Paul Beecher Blanshard (August 27, 1892 – January 27, 1980) was an American author, assistant editor of The Nation magazine, lawyer, socialist, secular humanist, and from 1949 an outspoken critic of Catholicism.
Orminda Blanshard raised her grandsons on an annual pension of $250 from the Methodist church while the boys washed dishes at a restaurant.
Realizing their need for good education, the family relocated to Detroit in 1908 so the boys could graduate from the well-known Central High School.
– We almost lived in the college library and reveled in its riches, counting ourselves among the blessed of the earth and coming out somewhere near the top of our class as a result.
Blanshard found his studies replete with "verbal evasion" and wryly observed that "This institution was what Mark Twain would have called a theological cemetery".
Instead, the ministers happened to ask me several questions on theology and church history, which I answered correctly and with an adequate display of ecclesiastical learning.
After a careful, slow, rereading of the New Testament Blanshard decided he was not a Christian believer, resigned his church, became an apostate, and moved to New York City.
"[7] Mayor Fiorello La Guardia appointed Blanshard head of the New York City Department of Investigations and Accounts in 1934.
Blanshard staffed the office with former associates of the City Affairs Committee (Henry J. Rosner, E. Michael White, and Beatrice Mayer), and friends Will Maslow (later Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress) and Louis E. Yavner (later La Guardia's Commissioner of Investigation).
Fifty years old by the onset of World War II, Blanshard served the State Department as an official in Washington and the Caribbean.
As an atheist, he observed the role of religion in these settings generally, but began to focus more upon the specifics and the influence of the Roman Catholic Church.
In 1960, he was invited to attend the famous Houston Ministers Conference and spearhead the questioning of Catholic Presidential candidate Senator John F. Kennedy.
Some weeks later, when Kennedy was facing a religious battle over federal aid to education, he reached out to Blanshard for guidance.