JFK's words were a turning point

Kennedy's speech focused on religion and politics in the United States.

That Monday night in Houston, John F. Kennedy knew the fate of his campaign was at stake.

He was the first Catholic nominated for president by a major party since Al Smith got crushed back in 1928, and, if anything, the specter of anti-Catholicism had only intensified.

Anti-Catholic tracts were being distributed throughout the country. A best-selling book had argued that Catholicism and democracy were incompatible. And Protestant leaders had issued a statement questioning the loyalty of Catholic candidates.

So on Sept. 12, 1960, a dark-suited Kennedy stepped to the lectern at the pink-and-green carpeted Rice Hotel in Houston and delivered the speech that for decades defined the relationship between religion and politics in America, telling a group of Protestant ministers, "I do not speak for my church on public matters - and the church does not speak for me."

Now, 47 years later, another presidential contender from Massachusetts who is an adherent of a minority faith is heading to Texas for a campaign-defining speech about why his faith should not be an obstacle to his candidacy. The circumstances are quite different - Mitt Romney's faith, Mormonism, remains less understood than Kennedy's Catholicism was in 1960, and his campaign for the Republican nomination has been premised heavily on appealing to voters who support a greater role for religion in public policy, while Kennedy was seeking to reassure voters that he was committed to the separation of church and state.

But the Romney speech, which is scheduled to take place Thursday at the George Bush Presidential Library in College Station, has refocused attention on the landmark Kennedy speech, which is widely regarded by historians as a turning point in the Massachusetts senator's tight campaign against Richard M. Nixon, then vice president.

"Kennedy needed to reassure Protestant religious groups in particular that he could be president, and that he wouldn't have divided loyalties," said Patrick N. Allitt, a history professor at Emory University. "Although not everyone was convinced, and it was an extremely close election, the fact he was able to become president and that the issue never did come up had the effect of reassuring people that we can have a Catholic president without those issues becoming troublesome."

Kennedy had been concerned about the obstacle of anti-Catholicism from the moment he considered running for president, and the "religious issue," as it was widely referred to, was heavily discussed among Democratic party insiders in 1956, when Kennedy was considered for the vice presidential nomination.

In the spring of 1960, as Kennedy battled Senator Hubert H. Humphrey for the Democratic nomination for president, he confronted the religion issue head-on in West Virginia, an overwhelmingly Protestant state, where Kennedy repeatedly pledged his independence from the Vatican. When he swept the West Virginia primary, Humphrey dropped out, and Kennedy declared, "the religious issue has been buried here in the soil of West Virginia."

But the issue would not go away, and over the course of the summer there were hundreds of anti-Catholic tracts circulated throughout the country.

In August of that year, evangelical leader Billy Graham hosted a secret meeting in Switzerland with about two dozen Protestant leaders to discuss how to block Kennedy's election; among those in attendance was the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, the preacher best known as the author of "The Power of Positive Thinking."

Then, on Sept. 7, a group of Protestant leaders, led by Peale and a prominent Boston evangelical, the Rev. Harold J. Ockenga of Park Street Church, gathered in Washington, declared themselves "The National Conference of Citizens for Religious Freedom," and issued a statement warning that a Catholic president would face "extreme pressure" from the Vatican on public policy.

Five days later, Kennedy gave his speech to the Houston Ministerial Association. The speech had been carefully rehearsed, and Kennedy's press secretary, Theodore Sorensen, wrote in his memoir that he read the speech to a prominent Jesuit theologian, the Rev. John Courtney Murray, in an effort to guard against offending Catholics. "The senator felt that the meeting with the Houston ministers was the most important of the campaign," Kennedy's personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, wrote in her memoir. "When he went into the meeting, many of the ministers were hostile to his candidacy; when he left, they were friendly and agreeable."

Peale and others soon backed away from the concerns they had expressed earlier, and a number of other religious leaders denounced anti-Catholicism in the campaign.

The Kennedy campaign also sought to portray those opposed to a Catholic candidate as bigots, and to use the issue to woo Catholic voters, many of whom had supported a Republican, Dwight D. Eisenhower, for president in 1952 and 1956.

"Kennedy neutralized the so-called religion issue just enough to squeak into the White House, and the argument that voters should disregard a candidate's faith prevailed in 1960, '64, '68 and '72," said Randall Balmer, a professor of American religious history at Barnard College. He said that remained the case until a born-again Christian, Jimmy Carter, sought the office successfully in 1976.

"In 1968, when Romney's father was a leading Republican contender for the nomination, it was just not an issue," Balmer said. "But in 1976, with Jimmy Carter, faith again becomes an issue, and we've been living with it ever since."

Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.