Charles Coughlin

The Reverend Monsignor Charles Coughlin
Father Coughlin c. 1938
Church	Catholic
Orders
Ordination	1916
Personal details
Born	Charles Edward Coughlin (1891-10-25)October 25, 1891 Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Died	October 27, 1979(1979-10-27) (aged 88) Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, U.S.
Buried	Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, Southfield, Michigan
Education	University of Toronto

Charles Edward Coughlin (/ˈkɒɡlɪn/ KOG-lin; October 25, 1891 – October 27, 1979; commonly known as Father Coughlin) was a Canadian-American Catholic priest based in the United States near Detroit. He was the founding priest of the National Shrine of the Little Flower. Dubbed "The Radio Priest " and considered a leading demagogue, he was one of the first political leaders to use radio to reach a mass audience. During the 1930s, when the U.S. population was about 120 million, an estimated 30 million listeners tuned in to his weekly broadcasts.

Coughlin was born in Ontario to working-class Irish Catholic parents. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1916, and in 1923 he was assigned to the National Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak, Michigan. Coughlin began broadcasting his sermons during a time of increasing anti-Catholic sentiment across the globe. As his broadcasts became more political, he became increasingly popular.

Initially, Coughlin was a vocal supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal; he later fell out with Roosevelt, accusing him of being too friendly to bankers. In 1934, he established a political organization called the National Union for Social Justice. Its platform called for monetary reforms, nationalization of major industries and railroads, and protection of labour rights. The membership ran into the millions but was not well organized locally.

After making attacks on Jewish bankers, Coughlin began to use his radio program Golden Hour to broadcast antisemitic commentary. In the late 1930s, he supported some of the policies of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The broadcasts have been described as "a variation of the Fascist agenda applied to American culture". His chief topics were political and economic rather than religious, using the slogan "Social Justice". After the outbreak of World War II in Europe in 1939, the Roosevelt administration forced the cancellation of Golden Hour and forbade distribution by mail of his newspaper Social Justice. Coughlin largely vanished from the public arena, working as a parish pastor until retiring in 1966. He died in 1979 at the age of 88.

Early life and work

Charles Coughlin was born on October 25, 1891 in Hamilton, Ontario, the only child of Irish Catholic Amelia (née Mahoney) and Thomas Coughlin. Born in a working-class neighbourhood, he lived in a modest home situated between a Catholic cathedral and convent. His mother, who had regretted not becoming a nun, was the dominant figure in the household and instilled a deep sense of religion in Charles.

After his secondary education, Coughlin attended the University of Toronto, enrolling in St. Michael's College, run by the Congregation of St. Basil, and graduating in 1911. Coughlin then entered the Basilian Fathers. He prepared for holy orders at St. Basil's Seminary and was ordained to the priesthood in Toronto in 1916. The Basilians then assigned him to teach at Assumption College, their institution in Windsor, Ontario.

In 1923, a reorganization of Coughlin's religious order resulted in his departure. The Vatican ordered the Basilians to change from a society of common life to a monastic life. The members of the order were required to take the traditional three religious vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience.

Unwilling to accept the monastic life, Coughlin applied for incardination, or transfer, out of the Basilians to the Archdiocese of Detroit. He was accepted in 1923 and moved to Detroit. The archdiocese assigned Coughlin to pastoral positions in several parishes. In 1926, he was assigned to the newly-founded Shrine of the Little Flower, a congregation of 25 families in Royal Oak, Michigan. The parish soon expanded under his leadership.

Radio broadcaster

Coughlin's church, the National Shrine of the Little Flower

In 1926, Coughlin began broadcasting his Sunday sermons from local radio station WJR. He later claimed that he started his radio show in response to the Ku Klux Klan burning a cross at the shrine. However, the broadcast also provided him with extra income to pay back the diocesan loan owed by the shrine. Coughlin started on WJR with a weekly, hour-long radio program.

When the Goodwill Stations radio network acquired WJR in 1929, owner George A. Richards encouraged Coughlin to focus his program more on politics than religion. Coughlin then started attacking income inequality, blaming the American banking system and the Jews for the poverty of American workers. The CBS radio network selected Coughlin's program in 1930 for national broadcast. The broadcast tower for his radio show was completed in 1931.

George A. Richards

In 1931, CBS received complaints from several affiliate stations about Coughlin's political views. The network then demanded a review of his scripts prior to broadcast, which he refused. CBS then dropped his program.

