Throughout much of the last century, Arkansas has been a hotbed of animosity toward Roman Catholicism. A new book by Professor Kenneth C. Barnes of the University of Central Arkansas, Anti-Catholicism in Arkansas, is a careful documentation of the anti-Catholic impulse which has periodically stained our history. The subtitle neatly sums up the story: How Politicians, the Press, the Klan, and Religious Leaders Imagined an Enemy, 1910-1960.
Much of the anti-Catholic leadership came from various Baptist denominations. Beginning in 1912, churches affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Baptist group in the state, began regularly publishing anti-Catholic articles in their denominational newspaper, the Baptist Advance.
While mainline Baptists were certainly in the vanguard of anti-Catholicism, as Ken Barnes has written, "the Missionary Baptists in Arkansas were the real crusaders." The Missionary Baptist denomination was in the process of being formed during the early 20th century, just when the anti-Catholic impulse was finding its legs.
The Baptist schism probably had many causes, but one of the most important had to do with congregational autonomy. Calling for a return to the "landmarks" of authentic Christianity, the breakaway Baptists placed emphasis on the supremacy of local congregations, including the argument that only local congregations should control missionary activities. The Landmark groups met at Little Rock in April 1902 and created the State Association of Missionary Baptist Churches. Two powerful leaders emerged, the Rev. Joseph A. Scarboro of Magnolia and Ben Bogart, a Searcy pastor.
Scarboro, who published an anti-Catholic newspaper called the Liberator, spoke for many fundamentalists when he outlined 12 anti-Catholic principles including some tenets which might surprise modern readers, such as "complete separation of Church and State" and "support for the public schools as the bulwark of our liberties." He also called for denying citizenship to Catholics as well as venturing that "no Romanist should be allowed to vote or hold office of any kind."
An often-overlooked aspect of anti-Catholicism to which Barnes devoted a chapter was the belief that priests often sexually abused women of the church. Here's how Barnes summarized this phenomenon: ". . . white men asserted a view of Catholic priests as sexual predators, alleging that priests sexually abused nuns, schoolgirls, and their own housekeepers. In addition, anti-Catholics argued that the confessional was a dark private space in which so-called celibate priests could recruit men's wives and daughters as their lovers." Barnes concluded: "The subject of sex, so rarely discussed in public, energized the anti-Catholic movement in the early and mid-1910s."
To address this supposed problem, anti-Catholics in the Arkansas Legislature began to agitate. Grant County state Rep. Robert R. Posey introduced a bill in the 1913 Legislature to provide for the inspection of Catholic facilities, commonly called the "Convent Inspection Bill." The bill failed despite having the support of both Southern Baptists and Missionary Baptists. Rep. Posey revived his bill two years later. It easily passed the Legislature and was signed by Gov. George W. Hays.
One of the most vigorous opponents of the anti-Catholics was a young priest at Subiaco Abbey in Logan County, Father Boniface Spanke. A native of Westphalia, Germany, Rev. Spanke took the fight beyond newspaper columns to preaching in small towns across the state. He built a Gospel Wagon, a 10-foot by 20-foot chapel on wheels pulled by two horses, which he took to small towns.
World War I exacerbated conflict between Protestants and Catholics. German-speaking Catholics, who were numerous in Arkansas, were viewed as disloyal in the fight against the Kaiser. The military cadets at Subiaco Abbey school were even mistaken for German soldiers on one occasion.
The rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the years following World War I added another visceral voice to the anti-Catholic crusade. Rev. Ben Bogard, the primary Missionary Baptist leader in the state, became an active Klansman. Among his many anti-Catholic publications were Popery Unmasked and Rum, Rags, and Religion.
The reference to rum in the title of Bogard's booklet points to the anti-Catholic belief that Catholics were behind the liquor trade. When the "wet" Catholic Gov. Al Smith of New York received the Democratic presidential nomination in 1928, all hell broke loose. Ben Bogard attacked Smith as a tool of the liquor interests and urged the election of Republican nominee Herbert Hoover. Arkansas gave Al Smith a majority, probably due to Arkansas Senator Joe T. Robinson being the Democratic candidate for vice president.
Al Smith suffered an ignoble defeat in 1928, and it would be another 32 years before the nation elected its first Catholic president, Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, in 1960. Once again, it was Baptist churches--both Southern and Missionary--who led the opposition to electing a Catholic, although the Churches of Christ also joined the anti-Kennedy campaign. Rev. W.O. Vaught, pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Little Rock, labeled Catholicism and communism as the two most deadly threats to freedom.
Barnes' hardbound book, which contains 266 pages, is available from the University of Arkansas Press for $34.95.
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Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living in rural Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com.
Editorial on 12/11/2016