Red Churches.

By the end of the 1940s, among anti- Communist crusaders it had become almost axiomatic that communism had infiltrated American churches and was using the pulpit as a base from which to subvert American society. Such beliefs were common among many church leaders, congressional investigators, and policy makers, as seen in the National Security Council Memorandum 68 (1950), which listed the churches as one of the institutions that worldwide communism "sought to stultify and turn against our purposes." As American churches in the 1930s and 1940s had been instrumental in pursuing progressive political causes, anti-Communists suspicious of anything left of center interpreted church advocacy of causes such as civil rights as proof of a Communist conspiracy among the congregations. If anything, however, American churches in the 1940s were foremost among institutions opposing communism and contributing to the McCarthyism of the period. When...