In recent years, some political leaders have raised concerns that many traditional Catholic and Jewish Americans are demonstrating more loyalty to the Vatican and Israel, respectively, than to American democratic principles. These concerns are not new. The 1930s saw similar anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic sentiments, but these were undermined by the promotion of a Judeo-Christian tradition that was instrumental in developing national unity during Word War II. Today, however, this tradition is at risk.
In the early twentieth century, Catholic and Jewish loyalties to American values and democracy were questioned. In 1928, Al Smith's presidential campaign elicited anti-Catholic diatribes from many Protestant leaders. They justified their opposition because, they believed, the Catholic Church was an "un-American" and "alien culture" that opposed freedom and democracy. Presenting the official position of the National Lutheran Editors' and Managers' Association, Dr. Clarence Reinhold Tappert warned about, "the absolute allegiance [a Catholic] owes to a 'foreign sovereign' who does not only 'claim' supremacy also in secular affairs as a matter of principle and theory but who, time and again, has endeavored to put this claim into practical operation."
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