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.of Protestants who exercise liberty of conscience ; Central File, General File Box831, Folder 122 Spain; DDE Papers. 74 PART ONEearly in 1954 by an NAE leader and sent to a small group of evangelical lead-ers, including Billy Graham and Fuller Seminary President Harold Ockenga,warned that the only way to head off the Roman Catholic menace to ournation is by using the same legal tactics they do, and that is legal infiltrationof the various branches of our government. The memo then detailed system-atically the numbers and names of Catholics appointed to high positions inthe Eisenhower Administration.Turning to the State Department, the memolamented that five out of Dulles s top six aides were Catholic.More omi-nous still was an ironic by-product of McCarthyism. The direct or indirectresult of Senator McCarthy s investigations is a disproportionate dischargingof Protestants and hiring of Roman Catholics under the false belief that thiswould protect the security of our nation. 24 McCarthyism has been criti-cized for many things, then and now, but surely the concern of conservativeProtestants that it might benefit Catholics was a novel objection.As ferventas they could be in their hatred of communism, evangelicals blanched atthe notion that the agitations of America s most prominent anticommunistwere benefiting their Catholic nemeses.To their mind, this made it all themore vital to place their own people in positions of power.None others couldbe trusted.Not that evangelicals had ceased combating their other perennial enemies communists and liberal Protestants especially when the two appeared tomake common cause.For example, L.Nelson Bell wrote to his friend andcongressional ally Walter Judd requesting a copy of the report by the HouseCommittee on Un-American Activities on the Communist sympathies ofDr.John Mackay, president of Princeton Theological Seminary.Bell regardedMackay as particularly threatening for two reasons.Not only was he a promi-nent voice for theological liberalism in the Presbyterian denomination, butMackay also advocated the recognition of Red China and at the same timeurges our Government to sit down at the conference table with the Com-munists. To a conservative Presbyterian and former China missionary likeBell, this was apostasy twice over.Judd sent the requested information toBell.The report indicated that Mackay had long been affiliated with left-wing24February 15, 1954 Confidential Memo The Washington Picture ; Evangelical Foreign MissionAssociation Papers (hereinafter EFMA Papers), Box 88, Folder 7; BGCA.Fundamentalistsseemed to share this concern that McCarthy s anticommunist crusade not provide coverfor Catholic advances in public life.See, for example, the November 13, 1954 Resolutionon Investigating Committees adopted by the American Council of Christian Churches,which resolved Protestants must be on constant guard against being drawn into the orbit ofRoman Catholicism as a professed major enemy of Communism ; Central File, General File,Box 1301, Folder: 201 1954; DDE Papers. UNITY DISSOLVED: PROTESTANTS AND FOREIGN POLICY, 1953 1960 75organizations and causes, some of which might also have been communistfront groups or included communist members.While this no doubt furtheredBell s suspicions of Mackay, it did not indicate that Mackay himself was a partymember.25Though not nearly as strident or alarmist as Bell, Niebuhr continued toharbor concerns over the political liberalism of his Protestant colleagues.The beginning of 1955 witnessed the 15th anniversary of Christianity andCrisis, and occasioned a reflective editorial from Niebuhr on his journal spurposes, past and present.The previous decade and a half had seen threemajor developments, he argued: the dramatic emergence of American power,the growth and consolidation of the worldwide communist movement, andthe advent of nuclear weapons and the concomitant arms race.The worldremained in crisis, Niebuhr contended, albeit a crisis much different fromthat of 1940.Yet too many Christians still held to a simplistic solution, thatnations should just disavow the use of nuclear weapons. Doing so might well increase the danger of war, and since war cannot be avoided without runningthe risk of it, it is not the business of the church to offer statesmen solutionswhich they must instinctively regard as irrelevant. The Christian counselto this nation should be primarily religious, rather than purely moral, hedeclared, such as reminding the nation in its majesty of a divine majestybefore which even great nations are as a drop in the bucket. 26In disparaging irrelevant solutions from church leaders, Niebuhr prob-ably had in mind letters like the one sent just two months later from NCCleader Ernest Gross to Harold Stassen, a former NCC official who had beenappointed a Special Assistant to President Eisenhower for nuclear weaponryissues.Gross reminded Stassen of how long and steadfastly the churcheshave sought to bring the armament race to an end and hoped a solutionto the disarmament problem can be found, especially if Stassen would help strengthen and reinforce the operations of the UN in pushing for disar-mament.27 Though heartened that another one of their own now occupied asenior policy position, the NCC found discouraging that their policies werenot as well received.The year 1955 witnessed a new Cold War flare-up, as the PRC escalatedits pressure on the offshore islands of Quemoy and Matsu, held by the Chi-nese Nationalists on Taiwan.Niebuhr took this as yet another opportunity25December 10, 1954 letter from Bell to Judd; December 14, 1954 Information from the Filesof the Committee on Un-American Activities memo; L.Nelson Bell Papers (hereinafter BellPapers), Box 31, Folder 4; BGCA.26Niebuhr, Our Fifteenth Birthday, Christianity and Crisis, 7 February 1955, 1 3.27April 22, 1955 letter from Gross to Stassen; NCC Papers, RG 6, Box19, Folder 20; PHS. 76 PART ONEto tweak liberal churchmen
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