Bishop Fulton J

Bishop Fulton J. Sheen’s Call for Religious

Unity during the Cold War

Michael J. Epple

Florida Gulf Coast University

Bishop Fulton J. Sheen (1895-1979), a prominent member of the United States Catholic hierarchy during the Cold War, effectively used the new medium of television to attract millions of Americans to his crusade against communism. No other religious leader had previously appeared in a regularly-scheduled prime time television show on broadcast television. Sheen utilized his television show as he had his radio show, the Catholic Hour, to call for Protestants, Catholics, and Jews to join together in their opposition against Communism during the Cold War. He promoted the formation of the Cold War consensus by providing a theological justification for resisting communism that all three religious groups could accept. His television show, Life is Worth Living, enjoyed widespread popularity. In 1952 he won an Emmy in the category of “outstanding television personality”. Although Sheen appeared on television for five years, his strident anti-communism, and his role during the Cold War have been largely forgotten. Indeed, little has been published on Sheen’s life in general.[i]

Sheen paved the way for a series of religious leaders who embraced his themes. Clerics such as Billy Graham, Norman Vincent Peale, and Reinhold Niebuhr joined Sheen during the Cold War giving Americans reassurance that God would stand with them against the atheistic threat of communism. Graham in particular followed Sheen’s example of appealing to mass audiences through public television appearances. In fact, it was Grahams’ anti-communist messages in the late 1940s that brought him to the attention of William Randolph Hearst, who told his newspaper people to “puff Graham.”[ii] This garnered Graham a great deal more publicity than he might otherwise have received

Prior to the beginning of the Cold War, Sheen had devoted a large portion of his life to saving America from the “evils of communism.” Sheen, a great admirer of the Middle Ages, saw himself in the mode of a medieval crusader. Whereas the crusaders set off to save the Holy land from the “infidel” Muslims, Sheen wanted to save Western Civilization from “Godless communism”. Instead of using physical weapons as the medieval crusaders did against Islam, Sheen utilized the media and the printed word to combat the communist infidels. Sheen viewed the Middle Ages as an ideal time when the Catholic Church exercised religious hegemony in Europe. This, in Sheen’s view, created a utopian society with morality firmly based in Christian teaching.

The utopia began to change with the Renaissance when Europe took the first steps toward establishing a secular society. The Protestant Reformation of the 1500s destroyed the Catholic Church’s religious hegemony and moved Europe away from the religious society of the Middle Ages. As Western society became more secular, a vacuum was created in the hearts and minds of the people. Sheen argued that people had an inherent need for God and that the Catholic Church had led them to fulfill that need. Without religious instruction, Western society turned to new ideologies to fill the void created by the abandonment of traditional Christian. Sheen argued that communism would prove to be the most harmful to America and Western civilization unless steps were taken to counter the appeal of Communism.

Sheen undertook a thorough study of Communism in the 1930s before he began attacking it. He claimed to have read every word written by Karl Marx and Vladimir Illyich Lenin.[iii] While Sheen may not have gone that far, he certainly spent a great deal of time studying communism as evidenced by his use of the two men’s writings on his shows and in his printed works.

In one of his earliest public references to Communism in 1933, Sheen argued that it had appeared because modern society refused to pray.[iv] Without regular prayer, humans could be fooled by false ideas attempting to replace Christianity. At the National Conference of Catholic Charities in 1935, Sheen presented a paper entitled, “The Mystical Body: The Church and communism.”[v] In this paper, Sheen presented an argument against Communism that he would use throughout the remainder of his life. He viewed it as a religion that offered a counterfeit item for everything that Christianity possessed, which sought to take the place of God in men’s hearts. In March 1935, he called Communism “the ape of Christianity in its divine and historical forces.” He claimed “it has taken the whole content of Christianity and substituted the spirit of Satan for the spirit of Christ.”[vi] Sheen argued that neither fascism nor the “New Deal” of the 1930s could stop Communism. Only true Christian religion could fight it.

