The president had a problem. During the summer of 1935, a political operative working for Franklin D. Roosevelt traveled the country hoping to gauge levels of support for the administration. The Democrats were looking ahead to the 1936 campaign, and they wanted to be prepared. The operative’s August report contained some important conclusions, which FDR’s secretary insisted that the president read personally. “I have said for some time,” the operative explained in the memorandum, “that, in my opinion, the strongest opposition to Mr. Roosevelt—in 1936—would come, not from the economic reactionaries, but from the religious reactionaries (if you can separate the two)… . The opposition of what one can call the evangelical churches is growing steadily more bitter and open.”1

The operative was correct. Roosevelt’s efforts to expand the power of the federal government and his internationalist inclinations seemed to parallel fundamentalists’ end-times fears about the rise of totalitarian states and world rule by a Satan-inspired dictator. They interpreted the Roosevelt presidency in the context of Adolf Hitler’s persecution of Jews and Christians, Benito Mussolini’s restoration of the Roman Empire, Joseph Stalin’s institutionalization of state atheism, the massive wave of Jews returning to Palestine, and the global economic depression, which led them to the inescapable conclusion that the countdown to Armageddon had seemingly begun. Troubled by what they were witnessing at home and abroad, white conservative Christians began to view their president and his administration not as God’s emissaries on earth but as tools of the devil. For the faithful living in the 1930s, to support Roosevelt was to support the coming antichrist.2

While 1930s fundamentalist critiques of New Deal liberalism have usually been ignored or dismissed as insignificant, irrational, or paranoid, it is crucial that we understand the ways politics and religion intersected in this decade to define the exploding fundamentalist movement and ultimately set the trajectory for evangelical activism across the rest of the century. Fundamentalists began mobilizing against the expanding state at the very moment of the New Deal’s inception. They helped foment conservative opposition to Roosevelt, lay the foundations for postwar religious mobilization, and create the political world view that subsequent generations of religious conservatives adopted and used to shape American politics. They are, therefore, essential to our understanding of the rise of modern Christian political engagement, the success of the religious Right, and ultimately the transformation of American politics and culture in the twentieth century.

This analysis of the origins of fundamentalist antiliberalism in the 1930s is significant for several reasons. First, it forces us to rethink the politics of American fundamentalism and its relationship to political conservatism. We know that conservative Christians have long lobbied the federal government to expand its reach on moral and social issues such as Prohibition; yet historians have not sufficiently explained why fundamentalists have simultaneously fought the expansion of the state into such seemingly religious-neutral areas as health care, the economy, social welfare, and civil rights. The beginnings of fundamentalist political mobilization in the interwar period reveal that the antistatist ideology at the core of the modern religious Right did not originate with the founding of the National Association of Evangelicals in 1942, the emergence of Billy Graham, or the establishment of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority in 1979, as historians have long assumed. Rather, it developed among fundamentalists during the 1930s, parallel to and corresponding with the birth of modern liberalism. The religious revivals of the late 1940s and 1950s did not mark the beginning of evangelical cultural reengagement but instead represented years of careful work and growing political savvy. Fundamentalists have long seen eye-to-eye with other conservatives not only on social issues but also on issues of state power.

Second, this essay highlights the impact of global events on fundamentalist theology and politics. For too long historians have treated fundamentalism in the United States as a native species nourished by local and regional concerns without giving proper attention to the ways the movement grew and evolved in response to international events. Zionism, the Bolshevik Revolution, the international economic depression, and the world wars shaped the faith and culture of American fundamentalists, who read their Bibles with Jews, communists, and fascists at the forefront of their interpretations. As they grew increasingly anxious about the prophetic significance of events abroad, they began looking more critically at changes occurring in the United States, which colored their analysis of the New Deal. They did not interpret Roosevelt’s presidency simply on its own terms but treated it as one part of a larger puzzle that included pieces from the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. When assembled, the completed picture revealed God’s plan for the final age. We cannot understand fundamentalist hostility to the state without first understanding the impact of international events on the movement.3

Despite the rich source material scattered in archives around the country, scholars have mostly overlooked the ways relationships among international crises, apocalyptic thought, and political activism transformed American culture. This article builds on the best literature on American fundamentalism by offering a detailed analysis of the relationships among millennial ideology, politics, and antiliberalism during the 1930s. As a result, it adds a new dimension to studies of the New Deal era, which have traditionally paid minimal attention to conservatism in general and fundamentalism in particular, and it enhances the scholarship on the origins of the modern Right, which has most often focused on the postwar era. Historians of modern conservatism, meanwhile, treat the rise of the religious Right, with its emphasis on social and moral issues, and the rise of conservative antistatism as mostly distinct. They were not. This research demonstrates that in the earliest stages of liberalism’s development, the most influential mainstream fundamentalist leaders in the nation crafted a unified religious critique of the New Deal state. Furthermore, by using both published materials and private sources such as letters and diaries, I demonstrate that there was no difference between the apocalyptic political rhetoric that fundamentalists used in public and the beliefs and ideas they expressed in private.4

To make these arguments, this article briefly sketches the rise of fundamentalist apocalyptic thought in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and then moves to the 1930s. Mussolini’s plans to restore the Roman Empire and Hitler’s anti-Semitic campaigns that drove thousands of Jews back to Palestine triggered fundamentalist convictions that the rapture was imminent. This belief, in turn, fostered a deep suspicion of Roosevelt, who seemed to be playing into the devil’s hands by undermining the supposed Christian (and constitutional) foundations of the United States. The article concludes by showing how believers in the early 1940s channeled their political frustrations into the establishment of a national, centralized evangelical lobby—the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE)—which continues to have tremendous political power to this day. The NAE did not serve simply as the launching pad for a new, culturally engaged, modern evangelicalism as historians have long assumed; it also represented the culmination of a decade of debate and hard work.

Fundamentalist Foundations and the Coming Global Apocalypse

Contrary to long-held popular misconceptions, fundamentalism thrived in predominately but not exclusively northern and western urban areas—New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and Seattle—areas where the differences between the faithful and the broader culture were most pronounced. Meanwhile, fundamentalists had a harder time building a distinctive movement in culturally conservative areas—such as the rural North and much of the South—where the differences between their faith and ethics and the broader community remained less obvious. In such places conservative Christians fit quite comfortably within existing, established, traditional churches. They generally felt little need to call their communities back to the “fundamentals” of the Christian faith—they had never left them. Nevertheless, fundamentalism was certainly not an entirely northern phenomenon. In the 1930s Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas; Columbia, South Carolina; and Cleveland, Tennessee, boasted some of the nation’s strongest and most influential fundamentalist churches and colleges where pioneering southerners aligned with northern fundamentalists against political liberalism. Eventually they helped deliver the South to the Republican party, turning the Bible belt into the sun belt as Darren Dochuk has recently demonstrated.5

