Feature
The Coming Perfect Storm
Five Reasons Why Freedom of Religion & Conscience Is in Peril
by Randall B. Smith
There have been periods in American history when the anti-Catholic forces in our society, always rumbling just beneath the surface, exploded and flowed out like molten lava down the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius. What brings about these periodic eruptions, I would suggest, is a particular confluence of events: a sort of "perfect storm," so to speak (if you will allow me to shift metaphors).
One such confluence of forces occurred in the early part of the last century, when American Protestant distrust of Catholics came together with the nativist Anglo-American distrust of immigrants from places like Ireland, Italy, and Eastern Europe. To this already-potent brew was added the increasing distrust among America's mostly Protestant upper classes of the working classes and the sorts of socialist ideas they might be harboring and anarchical plots they might be hatching. The results were not pleasant.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Randall B. Smith is Associate Professor of Theology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas.
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
31.6—November/December 2018
on Futility & the Open Door to Deliverance by Patrick Henry Reardon
31.4—July/August 2018
Labels & the Ecumenism of Discipleship by James M. Kushiner
18.10—December 2005
on an Apostle’s Encounter with the Son’s Children by Anthony Esolen
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