Sheen attacked Communism throughout the 1930s in public appearances, books, magazine articles, and on the radio. He rose to national prominence on The Catholic Hour radio program in the 1930s. He proved to be a popular speaker and at one point he received over 700,000 letters in a three-month period.[vii] When World War II began in Europe in 1939, he condemned Nazi Germany and fascist Italy for their actions, but he continued to insist that the Communist government in the Soviet Union presented the greatest danger to the world. Consequently, Sheen found himself in a difficult situation in late 1941 when the United States entered the war as an ally of the Soviet Union. He wanted to continue his crusade against Communism, but he did not want to appear disloyal to the United States. Sheen later claimed that his radio broadcasts during the war were carefully monitored and that if he suggested that the USSR was anything but a democracy, his microphone would be shut off, but offered no proof of interference in his broadcasts.[viii]

During the late 1940s as the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union unfolded, Sheen found a renewed interest in his crusade against Communism. He wanted all Americans, no matter what their religious faith, to join against what he viewed as the greatest problem facing the world: Communism. To that end, he used Christian theology and Biblical references to help promote a united front against Communism and to allay the Cold War fears of Americans by providing assurances that God would not abandon them. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Sheen used both his anti-Communistic rhetoric and religion in an attempt to rally Jews and Protestants to join with Catholics to oppose Communism.

As relations between the United States and the Soviet Union deteriorated in the late 1940s, Sheen attacked Communism on his radio broadcasts and sermons with a renewed vigor. In 1947, he began a series of broadcasts on The Catholic Hour radio program concerning Communism in which he encouraged American distrust of that ideology. In his introduction to the first show, Sheen recalled that he had been on the air for seventeen years and had never seen a time when “have the souls of men been more in the dark about the future.”[ix] He argued that civilization was in the process of decay, with Communism being a symptom of that decay. Americans seemed unaware of how badly and how fast the decay was taking place.

Sheen compared America to people in the days of Noah who watched him work for 120 years building the ark for a great flood and did nothing to prepare themselves for it. He quoted Matthew 24:38-39, which compared the attitude of the people of Noah’s day to the attitude that people would have at the time of the Second Coming of Christ. Just as the people in Noah’s day paid no attention to the possible end of their world; so the people of America failed to grasp the threat of Communism.

Sheen’s use of Noah would appeal to Catholic, Protestants, and Jews in his audience, who would probably be familiar with the story. Sheen argued that the secular society that had first begun to appear at the time of Renaissance was drawing to a close and people would be returning to religion. However, it would not be the Christian religion that would attract people, but rather the false church of Communism. Although Sheen remained completely devoted to the Catholic Church, he purposefully used rhetoric that downplayed his Catholicism and emphasized that the three groups faced a common enemy. Sheen even dropped his references to the Protestant Reformation breaking the Catholic hegemony in Europe and pushing Western civilization toward secularism. This call to break down barriers and to unite against Communism would give the Cold War consensus that emerged a religious justification.

As part of his plan to reach Protestants and Jews, Sheen tried to reassure them that the Catholic Church opposed Communism for the same reasons that they did.[x] It opposed Communism not on the basis of economics or ideology, but rather on moral and philosophical grounds. Communism distorted reality. This distortion was similar to what the communists accused Christians of doing to people when it labeled religion “the opiate of the people.” Communism deprived humans of their individuality because of its opposition to democracy. Therefore, Jews and Protestants should join with Catholics to keep the false religion of Communism from spreading across America.

While Sheen wanted to save America from Communism, he showed little interest in directly influencing the political situation by forming his own political organization. He ignored ardent anti-Communists such as Senator Joseph McCarthy. Sheen ignored McCarthy because, while he often warned that domestic communists could wreck the American government, he had little interest in the type of political theatrics that the McCarthy used to gain attention. If Sheen had actively supported McCarthy, it could have hampered his efforts to reach Protestants and Jews because McCarthy was Catholic. Sheen would not endorse a specific politician or political party, choosing instead to inform the American people of communist intentions and letting them make the choice on how to thwart them.

In the early 1950s, Sheen found a new way to deliver his message. He used the revolutionary new medium of television to demonstrate to America that he, a member of the Catholic clergy, could relate to their problems and could offer solutions on how to deal with them. So influential and effective was Sheen that he won an Emmy as the outstanding television personality of 1952. He titled his program Life is Worth Living to emphasize his hope that despite all the difficulties inherent in modern society, better life could be achieved by a revival of Christian morality and teaching. This show allowed Sheen to reach millions of people each week with a message that downplayed his Catholic doctrine in order to attract Protestants and Jewish viewers. He stayed away from religious subject matter that might seem to promote Catholic views and instead used Biblical references that all three faiths could accept.