Fundamentalists were avid readers and despite the challenges of the Great Depression they published some of the nation’s most influential religious periodicals. Donald Grey Barnhouse’s Revelation and Arno C. Gaebelein’s Our Hope never gained a large circulation (peaking at between twelve thousand and fifteen thousand subscribers), but they were popular among the nation’s leading conservative preachers and teachers. California-based King’s Business, marketed as a Christian family magazine, reached a monthly circulation of fifty thousand during the years between the world wars. John R. Rice’s Sword of the Lord began with a handful of subscribers in 1934 but quickly grew into the South’s leading fundamentalist periodical with a readership in the thousands and eventually one hundred thousand. Moody Monthly expanded during the FDR years (as did all of the major fundamentalist periodicals) from a monthly circulation of twenty-seven thousand to seventy thousand. Perhaps the most influential religious periodical of the interwar era, the venerable Sunday School Times maintained a weekly readership of approximately eighty thousand.6

Fundamentalists worshiped in both small storefront and behemoth mega-churches. At its height Mark Matthews’s Seattle congregation boasted over ten thousand members and was the largest Presbyterian church in the world, while J. Frank Norris, combining his Fort Worth and Detroit congregations, claimed over twenty-five thousand members. Harold J. Ockenga, who never attained such impressive membership statistics, presided over one of the most important pulpits in the United States, Boston’s historic Park Street Church, while H. A. Ironside preached at the Moody Church, one of the largest and most influential Protestant congregations in Chicago. Many of the most popular ministers also moonlighted on the radio, such as Barnhouse whose Bible Study Hour broadcast from Philadelphia to the nation. No one, however, compared with the Los Angeles–based Charles Fuller whose Old-Fashioned Revival Hour broadcast reached twenty million people at its peak in the 1940s.7

The men and women who read fundamentalist magazines, attended fundamentalist churches, and listened to fundamentalist preachers on the radio were, in general, overwhelmingly white and from the working and middle classes. It is very difficult (if not impossible) to estimate the total number of adherents in the 1930s since many remained within traditional denominations, but we do know that this era marked the beginning of an important shift in religious demography. The power of mainline denominations began to wane while the popularity of fundamentalism simultaneously surged. According to the Census of Religious Bodies, the conservative Church of the Nazarene, for example, grew from one hundred congregations in 1906 to 2,197 in 1936 while the Salvation Army expanded from 662 churches to 1,088 in the same period. The Assemblies of God, in turn, boasted 2,611 churches in 1936 despite having been founded just twenty-two years earlier. By the early 1940s, organizers of the National Association of Evangelicals legitimately claimed to speak for over one million Christians in the United States. Yet between 1926 and 1936, the overall number of churches in the United States declined by 14.2 percent. Although decades would pass before this shift became apparent, the depression years marked the beginning of the decline of the old-line Protestant denominations and the beginning of evangelical dominance. Therefore, it is all the more critical that we understand the politics of this significant generation of fundamentalists.8

The apocalyptic world view at the center of fundamentalism had its roots in the late nineteenth century, when a series of crises rocked the foundations of American Protestantism. The rise of the modern university system, urbanization, the popularization of Darwinian evolution, massive Catholic and Jewish immigration, the application of literary criticism to the Bible, and the systematic study of world religions pushed conservative Christians to rethink their theology. As they looked for solutions to the church’s growing challenges, a few turned to the teachings of the British evangelist John Nelson Darby who in the 1870s had preached premillennialism to small American audiences.9

Premillennialism is a type of eschatology (the study of the last things) based on a literal and rigid interpretation of the most obscure books of the Bible—Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation. Although there is some disagreement over details, premillennialists generally believe that these three books, when read in conjunction with one another and overlaid with some of Jesus’ and Paul’s New Testament statements, reveal a hidden “plan of the ages.” According to the plan, the current age will climax with the restoration of Jews to Palestine, the emergence of powerful empires in Rome, Russia, and the Far East, and then war. Out of this chaos, a new leader will appear promising peace and security. Unwilling or unable to recognize that this leader is actually the prophesied antichrist, most political and religious leaders around the world will cede their sovereignty and independence to him through an international agency. But just before the tyrant is revealed for the threat that he is, all true Christians will vanish off of the earth in the rapture, joining the resurrected Jesus in heaven. Shortly thereafter the imposter will lead the world through seven years of tribulation, at the end of which Jesus and the saints will return to earth where they will battle the forces of evil at Armageddon (a literal place in Israel). Christ will defeat the antichrist and establish a millennial kingdom of peace and prosperity on earth.10

Premillennialism functioned in important ways within the religious lives of fundamentalists. Malleable enough to fit the many crises and changing geopolitical contexts of the twentieth century, it proved stable enough to provide fundamentalists with a secure sense of their place in this world. No matter how dire the local, national, or international situation looked, they understood that they alone possessed the road map to God’s millennial kingdom. They had an irrevocable destiny to fulfill, one that God’s prophets had inscribed in the scriptures thousands of years ago. Like devout Calvinists who sent missionaries abroad even though they felt sure that they were powerless to affect anyone’s salvation, or like orthodox Marxists who challenged capitalism even though they believed that it was an inevitable step on the road to the socialist paradise, premillennialists never let their conviction that the future was already written lead them to passivity. During the twentieth century, this type of faith came to define mainstream American fundamentalism and evangelicalism. Just about every prominent conservative preacher, teacher, evangelist, and media personality of the last one hundred years, from Billy Sunday to Aimee Semple McPherson to Billy Graham to Jerry Falwell, subscribed to it.11

Fundamentalist apocalypticism owed much of its growth to a series of international crises that began in the first decades of the twentieth century. World War I with its terrifying weapons and unprecedented destruction seemed right out of the pages of the Apocalypse of John. Trench warfare, the rise and fall of nations, widespread famine, and an influenza epidemic all signaled the approach of the last days. Britain’s 1917 capture of Jerusalem from the Ottoman Empire was another crucial sign. The possibility that Palestine would be restored to Jews thrilled fundamentalists and seemed literally to fulfill Jesus’ prediction in Luke 21:24: “Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” The Bolshevik Revolution further influenced fundamentalist understandings of the Bible in the interwar era. Informed by their reading of Ezekiel, fundamentalists had long believed that Russia would emerge in the end times as the great “northern kingdom” that during the tribulation would attack Israel. A League of Nations, which offered the promise of world peace and the potential for a one-world government, further excited their sensibilities. Nevertheless, in this period fundamentalists remained focused on global signs and expressed few concerns about national politics. They generally supported the nation’s chief executives from Woodrow Wilson to Warren G. Harding to Calvin Coolidge to Herbert Hoover and felt little reason to mobilize politically except on particular moral issues such as Prohibition and Darwinian evolution.12