With backing by Richards, Coughlin established his own, independently-financed radio network. His show became the Golden Hour of the Shrine of the Little Flower, with WJR and WGAR in Cleveland as core stations. With Coughlin paying for the airtime on a contractual basis, the number of affiliates carrying Golden Hour increased to 25  stations in August 1932 and to a peak of 58 affiliates in 1938. Regional radio networks, such as the Yankee Network, the Quaker State Network, the Mohawk Network and the Colonial Network, also carried Golden Hour. Coughlin's radio network became the largest one of its type in the United States.

As the 1930s progressed, Coughlin's views changed. Eventually he became "openly antidemocratic", according to the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, "calling for the abolition of political parties and questioning the value of elections". His views mirrored those of Richards, who held reactionary conservative beliefs. Leo Fitzpatrick, who had given Coughlin his initial airtime over WJR in 1926 and was retained as a part-owner when Richards purchased the station, continued to serve as a confidant and advisor to Coughlin.

Support for Roosevelt

Against the deepening crisis of the Great Depression, Coughlin strongly endorsed New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1932 Presidential election. He was an early supporter of Roosevelt's New Deal reforms and coined the phrase "Roosevelt or Ruin", which entered common usage during the early days of Roosevelt's administration. Another phrase Coughlin coined was "The New Deal is Christ's Deal".

Opposition to Roosevelt

Father Coughlin and Senator Elmer Thomas on the cover of Time Magazine in 1934

Though he received them politely, Roosevelt had little interest in enacting Coughlin's economic proposals. Coughlin's support for Roosevelt and his New Deal faded in 1934 when Coughlin founded the National Union for Social Justice (NUSJ), a nationalistic workers' rights organization. Its leaders grew impatient with what they considered the Roosevelt's unconstitutional and pseudo-capitalistic monetary policies.

According to a 2021 study in the American Economic Review, Coughlin's criticisms of Roosevelt in his broadcasts reduced his vote shares in the 1936 US presidential election.

Radio audience

Father Coughlin at a WXYZ microphone (Radio Stars magazine, May 1934)

By 1934, Coughlin was perhaps the most prominent Catholic speaker on political and financial issues with a radio audience that reached tens of millions of people every week. Historian[ Alan Brinkley wrote that "by 1934, he [Coughlin] was receiving more than 10,000 letters every day" and that "his clerical staff at times numbered more than a hundred." He foreshadowed modern talk radio and televangelism. However, the University of Detroit Mercy claims that Golden Hour's peak audience was in 1932. It is estimated that at peak, one-third of the nation listened to his broadcasts. In 1933, The Literary Digest wrote, "Perhaps no man has stirred the country and cut as deep between the old order and the new as Father Charles E. Coughlin." At its peak in the early-to-mid 1930s, Golden Hour was phenomenally popular. His office received up to 80,000 letters per week from listeners. Author Sheldon Marcus said that the size of Coughlin's radio audience "is impossible to determine, but estimates range up to 30 million each week". He expressed an isolationist, and conspiratorial, viewpoint that resonated with many listeners.

In 1934, when Coughlin began criticizing the New Deal, Roosevelt sent the Securities and Exchange Commission preside, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., and Detroit Mayor Frank Murphy, both prominent Irish Catholics, to try to influence him. Kennedy was reportedly a friend of Coughlin's. Coughlin periodically visited Roosevelt while accompanied by Kennedy. In an August 16, 1936, Boston Post article, Coughlin referred to Kennedy as the "shining star among the dim 'knights' in the [Roosevelt] Administration".

Increasingly opposed to Roosevelt, Coughlin began denouncing him as a tool of Wall Street; Coughlin opposed the New Deal with growing vehemence, attacking Roosevelt, capitalists and alleged Jewish conspirators. Another nationally known priest, Reverend John A. Ryan, initially supported Coughlin but opposed him after Coughlin turned on Roosevelt. Kennedy, who strongly supported the New Deal, warned as early as 1933 that Coughlin was "becoming a very dangerous proposition" as an opponent of Roosevelt's and "an out and out demagogue". Kennedy worked with Roosevelt, Bishop Francis Spellman and Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (the future Pope Pius XII) in a partly successful effort to get the Vatican to silence Coughlin in 1936. Coughlin ended Golden Hour in 1939, but continued to publish Social Justice. In 1940 and 1941, reversing his own views, Kennedy attacked the isolationism of Coughlin.