The 1950s are sometimes called the “Golden Age” of television.[xi] Television moved from a scientific curiosity available to only a small number of American homes at the beginning of the decade to the predominant source of entertainment in homes by the end of the decade. During the 1950s, CBS and NBC dominated the new medium along with a smaller ABC, and an independent Dumont Network originating in the New York area. Sheen’s show first appeared on the Dumont Network and later switched to the ABC after the demise of Dumont in 1956.[xii]

Sheen foresaw that television would become a potent force in American culture, because viewers would be able to see as well as hear the programs. Sheen became a predecessor of later televangelists, like Reverend Pat Robertson and Reverend Jerry Fallwell, in that he recognized the potential for reaching far more people by his television appearances than he ever could have in personal speaking engagements. However, unlike Robertson and Fallwell, he never used his television show as a vehicle to launch political movements. Fallwell founded the Moral Majority and Robertson helped create the Christian Coalition. The Moral Majority worked to elect Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980, and Robertson’s Christian Coalition has continuously worked to elect conservative politicians.

Sheen’s program was much plainer than the present, flashy productions of Fallwell’s Old Time Gospel Hour and Robertson’s 700 Club, and not just because of the generally less elaborate staging of 1950s television. Sheen deliberately chose a format that would focus attention on the message rather than on the surroundings. The very novelty in the 1950s of being able to see the clergyman with his almost “hypnotic” dark eyes and to hear his pleasant speaking voice, was enough to attract both viewer attention and a significant number of responses. The only prop that Sheen used was a chalkboard to write on. His talks employed humor and everyday events to present his ideas.

Sheen at first met opposition to the idea of a religious show in what is now called prime time. Both NBC and CBS declined to broadcast the show, because commercial television was just getting established and neither network believed that a show by Sheen would attract a commercially viable audience. Eventually the Dumont Network agreed to put Sheen’s Life is Worth Living on the air. Dumont executives did not have much confidence in the success of Sheen’s program, and they put him opposite Milton Berle in the Texaco Star Theater on NBC, the most popular show at the time. Dumont did not even have a sponsor for the show and put it on to fill a gap in the schedule. Much to everyone’s surprise, the show did much better in the ratings than expected. A 1950s biographical sketch of Sheen claimed that the show drew an audience of ten million viewers by the end of that first season, earning ratings higher than Berle’s show.[xiii] Although recent research has shown that Sheen could not have had a larger audience than Berle, he did receive an audience response in the form of over eight thousand letters a week, and tickets to tapings of his show were quickly given away.[xiv] After its first season, Admiral Corporation agreed to sponsor Life is Worth Living. The company had a commercial at the beginning and the end of the show but did not interrupt the broadcast itself.[xv]

Sheen was a “Cold War Warrior” calling for his viewers to join him in a “Holy War” against the godless forces of Communism. This message had a powerful appeal as evidenced by the number of letters he received and he later claimed, “in proportion to the population the greatest number of letters came from Jews, the second largest amount from Protestants and the third from Catholics.”[xvi] The truth of that statement cannot be verified, because Sheen ordered the correspondence destroyed to protect the privacy of the writers.[xvii] During its first season, The New York Times noted that the program appealed to those of different religious faiths and called it, “a remarkably absorbing half hour of television, successfully refuting many of the preconceived notions of what constitutes model programming.”[xviii] The article also noted that Sheen was not interested in proselytizing and that all faiths could draw inspiration from the show.

Sheen’s call for unity among the religions came at an opportune time in the history of American religion. A new wave of revivalism coincided with the beginning of the Cold War, and by 1960 more Americans claimed to be affiliated with a Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish congregation than at any other time in the twentieth century.[xix] Americans identified themselves as Protestant, Catholic, or Jew at 66 per cent, 26 per cent and 3.5 per cent respectively.[xx] Each of the three religions was regarded by the American people as “equi-legitimate expression,” as each one viewed the other two as possessing similar values and morals.[xxi] Identifying with one of the three religions was to identify oneself as an American. The fact that communist nations were perceived as both a strategic threat to the United States and atheistic as the same time would give the American people two legitimate reasons to oppose Communism and support people like Sheen who called for religious unity against the threat. Sheen, with his program in prime time, had the potential to reach more United States citizens with the call for unity than any other religious leader in the United States.

Six of Sheen’s broadcasts dealt directly with Communism during the 1952-53 television season, but his most sensational broadcast occurred on 24 February, 1953, entitled “The Death of Stalin.” What made it sensational was the announcement a week later on 5 March that Stalin had just died. Sheen began the program by describing the power struggle in the Soviet Union after the death of Lenin in 1924. He compared Stalin to Julius Caesar, who in the days before his assassination in 44 BCE claimed to be a god. Sheen declared that Stalin had set himself up as a god in the USSR, but that he too would die. Quotations from a speech in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, in which Caesar referred to his divinity, were used to apply to Stalin. This depiction of Stalin considering himself divine was part of Sheen’s ongoing theory that Communism tried to serve as a substitute for Christianity. Stalin modeled himself as a “god” as part of the ongoing process to offer people a substitute for Christianity.