Then the Great Depression hit. As the nation’s economy deteriorated, fundamentalists began obsessing over Armageddon, sparking a renewed focus on eschatology in the leading religious periodicals. King’s Business responded to readers’ seemingly insatiable appetite for prophecy with a new monthly column in 1931 entitled “There Shall Be Signs” written by the Los Angeles pastor Louis Bauman. His articles on prophecy were among the most popular items printed in fundamentalist magazines of the period (and he wrote for almost all of them). When he eventually tried to quit his King’s Business column, editors told him that his pieces “received more favorable comment … than anything else in the magazine” and that “as far as subscriptions are concerned, Dr. Bauman is THE KING’S BUSINESS.” His articles often provoked letters from eager readers including one Sunday school teacher who complained that in his church he could not recall a single sermon on the Second Coming. “They don’t no nothing about it, at all.” Leading fundamentalist periodicals Sunday School Times,Revelation,Our Hope, and Moody Monthly responded with their own regular columns and/or series on prophecy and the news. The King’s Business editor and Bible Institute of Los Angeles faculty member Keith Brooks even began a new publication, Prophecy Monthly, to focus specifically on these issues.13

As ministers preached about Armageddon and laypeople read the latest prophecy news, Mussolini emerged as the object of fundamentalists’ most intense scrutiny. “Since Mussolini is resurrecting Rome,” wrote the revivalist Paul Rader, “the eyes of all students of prophecy are upon him.” For decades fundamentalists had expected the antichrist to take power through a ten-nation confederacy led by a restored Roman Empire. Il Duce seemed to fit the prophetic bill almost perfectly. The New York educator and fundamentalist leader Arno C. Gaebelein declared “One thing is certain. The Roman Empire is arising out of the dust of the centuries. What a testimony to the prophetic Word.” Nelson Bell, a Southern Presbyterian doctor, missionary, and future father-in-law to Billy Graham agreed, conceding that Mussolini was paving the way “for the final restoration of the old Roman Empire” and ultimately the antichrist. “What a joy,” he wrote, about events that seem less than joyful, “to have the hope of His Coming before us, rather than the mirage of a world getting better and better.”14

Il Duce had no idea how closely he was being watched by fundamentalists until he met Ralph Norton and Edith Norton. The Nortons, who were among the most influential and well-known American missionaries of the interwar era, embarked on a tour of Europe to study religious conditions around the continent. A meeting with Mussolini was the highlight of the trip. “Do you intend to reconstitute the Roman Empire?” the Nortons began. Then they walked their host through biblical prophecy building to the restoration of Rome. “Mussolini leaned back in his chair and listened fascinated. ‘Is that really described in the Bible?’ he said. ‘Where is it to be found?’” In one of the great ironies of fundamentalist history, by the time the Nortons had finished with Mussolini, he apparently believed—and maybe even hoped—that he was the long-awaited world dictator, the antichrist, prophesied in the book of Daniel.15

Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 provoked a flurry of prophetic speculation among American fundamentalists. The popular radio personality and Presbyterian minister Donald Grey Barnhouse felt confident that Italy’s designs on northern Africa matched biblical predictions. “The fact that detailed prophecies of events lying thousands of years in the future are to be found in the Bible is a demonstration, magnificent in its sweep, of the truth and the infallibility of the Word of God.” In his Texas church, John R. Rice preached similar sermons: “Is Mussolini the Anti-Christ?” and “Mussolini Restores the Roman Empire.” Both were printed in his fledgling newspaper, Sword of Lord, prompting a flood of positive correspondence. Such articles helped Rice build Sword of the Lord into one of the most influential Protestant papers in the South and then the nation.16

Along with the rebirth of the Roman Empire, the rise of Hitler and the corresponding growth of anti-Semitism around the globe emerged as other signs seized by fundamentalists as evidence of the looming rapture. Since fundamentalists had long believed that massive numbers of Jews would populate the Promised Land before the battle of Armageddon, they interpreted the Third Reich’s virulent anti-Semitism as part of God’s plan to drive Jews to Palestine to set the stage for his return. In fact, fundamentalists were among the first Americans to publicize the persecution that Jews faced. In early 1932, just before Hitler came to power, Barnhouse noted that anti-Semitism was among the primary points in his program “that make the whole movement of great interest to the Bible student.” After completing a 1933 tour of Germany, the Boston minister Harold Ockenga called the Nazi leader “an instrument in the hand of God for the driving of the Jews back to Palestine.” Charles Fuller, summing up the fundamentalist world view in a series of nationally broadcast sermons on the Old-Fashioned Revival Hour, explained that one of the main signs of Christ’s imminent return was the “budding of the fig tree”—the return of Jews to Palestine. In this sermon Fuller essentially promised his audience that they would likely witness the rapture.17

Fundamentalists’ interest in prophetic speculation combined with their obsession with the Jews fostered an implicit (and often explicit) anti-Semitism. Like millions of other depression-era Americans, they were quick to blame Jews for the nation’s economic troubles. Gaebelein, for example, joined such prominent Americans as Henry Ford in passing off the anti-Semitic forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion as an authentic document. Furthermore, Gaebelein asserted that the Protocols were written by “a believer in the Word of God, in prophecy … a true Christian.” The Minneapolis preacher and Bible institute president William Bell Riley praised the Protocols as well, blaming Jews for America’s economic crisis, for World War I, and for the decline of the Democratic party. Bauman, in turn, wrote that “while we have no agreement whatever with the dragon-spirit of anti-Semitism, yet the fact remains that all out of proportion to his numbers, the Jew is the world’s archtroubler.” Even Fuller repeated destructive stereotypes in his radio messages on prophecy. “The history of the Jews,” he opined, “is little else than … a wicked and willful rebellion against God, until such time as His long-suffering and mercy had ceased to have any good effect upon them.” While historians of evangelicalism have often dismissed fundamentalist anti-Semitism as an aberration, in fact crude stereotypes of Jews runs through most of the literature from the 1930s.18

FDR and the New Deal in Prophecy

The apparent fulfillment of prophecies that premillennialists since Darby had anticipated not only colored fundamentalist interpretations of international developments but also shaped their understandings of political events in the United States. Although most fundamentalists did not believe that the United States had a specific prophetic role to play in the end times, they expected their country ultimately to succumb to the power of the antichrist. Therefore, they looked for evidence of the devil’s influence not just abroad but also at home. Frustrations over the failure of Prohibition, growing working-class agitation, the growth of communism in the United States, and supposed cultural decline heightened their anxieties. Most important, the worldwide economic crisis—unlike the faraway migration of Jews to Palestine and communist agitation in Europe—directly impacted their lives. They felt the signs of the times in their pocketbooks, which shook their confidence in the future. Already predisposed to see evidence of impending doom, they greeted FDR’s campaign for president with skepticism. His charismatic personality combined with his utopian promises convinced many fundamentalists and other conservatives that he might be laying the foundations for a revolution. Furthermore, his consolidation of power, his controversial policies, and his internationalist sensibilities seemed to parallel biblical descriptions of political conditions in the last days. As a result, fundamentalists did not interpret the growth of the modern liberal state in the United States as a reasonable response to the economic depression but instead viewed it in conjunction with Mussolini’s visions of empire and Hitler’s anti-Semitism. Premillennialism served as the filter through which the faithful understood American politics. In short, white fundamentalists across the continent came to believe that New Deal liberalism was the means by which the United States would join the legions of the antichrist.19

Such views represented an important change among fundamentalists. Conservative Christians during the Progressive Era were generally comfortable with an activist state (even though they criticized social gospel preachers for neglecting individual salvation). Despite Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson’s partisan differences, fundamentalists praised both as godly, righteous leaders. When in 1928 the majority of believers voted against the Democratic presidential candidate Al Smith over his stand against Prohibition and his Catholicism, little distinguished their opposition from that of other 1920s conservatives. The apocalyptic discourse that characterized fundamentalist fears of FDR, in contrast, was something new and more substantial, demonstrating just how quickly economic turmoil, global crises, and growing concerns over communism had reshaped fundamentalist politics. Their criticisms of the New Deal married traditional American fears of a leviathan state to a particular, depression-era apocalyptic Christian theology. It was this union that came to define fundamentalists’ suspicion of the federal government and their distinctive twentieth-century political ideology.

