Charles Coughlin
Charles Edward Coughlin, commonly known as Father Coughlin, was a Canadian-American Catholic priest based near Detroit. He was the founding priest of the National Shrine of the Little Flower. Dubbed "The Radio Priest" and considered a leading demagogue, he was one of the first political leaders to use radio to reach a mass audience. During the 1930s, when the U.S. population was about 120 million, an estimated 30 million listeners tuned in to his weekly broadcasts.
Coughlin was born in Ontario to working-class Irish Catholic parents. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1916, and in 1923 he was assigned to the National Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak, Michigan. Coughlin began broadcasting his sermons during a time of increasing anti-Catholic sentiment across the globe. As his broadcasts became more political, he became increasingly popular.
Initially, Coughlin was a vocal supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal; he later fell out with Roosevelt, accusing him of being too friendly to bankers. In 1934, he established the National Union for Social Justice, a political organization whose platform called for monetary reforms, nationalization of major industries and railroads, and protection of labour rights. Its membership ran into the millions but was not well organized locally.
After making attacks on Jewish bankers, Coughlin began to use his radio program Golden Hour to broadcast antisemitic commentary. In the late 1930s, he supported some of the policies of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The broadcasts have been described as "a variation of the Fascist agenda applied to American culture". His chief topics were political and economic rather than religious, using the slogan "Social Justice".
After the outbreak of World War II in Europe in 1939, the National Association of Broadcasters forced the cancellation of Golden Hour. In 1942, the Archdiocese of Detroit forced Coughlin to close his newspaper Social Justice and forbade its distribution by mail. Coughlin vanished from the public arena, working as a parish pastor until retiring in 1966. He died in 1979 at age 88.
Early life and work
Charles Coughlin was born on October 25, 1891, in Hamilton, Ontario, the only child of Irish Catholic Amelia and Thomas Coughlin. Born in a working-class neighbourhood, he lived in a modest home situated between a Catholic cathedral and convent. His mother, who had regretted not becoming a nun, was the dominant figure in the household and instilled a deep sense of religion in Charles.After his secondary education, Coughlin attended the University of Toronto, enrolling in St. Michael's College, run by the Congregation of St. Basil, and graduating in 1911. Coughlin then entered the Basilian Fathers. The Basilians were a traditional order that denounced usury and supported social justice. Coughlin prepared for the priesthood at St. Basil's Seminary and was ordained in Toronto in 1916. The Basilians then assigned him to teach at Assumption College, their institution in Windsor, Ontario.
In 1923, a reorganization of Coughlin's religious order resulted in his departure. The Vatican ordered the Basilians to change from a society of common life to a monastic life. The members of the order were required to take the traditional three religious vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience.
Unwilling to accept the monastic life, Coughlin applied for incardination, or transfer, out of the Basilians to the Archdiocese of Detroit. He was accepted in 1923 and moved to Detroit. The archdiocese assigned Coughlin to pastoral positions in several parishes. In 1925, when Coughlin was exiting a building in Detroit, he saw a man stealing a trunk from the back of his car. When Coughlin confronted the thief, he dropped the trunk and swung at him. The fight continued until Coughlin knocked him unconscious. The incident received coverage in the Detroit newspapers.
In 1926, he was assigned to the newly founded Shrine of the Little Flower, a congregation of 25 families in Royal Oak, Michigan.
1926 to 1942
In 1926, Coughlin began broadcasting his Sunday sermons from local radio station WJR. He later said that he started his radio show in response to the Ku Klux Klan burning a cross at the shrine and wanted to provide support to local Catholics. However, the broadcast also provided him with extra income to pay back the diocesan loan owed by the shrine. Coughlin started on WJR with a weekly, hour-long radio program. A gifted speaker, he had a rich speaking voice and used a careful cadence.When the Goodwill Stations radio network acquired WJR in 1929, owner George A. Richards recognized Coughlin's talent as a broadcaster. Richards encouraged Coughlin to focus his program more on politics than religion. Coughlin then started attacking income inequality, blaming the American banking system and the Jews for the poverty of American workers. The Columbia Broadcasting System radio network signed a contract for Coughlin's program in 1930 for national broadcast. It was called the Radio League of the Little Flower.
1931 to 1934
By 1931, Coughlin had raised enough money from Radio League to construct the huge Charity Crucifixion Tower at the Shrine of the Little Flower.In 1931, CBS received complaints from several affiliate stations about Coughlin's political views. CBS management was also concerned about his attacks on the administration of US President Herbert Hoover. CBS then demanded a review of Coughlin's scripts prior to broadcast, which he refused. When Coughlin's contract with CBS ended, the network decided not to renew it.
Coughlin and Richards then established an independently financed radio network. His show became the Golden Hour of the Shrine of the Little Flower, with WJR and WGAR in Cleveland serving as core stations. With Coughlin paying for the airtime on a contractual basis, the number of affiliates carrying Golden Hour increased to 25 stations by August 1932. Regional radio networks, such as the Yankee Network, the Quaker State Network, the Mohawk Network and the Colonial Network, also started carrying Golden Hour. Coughlin's radio network became the largest one of its type in the United States. Leo Fitzpatrick, who had given Coughlin his initial airtime over WJR in 1926 and was retained as a part-owner when Richards purchased the station, continued to serve as a confidant and advisor to Coughlin.
