One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (26 page)

To help promote his 1956 blockbuster film
The Ten Commandments,
director Cecil B. DeMille worked with the Fraternal Order of Eagles to construct thousands of granite monuments of the commandments. The actor Charlton Heston, who portrayed Moses in the film, joined Judge E. J. Ruegemer of the Eagles, Fargo mayor Herschel Lashkowitz, and Lt. Gov. Clarence P. Dahl to dedicate one such monument in North Dakota.
Institute for Regional Studies, NDSU Fargo, (2107.30.1).

Although generally welcomed, the Eagles' campaign was not without its critics. Originally the organization prided itself on the support its activities received from Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish clergy alike. But as the campaign began to focus on placing monuments in prominent public locations, cracks appeared in this coalition. In July 1957, a Minneapolis rabbi who had long supported the Eagles' efforts wrote Ruegemer to say that his support had its limits. He praised the “highest motives” of the organization and said he still supported the placement of monuments on “private premises.” But the rabbi believed “efforts to place these plaques in institutions and places, state sponsored, represents a serious threat to and departure from the classic American principle of separation of church and state.” The American Jewish Congress felt the
same way, he noted pointedly. Individual chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union, meanwhile, raised similar objections. In June 1957, its Ohio branch sent a polite letter of protest to the mayor of Youngstown about a proposed monument there. “The Eagles' gesture is generous and public-spirited,” the letter read, but placement of such a religious icon on public land would “conflict with the healthy American tradition of separation of church and state.” While such complaints would, decades later, place these Ten Commandments monuments at the center of landmark legal struggles, at the time they were easily dismissed. The Eagles proceeded with their work, ultimately establishing nearly four thousand monuments across America.
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A
BALDING, BESPECTACLED
A
USTRALIAN PHYSICIAN
with jug ears and a jutting jaw, Dr. Fred Schwarz seemed unlikely to become a conservative celebrity on par with the great Cecil B. DeMille. Yet by the early 1960s, less than a decade after his arrival in America, Schwarz was unmistakably a star, considered an authority on the communist menace.
Time
called him a “keen, spell-binding” speaker who was quickly becoming “the hottest thing around,” while the publisher of
Life
praised him effusively in a personal appearance at one of the massive anticommunist rallies Schwarz regularly conducted for thousands of paying participants. In 1962, a
CBS Reports
special on the state of American conservatism identified Schwarz as “a new breed of Right Winger—the salesman for the Right.” Indeed, his legion of admirers soon included conservative icons such as William F. Buckley Jr., Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan.
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With no professional training in politics and no personal experience with the Communist Party, Schwarz instead found his new profession through his faith. “I was an evangelical Christian,” he later explained. “The Communists are evangelical in another sense and I know they intended to destroy what I stand for.” Believing America would be the main battleground in the struggle between religious freedom and godless statism, he abandoned his medical practice in Australia and emigrated in 1952. He soon began making public appearances and radio addresses across the country, denouncing communism as a dangerous, godless ideology and urging Americans to embrace religion as their defense. “I stressed
the role that atheism played in the formation of Communist doctrines, and the logical consequences,” he later remembered. “I challenged Christians to be as dedicated to Christian regeneration as the Communists were to creating a godless utopia.” His speaking fees helped him build a larger network for his work, though not much was really needed. In 1953, a modest $50 honorarium, given by the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel in Los Angeles, served as all the seed money he needed to create his new organization, the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade (CACC).
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Although the Australian doctor was more focused on international communism than domestic issues such as the New Deal state, Christian libertarians welcomed him as one of their own. In late 1952, Schwarz gave a lecture to fifteen hundred participants in the Freedom Club at First Congregational Church, earning thanks for his work in “the preservation of Freedom under God in this distracted world.” Likewise, in 1953, Schwarz attended Billy Graham's crusade in Detroit and chatted with him afterward. Graham had heard his anticommunist lectures on the radio and, duly impressed, arranged for the doctor to address a luncheon of congressmen and cabinet officials in the House of Representatives Dining Room. (An Alabama congressman reported back to Graham that the “terrific” lecture had impressed leaders from both parties: “He knocked them cold.”) Abraham Vereide also opened doors for Schwarz. In June 1956, select congressmen were invited to attend an ICCL meeting in the Vandenberg Room of the Senate to meet with “Dr. Fred C. Schwarz, noted surgeon, psychiatrist, and authority on the Communistic philosophy of Dialectical Materialism.”
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Schwarz capitalized on his new influence in Congress to present himself as a leading authority on the problem of communism and the solution of Christianity. In 1957, he addressed a breakfast meeting of the Republican Club, where he so inspired attendees that they “immediately,” as one told Schwarz, took steps “to refer you to the House Un-American Activities Committee and to arrange a personal interview between you and an Assistant to the President of the United States.” He was soon summoned to testify before the committee's staff on the topic “The Communist Mind.” In an interview that ran for an hour and twenty minutes, the doctor—who liked to compare himself to a pathologist in his new line
of work—patiently led congressional aides through his diagnosis of the communist menace. Ultimately, he urged greater awareness of “the basic foundations of American civilization” as the only cure. “We must give it priority in our thinking and in our actions,” he said. “We must build a strong base of freedom-loving people articulate in their faith, in their love of country, in their love of God, in their love of home, and in their love of law, and we must rally the spiritual forces in the heart of man.”
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Improbably, Schwarz's congressional testimony quickly became a cause célèbre. The first transcripts were rapidly distributed, forcing Congress to print another fifty thousand copies the following year. Executives at the Allen-Bradley Company, an electronics corporation in Milwaukee, published large portions of the interview as a special double-page advertisement in the largest metropolitan newspapers. “
WILL YOU BE FREE TO CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS IN THE FUTURE
?” the headline blared. “
NOT UNLESS
: You and other free Americans begin to understand and appreciate the benefits provided by God under the American free enterprise system.” The ad urged Americans to read Schwarz's words and share them with friends. Much like the other corporations who sponsored like-minded messages, the Allen-Bradley Company insisted it had nothing to gain. “With this advertisement,” the sponsor noted, “this company is trying to sell you nothing except the importance of holding fast to your American freedoms including the freedom to live, the freedom to worship your God, and the freedom to work as you choose.” Republican senator Barry Goldwater, meanwhile, wrote an opinion piece for the
Los Angeles Times
praising both Schwarz for his insights and Allen-Bradley for its “most useful service to this republic” in reprinting his message. Thrilled by the reception, Schwarz soon repackaged his testimony as a best-selling book,
You Can Trust the Communists (
. . .
To Do Exactly as They Say).
Released in 1960, it quickly sold a million copies.
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While Schwarz successfully spread his message in print, his energies were more devoted to a whirlwind tour of personal appearances. In 1958, the CACC launched its first School of Anti-Communism. For $5 a day—or $20 for the week—participants were treated to a slate of anticommunist films, lectures, and discussions in a packed schedule that ran from 8:30 a.m. to 9:45 p.m. Schwarz was the main attraction, but the weeklong schools provided a broader “faculty” featuring leading names from the
anticommunist lecture circuit, such as Herbert Philbrick, who infiltrated the Communist Party to write the best-selling book
I Led Three Lives,
and W. Cleon Skousen, a far-right former FBI administrator who authored
The Naked Communist.
Other conservative figures lectured as well, including Frank S. Meyer, editor of
National Review,
and Kenneth Wells, president of the Freedoms Foundation. The first School of Anti-Communism was held in St. Louis, but they soon spread to cities around the nation including Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Miami, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland.
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Fred Schwarz, founder of the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade, promoted a conservative vision of religious nationalism in his wildly popular Schools of Anti-Communism. CBS identified him as “a new breed of Right Winger—the salesman for the Right.”
Courtesy of the Ohio History Connection, Joe Munroe Photographer, Photograph of Fred Schwarz.