There is no doubt that for fundamentalists FDR had an ominous start. On the first set of ballots during the 1932 Democratic national convention, he received 666 votes—equal to the number long associated with the antichrist. Things went downhill from there as Prohibition reemerged as a central issue in the campaign. H. A. Ironside and the Moody Bible Institute president James Gray organized a mass meeting to address the question, “What is the Christian’s responsibility in reference to the question, ‘Shall We Repeal The 18th Amendment?’” In heavily Democratic Chicago, they wanted to challenge the position of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Editors of Moody Monthly reinforced this message, calling on readers to send representatives to Washington who would reduce taxes and support Prohibition. Then on the Sunday immediately preceding Election Day, fundamentalists around the nation preached in support of Hoover’s “dry” position. “I took my stand in no uncertain terms in my pulpit,” Bauman wrote a friend. “I came out as strongly as I could against Roosevelt and his whole sopping-wet program.” Although these same fundamentalists would soon fight Roosevelt’s expansion of the federal government into the economy, they were sure that Washington had an important role to play in restricting citizens’ moral choices.20

Roosevelt’s landslide victory and the swift end of Prohibition disappointed the faithful. Ironside wrote in his diary on November 8, 1932, “Election went off quietly but much to my regret Franklin Roosevelt was elected.” For conservative white Protestants, the election represented how far they had fallen during the previous decade. Their century-long effort to enshrine Christian morality in the Constitution was deemed a total failure. FDR’s election represented not simply the victory of a less desirable candidate but the ascension of the growing secular and nonwhite forces that had always opposed Prohibition. To fundamentalists, Roosevelt’s success was indeed an unmistakable sign that their place in government and society was greatly diminished. The nation was no longer in the hands of God’s chosen people.21

Fundamentalist leaders throughout the nation knew beyond any doubt that their colleagues had lined up for Hoover and the GOP. The Dallas Theological Seminary founder Lewis Sperry Chafer wrote Ironside immediately after the election: “I am greatly concerned over the turn of the election yesterday and feel we shall see much harder times before we see any relief.” Frustrated fundamentalists did not simply frame their analysis around relevant political issues. Instead, they believed that Roosevelt’s victory had moved the world one step closer to Armageddon. Chafer made this explicit in a letter to Ralph Norton. “As these dark days grow darker, we are feeling the certainty of His soon return.” The pastor of the influential Hollywood Presbyterian Church, Stewart MacLennan, had a similar perspective: “The results of the past election in our beloved country tend to confirm the conviction that we are living in the end days of human government in the earth… . Surely the Lord must be at hand!” Bauman also linked Roosevelt’s victory to prophecy. Writing to a friend in Canada, he explained, “The election here in the United States seems to have gone chiefly in a way that delights the devil’s crowd, but these are the last days and what else are we to expect?”22

Despite southerners’ despair over the repeal of Prohibition, they remained more loyal to the Democratic party than their counterparts in the North and the West. Faced with extreme poverty and often dependent on labor unions for survival, they generally did not view the Roosevelt presidency with the same cynicism as did their co-religionists in other parts of the country, but the leading fundamentalists in the South hoped to change this. The Texas firebrand J. Frank Norris left few doubts about his feelings for Roosevelt. He wrote Mark Matthews before the election, “I quite agree with you on Roosevelt’s being worse than [Al] Smith and in addition to being wet, he is a Communist. I can not believe the country will elect him.” That southern-bred Matthews also opposed FDR is revealing because the Seattle minister had worked closely with the Wilson administration and had been extremely active in the DNC for decades. Democrats such as Norris, Matthews, John Rice, and Nelson Bell spent the coming years admonishing their fellow southerners that supporting the GOP was not a sign of disloyalty to Dixie.23

Fundamentalists almost immediately began to view Roosevelt in the same light as totalitarian leaders who they believed were setting up their countries for the antichrist. Just a few months into Roosevelt’s term, the editors of Moody Monthly compared the president to Hitler and claimed that his actions were “preparing the people for what is coming later, and perhaps not much later—the big dictator, the superman, the lawless one at the head of the ten kingdoms of the prophetic earth.” The Moody Bible Institute (and later Fuller Seminary) professor Wilbur Smith laid out typical fundamentalist logic in a letter to the Sunday School Times editor Charles Trumbull. Smith called “the sudden, amazing rise of dictatorships throughout Europe” and the acquiescence to “dictatorship” in the United States “preparation for the coming of a great world dictator.” As economic troubles increased, Smith explained, people will “look to one great super-man, and that is the perfect setting of the stage for the manifestation of Anti-Christ.” Bauman believed that FDR’s programs were “presenting the world with a system of government, which, carried to its limits, corresponds amazingly to the Biblical description of the government of the coming ‘prince.’” Ockenga, Riley, and Rice each claimed that Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and Roosevelt might be establishing confederacies that would lead to world domination by the antichrist.24

That FDR might be employing totalitarian tactics was not fundamentalists’ only concern, however. They also sensed communist intrigue coming from within the New Deal. Roosevelt’s formal recognition of the Soviet Union infuriated the faithful. The missionary Robert Hockman hoped that when the Soviet ambassador arrived in the United States “the legion” would “march on Washington” and send “that bird … back to Russia with post haste.” Fundamentalists who had been fretting over Bolshevik influence in the United States for over a decade allied with other political conservatives including Elizabeth Dilling in invoking the bogeyman of communism to smear the New Deal. Riley—who published Dilling’s work in his Christian periodical—warned that the country was increasingly coming under Soviet sovereignty. “If Communism is not the objective of President Roosevelt and his ‘Brain Trust,’” he preached, “it was extremely stupid for them to adopt the Russian Soviet appearance in program!” In perhaps the most explicit condemnation of the president, Norris proclaimed, “I hail from the South and since my ancestors set foot on the shores of South Carolina … they have always been Democrats, but … the greatest menace that ever confronted America—is the ‘New Deal’—no more or less than the American name for Russian Communism.”25