Sheen warned his audience not to be concerned about Stalin’s death, which would inevitably come, but to be more concerned about what happened after his death. He predicted that the leaders of the Soviet Union would try to exploit Stalin’s death just as Caesar’s assassins tried to benefit from his death. Although the broadcast emphasized many of the themes that Sheen had been using for years, the subsequent death of Stalin gave Sheen even more media attention. He claimed in his autobiography that he was besieged by newspapers from around the country demanding to know what inside information that Sheen might have on Stalin. However, Sheen claimed it was luck that Stalin died when he did.[xxii] Nikita Khrushchev's memoirs also suggest that the death of Stalin was a surprise, even to the leadership of the Soviet Union.[xxiii]

After Stalin a struggle developed in the Soviet Union over succession. Sheen became concerned that the United States government and the American people might think that the new leadership would be willing to have better relations with this country. He warned that Soviet peace overtures could be used as stepping-stones to world domination.[xxiv] Peace from the communist perspective would only come when all private property and Western morality were abolished. Sheen asserted that real peace was more than an absence of war. Real peace that could only come from God would bring tranquility and justice to the world. Americans needed to look beyond the façade of Soviet peace offers and realize that peace on communist terms could only bring disaster for the West. Sheen further argued that Americans and the West must stop judging Soviet policy by whether it coincided with that of the Western powers as it did in World War II. He was referring to the alliance between the Soviet Union, Great Britain and the United States against Hitler. The alliance had formed only because both sides sought the same outcome, namely the end of the Nazi regime in Germany.

Although Sheen often talked about communism during his broadcasts, he attributed the success of the program not to Cold War fears, but to his ability to relate to everyday experiences of his audience. In an interview printed in the New York Times, Sheen claimed that he had no concerns with ratings and that he had gone on the air only to help his sponsor, God.[xxv] He credited the success of the show as coming from a desire of the American people to be given clear reasons for the condition of the world. However, since Sheen saw the decline of Western civilization as being responsible for the condition of the world, even shows on topics like hate and fear fit within his call for people to return to God to reverse that decline. He refrained from promoting Catholic doctrine on the show and instead utilized a religious philosophical point of view. Sheen told the interviewer that the show was attracting Protestant and Jewish viewers for that reason. He wanted to attract Protestants and Jews to the show so that they could be persuaded to join the fight against communism.

Sheen’s television program ended in 1957. During the 1956-57 season, Sheen’s program aired on Monday nights against the number-one-ranked program, I Love Lucy. His audience soon began to decline. Sheen later claimed that it was his decision to retire. He announced that just as spiritual considerations had motivated him to retire, spiritual matters would determine his possible return to television.[xxvi] Sheen returned with a syndicated television series, The Bishop Sheen Program, which ran from 1961-68; however, it was never as popular as Life is Worth Living. This later television show was not carried by a major network and did not attract a large audience.

In the 1960s, Sheen became involved in the Second Vatican Council and served as the Bishop of Rochester before retiring. He talked much less about Communism during the last two decades of his life and criticized United States involvement in Vietnam.[xxvii] However, he remained convinced that Communism would one day collapse in the Soviet Union and its citizens would return to Christianity.[xxviii] Sheen died on 9 December, 1979. The New York Times, Time Christianity Today, and Dr. Billy Graham all lauded him.[xxix] Graham’s comments demonstrated the appeal of Sheen across denominational lines; he called Sheen, “one of the greatest preachers in this century” and further stated that Sheen’s death was “a great loss to the nation and both Catholic and Protestant Churches.”[xxx] However, the articles gave little coverage to his anti-communism and instead concentrated on his role as a pioneer in television religious broadcasting. Sheen’s views on Communism may have seemed less significant to the press in the 1970s when the Cold War received less attention than it had in the 1950s.

[i] Until recently the main published works on Sheen were D.P. Noonan, The Passion of Fulton J Sheen (New York: Dodd Mead, 1972) and Sheen’s posthumous autobiography Treasure in Clay (San Francisco: Ignatius Books, 1980). In 2001, Thomas Reeves published the first full-length biography of Sheen since Noonan.'s work, but he does not attempt to analyze Sheen’s role in the Cold War. Thomas C Reeves, The Life and Times of Fulton J. Sheen (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2001). Kathleen Field’s dissertation Bishop Fulton J. Sheen: An American Catholic Response to the Twentieth Century (University of Notre Dame, 1988) attempted to locate Sheen’s place in the history of American Catholicism but does not focus on his Anti-communism.

