Teaching Fr. Coughlin's Social Justice

Introduction

Studying Coughlin's publication, Social Justice, helps to illuminate the beliefs and actions of one of the era's most vocal and controversial figures. Along with Louisiana Senator Huey Long and Dr. Edward Townsend, Coughlin offered his listeners and readers a set of ideas to explain their daily struggle around them and to help shape their perception of what was happening to them. By examining the writing and medium of Fr. Coughlin, students and the public can better understand the social, economic, and political turbulence that existed during the Great Depression.

Lesson Plans

These fourteen lesson plans are broken down into eight major conceptual units. Each has an introduction that provides an overview of the subject matter that the lesson plans will deal with along with some suggestions on how to approach this difficult set of primary sources. Additionally, each lesson plan has a set of primary source articles from Social Justice and recommendations for both background readings for teachers and students.

It is strongly recommended that teachers use the first lesson plan to help students engage and consider how Coughlin uses words and formulates arguments. Further, teachers should add additional materials to help contextualize the content of Social Justice and to help students understand the often subtle complexities of Coughlin's ideas.

Unit 1: Using Primary Documents

Lesson Plan 1: How to read and examine Social Justice

Unit 2: National Union for Social Justice

Lesson Plan 2: The New Deal is Not Christ's Deal: Coughlin's Turn Against FDR and the Formation of the National Union for Social Justice

Lesson Plan 3: The National Union for Social Justice as a Third-party Movement

Unit 3: Coughlin, the Union Party, and the Election of 1936

Lesson Plan 4: Reporting the Union Party in the 1936 Election

Lesson Plan 5: Driving Home the Point: Campaigning for the Union Party of 1936

Unit 4: Examining Coughlin's use of radio and print media

Lesson Plan 6: Coughlin, Social Justice, and the Mass Media

Unit 5: Wealth and Power - Coughlin's Conflicting Views on Economics

Lesson Plan 7: Economics, Faith, and the Great Depression: Analyzing Fr. Coughlin's View of the Great Depression