Fundamentalists based their politics on the conviction that a satanically orchestrated conspiracy would soon dupe the world, which made them hypersensitive to anything that seemed to compromise traditional, biblical, patriotic Americanism. What particularly set fundamentalists apart from other conservatives was the connection they drew between the president’s supposed communism and biblical prophecy. Rice best illustrates this point. Claiming that “Mrs. Roosevelt is openly allied with the Reds, and President Roosevelt is a socialist,” he asserted, “the wave of communism which now has reached the White House … will eventually put America under a dictator as foretold by the Bible.” Fundamentalists vehemently opposed communism but unlike the more radical members of the far Right who leaned toward fascism, such as Gerald Winrod and Gerald L. K. Smith, they believed that governments run by dictators—whether on the right or left—would lead to the antichrist. Since communist and fascist governments similarly limited religious freedom in the 1930s, fundamentalists adamantly opposed both (and in fact made little distinction between the two).26

Most fundamentalist critiques of Roosevelt remained very general, but a few specific policy initiatives provoked the faithful. Among Roosevelt’s early programs, the National Recovery Act (NRA) and its symbol, the blue eagle, sparked the most controversy. The book of Revelation predicts that in the last days the antichrist will require all people to display the “mark of the beast” to participate in the economy. The NRA seemed to foreshadow this prophecy. “Roosevelt’s ‘Blue Eagle’ sign is certainly significant,” Bell wrote. “If he succeeds in his present policy, just watch European powers follow suit and then it will not be long until the ‘mark of the beast’ will be displayed.” The majority of fundamentalists agreed with Bell that the eagle was a precursor, but not the actual mark. The editors Barnhouse (with Revelation) and Trumbull (with Sunday School Times) even participated in the NRA, confident that they were not victims of the beast. Nevertheless, all of the fundamentalist periodicals took up the issue in response to readers’ questions about the relationships among current events, federal policies, and prophecy. Their concerns revealed that fears of Roosevelt as forerunner to the antichrist were not just a top-down phenomenon generated by influential ministers but also reflected the interests and anxieties of laypeople.27

Social Security was a second major New Deal initiative that fell under heavy fire from fundamentalists. In the fall of 1935—possibly in response to the summer memorandum on growing conservative Christian opposition—Roosevelt reached out to the nation’s religious leaders, asking them to support the recently passed Social Security Act. “Tell me,” he wrote, “where you feel our government can better serve our people… . We shall have to work together for the common end of better spiritual and material conditions for the American people.” The response from fundamentalist ministers was probably not what the president hoped for. They believed that as more Americans turned to the federal government for help, the fewer rights they would retain. Eventually they would be powerless when the government ceded control to the antichrist. “In my humble judgment,” the Wheaton College president J. Oliver Buswell explained to FDR, “you are seriously in error. In fact, the socialistic or communistic tendencies of your administration and of the legislation to which your letter refers, are entirely contrary to the spirit and the detailed teachings of the Word of God.” That something as seemingly benign as the Social Security Act provoked heated opposition reveals the depths of fundamentalist anxieties over liberalism. Fundamentalists believed that the government had no business expanding its reach into the economy; policies that strengthened the state not only violated their political presuppositions but went against the eternal word of God.28

Other fundamentalists had more general criticisms of the welfare state rooted in fears of encroaching communism and/or traditional conservative concerns about the role of government. Echoing the elite businessmen and corporate barons of the American Liberty League and the National Association of Manufacturers, Chafer complained to Roosevelt that “any reproduction of the English dole system should have been avoided” and warned that the people “are anticipating too much from the federal government.” After listing New Deal expenditures, Gaebelein asked, “What has been accomplished by it?” His answer: “the creation of a new class of citizens, the class of ‘dole-loafers.’” Foreshadowing modern racially coded allusions to supposed “welfare queens,” he lamented the difficulty of finding “colored maids” in Washington, D.C., since “they are all on the dole.” Ockenga, in turn, complained of “character disintegration” in “every one of these security movements, doles and unemployment protections,” which “lowers the independence of the character of the people. It makes them dependent more and more upon government.” This rhetoric is difficult to distinguish from that of other conservatives of the time, but its source is significant. These critics were not political activists or businessmen; they were some of the most influential fundamentalists in the nation who were disparaging the president from their pulpits and in their Bible school classrooms.29

Roosevelt’s prolabor policies antagonized the faithful as well. Despite many fundamentalist leaders’ roots in the working and middle classes, most overlooked the causes of workers’ frustration and joined other conservatives in denouncing the labor movement as foreign and communistic. Bell complained that FDR was “pandering” to labor. “What we need,” he wrote, “is a Government that stands for law and order and which will rule with an iron hand when necessary.” The World’s Christian Fundamentals Association leader Paul Rood blamed protests on “professional agitators who are instigating these strikes” on behalf “of certain Socialistic and Communistic leaders.” That Roosevelt had supported prolabor legislation and refused to denounce strikers infuriated fundamentalists. Furthermore, that he selected the left-leaning Frances Perkins to serve as the first female cabinet secretary (secretary of labor) demonstrated the ways women were continuing to infiltrate the supposedly male world of politics, to fundamentalists’ utter distain. They saw labor strife and women’s move into new spheres as additional evidence of communist influence and the decline of their civilization.30

Roosevelt’s internationalist sensibilities and his efforts to join the World Court further rankled. Since at least the creation of the League of Nations, believers saw supposedly benevolent global alliances as the most likely path for bringing the United States under the sovereignty of the coming antichrist. Therefore, they joined New Deal critics including Father Charles Coughlin in denouncing what they viewed as a violation of American independence. The rejection by Congress of the president’s court proposal thrilled Gaebelein who boasted that the defeat of the treaty meant “that Americans refuse to be denationalized and that patriotism is not dead yet.” For Gaebelein and his compatriots, fighting the antichrist meant keeping the United States free from all foreign entanglements. While fundamentalists’ premillennial justification for their strident nationalism was unique, their goals were similar to that of other isolationists.31

As radical as fundamentalists’ critiques of the president seem, their rhetoric paralleled that of prominent mainstream conservatives. Herbert Hoover, for example, speaking at the 1936 Republican National Convention, compared the New Deal to the “march of socialism and dictatorships” in Europe, and he called on the American people to launch a “holy crusade for freedom.” Senator Frederick Steiwer even suggested in his convention keynote address that Americans’ religious liberty was in danger. The New Deal’s “centralization of power,” he warned, would likely grow to the point that “all human rights, including religious freedom, must yield to its tyranny.” Yet what distinguished fundamentalists from most of FDR’s other adversaries was the religious nature of their overarching criticism. Alongside Mussolini’s conquest of Ethiopia, Hitler’s brutal plans for the Jews, and the spread of communism, the United States seemed to be falling into place in the premillennial plan of the ages. In their minds their formally Christian nation was rushing toward the devil’s camp, with Roosevelt leading the way—but he could be stopped.32

