Communism in the Churches

Red Religion.

In the wildly anti-Communist climate of the cold war some American religious leaders, mostly Protestant, became targets of red-baiters. While some clergymen had been Communists or fellow travelers, particularly in the 1930s, few remained allied with Soviet communism after World War II. In many cases the postwar charges of Communist sympathy were made and supported by conservative Protestants, often labeled fundamentalists, who were angry with what they perceived as a liberal drift by the mainline denominations.

Senate Hearings.

In 1951 the Reader's Digest carried an article, "Methodism's Pink Fringe," which charged that organizations within Methodism, the largest Protestant church in the United States, were filled with Communists and fellow travelers. In 1952 the House Committee on Un-American Activities extended that attack when it issued an eighty-seven-page pamphlet, Review of the...

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