He accused Roosevelt of "leaning toward international socialism on the Spanish question" (referring to the Spanish Civil War). The NUSJ gained a strong following among nativists and opponents of the Federal Reserve, especially in the American Midwest. Michael Kazin has written that Coughlinites saw Wall Street and Communism as twin faces of a secular Satan. They believed that they were defending those people who were joined more by piety, economic frustration, and a common dread of powerful, modernizing enemies than through any class identity.

The priest supported populist Louisiana Governor Huey Long until his assassination in 1935. At a NUSJ rally at Cleveland Municipal Stadium on May 11, 1936, Coughlin predicted the organization would "take half of Ohio" in the upcoming primary election, citing multiple congressional candidates that had the NUSJ's backing.

Coughlin teamed up with the activist Francis Townsend and Long associate Gerald L. K. Smith to support House Representative William Lemke's Union Party 1936 campaign for president. Coughlin presided over two additional high-profile events in Cleveland during the summer of 1936: the Townsend Convention held at Cleveland Public Hall during mid-July and the Union party convention at Municipal Stadium on August 16th; at the latter, Coughlin fainted near the end of his speech. One of Coughlin's campaign slogans was "Less care for internationalism and more concern for national prosperity", which appealed to the 1930s U.S. isolationists and especially to Irish Catholics.

Lemke's candidacy was a failure, with Coughlin taking a brief two-month hiatus after the election. Coughlin had promised to deliver nine million votes for Lemke, but he only received one million. Roosevelt won the election by a landslide.

Social Justice magazine on sale in New York City, 1939

Coughlin also began to support a far-right organization called the Christian Front, which claimed him as an inspiration. He urged the formation of a national Christian movement to violently rebel against the U.S. government, and personally selected John F. Cassidy to lead it. After the Front's New York City unit was raided by the FBI in January 1940 for plotting to overthrow the government, it was revealed Coughlin had never officially been a member.

Coughlin also promoted his views in the weekly rotogravure magazine Social Justice, which began publication in March 1936. Coughlin denied on various occasions that he was antisemitic, yet he received indirect funding from the German Government during this period.

On November 9 and 10, 1938, Nazi organizations and sympathizers attacked Jewish businesses and synagogues throughout Germany in what became known as the Kristallnacht. When the station manager for WMCA in New York, Donald Flamm, saw the preliminary script for the November 20th broadcast of Golden Hour, he immediately demanded that Coughin change some inflammatory references to Kristallnacht. However, he did not have the opportunity to view the final script.

On the November 20th broadcast, Coughlin deflected blame from the Nazis by referring to the many Christians who had been murdered in the Soviet Union by its government. He said, "Jewish persecution only followed after Christians first were persecuted." After the show finished, the WMCA booth announcer said, "Unfortunately, Father Coughlin has uttered many misstatements of fact".

WMCA immediately dropped Golden Hour, stating that Coughlin was inciting racial prejudice. Flamm remarked that the show "was calculated to stir up religious and racial hatred and dissension in this country". In response, Coughlin accused the station of being under "Jewish ownership". When WIND and WJJD requested advance copies of the next Golden Hour script, for review and approval, his refusal prompted them to drop the program.

On December 18, 1938, thousands of Coughlin's followers picketed WMCA's studios in protest. Some of the protesters yelled antisemitic statements, such as "Send Jews back where they came from in leaky boats!" and "Wait until Hitler comes over here!" The protests at WMCA continued for 38 weeks. Coughlin was present at some of the protests.

Backlash

While members of the American Catholic hierarchy did not approve of Coughlin, only Coughlin's superior—Bishop Michael Gallagher of Detroit—had the canonical authority to curb him, and Gallagher supported the "Radio Priest". Owing to Gallagher's autonomy and the prospect of the Coughlin problem leading to a schism, the Catholic leadership took no action against hime. However, that stance changed when Gallagher died in January 1937.

In 1938, Cardinal George Mundelein, archbishop of Chicago, issued the first formal condemnation of Coughlin by the Catholic hierarchy. Mundelein said that Coughlin was : "...not authorized to speak for the Catholic Church, nor does he represent the doctrine or sentiments of the Church."

Coughlin increasingly attacked Roosevelt's policies. The administration decided that, although the First Amendment protected free speech, it did not necessarily apply to broadcasting because the radio spectrum was a "limited national resource" and as a result was regulated as a publicly owned commons. The authorities imposed new regulations and restrictions on radio stations for the specific purpose of forcing Coughlin off the air. For the first time, the authorities required regular radio broadcasters to seek operating permits.

