Book Review

Despite the two centuries separating their settings, both of these engagingly written volumes consider the efforts of Catholics and Protestants to achieve common political goals. They also address the confluence of history, religion, and contemporary politics.	1
These issues coalesce most obviously in Kenneth J. Heineman's God Is a Conservative. Here, Heineman discusses culture, religion, and politics in the United states since the mid-1960s, and devotes special attention to each four-year cycle of presidential elections. God Is a Conservative, however, is "not an academic monograph intended for a handful of specialists." Rather, it "is a work of broad social commentary" (ix). Heineman shares the views of social and religious conservatives who feel outraged that the major political parties--especially the Democrats--have ignored their needs. Convinced that cultural liberals have alienated the Democrats from their electoral base, he fears that the "class and cultural divisions . . . that tore apart the New Deal coalition" are also afflicting the Republicans (12). Heineman's contempt for the "liberal media," libertarians, "politically correct academics," and "country-club Republicans" is evident throughout his book. These groups have, in his view, declared war on Christian conservatives' values. He extends muted praise toward Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan, both of whom Heineman sees as flawed individuals who have nevertheless tried to advance social conservatism without endorsing the economic libertarianism found among many mainstream Republicans. Heineman recognizes that the "restoration of moral order in America, as social conservatives see it, may require a diminution of individual liberties" and warns that the resultant cultural conflict "may be bloody" (265).	2
Scholars, regardless of their political orientation, will probably question Heineman's evidence and methodology. Many will doubt whether the presidential election cycle is the best perspective from which to approach a "social history of moral politics" (13). An examination of his footnotes reveals that Heineman often fails to cite the readily available newspapers from which he quotes (for example, 118, 119, 201). It is astonishing that a book published by New York University Press would report that, by 1980, New York City had lost its position as the "nation's largest city" (97). Students of nineteenth-century American religion may take another glance at the 1860 and 1870 published federal censuses (Heineman evidently never ventured a first look) after reading that "as early as the Civil War" the South "had twice the number of protestant churches . . . than could be found in the North" (7). These censuses indicate that there were considerably more Protestant churches in the North.	3
More troubling is Heineman's use of caricature and his straining of credulity. For example, it may astonish people on "the Left" to learn that, for them, "being educated had nothing to do with schooling and everything to do with whether the individual embraced the proper political position" (98). Those old enough to remember the late 1970s will certainly pause when they read Heineman's account of that time: "It seemed as if gays were everywhere" (99). Without citing any names, Heineman is content to declare that "Leftist academics" have been "embarrassed by the fact that King was a Baptist minister" (126). Governors Michael Dukakis's and Jerry Brown's positions on abortion--and that alone--demonstrate that "their sensitivity to religious issues was sorely lacking" (67).	4
In contrast to Heineman, Charles P. Hanson is skeptical of conservative Christian claims to a usable past. Though Hanson disputes Alan Heimert's interpretation that Calvinism contributed to the American Revolution, he also quarrels with those late twentieth-century Christians who claim that a pious republic is a legacy of the Revolutionary generation. Rather than emphasizing a connection between Calvinism and rebellion, Hanson argues that the most important religious changes wrought by the revolution emerged from pragmatic responses to "sheer contingency" (4).	5
Hanson's focus, however, is on the eighteenth century. Whereas Heineman calls attention to the common moral ground between contemporary conservative Catholics and Protestants, Hanson investigates the first American political coalition between Catholics and Protestants. New England Cavlinist beliefs had long been rooted in anti-Catholicism. Its persistence was evident in 1774 when many New Englanders protested loudly upon Parliament's enacting of the Quebec Act. They claimed that King George III intended to use this law as a way "to establish Catholicism in the Protestant colonies" (12). The exigencies of the Revolution, however, soon forced New Englanders to reexamine their beliefs. When they invaded Quebec in 1775, the revolutionaries recognized that they could not expect to expel the British by alienating French Canadians. Although the French Canadian elite and Catholic clergy remained strongly committed to the British--even in those areas occupied by the revolutionaries--the invaders soon found support among ordinary inhabitants, who were convinced that the Americans had "come in to give them their liberty" (41). The invaders soon found that their antagonistic preconceptions regarding French Catholics were unfounded, and when they retreated, the New Englanders carried with them a newfound respect for these religious rivals.	6
This encounter of a few thousand New England soldiers was repeated for many thousands more after the signing of the 1778 alliance with France. French soldiers and sailors lived among New Englanders, and these Protestants eventually concluded that their allies were not the "frivolous, priest-ridden slaves" (121) they had believed them to be. Eventually, New Englanders praised Louis XVI as "the greatest prince on earth" (119).	7
Besides showing how the contingencies of the Revolution led to a decline of anti-Catholicism, Hanson also provides a fine account of the revolutionaries' invasion of Quebec. He acknowledges, however, that the Revolution failed to destroy all vestiges of anti-Catholicism in New England, as "so simple a conclusion does violence to the subtlety of change" (219). Hanson ought to have considered anti-Catholicism's continuities further and attempted to reconcile his argument with Protestant New Englanders' later violence towards Catholics and the American Party's anti-Catholicism of the 1850s. Perhaps Hanson or someone following him will draw the important connections between the transformation the Revolution wrought regarding Calvinists' views of Catholics and the nineteenth-century's Protestant Crusade.	8
John Quist Shippensburg University

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