The evangelical political resurgence was centered in 1960s southern California

Evidence

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN white masculine power, family values politics, and a militant defense of Christian America was on clear display in the early 1960s in southern California, the center of the evangelical political resurgence. In 1961, Pepperdine College, a hotbed of Sunbelt evangelicalism popular with conservative donors and Christian celebrities alike, hosted a “freedom forum.” With the recent election of the Catholic Democrat John F. Kennedy, the mood was more urgent than triumphalist. Kennedy’s Catholicism was cause for serious concern among fundamentalists in particular, and the contention that Kennedy was soft on communism—this despite the fact that Kennedy had increased military spending by 14 percent during his first nine months in office—was also a matter of concern. At the forum, fifteen hundred businessmen and educators discussed ideas such as outlawing the Communist Party, refusing to seat Red China in the UN, disbanding President Kennedy’s Peace Corps, and commending the extremist John Birch Society. The highlight of the event was a televised luncheon with Barry Goldwater. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 94

Categorization

• XREF: The Kennedy-as-communist-soft accusation parallels the ‘Catholicism as threat’ panic the reader knows from the immodesty article’s religious-other frame; also connects to general histories of the John Birch Society’s reach.