TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/election/60elect/60elect.006

Text File | 1992-08-29 | 9.2 KB | 173 lines

                                                                                September 26, 1960

THE CAMPAIGN

Test of Religion


     Jack Kennedy carefully chose his ground for his
counterthrust on religion, and it was plainly hostile ground.
Looking something like a parson himself, dressed in severe black
suit and black tie, he strode purposefully into the ballroom of
Houston's Rice Hotel last week to address and be questioned by
the Greater Houston Ministerial Association under the eye of a
statewide TV. Nervously he worked his thumbs together, rubbed
his fists back and forth, sipped water several times as he
waited through the introductions and opening prayer. "What's the
mood of the ministers?" he asked his press chief, Pierre
Salinger. Replied Salinger: "They're tired of being called
bigots."

     "I Would Resign." Once in command of the microphone,
Kennedy wasted no time getting to his point. "I believe in an
America," said he, reading word for word from a five-page
statement drafted by himself and Speechwriter Ted Sorenson (a
Unitarian), "where the separation of church and state is
absolute -- where no Catholic prelate would tell the President,
should he be a Catholic, how to act, and no Protestant minister
would tell his parishioners for whom to vote." He urged the
clergymen to "judge me on the basis of my record of 14 years in
Congress -- on my declared stands against an Ambassador to the
Vatican, against unconstitutional aid to parochial schools and
against any boycott of the public schools, which I have
attended myself...I do not speak for my church on public matters
-- and the church does not speak for me."

     Then Kennedy came to a paragraph that would be cited for
years to come. "Whatever issue may come before me as President,
if I should be elected -- on birth control, divorce, censorship,
gambling, or any other subject -- I will make my decision in
accordance with these views, in accordance with what my
conscience tells me to be in the national interest, and without
regard to outside religious pressure or dictates. And no power
or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise. But
if the time should ever come -- and I do not concede any
conflict to be even remotely possible -- when my office would
require me to either violate my conscience or violate the
national interest, then I would resign from office, and I hope
any conscientious public servant would do the same."

     "An Improper Action." When Kennedy had finished, the
ministers applauded politely, then opened fire, often with
complex questions. Kennedy fielded skillfully. Yes, he said, he
would attend any non-Catholic religious service "that has any
connection with my public office." No, he would not request
Boston's Cardinal Cushing to ask the Vatican to "authorize"
Kennedy's views on church-state separation because, just as
Kennedy expected the church to keep out of his politics, so he
intended to keep out of church matters. What if the Catholic
Church used its "privilege and obligation," as white-haired
Baptist Minister K.O. White called it, to direct Kennedy's
political life? Kennedy stuck out his jaw: "I would reply to
them that this was an improper action on their part, that it
was one to which I could not subscribe. I am confident there
would be no such interference."

     Most of the ministers were impressed if not converted.
"Martin Luther himself would have welcomed Senator Kennedy and
cheered him," said a Lutheran, the Rev. George C. Reck. But some
were unfazed. "Senator Kennedy is either a poor Catholic or he
is stringing the people along," said Dr. W. A. Criswell, pastor
of the nation's largest Southern Baptist congregation, who
believes that a Catholic President is only the first step, until
finally comes the day when "religious history has also died in
America as it has died in Spain." The Kennedy camp rated
Kennedy's performance as highly successful -- and highly
important in a state where he and Nixon are thought to be
running neck and neck. Kennedy men planned to send tapes of the
show to TV stations throughout the South and Midwest.

     Cutoff. Early in the week, Dick Nixon proposed that both
candidates keep the religion issue out of the Page One
headlines by agreeing to a "cutoff date on its discussion." For
himself, Nixon intended to begin the cutoff immediately,
although he acknowledged that it would be more difficult for
Kennedy to do so, and he rested on his often-repeated position
that "I disapprove of the religious issue being used in my
behalf or against my opponent." But he resisted demands from
Democratic quarters that he denouce the implied endorsement of
the Citizens for Religious Freedom -- including such prominent
Protestant preachers as Dr. Norman Vincent Peale and Dr. Daniel
A. Poling -- which had questioned the Kennedy candidacy on
religious grounds.

