Tri-Faith America: How Catholics And Jews Held Postwar America To Its Protestant Promise - Softcover

Schultz's work is an important part of recent scholarship...that examines how access to the political, social, and cultural 'mainstream' was expanded during World War II and the postwar period. ...Tri-Faith America is an important work that challenges historians to think more critically about religious and ethnic relations in the postwar period. (Journal of American Ethnic History)

A creatively imagined, subtly rendered narrative...Schultz has produced a terrific, timely book that not only accomplishes its stated goals admirably but also helps us consider anew the character of public life and debate. (Journal of American History)

One of the finest studies of twentieth-century religion and politics in America published in the past two decades. (Sociology of Religion)

Schultz offers a work filled with contradiction, irony, and unintended consequence. It exemplifies good intellectual history. (Religion and Politics)

For scholars of twentieth-century American Jewish history, this book is a must-read. (American Jewish Archives Journal)

President Franklin D. Roosevelt put it bluntly, if privately, in 1942-the United States was "a Protestant country," he said, "and the Catholics and Jews are here under sufferance."
In Tri-Faith America, Kevin Schultzexplains how the United States left behind this idea that it was "a Protestant nation" and replaced it with a new national image, one premised on the notion that the country was composed of three separate, equally American faiths-Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. Tracing the origins of the tri-faith idea to the early twentieth century, when Catholic and Jewish immigration forced Protestant Social Gospelers to combine forces with Catholic and Jewish relief agencies, Tri-Faith America shows how the tri-faith idea gathered momentum after World War I, promoted by public relations campaigns, interfaith organizations, and the government, to the point where, by the end of World War II and into the early years of the Cold War, the idea was becoming widely accepted, particularly in the armed forces, fraternities, neighborhoods, social organizations, and schools.
Tri-Faith America also shows how postwar Catholics and Jews used the new image to force the country to confront the challenges of pluralism. Should Protestant bibles be allowed on public school grounds? Should Catholic and Jewish fraternities be allowed to exclude Protestants? Should the government be allowed to count Americans by religion? Challenging the image of the conformist 1950s, Schultz describes how Americans were vigorously debating the merits of recognizing pluralism, paving the way for the civil rights movement and leaving an enduring mark on American culture.