Fighting Fundamentalist: Carl McIntire and the Politicization of American Fundamentalism by Markku Ruotsila (review)

Before Billy Graham inflamed Los Angeles with his anti-Communist revivalism in 1949, before Pat Robertson mobilized religious media to engage in cultural combat in 1961, before Jerry Falwell launched the Moral Majority to help elect Ronald Reagan in 1979, Reverend Carl McIntire marshaled religious conservatives for spiritual and political battle as Christianity's Cold War commander. Not only did McIntire write the playbook for U.S. religious political activism, he also built much of its infrastructure and exerted a wide-ranging influence for well over half a century. Throughout his career as a fundamentalist preacher, broadcaster, and political activist, "McIntire's chief priority remained the anticommunist cause" (p. 269). Eventually, McIntire's acerbic, pugilistic, autocratic leadership eroded his support base and relegated his legacy to the dustbin of history.

For decades, church and political historians have largely caricatured McIntire as undeserving of serious examination. Markku Ruotsila, a professor of church history at the University of Helsinki, has adroitly rescued McIntire's story and significance with his eloquent and fluid telling of the Fighting Fundamentalist. In this impeccably researched volume drawing on extensive archival resources, Ruotsila provides a balanced biography that is not only scholarly but human.

McIntire's story begins at the advent of the twentieth century in rural Oklahoma at the same time Christian fundamentalism began to emerge in the United States. His hardscrabble, pietistic upbringing forged a survivalist mentality that drove him to work hard and never give up until the end of his 95 years. He enthusiastically embraced the fundamentalist religious populism of rural Oklahoma and its fervent American patriotism. From a young age, he determined to help "build our great country" and preserve "it for freedom" (p. 16).

His mission in life was never simply religious; it was to engage society, promote capitalism, and build. Over the course of his life, he built and led churches, religious associations, radio stations, religious schools, colleges and seminaries, Christian hotels and retreat centers, domestic and international mission boards, relief organizations, youth organizations, a Navajo school, an alcoholics' recovery center, a tuberculosis sanatorium, and even a UFO Bureau. However, his passion was politics. He sought to turn the United States back to its religious roots using national petition drives, lobbying Congress and the White House, provoking congressional investigations, leading mass marches on Washington, DC, joining a religious takeover of the Republican Party, and engaging in cultural warfare on "issues of abortion, gay rights, sex education, secular humanism, and alleged judicial tyranny" (p. 5).

Throughout McIntire's career, the enemy was unequivocally Communism and its supporters. He was convinced theologically that Satan was the true "author of Communism" (p. 73) and that capitalism was God's biblical mandate. With the patronage of prominent U.S. businessmen such as J. Howard Pew (Sun Oil Company) and Robert R. Young (Chrysler), he launched attacks on unions and other vestiges of socialism, calling on Christians to mobilize in "defense of free enterprise" (p. 74). For McIntire, the threat of a Communist takeover was most powerfully personified in the World Council of Churches, whose membership included clergy from Communist countries. As early as 1946, McIntire's fundamentalist American Council of Christian Churches began to lobby the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to investigate and expose "Reds in the churches" and "Communist infiltration in religious circles" (p. 119). In 1953, with the support of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, McIntire's multiple organizations turned their fury on Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam who was leading the efforts of the more liberal National Council of Churches to abolish HUAC. Later, in the mid-1960s, McIntire "employed every tool in his arsenal" (p. 216) to support the Vietnam War and halt Communist expansion in Asia. At a pro-war rally in Washington, DC, McIntire's minions carried a sign declaring "Kill a Commie for Christ's Sake" (p. 216).

In Fighting Fundamentalist, Ruotsila tells McIntire's story on multiple levels. Ruotsila masterfully navigates the...