Though popular across the country, the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade had its greatest successes in its Southern California home. In November 1960, Schwarz held his first anticommunism school in Los
Angeles. Registration cards stressed the dangerous advances socialism had made in America. One side of the form was filled with a bold-print reproduction of a quotation falsely attributed to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev: “We cannot expect the Americans to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of Socialism, until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism.” Having read those words, applicants could simply turn the card over, fill in their information, and reserve a spot.
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The appeal worked. More than three thousand came to the Biltmore Hotel to hear lectures from Schwarz, Skousen, Philbrick, and others. Delighted by the outpouring of public support, Schwarz organized another school for suburban Anaheim in March 1961. This Orange County School of Anti-Communism broke earlier records for attendance, with crowds topping a thousand a day at Disneyland hotel sessions and even selling out the seventy-five-hundred-seat La Palma Stadium for a “Student Day” event.
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Schwarz capitalized on these successes with two major events later that year. First, in August 1961, he opened the Southern California School of Anti-Communism. Patrick Frawley, a Bel Air millionaire who had created the leakproof Paper Mate pen and owned the Schick Safety Razor Company, led the sponsoring committee. Though once apolitical, Frawley had become deeply involved in politics after Cuban revolutionaries seized control of a Schick factory. By the end of the 1960s, he was funneling nearly $1 million a year to conservative causes, leading a progressive watchdog organization to name him the “Number One Man on the Right.” Schwarz had been one of the earliest beneficiaries of his funding, beginning with an unsolicited check for $10,500. Frawley devoted himself to the Southern California school. In a sign of his grand ambitions for the event, he reserved the Los Angeles Sports Arena, a massive sixteen-thousand-seat auditorium that served as home for the Los Angeles Lakers, the Sunkist Invitational track meet, UCLA and USC men's basketball, and even the 1960 Democratic National Convention. To help pay for it all, Frawley tapped his contacts at the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. It held a luncheon for 641 local businessmen, complete with a speech from Fred Schwarz on “the nature and potential consequences of the threat that Communism presented to the free enterprise system,” and thereby won over several new supporters. Meanwhile, Frawley purchased
three prime-time television spots during which Schwarz gave viewers half-hour previews. The Richfield Oil Company came on board to broadcast all the two-and-a-half-hour evening sessions of the school. The massive outpouring of corporate support led to high expectations. Agents at the local FBI office reported that it would likely be “the largest meeting of this nature ever to be held in the world.”
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