When Coughlin's permit was denied, he was temporarily silenced. Coughlin worked around the new restrictions by purchasing air time and playing his speeches via transcription. However, having to buy the weekly air time on individual stations severely reduced his reach and also strained his financial resources. Meanwhile, Bishop Gallagher died and was replaced in Detroit by Archbishop Edward Mooney, who was less sympathetic to Coughlin than Gallagher. In 1939, the Institute for Propaganda Analysis used Coughlin's radio talks to illustrate propaganda methods in their book The Fine Art of Propaganda, which was intended to show propaganda's effects against democracy.

Coughlin was praised in January 1939 by Regime Fascista, an Italian newspaper aligned with the fascist government of Italy.

After the outbreak of World War II in Europe in September 1939, Coughlin made an on-air appeal for listeners to travel to Washington as "an army of peace" to stop the repeal of the Neutrality Acts, a neutrality-oriented arms embargo law, leading opponents to accuse Coughlin of stoking incitement bordering on civil war. This resulted in an intervention to finally remove Coughlin from the air, not by a federal agency but by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), the industry's lobby group. The NAB formed a self-regulating Code Committee that imposed limits on the sale of air time to people deemed to be controversial. Ratified on October 1, 1939, the code required manuscripts for programs to be submitted in advance and effectively prohibited on-air editorials or the discussion of controversial subjects, including non-interventionism, with the threat of license revocation for radio stations that failed to comply. This code was drafted specifically as a response to Coughlin and Golden Hour. WJR, WGAR and the Yankee Network threatened to quit their memberships in the NAB over the code, but acquiesced and adopted it, with the majority of affiliate contracts running out at the end of October. In the September 23, 1940, issue of Social Justice, Coughlin announced that he had been forced off the air "by those who control circumstances beyond my reach".

Newspaper shutdown and end of political activities

Coughlin said that, although the government had assumed the right to regulate any on-air broadcasts, the First Amendment still guaranteed and protected freedom of the written press. He could still print his editorials without censorship in his own newspaper Social Justice. After the December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and the U.S. declaration of war against the Axis Powers, anti-interventionist movements (such as the America First Committee) rapidly lost support. Isolationists such as Coughlin acquired a reputation for sympathizing with the enemy. The Roosevelt administration stepped in again. On April 14, 1942, U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle wrote a letter to Postmaster General Frank Walker, suggesting that the Post Office Department revoke the second-class mailing privilege of Social Justice, making it impossible to mail its issues.

Under the Espionage Act of 1917, the mailing permit for Social Justice was temporarily suspended on April 14th. Its distribution was now confined to the Boston area, where it was distributed by private delivery trucks. Walker scheduled a hearing on its permanent suspension for April 29th, which was postponed until May 4th.

Meanwhile, Biddle was also exploring the possibility of indicting Coughlin for sedition as a possible "last resort". Hoping to avoid such a potentially sensational and divisive sedition trial, Biddle arranged to end the publication of Social Justice by meeting with banker Leo Crowley, a Roosevelt appointee and friend of Mooney. Crowley relayed Biddle's message to Mooney that the government was willing to "deal with Coughlin in a restrained manner if he [Mooney] would order Coughlin to cease his public activities".

On May 1st, Mooney ordered Coughlin to stop his political activities and work as a parish priest. Mooney warned him that a failure to comply could result in Coughlin's suspension from active ministry. Coughlin complied with the order and was allowed to remain the pastor of the Shrine of the Little Flower. The pending hearing before the Postmaster General, scheduled for three days later, was canceled.

Later life

Coughlin's grave at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery

Forced by the Catholic Church to end his public career in 1942, Coughlin served as a parish pastor until his retirement in 1966. On May 30, 1951, he attended the funeral of George A. Richards, who died following a long legal fight to keep his broadcast licences amid accusations of antisemitism and using the stations to further his political interests.

Coughlin died in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, in 1979 at age 88. Church officials stated that he had been bedridden for several weeks. He was buried in the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Southfield, Michigan.

Viewpoints

Antisemitism

Coughlin's Social Justice magazine on sale in New York City, 1939

The Jewish television producer Norman Lear recounts in his autobiography how his discovery of Coughlin's radio broadcasts at the age of nine disturbed him deeply and made him aware of the alarming and widespread antisemitism in American society. He believed Jewish bankers were behind the 1917 Russian Revolution, backing the Jewish Bolshevism conspiracy theory.

