Evangelical anticommunist events fused faith, patriotism, and celebrity in the early 1960s

Evidence

Four months later, the region’s evangelicals came together again, this time in Anaheim. The occasion was an event organized by the Southern California School of Anti-Communism, a “citizen’s training program” headed by Fred Schwarz. Schwarz, an Australian physician who founded the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade, had recently set up shop in southern California. At the close of the five-day event, sixteen thousand young people and their parents sang the “Star-Spangled Banner,” pledged their allegiance to the flag, and listened to celebrity speakers. First up was Marion Miller, a housewife who had gained fame crusading for anticommunist education in public schools, and for infiltrating the Los Angeles Left as an FBI informant. Next up was Ronald Reagan. Still a Democrat at the time, Reagan warned of communists’ devious plans to target teenagers’ “rebellious nature,” fooling them into thinking that their “patriotism is hollow.” Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, and John Wayne then followed suit. But it was pop star Pat Boone who stole the show that night, closing with an impromptu address that Reagan would recall years later: “I would rather see my four girls shot and die as little girls who have faith in God than leave them to die some years later as godless, faithless, soulless Communists,” Boone asserted. His audience was thrilled, even if his wife was not. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 96

Categorization

• CANDY: Pat Boone, Reagan, Roy Rogers, and John Wayne on the same anticommunist bill — a tight, tweetable snapshot of the fusion being claimed.
• XREF: Foreshadows the consumer-culture transmission method the book centralizes; also echoes how the reader’s own analysis of celebrity-right fusion will play out. — connects to: Billy Graham fused Christian identity with American patriotism as early as the 1950s — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 237