     Hapless Dr. Peale, for once not seeming Everyman's best
guide to Confident Living (one of his multimillion-selling
titles), tried to separate himself from the movement he had made
himself the spokesman for. The Philadelphia Inquirer dropped his
weekly column. Dr. Peale emerged from a week-long "retreat,"
after offering to resign from the pulpit of Manhattan's Marble
Collegiate Church (refused), and submitted his resignation from
the Citizens for Religious Freedom (accepted), and he declared
that the people have a right to elect a man of any rligion --
or none at all -- to the presidency. "I was not duped. I was
just stupid," he told a New York Herald Tribune reporter.

     "Magnificent." The so-called Citizens for Religious
Freedom, which had set the whole fuss going the week before,
praised Kennedy's Houston statement as "the most complete,
unequivocal and reassuring statement which could he expected of
any person in his position." "Magnificent," echoed Dr. Daniel A.
Poling. In the October issue of the Christian Herald, which he
edits, Dr. Poling explained why he got into the public
controversy in the first place. "Religion is important in an
election because it is important, or should be important, to
the man who practices it. Anything that helps to make the man
is important to voters when that man runs for public office and
particularly for the highest office in the land."

     Democratic National Chairman Henry M. ("Scoop") Jackson
hinted darkly that Republican moneybags were bankrolling the
anti-Catholic campaign, and challenged the press to find out
"who prepared the statement issued by Dr. Peale's group." He
suggested that the issue was turning the whole campaign in
Kennedy's favor. Ex-President Harry Truman charged that back
home in Independence, Mo., "the Republicans are sending out all
the dirty pamphlets they can find on the religious issue."
Republican National Chairman Thruston Morton rebutted in the
same vein: "The Democrats are deliberately keeping the
religious issue alive for the purpose of exploiting it for their
own political advantage. Former President Truman's statement
that Republican headquarters are issuing anti-Catholic pamphlets
is completely false and reprehensible."

     Whose Gain? Candidate Kennedy, flying into Manhattan to
accept the Liberal Party's endorsement, convulsed the dinner by
declaring that the Republican platform be entitled "The Power of
Positive Thinking." [Other humor making the rounds in Catholic
circles: Kennedy wins the presidency, and in the normal course
of events the time comes to elect a new Pope. "How about
America's Cardinal Spellman?" suggest one Italian cardinal.
"Not on your life," snaps a second. "Do you want the Vatican to
be run from the White House?"] Invading heavily industrial New
Jersey, he got one of the greatest receptions of any candidate
in memory.

     Politicians in both camps agreed that Kennedy stood to gain
from the religion furor -- so long as a counterreaction did not
set out of suspicion that he was deliberately exploiting it.
Some Protestant Democrats might be roused to vote against him on
the basis of religion alone in the farm belt and in the Deep
South. But in the populous industrial states that he needs most
of all -- New York (35% Catholic), New Jersey (43%),
Pennsylvania (31%), Illinois (33%), Michigan (24%), Ohio (21%),
Wisconsin (32%) -- Kennedy stands a good chance of winning, if
he can solidify the Democratic Catholic vote that swung to
Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956. [Last week the Gallup Poll
reported that 71% of U.S. Catholic voters lean toward Kennedy,
26% toward Nixon, with 3% undecided.] Nixon, on the other hand,
feels that if religion does not become the decisive point in a
voter's mind, he has a good chance of carrying such
predominantly Catholic groups as the Poles and Hungarians, on
the issue of "standing up to the Russians." Nixon's hold on
conservative Catholic Republicans is strong, but TIME
correspondents last week detected some movement away from Nixon
into the "undecided" sector, under the force of the religion
debate.

     Religion was a subject that, most everyone agreed, had to
be talked out at some point in the campaign, and sincere men as
well as bigots had brought it to the fore. And it was also a
question that could be talked about too much, to the exclusion
of other important issues in 1960.