re: #69 ObserverArt

I remember all too well how Peale shot his mouth off in the 1960 Presidential campaign and attacked Kennedy for being a Catholic. That was when the whole world saw what a bigot Norman Vincent Peale was.

Here’s a reminder for those who either were not born or who need to remember from Wikipedia:

Peale was invited to attend a strategy conference of about thirty evangelicals in Montreux, Switzerland, by its host, the well-known evangelist Billy Graham, in mid-August 1960. There they agreed to kick off a group called The National Conference of Citizens for Religious Freedom in Washington the following month. On September 7, Peale served as its chairman and spoke for 150 Protestant clergymen, opposing the election of John F. Kennedy as president.[30] “Faced with the election of a Catholic,” Peale declared, “our culture is at stake.”[26] In a written manifesto Peale and his group also declared JFK would serve the interests of the Catholic Church before the interests of the United States: “It is inconceivable that a Roman Catholic president would not be under extreme pressure by the hierarchy of his church to accede to its policies with respect to foreign interests,” and that the election of a Catholic might even end free speech in America.[26] Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr responded “Dr. Peale and his associates … show blind prejudice.”[26] Protestant Episcopal Bishop James Pike echoed Niebuhr: “Any argument which would rule out a Roman Catholic just because he is Roman Catholic is both bigotry and a violation of the constitutional guarantee of no religious test for public office.”[31] The Peale statement was further condemned by former President Harry Truman, the Board of Rabbis, and other leading Protestants such as Paul Tillich and John C. Bennett.[31] Peale recanted his statements and was later fired by his own committee. As conservative William F. Buckley succinctly described the fallout: “When … The Norman Vincent Peale Committee was organized, on the program that a vote for Kennedy was a vote to repeal the First Amendment to the Constitution, the Jesuits fired their Big Bertha, and Dr. Peale fled from the field, mortally wounded.”[32] Peale subsequently went into hiding and threatened to resign from his church.[33] The fallout continued as Peale was condemned in a statement by one hundred religious leaders and dropped as a syndicated columnist by a dozen newspapers.[33] After the uproar the pastor backed off from further formal partisan commitments.

Oh and this was when Mom started to sour on Billy Graham KKKraKKKer, too! Graham was Peale’s partner in spreading the anti-Catholic shit.