Patrick Lacroix's interesting study argues that the Kennedy years represent an important, if neglected, part of what he terms “the arc of US religious history.” He contends that the landscape of faith and politics was reshaped in the three years that JFK held office. For him, the years of Kennedy's presidency did not simply coincide with but rather caused the decline of old denominational animosities, and, furthermore, they encouraged “the development of new partnerships based on a shared ideological outlook” (2). Lacroix argues that the beginnings of the liberal-conservative division within many American religious denominations began during the thousand days that JFK held office and that we are still living with the consequences of this religious transformation.
Lacroix is on a mission to fill what he portrays as a significant scholarly lacuna. He observes correctly that most JFK biographers have neglected to examine the intersection of religion and politics during the Kennedy presidency. He also suggests that notable historians of American Catholicism, such as Patrick Allitt, John McGreevy, and Mark Massa have also tended to “relegate Kennedy to irrelevance by their laconic treatment of his presidency” (229). He acknowledges that some work has been done by scholars like Thomas Carty and David Allen, but he presents his book as a comprehensive account of the intersection of faith and politics throughout Kennedy's term in office.
Lacroix does not give much time to JFK's own Catholic commitments. His effort is not to explore the impact of JFK's personal religious views but rather to examine how religion and the Kennedy presidency intersected. He concludes that religion was “repurposed to promote liberal reform domestically and abroad,” especially around matters like racial justice and arms control (18).
Lacroix begins his substantive investigation with a review of the religious background to the 1960 campaign and an analysis of the role of religion in that notable presidential contest. He establishes conclusively that JFK meant what he said in his famous address in Houston on September 12, 1960, when he assured the Protestant ministers that he would adhere to a strict separation of church and state. Such a stance, of course, eventually led Billy Graham to quip that the country had elected a Baptist president.
Lacroix, however, demonstrates that matters were more complex than perhaps Billy Graham understood. He shows how the Kennedy administration worked with religious groups, including Catholic groups, in developing the Peace Corps, although the administration always emphasized that it did not favor Catholics in any way. The deliberations over funding for education and the Peace Corps clarified well that “the first Catholic president would not blindly serve the interests of his church” (72).
But Lacroix's book argues that the story should not end with that conclusion. Instead, it elucidates that faith and foreign policy intersected often during the period from 1961 to 1963. Building on the work of historians like Andrew Preston and David Allen, Lacroix demonstrates that “the Kennedy administration evolved from reluctance to draw from U.S. religious sentiments, energies, and activism to direct engagement with Protestant and Catholic leaders as it sought to advance its foreign policy agenda” (80). Here, the influence of Pope John XXIII's encyclicals and of the calling of the Second Vatican Council provided a more agreeable context in which JFK could operate.
While Kennedy initially had to tread carefully so as not to be seen as overly influenced by “Catholic power,” over time he allowed for some religious influence, particularly in moving to ease tensions in the Cold War after the Cuban Missile Crisis. John XXIII's Pacem in Terris revealed overlapping interests between the United States and the Vatican, especially on the issue of arms control. Lacroix is persuasive on that point, although less so regarding the impact of religion in the Vietnam conflict.
Lacroix devotes a fine chapter to the mobilizing of religious groups on the civil rights issue. He promotes the familiar narrative that the Kennedy administration overcame its initial reluctance on civil rights in the breakthrough summer of 1963 so that thereafter it sought to utilize religious support to promote its civil rights agenda. There is certainly some evidence for this, but Lacroix himself admits that there is a variety of interpretations available here: “Was religious involvement in policymaking an attempt by a secular president to instrumentalize religion, or the same president's genuine well-meaning sense that faith could and should serve the social good?” (146) The author leans to the latter. The evidence suggests more of the former.
The author brings his key arguments together in his final chapter, which presents the Kennedy years as “transformative” for American religious history. By 1963, Kennedy's Catholicism was no longer the political liability it had been during the 1960 campaign. The incumbent had demonstrated his commitment to disestablishment and to a certain secularization through his support of the Supreme Court decisions banning prayer and the reading of Bible verses in public schools. Now the issue was increasingly liberal ideology versus a more conservative viewpoint for both Protestants and Catholics.
Lacroix admits that there were a range of other factors influencing this developing division during the mid- and later 1960s, but he holds strongly to the view that the Kennedy administration contributed notably to this major shift in the politics of American religion. Thus, JFK must be considered a consequential figure in the realignment of U.S. religion.
Perhaps LaCroix exaggerates the extent of Kennedy's influence. Certainly, he does not sufficiently engage the persuasive arguments of Robert Wuthnow's The Restructuring of American Religion (Princeton University Press, 1988), which explained the decline in denominational distinctions and the emergence of more ideological special interest groups in the 1960s as a consequence of such larger social/political forces as the rapid expansion of higher education, the enhanced role of government, and the decline of mainline Protestantism. In this view, JFK's presidency coincided with the larger religious restructuring but did not cause or significantly influence it. Nonetheless, Lacroix's book is a valuable contribution to the literature on religion and politics. By moving the discussion away from Kennedy's personal religious views to how his administration engaged religious groups and viewpoints, he has advanced the discussion. His book illustrates that despite the enormous literature on the Kennedy presidency, there is much still to discover and debate.
