Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Al Smith" in English language version.
A Methodist newspaper in Georgia called Catholicism "a degenerate type of Christianity," while a Baptist newspaper warned that Smith, if elected, would close down all Protestant churches and end not only freedom of worship but freedom of the press as well.
Smith's campaign, Catholic commentators said, would now demonstrate whether Catholics would continue to be "debarred from any share in the government they support with their blood and money," or whether they would finally be accepted as equals. The campaign proved that many Protestants believed they should remain debarred. A general in the Army was widely quoted as stating that Catholics were fine as "cannon fodder" but one should never become commander-in-chief. Prominent Protestant minister and author Charles Hillman Fountain went further and wrote that not only was a Catholic unfit to be president, but "no Catholic should be elected to any political office."
More disturbing than the ridiculous and the dangerous was the respectable anti-Catholicism. [...] Christian Century magazine labelled Catholicism "an alien culture, of a medieval Latin mentality," and insisted a reasonable voter could oppose Smith "not because he is a religious bigot" but because there is "a real issue between Catholicism and American institutions.