With the United States suffering through the Great Depression, Coughlin strongly endorsed New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt for president in the 1932 Presidential election. He was invited to attend the June 1932 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. An early supporter of Roosevelt's New Deal reforms, Coughlin coined the popular phrase "Roosevelt or Ruin". Another phrase Coughlin created was "The New Deal is Christ's Deal". After Roosevelt was elected in November 1932, he politely received Coughlin's policy proposals, but showed no interest in enacting them.
By 1933, Securities and Exchange Commission President Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., a strong New Deal and Roosevelt supporter who had befriended Coughlin, warned that he was "becoming a very dangerous proposition in the whole country" and "an out and out demagog " in a letter to Felix Frankfurter. That same year, The Literary Digest wrote, "Perhaps no man has stirred the country and cut as deep between the old order and the new as Father Charles E. Coughlin."
1934 to 1936
In 1934, Coughlin founded the National Union for Social Justice, a nationalistic workers' rights organization. Its leaders were impatient with what they considered the Roosevelt's unconstitutional and pseudo-capitalistic monetary policies. The NUSJ soon gained a strong following among nativists and opponents of the Federal Reserve, especially in the American Midwest.By 1934, Coughlin was perhaps the most prominent Catholic speaker on political and financial issues. His radio audience included tens of millions of Americans every week. Historian Alan Brinkley wrote that "by 1934, he was receiving more than 10,000 letters every day" and that "his clerical staff at times numbered more than a hundred." He foreshadowed modern talk radio and televangelism. However, the University of Detroit Mercy states that Golden Hour's peak audience was in 1932.
It is estimated that at peak, one-third of the nation listened to his broadcasts. The Golden Hour office was receiving up to 80,000 letters per week from listeners. Author Sheldon Marcus said that the size of Coughlin's radio audience "is impossible to determine, but estimates range up to 30 million each week".
In 1934, Roosevelt sent Kennedy and Detroit Mayor Frank Murphy to visit Coughlin and try to temper his attacks. Coughlin visited Roosevelt several times at his estate in Hyde Park, New York. In a bid to control the excesses of the radio industry, Congress passed the Communications Act of 1934, establishing the Federal Communications Commission. FCC Chairman Frank R. McNinch warned that it would not allow broadcasters to use their networks or stations as "...an instrument of racial or religious persecution".
Coughlin's attacks on Roosevelt continued to increase. He began denouncing him as a tool of Wall Street. Coughlin opposed the New Deal with growing vehemence, attacking Roosevelt, capitalists and alleged Jewish conspirators. He encouraged the third-party candidacy of Louisiana Governor Huey Long for president in the 1936 election, but that was cut short by Long's assassination in 1935. Under Coughlin's direction, the NUSJ founded the Union Party in preparation for the 1936 elections.
1936 to 1938
In early 1936, at Kennedy's urging, Bishop Francis Spellman and Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli tried to mute Coughlin's vitriol. While the American Catholic hierarchy did not approve of Coughlin, only Coughlin's superior—Bishop Michael Gallagher of Detroit—had the canonical authority to curb him. Gallagher was a strong supporter of Coughlin and refused to stop him. The church hierarchy also feared the backlash from Coughlin's Catholic supporters if they reprimanded him.Coughlin opened a new church building at the Shrine of the Little Flower in 1936, an octagonal structure shaped like a tent. One of its unique features was an altar positioned at the center of worship. This design did not become common in Catholic churches until the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.
With the start of the 1936 U.S. presidential election, Coughlin was ready to support a third party candidate running against Roosevelt. At a NUSJ rally at Cleveland Municipal Stadium on May 11, 1936, Coughlin predicted that NUSF would "take half of Ohio" in the upcoming primary election, citing multiple congressional candidates with NUSJ backing. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July, Coughlin accused Roosevelt of "leaning toward international socialism" by his failure to support the Nationalists under General Francisco Franco. Coughlin presided over the Townsend Convention held in July at Cleveland Public Hall on July 23. In his speech on July 16, Coughlin called Roosevelt a liar and a communist, referring to him as "Franklin Doublecross Roosevelt."
At the Union Party convention at Municipal Stadium in Cleveland on August 16, Coughlin endorsed the party's presidential candidate, House Representative William Lemke. Coughlin fainted near the end of his speech. In an August 16 Boston Post article, Coughlin referred to Kennedy as the "shining star among the dim 'knights' in the Administration".
Coughlin promised his radio audience that he would retire from broadcasting if he failed to deliver nine million votes for Lemke; he only received 850,000 votes. Roosevelt won the election on November 5 by a landslide. According to a 2021 study in the American Economic Review, Coughlin's criticisms did reduce Roosevelt's share of votes versus the 1932 election. After the election, both the Union Party and its parent organization, the NUSJ, disbanded; Coughlin took a two-month retirement from Golden Hour.
After Bishop Gallagher died in January 1937, Pope Pius XI replaced him with Edward Mooney, the first Archbishop of Detroit. Coughlin then left retirement to return to Golden Hour, in memory of Gallagher. In October 1937, Mooney rebuked Coughlin for casting aspersions on Roosevelt's sanity over his nomination of U.S. Senator Hugo Black to the U.S. Supreme Court.