As the 1936 elections neared, fundamentalists began preaching action. “The Christian,” Rood insisted, “should exercise his franchise.” Directly challenging those fundamentalists who believed that their citizenship in heaven negated their citizenship on earth, he continued, “If there ever was a time when the Christians of the United States needed to function as citizens it is now. Subversive influences are at work that would destroy constitutional government.” Sword of the Lord called on Americans to “awake and repudiate at the polls” Roosevelt, who had helped lead the nation away from God. Norris, in his typical hypermasculine rhetoric, called on “red-blooded, one hundred percent Americans” from across the nation to imitate the Old Testament warrior Samson and put Washington’s “uncircumcised Philistines out of business.” Brooks warned that “if our citizens do not arouse themselves and block the way in the next election,” the New Deal will “so thoroughly weaken the economic stability and morale of the people that the nation will easily succumb to almost any antagonistic force—even a Communistic revolution.” Gaebelein ran a series of anti–New Deal articles in Our Hope, accusing the president of leading the nation to communism. “In view of these solemn facts,” he admonished, “Christians everywhere should begin to pray earnestly at once that this menace be arrested.”33

The same religious leaders who were most obsessed with the prophesies of the end of times were most adamant during the 1936 campaign about mobilizing Christians against the New Deal—as Roosevelt’s political operatives had discovered. Speculation about the future gave fundamentalist leaders a profound sense of courage. While much of the nation supported the president, Christians knew that Jesus was returning soon. Regardless of the outcome of the election, they would ultimately prevail. The significance of their political efforts is not in the seeming contradiction between premillennialist determinism and political action. Instead, the significance lies in the ways premillennialism directly shaped the nature of fundamentalist political activity. While Roosevelt led the nation to the left, fundamentalists informed by biblical prophecy pushed their followers confidently to the right.

How many people actually responded to the fundamentalist call to action in 1936? We do not know. Unlike for more recent efforts, such as the Christian Coalition’s grassroots campaigns, measuring the influence of religious activists on interwar politics is difficult. Although hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of conservative Christians adhered to the fundamentalist faith, many in the South likely remained loyal to FDR, and those who opposed the president—from all regions—probably had minimal direct impact. Nevertheless, by preaching cultural engagement and working for conservative political causes while simultaneously predicting an imminent Armageddon, these fundamentalist leaders sensitized subsequent generations of believers to the dangers of modern liberalism. From at least 1936 onward, the faithful cautiously began building a home—and a future—for themselves within the conservative wing of the Republican party.

Despite Christians’ continuing faith in God’s sovereignty, the president’s overwhelming victory still stung. Conservatives had hoped that the 1932 election was a fluke. The president’s victory four years later signaled to them nothing less than the last gasp of America’s Protestant civilization and the solidification of the nation’s move toward communism. Rood explained that Roosevelt’s plan to “repudiate our cherished national principles has met with the enthusiastic approval of the voters.” “The Constitution,” Norris lamented, “has been repealed.” Moody Monthly fretted that the United States was “headed toward liberalism and the passing of old-time American institutions. … We are headed, with the rest of the world, toward a dictatorship of communism or fascism.”34

Gaebelein, Brooks, and Bauman linked the election directly to prophecy. “The Election is over,” Gaebelein groused. “All that is going on in the United States is in full swing with the predicted end of our age… . Political conditions revealed through Daniel 2,500 years ago are now universal.” Brooks asked, “Will Mr. Roosevelt make use of the vote of confidence given him to ride roughshod over the Constitution into the seat of a dictator? … What does the student of prophecy expect?” Finally, in an unabashedly partisan article entitled “The National Election Viewed beneath the Searchlight of the Prophetic Word,” Bauman denounced “benevolent American Dictator-President Roosevelt” and then stoked the nativist fires that many fundamentalist leaders had fanned throughout the decade. The majority of Protestants had voted for the Republican Alf Landon, he noted, but Jews and Catholics overwhelmed them, turning the tide for the incumbent. “The Lord Jesus Christ,” he argued, “receives no recognition at the ballot box.” He later tempered his views somewhat. “Be it far from us even to suggest that any President of the United States could ever become the Antichrist.” That he had to state this explicitly so that his readers would not be misguided reveals how dramatic his critique of Roosevelt had become.35

During FDR’s second term, fundamentalists preached more of the same. Sit-down strikes, the growing deficit, “radicals” in the president’s cabinet, and war in Europe reinforced their apocalyptic expectations. The most controversial event of the period was Roosevelt’s ill-fated court-packing scheme. Fundamentalists interpreted the move as yet another diabolical plot in line with the premillennial plan of the ages. “All that stands between you, Mr. American Citizen,” Bauman wrote in anticipation of the president’s proposal, “and the tyranny of dictatorship—a Mussolini, or, perchance, a Hitler or a Stalin—is ‘nine old men’!” America, he warned, “may begin with a benevolent dictator” (referring to Roosevelt), “but dictators do not long remain benevolent! Benevolent dictator; then, tyrannical dictator; then, Antichrist.” For the faithful, Americans were already sliding down a slippery slope to Armageddon. The court plan simply represented one more indication that end-times events were falling into place. Roosevelt already oversaw the executive branch; his party controlled Congress; and now he was after the Supreme Court. Run-of-the-mill conservatives viewed this as a dangerous threat to balanced government; fundamentalists saw it as a step toward the Apocalypse. Despite their different reasons for opposing the growth of the liberal state, they had much in common.36

Roosevelt’s decision to break tradition and run for an unprecedented third term reinforced fundamentalist fears that the chief executive secretly maintained dictatorial aspirations. For believers, the 1940 presidential campaign provided yet another opportunity to redirect the nation to God. Ockenga encouraged Americans to fight the president’s devilish schemes. “Do not let any soothing words lull you into indifference to the mighty factors which are at work in our society grinding out a state which will resemble the totalitarian conception… . But if America is to be saved,” he argued, “citizens must act… . To your tents, to the battle, O Americans, we will have no part in dictatorships.” The editors of Moody Monthly concurred. Just weeks before Election Day they advocated political activism as the best means of combating the destruction of the faith in the United States. “The battle lines are drawn. The war is on,” they declared. “These evils must be corrected at the ballot box at once… . A conscripted army to save the property of America means nothing unless there can be self-conscription of patriots in an army set to save American ideals.”37

Apparently there were still not enough patriots in the fundamentalist army, at least not yet. Although Bell had hoped in 1940 that the president would get “the licking he deserves,” it was not to be. Once again, laypeople turned to their leaders for help in understanding what FDR’s third electoral victory meant for the prophetic plan. Gaebelein admitted that Roosevelt’s reelection “came as a disappointment… . The pace of age-end events,” he determined, “is quickening… . Increasing presidential power and all that it involves is yet another shadow of the world-authority that one day shall rest in the hands of the Beast and Anti-Christ.” A Sunday School Times reader wrote Bauman enquiring about his view of the election “as it relates to Bible prophecy.” “America is headed for a dictatorship,” Bauman replied, yet “we should not be discouraged or pessimistic. These are dark days but the very shadows that are about us clearly indicate that the day break of the millennial age is at hand.” Another correspondent saw a silver lining in the election. “From a human viewpoint … I deeply regretted the result of the Presidential election, but I have thought that it might be part of the Lord’s plan for our country in the closing days of Gentile world power.” Indeed. For many fundamentalists, the election, like Hitler’s anti-Semitism, was something to oppose but also something to excite. With Roosevelt beginning an unprecedented third term in office, there could be no doubt that Jesus was coming back very soon.38

