Cam & Ray's Cold War Podcast

Today we talk more about Christians who opposed the New Deal. In the 30s there was a guy called Father Charles Coughlin, a Canadian-American Roman Catholic priest based near Detroit. Commonly known as “the radio priest”, he was one of the first political leaders to use radio to reach a mass audience: first took to the airwaves in 1926, broadcasting weekly sermons over the radio. By the early 1930s...

In 1950 Harry Truman complained about a “great wave of hysteria” sweeping the nation – the Red Scare. He should know. He was really largely responsible for creating it. Between the launching of his “loyalty program” in March 1947 and it’s finish in December 1952, some 6.6 million persons were investigated to see if they […]

In his “New Deal”, FDR brought back the ideals of the “Social Gospel“, a 19th century Christian reform movement, to justify the creation of the modern welfare state. For a while, at least, some American Christian leaders were big fans of socialism. However, starting with FDR, and for the next 25 years, successive American administrations […]

Manufacturers and the media also used the Dies Committee to silence their critics. Any attempt to criticise the behaviour of industrialists was called “socialism”. Along with communist witch hunts, another tactic industrialists used to protect themselves against the New Deal was the newly invented idea of Public Relations – a fancy name for corporate propaganda. […]