Father Charles Coughlin and the New Deal

Anti-Semitism From the Golden Hour of the Little Flower

Michael Streich

April 27, 2009 Suite101

In the 1930s, Father Charles E. Coughlin would emerge as one of the most power radio personalities in an industry that was only slowing coming into its own. Coughlin’s Sunday “Hour of Power” broadcasts mixed religious themes with political issues, eventually used to convey such virulently anti-Semitic sermons that Coughlin has been called the “father of hate radio.” At his height, both Catholics and Protestants comprised over forty million weekly listeners.

 

Radio League of the Little Flower

 

Coughlin’s “golden hour of the Little Flower,” named for St. Therese of Lisieux who had recently been canonized, helped to finance the construction of a national shrine in Royal Oak, Michigan. Yet even before the pivotal election of 1932, Coughlin’s sermons had begun to incorporate political and social messages. Stoking fears of Communism, Coughlin skillfully wove anti-Semitic messages into his sermons, equating Communism with the Jews.

 

University of Texas historian Robert Abzug writes that Coughlin “was one of the principal disseminators of anti-Semitic propaganda in mainstream American culture.” Throughout Hitler’s rise to power, Coughlin defended Nazism ostensibly as a deterrent against Soviet Russia and Communism. He excused Kristallnacht and used propaganda speeches by Dr. Josef Goebbels without checking sources.

 

Couglin’s “Christian Front,” established in 1938, referred to the “synagogue of Satan” and published the Christian Index, a guide to non-Jewish merchants in New York City. Members of the Front were urged to “buy Christian.” Address Jews in a December 11, 1938 radio address, Father Coughlin stated, “…You are a minority – a small but powerful minority. We are a majority – an easy-going, patient majority – but a majority always conscious of our latent power.”

 

Coughlin Attacked the New Deal and FDR

 

From the very beginnings of Roosevelt’s New Deal, Coughlin attacked programs he disagreed with. Additionally, he attacked Jews in high government positions as well as bankers and financiers, referring to them as “modern shylocks.” At first supporting FDR, Coughlin began to criticize the President, forming his National Union for Social Justice in 1934 that advocated nationalization of utilities and banks.

 

When Congress considered increasing the amount of silver in order to create more currency – at 25% above world prices, Coughlin maneuvered to get the bill passed although FDR opposed it. Eventually, it was disclosed that Coughlin’s Radio League owned one half million ounces of silver.

 

By 1936, Coughlin was comparing the New Deal to, “…the red mud of Soviet Communism and…the stinking cesspool of pagan autocracy.” His newly formed Union Party ran North Dakota Representative William Lemke as a presidential candidate. Coughlin believed in an international conspiracy led by Jewish bankers and other power brokers. It was these men, according to Coughlin, that had financed the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.

 

Although Coughlin was an irritant, and President Roosevelt wisely chose not to confront the priest head-on, it was the incessant anti-Semitism coming out of his sermons and from the pages of magazine Social Justice that may have done the most harm. Historians note that the US failures to ease immigration restrictions for Jews fleeing Europe in the pre-war years may be linked to the constant message of fear and hate.

 

National Shrine of the Little Flower

 

Father Coughlin’s biography, appearing on the website of the National Shine, says nothing of his anti-Semitism nor does it allude to the depth of political involvement, silenced by the church hierarchy by 1941. According to the website, “the priest’s sermons clarified the principles of Christianity and answered thousands of questions concerning faith and morals.”

 

Sources:

 

Robert H. Abzug, America Views the Holocaust 1933-1945: a Brief Documentary History (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1999)

Albert Fried, FDR and his Enemies (Palgrave/St. Martin’s Griffin, 1999)

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Coming of the New Deal (Houghton Mifflin Company Boston, 1959)

Donald Warren, Radio Priest: Charles Coughlin, the Father of Hate Radio (Free Press, 1996)

The copyright of this article is owned by Michael Streich. Permission to reprint online or in print must be granted by the author in writing.