Holy Alliances: John A.

Ryan, the Roman Catholic Church and the Democratic Party

In the historical imagination John A. Ryan, like his nemesis Charles Coughlin, is perhaps just as

connected with American politics as he is with religion. His writing in The State and the Church

(1922) was cited widely by anti-Catholic writers for generations, even cropping up in arguments

against Catholic politicians as late as the election of 1960. Ryan himself is often directly

associated with another Democratic, Franklin Roosevelt. Ryan’s nickname, “the Right Reverend

New Dealer,” underemphasizes the fact that he had been an advocate of national insurance

(similar to social security), a living wage, reduced working hours, and countercyclical economics

long before Roosevelt began to contemplate these things .1

What’s easy to miss is that Ryan was not a politician, he was a religious leader, and his

progressive Democratic politics were a key part of the path to Catholic Americanization, and the

religions move to the American mainstream. Catholics had admittedly long been connected with

the Democratic Party, organizations like Tammany Hall had nurtured a connection between

ethnic Irish and Italian identities, Catholicism and political loyalty. Yet Ryan was busy forging a

new type of politics, this was not agrarianism, populism or machine politics, rather he was

allying himself with social gospel liberals.2 If Catholics had stood opposed to the Republican

ascendency during the previous century, Ryan wanted to be sure that Catholics found acceptance

in being on the same path as this new political juggernaut.

The early twentieth century thus was a remarkable period of political realignment. There

are many possible contingencies that could have occurred, Bishop John Ireland for instance tried
1
Gary Dorrien, Social Ethics in the Making: Interpreting an American Tradition (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell,
2011), 202, 212; John Augustine Ryan, Questions of the Day (New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1931),
224,228,238.
2
Ryan did however embrace populist politics early on in his life, voting for James B. Weaver and the People’s Party
in the election of 1892
See:
Ibid, 186.
move Catholics towards the Republican Party.3 African Americans were willing to contemplate

breaking their historical allegiances to the Republican Party and might have moved towards

Socialism if circumstances had been different.4 Yet thanks to efforts by people like Ryan the

Democratic party of the New Deal would form a coalition that brought together blacks, northern

and southern poor whites and progressive Catholics, it was a strange collection of demographics

but would hold together until the 1960s (when the Southern Strategy in particular dealt it a death

blow). This New Deal Democratic party proved to be one of the most effective political

operations the nation as yet seen, and Ryan is to be credited for making sure it was not rabidly

anti-Catholic, as it could have been.

Part of the reason that Ryan was able to be a figure that helped transform the Democratic

party is that he proved himself to progressive Protestants as perhaps one of the most realistic of

the Social Gospel reformers, winning Catholics a place of respect in this new movement. His

1906 Living Wage was a concrete and actionable proposal for reform, yet at the same time

because it depended on the idea of a patriarchal paterfamilias as the sole breadwinner to earn the

“living wage” it was also couched as a conservative one.5 Where other Social Gospel writers,

whether radicals, like Walter Rauschenbusch, or older more conservative voices in the

movement, like Francis Greenwood Peabody, seemed to be dreamers, Ryan could appeal to

Protestants as a rare voice of pragmatism.

When the depression began Ryan, due to his prior public statements about the dangers of

overproduction leading to economic collapse, seemed to be vindicated as something of a prophet.

3
William B. Prendergast, The Catholic Voter in American Politics: The Passing of the Democratic Monolith
(Georgetown University Press, 1999) 85.
4
Reverdy C. Ransom, Making the Gospel Plain, ed. Anthony B. Pinn (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International,
1999) 122.
5
Dorrien, Social Ethics in the Making, 190-194.
While Ryan was perhaps a bit ignorant about the possibility of using military power to force

open foreign markets thereby temporarily easing crisis of overproduction, which became the

most common solution to this problem in the 20th century, his analysis is extremely cogent and

his suggestion of reducing working hours still viable.6 Ryan’s insightfulness meant that even

though he had a rather unapologetic tone about the more authoritarian aspects of Catholicism (his

appeal to the Espionage Cases, one of the most controversial Supreme Court cases, to justify the

Catholic churches limits on speech being a particularly egregious example) his ability let

Protestants see him as an able colleague in reform.7

Yet even with his considerable bona fides Ryan had to overcome a huge amount of anti-

Catholic prejudice to even be seen as a legitimate social gospel voice, to be a legitimate part of

this new Democratic coalition. The 1920s saw Ryan adopt temperance views, likely so that he

could fit in better with his Protestant social gospel associates. Temperance views, while virtually

a prerequisite to being a Protestant reformer of any stripe, where heavily opposed by Catholics.

Ryan obviously had no great moral attachment to temperance, as he was more than willing to

renounce it and support the campaign of “wet” fellow Catholic, Al Smith, when he ran for the

Presidency as a Democrat in 1928.8

While Temperance proved a short lived way for Ryan to try and buy toleration for his

faith he would try other means. Even in 1931, long after he was widely known for having argued

for the living wage, he would have to vigorously argue that a Catholic could indeed be a social
6
Ibid, 206-207.; Ryan, Questions of the Day, 240-243;
For an overview of the use of the Open Door to relieve the pressure on American markets see:
Christopher Layne, The Peace of Illusions: American Grand Strategy from 1940 to the Present (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press ;2007).
7
Ryan, Questions of the Day, 250.
8
Dorrien, Social Ethics in the Making, 204.
The failure to elect Al Smith, despite his progressive politics, shows that in 1928 this fusion of Catholicism and
Democratic progressives was not yet complete. In 1928 it seems clear that many people that would have voted for a
non-Catholic voted for Herbert Hoover or Norman Thomas due to Smith’s religion.
liberal. Writing in response to a critical editor in The Nation he argued that that: “The most

astonishing and disturbing statement in the Nation editorial is that the liberal who is logical

‘cannot be other than anti-Catholic.”9 This suggests a very illiberal brand of liberalism.” Here

was Ryan at his most daring, suggesting that Protestant liberal would betray their own values if

they attacked Catholic beliefs.

Ryan went further than this; in his writings he overtly suggested that there should be an

alliance of Protestant liberals and Catholic reformers. In the same chapter he discussed the anti-

Catholicism of The Nation he put it bluntly:

“I would suggest of the editors of the Nation and to all others who see to established a
wider industrial and political justice that the task before them, before us all, is formidable enough
and sufficiently worth while to command our united efforts. This cause will not be served by
lecturing, threatening and antagonizing Catholic economic and political liberals, merely because
they refuse to accept the ant-Church variety of liberalism. This mistaken and utterly unnecessary
course is mainly responsible for the ultra-conservative position taken by many prominent
Catholics, lay and clergy, on the continent of Europe.”10
There was obviously an explicit threat in this statement. If American liberals did not

welcome Catholics as political co-workers, the Catholic Church could just as easily go down a

reactionary path.

As a reformer Ryan may not have been the most visionary. His can be faulted for

hypocrisy believing workers had intelligence enough to govern themselves, but not enough

apparently to be trusted to read any of the books on the Catholic Index without supervision. Yet

he should be credited, like W.E.B Du Bois and Reevdy Ransom, Ryan was a social gospel writer

who was working to gain a measure of political power for his oppressed fellows. It is a measure

9
Ryan, Questions of the Day, 254.
10
Ibid, 255.
of his considerable success, and the success of other Americanizing Catholics, that few people

remember that they had to do this.