A Catholic New Deal: Religion and Labor in 1930s Pittsburgh
Religion and Labor in 1930s Pittsburgh Leslie Tentler, a student of American religious and labor history, observes that many scholars tend to misjudge the role Catholicism played in the 1930s union movement. Lizabeth Cohen, Gary Gerstle, and Douglas Seaton, among others, criticize the anti Communist Catholic priests who supported the 1930s union movement. According to such labor historians, Catholic priests undermined the political power of American workers by purging their ranks of well intentioned Communists. Cohen contends that Chicago workers could not have formed successful industrial unions without first severing their ties to their religious and ethnic communities. To Cohen, and to Gerstle as well, workers' religious and cultural associations interfered with the development of class consciousness and, therefore, of labor organization. Other scholars depict Catholic clergy and laity as foes of reform and as catalysts of America's anti-Communist foreign policy after World War II. Michael Heale argues that American Catholic anti-Communism in the 1930s "intertwined" with anti-Semitism. He also asserts that anti Communist political activism was the way by which Catholics proved "their American identity." In the same vein, Stephen Whitfield concludes that anti-Communism secured Catholics' place in American society: "A