During the last half of 1938, Social Justice reprinted weekly installments of the fraudulent, antisemitic text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Communism and socialism

In January 1930, Coughlin began attacking socialism and Soviet Communism on his CBS radio show, both ideologies strongly opposed by the Catholic Church.

Coughlin criticized Roosevelt's 1933 to extend diplomatic recognition by the United States of the Soviet Union.

Coughlin criticized American capitalists, stating that their greed was making communist ideologies attractive to workers. He warned, "Let not the workingman be able to say that he is driven into the ranks of socialism by the inordinate and grasping greed of the manufacturer."

Economic policies

Coughlin proclaimed in 1935:

"I have dedicated my life to fight against the heinous rottenness of modern capitalism because it robs the laborer of this world's goods. But blow for blow I shall strike against Communism, because it robs us of the next world's happiness."

The NUSJ's articles of faith were work and income guarantees, nationalizing vital industries, wealth redistribution through taxation of the wealthy, federal protection of labor unions, and limiting property rights in favor of government control of the country's assets for public good.

Coughlin also remarked

We maintain the principle that there can be no lasting prosperity if free competition exists in industry. Therefore, it is the business of government not only to legislate for a minimum annual wage and maximum working schedule to be observed by industry, but also so to curtail individualism that, if necessary, factories shall be licensed and their output shall be limited.

Money supply

Coughlin preached increasingly about the negative influence of "money changers" and "permitting a group of private citizens to create money" at the expense of the general welfare. He claimed that the Great Depression was a "cash famine" and proposed the nationalization of the Federal Reserve System, as the solution.

In January 1934, Coughlin testified before the US Congress, saying, "If Congress fails to back up the President in his monetary program, I predict a revolution in this country which will make the French Revolution look silly!" He also said to the Congressional hearing, "God is directing President Roosevelt."

He urged Roosevelt to use silver to increase the money supply and reorganize the financial system. The US Government increased investment in silver for a limited period following the Silver Purchase Act of 1934, which resulted in U.S. silver mines being nationalized between 1934 and 1943 through stamp taxes.

In the 1930s, Coughlin called on Congress to take back control of the money supply, as it is given authority under Article I, Section 8, in the Enumerated Powers, to coin money and regulate the value thereof.

Fascism

In 1936, Coughlin expressed overt sympathy for the fascist governments of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, terming them as an antidote to Communism. A New York Times report from Berlin in 1938 identified Coughlin as "the German hero in America for the moment" with his sympathetic statements towards Nazism as "a defensive front against Bolshevism".

In February 1939, when the American Nazi organization the German American Bund held a large rally in New York City, Coughlin immediately distanced himself from the Bund. On the Golden Hour, he said:

"Nothing can be gained by linking ourselves with any organization which is engaged in agitating racial animosities or propagating racial hatreds. Organizations which stand upon such platforms are immoral and their policies are only negative."

Prohibition

Coughlin was critical of Prohibitionism, which he claimed was the work of "fanatics".

References in popular culture

• Sax Rohmer's novel President Fu Manchu (1936) features a character based on Coughlin named Dom Patrick Donegal, a Catholic priest and radio host who is the only person who knows that a criminal mastermind is manipulating a U.S. presidential race.
• In his song Lindbergh, singer Woody Guthrie references Coughlin, stating "yonder comes Father Coughlin wearing the silver chain, cash in his stomach and Hitler on the brain."
• Coughlin served as the inspiration for Bishop Prang in Sinclair Lewis' 1935 novel It Can't Happen Here. Prang endorses Buzz Windrip, a parody of Huey Long, who defeats Roosevelt in the 1936 U.S. presidential election and sets up a fascist government.
• Coughlin served as the inspiration for influential antisemitic radio priest Father Crighton in Arthur Miller's 1945 novel Focus. The novel was later adapted into a movie in 2001, which also maintained the Crighton character.
• The novel Joe Steele by Harry Turtledove briefly features Coughlin as an outspoken critic of President Steele, an alternate universe character resembling Joseph Stalin. Steele silences Coughlin by accusing him of spying for the Nazis and has him sentenced to death. Ironically, Coughlin's defense attorney in the trial is Jewish.
• The children's author Theodor Seuss Geisel attacked Coughlin in a series of 1942 political cartoons.
• The producers of the HBO television series Carnivàle (2003–2005) have said that Coughlin was a historical reference for the character of Brother Justin Crowe.
• Philip Roth's novel The Plot Against America (2004) mentions Coughlin and his antisemitic radio addresses of the 1930s in several passages. Roth also portrays Coughlin as helping the aviator Charles Lindbergh form a pro-fascist US government.
• In the M*A*S*H television episode "The Bus" (S4E6), Frank Burns discusses meeting his first love during a high school debate as to whether Coughlin should be president.
• In her podcast Ultra, Rachel Maddow describes Coughlin's radio show and publications at length, mainly in the context of his support of the Christian Front during the failed attempt to convict them for their plans of a violent coup to overthrow the federal government.
• In the video game Hearts of Iron IV, Coughlin can be selected as "Fascist demagogue" if the player chooses to play as the US.

