Abstract
We argue that analyses of civil religious ideologies in civil rights contention must include the interplay of both movement and countermovement ideologies and must recognize the ways in which such discourse amplifies conflict as well as serves as a basis for unity. Based on in-depth interviews, archival research, and content analysis of civil religious language, this article examines how priestly and prophetic civil religious discourses, and the infusion of Black power ideologies, provided significant and dynamic resources for both movement and countermovement ideologies during periods of civil rights contention in Cairo, Illinois, especially from 1969 to 1972. We compare the ways in which Cairo’s civil rights leaders mobilized prophetic versions of civil religion, and concomitantly, how white countermovement organizations used a priestly civil religion. On the prophetic side the themes of “equality,” “freedom,” “justice,” and the “right to revolt” against worldly socio-political arrangements were employed. On the priestly side, the theme of “law” and “order” was played up, with a secondary theme that connected religious acquiescence to worldly power with God’s will. The former rhetoric saw calls for economic and employment integration within God’s will and the nation’s destiny. The latter rhetoric contrasted civil rights claims as essentially “un-American.”
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Notes
An exception to this is the Rev. Pat Robertson, who called his organization the “Christian Coalition” and is known for only slightly disguised anti-Semitic writings. Further, the treatment of Islam and Muslims in the United States since 9/11 has occasionally veered into explicit anti-religious sentiment. Notable also how often that rhetoric is repudiated.
While the prophetic is typically progressive and the priestly conservative, it is important to realize that there are exceptions to these patterns. For example, the Christian Right’s pro-life efforts in the 1970s and 1980s might be construed as prophetic since they stressed the notion that individual sins (abortion) were harming the collective moral state of society, and they drew on a moral authority that transcended the authority of the political system. Their claim was that the dominant status quo was “secular humanist” and they were speaking “truth to power” by making a prophetic challenge to it (e.g., Williams 2009).
Those arrested included national NAACP activists Lester Bailey and June Shagaloff. The newspaper labeled Ms. Shagaloff a “Negro,” although she was of a Russian Jewish background. Local residents included NAACP President and business owner Henry Dyson, AME minister, Rev. J.A. Welks, and white attorney David Lansden (CEC 2/8/52, p. 8). Hattie Kendrick (1976, p. 10) noted that police also arrested two church trustees, Dr. J.C. Wallace and Dr. W.A. Fingal (dentist). As noted in Juan Williams’s (1999, p. 206) biography of Thurgood Marshall, Marshall had to return to Cairo to bail out June Shagaloff after the Cairo police chief refused to let her out on bail despite local contributions and because she owned no property in Cairo. Local authorities later dropped the charges.
However, as often occurred, Rev. Ramsey soon moved on to the Illinois Council of Churches in 1963, perhaps due in part to friction with deacons who feared for their jobs (Oliver 1994).
Catholic support of the movement in a post Vatican II context, especially support from lower-echelon functionaries such as local priests, is unsurprising. Many Catholic priests subscribed to a social justice agenda subsequent to Vatican II (1962–1965).
The headquarters for the National White Citizens Council was in Jackson, Mississippi.
For a substantive account of how God stands against the political and social oppression of blacks and how he favors them as the oppressed, see Cone (1975).
For a fuller elaboration of these points, see Cone (2010, pp. 116–136).
Title of newspaper article derived from article content. Source: Verbatim notes on Cairo News; Cairo, Illinois Oral History Project, Southern Illinois University, Department of Sociology, Carbondale, IL.
Titles of newspaper articles derived from article content. Source: Verbatim notes on East St. Louis Monitor; Cairo, Illinois Oral History Project, Southern Illinois University, Department of Sociology, Carbondale, IL.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Sarah Lawrence. She played an invaluable role in locating important documents for this article and finalizing its formatting. Her assiduousness made the timely completion of the article possible. Allison Crossley provided us with useful feedback when an earlier draft of the manuscript was presented American Associological Association 2013 conference in NY.
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Reed, JP., Williams, R.H. & Ward, K.B. Civil religious contention in Cairo, Illinois: priestly and prophetic ideologies in a “northern” civil rights struggle. Theor Soc 45, 25–55 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-015-9262-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-015-9262-7