[ii] Marshal Frady, Billy Graham: A Parable in American Righteousness, (Boston: Little & Brown Co., 1979), 201.

[Selected Annual Proceedings of the Florida Conference of Historians, Annual Meeting, 2004,}

[iii] Noonan, The Passion of Fulton J Sheen, 24.

[iv] “Bolshevism Traced to Atheism by Sheen,” New York times, 3 April, 1933, 18.

[v] Fulton J. Sheen, “The Mystical Body: The Church and Communism’” (paper presented at the National Conference of Catholic Charities, Peoria, Illinois, 1 October, 1935) Fulton J Sheen Archives, Diocese of Rochester, New York.

[vi] Those comments were made at a Lenten Sermon at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. “Communist ‘Faith’ Defined by Sheen,” New York Times, 25 March, 1935, 18.

[vii] This figure comes from Noonan’s biography of Sheen. He had worked with Sheen and used the figure to point out Sheen’s popularity. Noonan, Passion, 51-52.

[viii] Sheen, Treasure in Clay, 88.

[ix] Fulton J. Sheen, Light Your Lamps, (Washington D.C.: National Council of Catholic Men, 1947), 11.

[x] “Communism and the Church,” broadcast on The Catholic Hour, 16 February, 1947.

[xi] For a discussion of the “Golden Age” of television, see: William Brody, Fifties Television: The Industry and its Critics (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990). Also see: Max Wilk, The Golden Age of Television: Notes from Survivors (New York: Delacorte Press, 1976).

[xii] See Barry Littman, The Vertical Structure of the Television Broadcasting Industry: The Coalescence of Power, (Lansing: University of Michigan Press, 1979) for a look at how three networks came to dominate the industry.

[xiii] James Conniff, The Bishop Sheen Story (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Publications, 1953), 11.

[xiv] Mary Ann Watson in a 1993 article argued that the number of affiliate stations with the Dumont network could never have produced an audience larger than Milton Berle’s on NBC. She also claimed that in 1955, Sheen was at the height of his popularity and reached at most 5.5 million households. Mary Ann Watson, “And they Said ‘Uncle Fultie” Didn’t Have a Prayer”, Television Quarterly, 26:3 (1993), 16-21. The number of letters comes from Conniff, Bishop Sheen Story, 11.

[xv] “Admiral Sponsor of Sheen TV Talks,” New York Times, 22 October, 1952, 33.

[xvi] Sheen, Treasure in Clay, 73.

[xvii] Ibid.

[xviii] “Bishop Sheen Preaches Absorbing Sermons in ‘Life is Worth Living’ Series,” New York Times, 22 February, 1952, 27.

[xix] According to figures supplied by Sydney Ahlstrom, church affiliation peaked in 1960 with 69% of the American population claiming membership in Catholic, Protestant or Jewish congregations. After 1960, that number began to decline. Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven, CT.: Yale University Press, 1972), 952.

[xx] These figures come from Will Herber, Protestant—Catholic—Jew; An Essay in American Religious Sociology (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1960), 211.

[xxi] Ibid., 258.

[xxii] Sheen, Treasure in Clay, 73-74.

[xxiii] Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, Strobe Talbott, trans. (Boston: Little & Brown Co., 1970), 308-324.

[xxiv] Fulton J. Sheen, Life is Worth Living (NY: McGraw-Hill, 1953), 140.

[xxv] “The Bishop Looks at Television,” New York Times, 6 April, 1952, 13.

[xxvi] “Sheen Retires from TV,” New York Times, 19 October, 1957. There have been persistent rumors that Cardinal Spellman forced Sheen off the air because of differences between those two men. Reeves attempts to explore this in depth but admits to being stymied by lack of documents on the subject. Reeves, Life and Times, 363-371.

[xxvii] “Catholic Bishop Wants Troops Withdrawn from Vietnam,” Christian Century, 16 August, 1967, 36.

[xxviii] Sheen kept a replica of a Russian church in his private chapel to express his hope for the change in Russia. Sheen, Treasury in Clay, 90.

[xxix] “Archbishop Sheen, who Preached to Millions Over TV is dead at 84”, New York Times, 10 December, 1979. “Microphone of God”, Time, 24 December, 1979, 84. “The Prime Time Bishop Enters Eternity”, Christianity Today, 4 January, 1980.

[xxx] “Graham Mourns Sheen as a ‘Great Preacher’,” New York Times, 10 December, 1979, D13.