Defending Against Anti-Catholicism

Author: James Mulligan
Source: Chicago Historical Society (ICHi-37962)

Public expressions of nativism and anti-Catholicism were at a peak in the mid-1850s, and found expression in the Yankee-run Chicago Tribune. James Mulligan, a young Irish Catholic lawyer, advised an aggrieved group of Roman Catholics that it would be unwise to bring legal suit against the paper. Less than a year later Mulligan accepted an invitation to become the editor of the Western Tablet, a Chicago Catholic paper, and during the Civil War he became one of the city's most celebrated war heroes. James Mulligan to Priest and Professors of St. Mary School, 7 August 1854.

See also: Americanization; Irish; Lager Beer Riot; Roman Catholics; Yankees

Remembering a Social Gospel Activist

Author: Graham Taylor
Source: Newberry Library

Graham Taylor, founder of Chicago Commons, paid tribute in 1929 to the recently deceased William Carwardine, who like Taylor was a leading minister in the Social Gospel movement. Carwardine came to prominence after he delivered a sermon decrying injustice to workers during the 1894 Pullman Strike, and he became a speaker, writer, and activist for what he saw as "applied Christianity." Both Taylor and Carwardine sought to address a public well beyond their denominations, Taylor as a columnist for the Chicago Daily News, and Carwardine as religion editor for the Chicago Herald and Examiner. Graham Taylor in Chicago Daily News, 31 August 1929.

See also: Chicago Commons; Journalism; Protestants; Pullman Strike; Social Gospel in Chicago

The Range of a Minister's Public Talks

Source: University of Iowa

Unitarian minister Preston Bradley, who founded the Peoples Church of Chicago in 1912, was known as a powerful orator, and lectured on secular as well as religious subjects on the Chautauqua circuit. Chautauqua Brochure, 1922.

See also: Lectures and Public Speaking; Protestants

Ecumenical Evenings

Creator: Curt Teich & Co.
Source: Lake County Discovery Museum, Curt Teich Postcard Archives (6B717)

The Chicago Sunday Evening Club began in 1908 with informal religious talks in Orchestra Hall presented by representatives of a variety of denominations. The programs began to be broadcast on radio in 1922, and were brought to television by WTTW in 1956. The series survived on that station into the twenty-first century as a weekly program called 30 Good Minutes. Over the years speakers have included figures as diverse as John Ashcroft, William Dever, W. E. B. DuBois, Emil Hirsch, Bill Kurtis, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Amos Alonzo Stagg. Chicago Sunday Evening Club Postcard, 1946.

See also: Broadcasting; Lectures and Public Speaking; Public Broadcasting; WTTW: Public Broadcasting; Foreign-Language Broadcasting (Table)

Association of Catholic Trade Unionists, Gary

Creator: Association of Catholic Trade Unionists, Gary Chapter
Source: Calumet Regional Archives, Indiana University Northwest, Gary (CRA#335, b.1, f.4)

The Gary Chapter of the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists was an anti-Communist, pro-labor organization founded in 1945 that, in the language of its constitution, saw trade unionism as indispensable to "the establishment of a Christian Social Order as set forth in the Papal Encyclicals." The association offered talks and classes on labor topics and in 1949 began sponsoring an annual Labor Day Mass. Association of Catholic Trade Unionists Press Release, 1957.

See also: Cold War and Anti-Communism; Iron- and Steelworkers; Unionization; Work