See also

• Radio propaganda
• Clerical fascism
• Fascism in North America
• Frank J. Hogan, ABA president who rebutted Coughlin on the air
• Huey Long – American politician (1893–1935)
• John Francis Cronin – American priestPages displaying wikidata descriptions as a fallback
• Jozef Tiso – President of the Slovak Republic from 1939 to 1945
• Robert P. Shuler – American evangelist (1880–1965)
• Archibald John Shaw – Australian Catholic priest and radio pioneer
• Jozef Murgaš – Slovak inventor, architect, botanist, painter and Catholic priest (Slovak "Radio priest")
• Elias Simojoki - Pastor and fascist leader

References

Works cited

• Beard, Charles A.; Smith, George H.E., eds. (1936). Current Problems of Public Policy: A Collection of Materials. New York: The Macmillan Company. p. 54.
• Bennett, William J. (2007). America: The Last Best Hope, Vol. 1. New York: HarperCollins.
• Boyea, Earl (1995). "The Reverend Charles Coughlin and the Church: the Gallagher Years, 1930-1937". Catholic Historical Review. 81 (2): 211–225. doi:10.1353/cat.1995.0044. S2CID 163684965.
• Bredemus, Jim (2011). "American Bund - The Failure of American Nazism: The German-American Bund's Attempt to Create an American "Fifth Column"". TRACES. Archived from the original on May 18, 2011. Retrieved March 2, 2011.
• Brinkley, Alan (1983) [1982]. Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression. New York: Vintage. ISBN 0-394-71628-0.
• Carpenter, Ronald H. (1998). Father Charles E. Coughlin. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 173.
• Coughlin, Charles (February 27, 1939). "Column". The New York Times.
• Dollinger, Marc (2000). Quest for Inclusion. Princeton University Press.
• DiStasi, Lawrence (May 1, 2001). Una storia segreta: The Secret History of Italian American Evacuation and Internment During World II. Heyday Books. p. 163. ISBN 978-1-890771-40-9.
• Kazin, Michael (1995). The Populist Persuasion: An American History. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-03793-3.
• Kennedy, David M. (1999). Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945. Oxford University Press. p. 232. ISBN 978-0-19-503834-7.
• Lawrence, John Shelton; Jewett, Robert (2002). The Myth of the American Superhero. Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing. p. 132.
• Marcus, Sheldon (1972). Father Coughlin: The Tumultuous Life Of The Priest Of The Little Flower. Boston: Little, Brown and Co. ISBN 0-316-54596-1.
• Maier, Thomas (2009). The Kennedys: America's Emerald Kings: A Five-Generation History of the Ultimate Irish-Catholic Family. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-7867-4016-1. Archived from the original on January 2, 2021. Retrieved October 10, 2018.
• Rollins, Peter C.; O'Connor, John E. (2005). Hollywood's White House: The American Presidency in Film and History. University Press of Kentucky. p. 160.
• Sayer, J. (1987). "Father Charles Coughlin: Ideologue and Demagogue of the Depression". Journal of the Northwest Communication Association. 15 (1): 17–30.
• Schrag, Peter (2010). Not Fit for Our Society: Nativism and Immigration. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-25978-2.
• Severin, Werner Joseph; Tankard, James W. (2001) [1997]. Communication Theories (5th revised ed.). Longman. ISBN 0-8013-3335-0.
• Shannon, William V. (1989) [1963]. The American Irish: a political and social portrait. Univ of Massachusetts Press. p. 298. ISBN 978-0-87023-689-1. OCLC 19670135. Ku Klux Klan shrine of the little flower.
• Smith, Amanda (2002). Hostage to Fortune. pp. 122, 171, 379, 502.
• Tull, Charles J. (1965). Father Coughlin and the New Deal. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 0-8156-0043-7.
• Turrini, Joseph M. (March 2002). "Catholic Social Reform and the New Deal" (PDF). Annotation. 30 (1). National Historical publications and Records Commission: 7, 8, 19. Archived (PDF) from the original on September 21, 2012. Retrieved February 2, 2013.
• Warren, Donald (1996). Radio Priest: Charles Coughlin The Father of Hate Radio. New York: The Free Press. ISBN 0-684-82403-5.
• Woolner, David B.; Kurial, Richard G. (2003). FDR, the Vatican, and the Roman Catholic Church in America, 1933–1945. Palgrave Macmillan US. p. 275. ISBN 978-1-4039-6168-6.

