American Evangelical Attitudes Toward Catholicism: World War II to Vatican II

From the close of World War II to the beginning of the Second Vatican Council, anti-Catholicism marked the attitudes of U.S. fundamentalists and neoevangelicals. Exploring anti-Catholicism’s forms and how they differed and changed within the two groups, this study examines the early documents of the National Association of Evangelicals, the neoevangelical Christianity Today, and the fundamentalist Christian Beacon. Both groups’ opposition to Catholicism was assumed more than stated, but by the early 1960s greater openness to Catholicism could be seen, especially among neoevangelicals, representing important seeds of change that would later flower into dialogues including “Evangelicals and Catholics Together.” Developments were ambiguous, however, with countertrends found especially when issues of church and state became pronounced. Nevertheless, seen against the backdrop of fundamentalism’s continued anti-Catholicism, the changing attitudes of neoevangelicals were significant, laying groundwork for future engagements with Catholicism.