Building a Fundamentalist Political Lobby

As the actions of conservative Christians in the 1930s demonstrate, fundamentalist antiliberalism was not a product of the Cold War or of the social turmoil of the 1970s; modern liberalism and fundamentalist antiliberalism grew together from the same seed. Fundamentalists in the depression decade for the first time developed an explicit, conservative, antiliberal political philosophy, but they did not build a unified movement. They preached, they wrote, they cajoled, they admonished, but they did not organize. In the late 1930s this began to change. The thousands of sermons, letters, and radio addresses warning that the growth of the New Deal state played into the hands of the devil provided the foundation for a new political movement. Despite fundamentalists’ fears of the antichrist, they never planned to surrender. While their efforts started small and their initial goals remained limited, they ultimately succeeded in transforming the relationship among American fundamentalism, politics, and culture.

Why would these apocalypse-obsessed Christians organize? Why not just wait for the millennium? Better yet, why not help usher in the millennium? There are multiple answers to these questions, none of which is likely to satisfy outsiders. Yet to insiders, the logic was consistent. Ockenga said it best: “We labor as though Christ would not come for a millennium. We live as though he were to come to-night.” There was a practical need among fundamentalists to find hope in the premillennial system. Although they embraced a fatalistic theology, they did not want fatalism to characterize their lives. Rather than succumb to the inevitability of the coming tribulation, they turned premillennialist determinism on its head, using it as a means of rallying believers to action in an epic conflict that they were sure would end in their ultimate triumph. Furthermore, for fundamentalists, battling the legions of Satan presented them with a win-win opportunity. They interpreted their political losses as necessary events that brought them one step closer to Christ’s second coming while their political victories indicated their own righteousness and God’s blessing. They knew that God’s judgment was imminent; he was going to separate the righteous from the unrighteous, the sheep from the goats. Fundamentalists believed that their actions would highlight the antithesis between the faithful and the unfaithful. As the apocalypse approached, conservative Christians wanted to demonstrate that they were on the right side of history.39

Fundamentalist mobilization in the late 1930s occurred among the same network of leaders who had been denouncing FDR’s liberalism for years. They believed that to turn the tide in the nation and ultimately the world, they had to start with a rejection of the New Deal and a restoration of the United States to its supposed Christian foundations. The United States, Ockenga preached, had “a providential position in history… . Our continent was preserved to incarnate the development of the best civilization. Humanly speaking, it is almost as though God pinned His last hope on America.” According to the Boston minister, “The decisions and the course of America will hasten or defer the collapse of civilization into chaotic barbarism.” Implying that the timing of Armageddon was not inevitable, he asked, “What then is the way out? Will it be with a revival or the rapture?” Revival, he hoped, as he called the nation back to God.40

Dan Gilbert agreed. Among the president’s harshest critics, Gilbert was an evangelist, journalist, popular author, and a leader in the World’s Christian Fundamentals Association and later the National Association of Evangelicals. Surprisingly, he has been almost totally ignored by historians. Writing for Moody Monthly Gilbert summed up the fundamentalist position on the New Deal perfectly: “The most cursory observer of the present situation cannot escape the conclusion that the kind of government developing in America today approximates … the Antichrist setup.” Yet he never preached apathy or fatalism. In 1940 he developed the most thorough and articulate fundamentalist political philosophy of the era, which he espoused in his own books as well as in columns in the leading fundamentalist magazines including King’s Business, Sunday School Times, Sword of the Lord, and Pilot. “There is a definite need,” he explained, “for the clear enunciation of a creed of and for conservatives.” Fundamentalists, he insisted, must “abolish the socialist bureaucratic encroachments” on constitutional government, fight to conserve “our Christian heritage,” commit “to a crusade to reverse the whole prevailing trend,” and “be militantly determined to alter drastically the course our nation is at present pursuing.” While the vast majority of Gilbert’s writings explored the relationship of world events to biblical prophecy, his call for a new conservative movement was in no way a repudiation of his premillennial conviction that the rise of the antichrist was inevitable. Instead, Gilbert represented the prototypical fundamentalist of the 1930s and 1940s—conservative political ideology mixed with apocalyptic fear mongering.41

Others were more pragmatic. In 1940 Ralph T. Davis, a missionary executive concerned about the potential impact of the military draft on overseas evangelistic work, began talking to leaders around the country about creating a fundamentalist lobby. “The functions of the proposed council,” he suggested, “should be to deal with problems which are common to us all. Perhaps the headquarters should be located in Washington.” Davis was not advocating another evangelistic society; he wanted to shape the grassroots fundamentalist movement into a mainstream organization with its own political lobby to represent its interests in the nation’s capital, similar to that of the liberal Federal Council of Churches. Religious leaders sensed that despite their fears of centralized control, the only way to deal with the developing totalitarian state in the United States was to centralize fundamentalist efforts—to fight fire with fire. Working as disparate individuals had simply not achieved the results they wanted.42

Davis’s plan provoked some mild initial resistance. Riley, for example, expressed doubts about its purpose and wondered if it would duplicate the older (and dying) World’s Christian Fundamentals Association. His questions gave Davis the opportunity to make even more explicit the political nature of this group. “We feel that the greatest need is for some common meeting ground for representation to government where legal matters may be handled as they concern one endeavor or another of the evangelical forces.” Persuaded, Riley agreed that a new organization was needed to exercise “righteous influence in government affairs.”43

Others, however, were not as easily convinced. Paul Fischer, the secretary of the conservative Christian Business Men’s Committee International, invoked premillennial arguments about the last days and explained that “the early church paid little attention to the political implications of their contacts with civil government.” When Christians eventually “began to claim civil rights and the church began to make its influence felt politically,” he warned, “a period of spiritual decay set in.” The Lutheran minister John Brenner agreed. “To introduce an ‘evangelical bloc’ into the political and economic affairs of our nation would lead to internal dissentions and finally to the loss of our freedom of religion.”44

Despite these concerns, few leaders of the mainstream fundamentalist network (who were increasingly calling themselves evangelicals) were willing to stay outside of politics. In 1942 the most powerful and influential white fundamentalists in the nation—including Bell, Chafer, Fuller, Frank Gaebelein (co-editor of Our Hope and son of Arno Gabelein), Gilbert, Ironside, Ockenga, Rood, and many others—descended on St. Louis to organize the National Association of Evangelicals for United Action. Historians have traditionally viewed this organization as the first step in the reconstruction of a new, modern evangelicalism. However, it more accurately represented the logical culmination of a decade of hard work rather than a new beginning.45