Further reading

• Abzug, Robert E. American Views of the Holocaust, 1933–1945. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999).
• Athans, Mary Christine. "A New Perspective on Father Charles E. Coughlin". Church History 56:2 (June 1987), pp. 224–235.
• Athans, Mary Christine. The Coughlin-Fahey Connection: Father Charles E. Coughlin, Father Denis Fahey, C.S. Sp., and Religious Anti-Semitism in the United States, 1938–1954. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1991. ISBN 0-8204-1534-0
• Carpenter, Ronald H. "Father Charles E. Coughlin: Delivery, Style in Discourse, and Opinion Leadership", in American Rhetoric in the New Deal Era, 1932–1945. (Michigan State University Press, 2006), pp. 315–368. ISBN 0-87013-767-0
• Gallagher, Charles. "“Correct and Christian”: American Jesuit Support of Father Charles E. Coughlin's Anti-Semitism, 1935–38." in The Tragic Couple (Brill, 2014) pp. 295-315.
• General Jewish Council. Father Coughlin: His "Facts" and Arguments. New York: General Jewish Council, 1939.
• Goodman, David. "Before hate speech: Charles Coughlin, free speech and listeners’ rights." Patterns of Prejudice 49.3 (2015): 199-224. doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2015.1048972
• Hangen, Tona J. Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion and Popular Culture in America. (U of North Carolina Press. 2002). ISBN 0-8078-2752-5
• Kay, Jack, George W. Ziegelmueller, and Kevin M. Minch. "From Coughlin to contemporary talk radio: Fallacies & propaganda in American populist radio." Journal of Radio Studies 5.1 (1998): 9-21. doi.org/10.1080/19376529809384526
• Ketchaver, Karen G. "Father Charles E. Coughlin-the" Radio Priest" of the 1930s." Theological librarianship 2.2 (2009): 81-88. online
• Mazzenga, Maria. "Condemning the Nazis' Kristallnacht: Father Maurice Sheehy, the National Catholic Welfare Conference, and the Dissent of Father Charles Coughlin." U.S. Catholic Historian 26.4 (2008): 71-87. excerpt
• Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. The Age of Roosevelt: The Politics of Upheaval, 1935–1936. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003. (Originally published in 1960.) ISBN 0-618-34087-4
• Smith, Geoffrey S. To Save A Nation: American Counter-Subversives, the New Deal, and the Coming of World War II. New York: Basic Books, 1973. ISBN 0-465-08625-X
• Wang, Tianyi. "Media, pulpit, and populist persuasion: Evidence from Father Coughlin." American Economic Review 111.9 (2021): 3064–3092. online

External links

• Works by or about Charles Coughlin at the Internet Archive
• "Father Charles E. Coughlin; Social Security History". ssa.gov. Social Security Administration. Retrieved August 26, 2016.
• Father Coughlin & The Search For "Social Justice" Text
• Brief information on Coughlin, including an audio excerpt
• Video of Coughlin attacking Roosevelt
• History Channel Audio File- Father Coughlin denouncing the New Deal
• American Jewish Committees extensive archive on Coughlin; includes contemporary pamphlets and correspondence
• Father Charles Coughlin FBI Files at the Walter P. Reuther Library
• Am I An Anti-Semite? by Charles Coughlin at archive.org
• Coughlin radio broadcasts at archive.org
• Newspaper clippings about Charles Coughlin in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
• The 8-part podcast series Radioactive: The Father Coughlin Story by Exploring Hate on PBS
  • Official podcast trailer