when imigrants eschewed the South and Catholic encounters occurred either in the North or in a foreign country. During this time, most anti- 94 Forrester, The Baptist Position, 29. 95 Birdwhistel argues that through the 1960s, Baptists continualy shaped their perceptions in isolation from Catholicism. Se, Birdwhistel, "Southern Baptist Perceptions of and Responses to Roman Catholicism, 1917-1972," 221. 198 Catholicism contained in southern religious periodicals addresed doctrinal diferences and northern anecdotes. The other two areas of prominence were education and misions. Stories abounded about clashes outside the South, from debates over reading the Bible in public schools to the competition for winning souls in Italy. There was an esoteric quality to this anti-Catholic literature whereby Southern Baptists could point to the outside world as evidence that the South was stil the moral center of the United States. At a time when Southerners were re-imagining their peculiar nature, anti- Catholicism provided another means to reconstruct religious identity. 96 During the 1890s, much anti-Catholic literature continued to originate from the North, driven by individuals such as Josiah Strong and by anti-Catholic groups such as the American Protective Asociation. For Southern Baptists, this was a transitional decade. The Sunday School Board gave the denomination more control to shape their distinctive mesage. There were other indicators of a growing independence. They debated the relevance that national anti-Catholic organizations, such as the American Protective Asociation, had in the South, preferring to engage with Catholicism on their own terms (the A.P.A. made few inroads in the South). While census data reveals that compared to other regions Catholics were comparatively underrepresented in the South, Baptists increasingly gave credence to a threatening new cultural presence with which they engaged. Whether real or imagined, the literature reveals that Baptists believed imigration was creating a southern Catholic culture. Baptist writers focused on peripheral batlegrounds such as Savannah and New Orleans. They also wrote about mision encounters in Catholic countries closer to home, such as Mexico and Cuba. On 96 Harper, The Quality of Mercy: Southern Baptists and Social Christianity, 1890-1920, 112. 199 the surface, these acounts described eforts to win souls; but they also revealed a denomination increasingly consumed with containing Catholicism and preventing its penetration into the South. In the early twentieth century, Southern Baptists wrote extensively about Catholicism. Primarily, these writings focused on authority and control. In cities like Birmingham, Atlanta, and Nashvile, Catholics expanded their presence and chalenged cultural norms. Critics of Catholicism launched a full-scale atack. They portrayed the Catholic Church as an insidious organization hel-bent on political and cultural domination. As champions of the separation of Church and State, they argued that Catholicism and democracy were incompatible, citing cals for public funding of parochial schools and Catholics working in government or holding public office as examples of religious liberty violations. They characterized the Catholic clergy as the foot soldiers of the Pope, aserting that priests held enormous power over their congregations. Those who sent their children to parochial schools stood the chance of having their children brainwashed into Catholicism. Some writers ascribed deviant gendered notions to Catholicism, implying that they threatened the sanctity of southern womanhood. A few ventured into wild sensationalism, acusing nuns with luring young women into convents and priests with sexual abuse. Not al notions of anti-Catholicism were advocated with such melodrama; some emphasized social uplift. Historian Keith Harper argued that during the Progresive Era, many Baptists became more concerned with solving societal problems through their faith, 200 transforming ideas into actions. 97 Baptist women like Marie Buhlmeir ministered to Catholic imigrants as they descended from pasenger vesels in Baltimore harbor, teaching them asimilation skils and converting them into Baptists. This was the paternalistic side of anti-Catholicism, Baptist reformers emphasizing enlightenment through salvation. Roman Catholicism, they claimed, preferred that its adherents remain ignorant, relying on superstitious rituals, symbols, and customs rather than biblical teachings. Through education and evangelization, Southern Baptists could maintain their cultural hegemony. F. H. Sils wrote that he held no il wil toward Catholics who asimilated into the South and lived ?an honorable, upright, moral and Christian life,? but argued that ?agents of the Roman Catholic Church? stood in the way of progres, obstructing such Progresive reforms as Prohibition. 98 In concluding his history of the Sunday School Board, Frost chalenged felow Baptists to go forward as instruments of change, recognizing that, The possibilities are imense and capable of indefinite expansion. The past is full of promise for the future. The Baptists of the South should lead al other people for the coronation of the King and the bringing of the kingdom. We conquer for him, when loyal and making conquest in the things that are his [sic]. 99 By 1920, the SBC was the largest and most powerful denomination in the South. Historians have atributed many factors to its succes, including, among others, a 97 Although Charles Reagan Wilson argues that in constructing symbols of the Lost Cause, Southern Catholics were a part of the South's civil religion. To the contrary, my study suggests that Southern Baptists disregarded the Confederate credentials of Catholics, much like they disregarded Catholic commitments to temperance and the preservation of white southern womanhood: Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920, 34. 98 Sils, Roman Catholicism Investigated and Exposed, 7. 99 Frost, The Call of the South, 96. 201 distinctive doctrine, the organizing power of efective Baptist leadership, a commitment to evangelism, and an impulse for reform. Few scholars have considered the importance of social identity in shaping southern religious identity. 100 Yet, without an understanding of how they perceived Catholics and Roman Catholicism, studies about how Southern Baptists shaped their doctrine, established mision and educational programs, and aserted their cultural authority on the South are incomplete. Although this study offers new perspectives on anti-Catholicism in the South, more detailed studies are needed, particularly those that expand the scope of inquiry. While al southern evangelicals held anti-Catholic beliefs, more denominational studies would shed more light on how religious identities shaped antipathy. A sampling of Baptist sentiments from four similar southern states offers ample evidence of shared anti- Catholic sentiments but may not adequately acount for regional variations. Maryland and Florida had large, multi-ethnic Catholic populations that were politicaly and socialy engaged. Baptist seminaries in Texas and Kentucky contributed to denominational identity, as did the Foreign Mision Board in Virginia. Curiously, al three states had cities with prominent Catholic concentrations. Louisiana not only had a large Catholic imigrant population but also a large African-American Catholic presence that might more fully iluminate how Southern Baptists reconciled racial identity with their anti- Catholic sentiments. Local studies offer the most abundant paths of inquiry. Birmingham was a hotbed of anti-Catholicism during the early twentieth-century that 100 Those who have looked at identity have focused on race as the major influencer of religious culture. Se, for example, Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey, The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America (Chapel Hil: The University of North Carolina Pres, 2012); Harvey, Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities among Southern Baptists, 1865-1925. 202 deserves a monograph-length investigation into the deadly mixture of politics, religion, ethnicity, civic engagement, and clas conflict that fueled the antipathy and violence. Other cities such as Louisvile, Savannah, New Orleans, Tampa, Galveston, and Baltimore share similar prospects. Finaly, did southern Catholics share responsibility for religious hostility? Were their identities also contingent upon defining a measurable other? Although these questions fal outside the scope of this study, southern Catholicism deserves further scrutiny. Diocesan archives offer abundant, underutilized resources for state and local studies that should yield deeper, more complex representations that go beyond the ?culturaly captive? paradigm. 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