Business elites organized against labor via church infiltration after World War II

Evidence

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Crane served as a trustee for the Foundation for Economic Education. He played a central role in the National Association of Manufacturers, where he chaired a Committee on Cooperation with Churches, which sought to dissuade churches from allying themselves with “movements to win greater social protection and advantage for labor.” Along with his friend J. Howard Pew, the president of Sun Oil, Crane took on a leadership position in the National Council of Churches, a lay organization devoted to winning control over the mainline Protestant church back from the liberals and socialists whom they believed had won control over the Federal Council of Churches. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1446

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader narrative of business-funded think tanks and the post-war conservative network; also echoes the Montgomery-era religious elements of a later Fuller/Starr chapter. — connects to: Personal-capital firms formed an organization defending owners against state and unions — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 290; Postwar American business elites feared liberalism more than Soviet communism — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1446; Anti-radical elites dropped racial targets to attack labor as foreign — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 189 (+1 more)
• SEED: The church-capture strategy as an underappreciated arm of the neoliberal network is an article-worthy angle.

Broader Connections

• Postwar American business elites feared liberalism more than Soviet communism #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1446