Church and State in the City: Catholics and Politics in Twentieth-Century San Francisco by William Issel (review)

The title of this intriguing history of twentieth-century San Francisco does not entirely do it justice. More than a history of Catholics and politics, William Issel has written a complex account of contests (and alliances) among Catholics, labor activists, leftists and business interests to define the public interest. In doing so he has rewritten the history of one of the nation’s most intriguing cities. San Francisco tends to be identified with the counterculture and political radicalism of recent decades, but from the 1890s through the 1960s its large population of Catholics influenced policy and perceptions of the “common good” (2) in ways that reflected their faith. In the process they came into conflict with “laissez-faire capitalists, secular liberals, and anti-Catholic socialists and communists” (2) and, later, with the New Left, the counterculture and the LBGT community. Issel’s account not only re-envisions local history but also challenges the idea that “the history of urban politics and policy can be best understood as the unfolding of a coherent, progressive, secular modernization of urban political culture” (5–6).

By the early twentieth century the city’s largest ethnic groups were Irish, German and Italian, and most of these residents were Catholic. Inspired by papal encyclicals that promoted workers’ rights and mainstream unionism yet condemned radicalism, Catholic San Franciscans challenged “the presumptions of organized capital to unilaterally define the public interest” (251). Instead they insisted on a faith-based moral economy that simultaneously defended workers’ right to organize (responsibly) and promoted cooperation among capital, labor and government.

This position also entailed a rigid anti-communism, and the struggle between Catholics and Communists heated up in the 1930s as both struggled to define the common good, represent the working class and control the language of Americanism. Catholics gained the edge as they launched a militant Catholic Action movement, organized labor schools and chapters of the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists (ACTU), and started a labor relations program at the Jesuit-run University of San Francisco. Many of these efforts were spearheaded by Father Hugh A. Donohoe, an ACTU organizer who told workers they had a “moral obligation” to organize (84).

When the story reaches the 1960s, Issel’s narrative lens widens to include efforts by women, racial minorities, environmentalists, counter-culturalists and LBGT groups to redefine the public interest in their own ways. A particularly interesting chapter on women’s activism showcases one strength of the book – its compelling mini-biographies – by using the careers of four women to illustrate their competing visions of the public good in this pivotal decade. Another chapter points to the disconnect between the city’s traditions of religious toleration and racial discrimination. In the 1960s contests to define the public interest became focused on job discrimination, de facto school segregation, and redevelopment plans that would displace minority residents. At the same time, controversies over building freeways pitted business, labor and government interests against environmental and historic preservation groups. In many cases, grassroots activists demonstrated their power to shape public policy and ideas about the common good.

By the 1970s, the Catholic moral economy was losing ground as hippies and New Leftists embraced a secular society marked by radical individualism and moral relativism. San Franciscans no longer agreed that “the common good required residents to conform to a civic moral order derived from religious traditions of any kind” (249). Instead they adopted a new “vision of the common good premised on unlimited individual rights, unbounded individual freedom of choice, and government activism on behalf of rights, not duties” (249).

Church and State in the City forms part of an exciting new trend in which scholars are bringing religion from the margins to the center of political history. Moving beyond a tired dynamic in which the Catholic Church in particular is either absent from the story, or vilified as a conservative...