Alfred O. Hero, American Religious Groups View Foreign Policy: Trends in Rank-and-File Opinion, 1937-1969 Durham, NC: Duke University, 1973. 552 pages. ISBN: 0822302535

Well before religion became de rigueur in Cold War historiography during the 1990s, Alfred Hero published American Religious Groups View Foreign Policy: Trends in Rank-and-File Opinion, 1937-1969, an extensive compilation of survey data on the opinions of American Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. Hero, a director of the World Peace Foundation, earned his PhD in political science at George Washington University. Unsurprisingly then, American Religious Groups View Foreign Policy is more a work of political science than history. 236 of the 552 pages are dedicated to tables summarizing Gallup polls, surveys, and other “empirical social science data.”¹

Hero set out three questions for his compendium: How closely did the views of religious leaders reflect those of the laity, how did the opinions of the religious grassroots affect foreign policy, and how could religious leaders more effectively communicate foreign policy considerations to their flocks. Hero found that the Catholics surveyed tended to be more isolationist and less well informed then their Protestant counterparts, though Christians in general lagged behind Jews in both categories. Hero tracks the change over time in the beliefs of different groups, e.g., “Negro-Protestants” were more isolationist than white protestants prior to World War II but became significantly more interventionist by the 1960s. He was surprised to find that there was no correlation between the frequency of attending religious services and variance in political beliefs. Furthermore, a parishioner’s theology seemed far more likely to indicate their foreign policy beliefs than their denominational loyalty. Thus Methodists were pretty evenly split over the question of whether to support Chiang Kai-Shek or Mao Tse-Tung, but theological conservatives of any denomination were significantly more likely to support the generalissimo while theological liberals backed Mao. In general, theologically conservative church people were also conservative (which he defines as isolationist) in their approach to American foreign policy.²

But Hero was most concerned about the disconnect between the clergy and laity in the mainline Protestant denominations. Parishioners in theologically conservative denominations tended to advocate the same foreign policy positions as their clergy, but congregates in the theologically liberal mainline denominations advocated very different positions from their leaders. Indeed, the mainline grassroots tended to be nearly as conservative in their foreign policy beliefs as those in fundamentalist churches. Hero’s frustration is evident as he attempts to explain why mainline congregates would not listen to their well-educated, liberal pastors. Hero concludes the book by offering suggestions for how the mainline denominations could more effectively convert their lay members to a more activist foreign policy: encouraging greater ecumenical cooperation, promoting “effective elites,” and emphasizing ethical issues in seminaries.³

Unfortunately, Hero – a member of several committees that advised the National Council of Churches on foreign policy – was blind to the significance of the division between fundamentalist and modernist Christians. He noted that such a difference existed, but only dedicated a few pages to the fundamentalists. American Religious Groups View Foreign Policy was published in 1973, three years prior to Time’s “Year of the Evangelical,” so it would be anachronistic to expect Hero to have placed as great an emphasis on fundamentalists as later historians did. Yet without recognizing its true significance, Hero shed light upon the conservative resurgence of the 1950s-80s. During the 1940s and ’50s, when policy makers looked for input from the religious community they turned to the mainline National Council of Churches. But Congresspeople were surprised to find that most of the constituent mail that they received was “contrary to the policy recommendations of national religious leaders.” This disconnect between conservative laity and liberal clergy in the mainline denominations must have played a role in the lay exodus to fundamentalist denominations, like the Southern Baptist Convention, and new nondenominational mega churches. Conservative lay Protestants in the mainline denominations – misrepresented by their liberal national leadership – voted with their feet.⁴

1 Alfred O. Hero, American Religious Groups View Foreign Policy: Trends in Rank-and-File Opinion, 1937-1969 Durham, NC: Duke University, 1973, vii.