Reaction and Retreat

1. Reaction and Retreat Chapter 13

2. Prohibition • Alcohol Prohibition, a movement echoing the earlier temperance reform movements of the 19th century, enabled women to increase the scope of their roles and simultaneously address the white Protestant fears of the growing immigrant population • Drunkenness became a characteristic ascribed to Catholics, Jews, Irish, etc…, reflecting both the religious and ethnic overtones of Prohibition • Banning alcohol was a means of assimilating “the other” to America • The Eighteenth Amendment was passed in 1919; in this sense Prohibition was successful, however it also spurred an underground crime network in response to the dry nation • The 21st Amendment ended Prohibition in 1933

3. Restricting Immigration • In 1924, Congress enacted a “quota system” for immigration which “limited the number from any individual country” based on the percentage of immigrants currently inhabiting America; this privileged northern and western European countries and restricted most others • This political move reflected the mounting fear over the increasing pluralism being brought in by foreign countrymen and women; in 1965 the restrictions would be lifted

4. Problems for Jews and Catholics • Anti-semitism was experiencing a surge • The trial of Leo Frank (accused of murdering a Christian woman) “fueled a growing backlash against Jewish Americans” when he was found guilty after a mockery of a trial (191) • Henry Ford sponsored the publication of Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which described the Jewish economic conspiracy to take over the world • Protestants were suspicious of Catholics, particularly following WWI (many Germans were Catholics) • The 1928 election of Catholic governor Al Smith (NY) was vilified for his support of the eradication of Prohibition, seen as an infiltration of Catholic values • However, what this anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic response really shows is how firmly embedded Judaism and Catholicism were in American society

5. Institutionalized Intolerance • The Ku Klux Klan experienced a resurgence beginning in 1915; the trial of Leo Frank and the film The Birth of a Nation reinvigorated efforts to eradicate non-white, non-Protestant elements from America • William Joseph Simmons was the primary force behind the Klan’s rebirth, turning it into a “religiously-based terrorist body” (195) that believed that it was a force for moral good and social reform, which simply employed any-means-necessary to accomplish its goals • They had a different understanding of a “unified America” (195)

6. New Media and Religion • Religion and media like radio and eventually television have had a mutually-edifying relationship (in spite of critique by those who saw communications media as dangerous to the “religious and moral fabric of the nation” (196) • Beginning in the 1930’s America witnessed the marriage between religion and media as religious figures took to the radio airwaves and film • Charles Fuller began the “Old Fashioned Revival Hour”, which would become the most popular program on the radio • Inserting themselves into the morally ambiguous film industry were religious films such as King of Kings • Media enabled religious figures to expand their ministry in a way that was not possible before • Yet they often served to homogenize or assimilate religious difference into a “least common denominator” (198) creating an overarching religious viewpoint