Ockenga served as the association’s first president. His keynote address at the conference, representing the decade-long cross-fertilization of conservative political ideology with fundamentalist theology, helped give modern American evangelicalism its identity. He began his sermon with an allusion to Armageddon, warning: “I see on the horizon ominous clouds of battle which spell annihilation unless we are willing to run in a pack.… . This is the time, the day for the offensive.” He then went on to identify those clouds. They were Roman Catholicism, theological modernism, secularism, and finally, political liberalism. “We are standing in the most tremendous danger of all,” he preached. “Already a revolution has taken place in our nation. Whenever the major part of the business of the nation is being done by the government rather than by private interest, capitalism ceases its functioning… . The crisis is greater than any of us realize.” Under Roosevelt, Ockenga asserted, the federal government had become a direct threat to true Christianity.46

After Ockenga finished his sermon, William Ward Ayer, the pastor of New York City’s Calvary Baptist Church, reiterated many of the same themes. “The inroads of wild socialistic theories,” he preached, “through the power of organized minorities in government are creating a cancerous condition in America. Not only is there surreptitious entrenching of radicals in high places in our government life, but a tendency is manifest even on the part of high officials to smear any who call attention to these cancerous adhesions to our body politic.” But uniting together offered a solution. “It is not boasting to declare that evangelical Christianity has the America of our forefathers to save… . Millions of evangelical Christians, if they had a common voice and a common meeting place, would exercise under God an influence that would save American democracy.” It was time for Christians to organize—and organize they would.47

Once the hundreds of anti-Roosevelt preachers, editors, and radio personalities sprinkled throughout the country banded together in the early 1940s to form a political lobby representing over one million Christians, they found some of the nation’s leading conservatives—both politicians and businessmen—receptive to their agenda and their goals. The NAE gave them respectability and power, two things they had lacked since the controversies of the 1925 Scopes trial (if they ever had it). Reporting on the organization’s early success, Clyde Taylor, who represented the association in the capital, noted, “We are seeing the gradual awakening of Protestantism, and many of its activities are centering in Washington… . Senators and Representatives are becoming very much aware that great religious forces are active.” In less than a decade evangelicals even managed to win an audience with the most powerful men in the world. In 1953 the NAE presented President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Vice President Richard M. Nixon with a “Declaration of Seven Divine Freedoms,” which the American leaders signed in celebration of the Fourth of July.48

Although scholars have yet to recognize fully the Depression-era origins of evangelical antiliberalism, the story of evangelical postwar political mobilization and the variety of forms it took has spawned a vibrant new literature that bridges the period from the founding of the NAE to the making of the modern religious Right. Since 1942 the NAE has steadfastly lobbied the government on issues of importance to evangelicals such as safeguards for missionaries working abroad, access to radio and television airwaves, and protections for religion in school curricula. Evangelicals also benefitted from the emergence of a new spokesperson in Billy Graham. Very much a product of 1930s fundamentalism, Graham represented the movement’s revitalized, respectable, politically savvy postwar image. He cautiously preached conservatism and won the ear of every president from Harry S. Truman to Barack Obama—while penning multiple books on premillennialism. His success was (and is) a testament not only to his personal abilities but also to the increasing clout of evangelicals. Furthermore, he helped evangelical antistatism penetrate further into the South.49

While Graham and the NAE symbolized evangelicalism’s mainstream base, they did not represent the only voice of postwar conservative Christianity. Others tried to push the faithful toward more extreme positions. On one side, anticommunist crusaders such as Billy James Hargis and Fred Schwarz drew large followings with their confrontational and controversial tactics. On the other side, those such as Bob Jones Jr. clung to the fundamentalist nomenclature and labored to maintain strict separation from politics and secular culture (which was always easier said than done). Regardless of the varying opinions of what constituted “appropriate” Christian political involvement, however, religious leaders from across the white evangelical spectrum preached apocalypse and shared a deep suspicion of New Deal liberalism during the decades after World War II. They consistently voted along conservative lines and supported conservative candidates. Meanwhile, their interest in the relationships among prophecy, international events, and American politics persisted. The Cold War, statehood for Israel, the Cuban missile crisis, and the oil crisis all fanned interest in Armageddon. But as long as the postwar Republican party shared FDR’s internationalism and represented a moderate, watered-down version of the New Deal, evangelicals were not strongly motivated to organize along purely and explicitly partisan lines.

Things changed for many evangelicals in the late 1970s. When Republican party operatives turned to a new generation of conservative Christian leaders including the premillennialist preachers Tim LaHaye and Jerry Falwell for help in getting Ronald Reagan elected, they probably had no idea how prepared the faithful were for the revitalized GOP. While evangelicalism had certainly evolved in important ways since the 1930s, believers remained critical of liberalism and committed to an imminent second coming. Politicos recognized that many evangelicals were disappointed by the policy initiatives of born-again President Jimmy Carter and that the controversial social issues of the decade such as feminism, abortion, sex education, and homosexuality had pulled most evangelicals further to the right. They knew that in the post–civil rights era, southerners had little remaining loyalty to the DNC. They also understood that the cultural turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s had driven many of even the most hardcore fundamentalist separatists to action. Even so, they did not grasp how powerfully Reagan’s blend of apocalyptic rhetoric with criticism of the New Deal state would resonate with believers. The match could not have been more perfect. As governor of California and then presidential candidate, Reagan had never hidden his interest in biblical prophecy. His beliefs were best captured in a 1983 article by Wolf Blitzer, then a journalist for the Jerusalem Post, who reported that Reagan told an Israeli lobbyist, “You know, I turn back to your ancient prophets in the Old Testament and the signs foretelling Armageddon, and I find myself wondering if—if we’re the generation that’s going to see that come about. I don’t know if you’ve noted any of those prophecies lately, but believe me, they certainly describe the times we’re going through.” Conservative Christians had long sought a leader who shared their social values, their unflinching support for Israel’s sovereignty, their skepticism of the United Nations, and their fear of the power of the state. When Reagan denounced the federal government while drawing on apocalyptic language to frame the Cold War, evangelicals could not have been more pleased. It should be no surprise then, that they have revered him ever since. Unlike Roosevelt, who foreshadowed the antichrist, Reagan represented a new messiah squaring off against the big-government forces of Satan.50

In sum, fundamentalists in the 1930s, obsessed with matching up global crises with biblical prophecy, developed a powerful critique of New Deal liberalism. In an era when the Bible seemingly indicated that the end of time was rapidly approaching—with a global economic depression, wars and rumors of wars, the restoration of the Roman Empire, thousands of Jews trekking to Palestine, the growth of communism, and the rise of a strong nation-state in the United States—fundamentalists redefined their politics and established the foundation for the postwar evangelical surge. Confident in the outcome of history, they found the courage to act. As citizens of both this world and the next, they maintained both that the rise of the antichrist was imminent and that it was never too late for revival. Every generation since has heeded this message. While most fundamentalists never really believed that Roosevelt was the antichrist, they felt sure that he had moved the United States one enormous step closer to Armageddon.

© The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Organization of American Historians. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.