In the 1930s, Father Charles E. Coughlin, the "Radio Priest" from Royal Oak, Michigan, used radio broadcasts to assemble what was then the largest congregation in the history of Christianity. He also became the first Roman Catholic priest to make a serious impact on the U.S. political scene.

Early Years

     Born of a Canadian mother and an Irish-American father in Ontario in 1891, Coughlin was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1916 as a member of the Basilian order. He assisted in several Michigan parishes, becoming a diocesan priest in Detroit in 1923. Already enjoying a reputation as a pulpit orator, his masses at the churches to which he was temporarily assigned regularly attracted overflow crowds.

     In 1926 Coughlin became pastor of the just-dedicated Shrine of the Little Flower parish in Royal Oak, four miles up Woodward Avenue from Detroit's northern city limits. Although the parish had only 25 families at its inception, the enterprising young priest built a church to hold 600 people. The building process was anything but trouble-free. Raising funds for the new parish proved difficult, and the Ku Klux Klan, fearful of an increasing Roman Catholic populace in the area, burned a cross on the church lawn. Fortunately, Coughlin was introduced to Leo Fitzpatrick, station manager of powerful WJR radio, who was taken by the young pastor's plight. Fitzpatrick suggested that Coughlin employ his oratorical skills over WJR in order to create a more sympathetic climate for the Shrine parish and to appeal for financial support.

Persuasion by Radio

     Originally entitled the Golden Hour of the Little Flower, Coughlin's first broadcast was relayed from the Shrine on 3 October 1926. Initially the program was intended for children but gradually shifted to adult topics on general economic and political perils facing the country. For Coughlin soon discovered that such subjects struck a responsive chord with listeners, resulting in correspondence that often contained financial contributions. He organized the Radio League of the Little Flower (annual membership fee: $1) to stimulate donations that allowed him to purchase more radio exposure. In 1929 he bought time on Cincinnati's powerful clear-channel station WLW and began negotiations to add WMAQ (Chicago) as his enterprise's third station. Because WMAQ was a CBS-owned outlet, the matter was referred to network headquarters in New York. As a result, Coughlin was sold time on the CBS network. National visibility was at hand.

     The cost of airtime soon was dwarfed by the rising tide of contributions that his widely distributed program elicited. As the Great Depression set in, Coughlin's offensive against the twin evils of communism and international banking resonated with many and further increased the popularity of his broad­ casts. But when his attacks became more specific and mentioned President Herbert Hoover by name, CBS became nervous. Edward Klauber, the network's executive vice president, requested that the priest submit scripts for advance clearance. Coughlin's response came in his 4 January 1931 broadcast when he asked his listeners whether or not CBS should be allowed to censor him. CBS was inundated with 1,250,000 letters of protest, and Coughlin's messages were never presented.

     CBS still eased him off its network the following April and NBC was not interested in being Coughlin's replacement chain. So WJR's Fitzpatrick contacted Alfred McCosker, his counterpart at WOR, New York. Together they set up a telephone­ linked group of 11 stations that expanded to 26 outlets from Maine to Colorado by the autumn of 1932. Weekly cost for the landlines and airtime was $14,000.

     Coughlin's program now openly laid blame for the Depression on President Hoover. Over a million letters of support poured in; Royal Oak's first post office was established to cope with his correspondence, and Father Coughlin became the subject of feature articles in radio fan magazines and newspapers across the country. His religious superior, Bishop Michael Gallagher, was a firm supporter of Coughlin's social justice agenda, so grumblings from prominent East Coast cardinals were of no concern. Thousands of visitors, Catholic and non­ Catholic alike, made pilgrimages to the Shrine church, now graced by an imposing 150-foot stone tower upon which was carved a crucifix illuminated by floodlights. Coughlin's radio speeches, composed in a small study at the top of the tower, increased in both vehemence and popularity. A poll conducted by WOR named him the nation's most useful citizen of 1933, and when WCAU asked its Philadelphia listeners whether they wanted Father Coughlin or the New York Philharmonic on Sunday afternoon, there were 187,000 votes for the cleric and only 12,000 for the orchestra.

Controversy

     Coughlin cheered the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt and remained a staunch New Deal supporter throughout 1933, FDR's first year in office. The priest's resonant brogue and passionate oratory advocated the nationalization of gold and revaluation of the dollar, policies that were originally favored by the Roosevelt administration as well. But Roosevelt never warmed to the "Radio Priest" and never extended to him the counselor status that Coughlin thought he deserved. So on II November 1934, Coughlin announced the formation of a National Union for Social Justice to lobby independently for his social and economic proposals. The break with Roosevelt became complete when the administration proposed joining the World Court, an entity Coughlin considered a tool of international bankers. His 27 January 1935 broadcast was a blistering attack on the proposal, resulting in 200,000 protest letters to Congress, a key factor in the government's abandonment of the plan.

     Coughlin's social justice movement now converged with the Share-Our-Wealth platform of Louisiana's bombastic Senator Huey Long. But in September 1935, Long was assassinated. The news reached President Roosevelt during a meeting with Coughlin and Joseph P. Kennedy (father of the future president), a conference Kennedy had arranged in an unsuccessful attempt to reconcile the priest and the president. The next year, Coughlin's National Union for Social Justice joined with Long's Share-Our-Wealth backers to create the Union Party and to endorse the presidential bid of North Dakota Congressman William Lemke. The priest also founded his own newspaper, Social justice Weekly, which soon achieved a circulation of 1 million copies. Such success emboldened Coughlin to promise that he would leave radio if he could not deliver 9 million votes to Lemke. When Lemke garnered less than 1 million ballots, Coughlin honored his pledge and took leave of his broadcast audience on 7 November 1936.

     Three months later, however, he was back on the air, ratio­nalizing that this turnabout occurred because it was the dying wish of his supportive superior, Bishop Gallagher. For the next two years, Coughlin continued his broadcast attacks on Roosevelt's New Deal and its failure to adopt the monetary reforms that the priest advocated. Beginning in mid-1938, with European war clouds gathering, Coughlin began to focus more on international affairs. In his November 20th radio program, he excused German Nazism as a necessary defense mechanism against communism and supported the Nazi theory that Jewish bankers were behind the Russian Revolution. Over the next year his broadcasts took a more and more anti-Semitic tone.

     In October 1939, fearing government retaliation for the strident broadcast oratory of Coughlin and other radical political voices, the National Association of Broadcasters' Code Committee placed strict limitations on the sale of radio time to "spokesmen of controversial public issues." As the priest's air­ time was all purchased at commercial rates, this new self-policing edict gradually eroded his network as his contracts with stations expired. He canceled his 1940-41 season (the program had always taken a summer hiatus anyway) and never returned to the airwaves. On 1 May 1942, Coughlin's banishment from the public stage was complete when his new superior, Archbishop Francis Mooney, ordered him to cease all writings and nonreligious activities for the duration of the war. Acting upon a request relayed by Roosevelt emissary Leo Crowley and expressions of concern from the Vatican, Mooney threatened to revoke Father Coughlin's priestly authority if he did not comply.

     Always the obedient priest, Coughlin immediately abandoned publication of Social Justice, allowed the government to revoke its second-class mailing privilege, and retreated to the role of Shrine pastor. He served in that capacity until his retirement in 1966.

     At the height of his prominence, Father Coughlin had a listenership of more than 30 million, received 400,000 letters per week, and was featured twice on the cover of Newsweek. In stark contrast, from 1966 until his death a decade later the "Radio Priest" lived unobtrusively, first in a small apartment behind his beloved Shrine of the Little Flower and then in a home he purchased in nearby Birmingham.