Seminary, Socialism, War, and Apostasy
Following graduation from Michigan University in 1914, Blanshard enrolled in Harvard Divinity School. Prior to entry, he joined the Socialist Party, of which he remained a member for 19 years. Blanshard found his studies replete with "verbal evasion" and wryly observed that "This institution was what Mark Twain would have called a theological cemetery". He joined the Boston Socialist Party and sometimes was dispatched to local strikes as a clerical agitator. Under these casual arrangements he met both Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Blanshard described his early preaching experience as relying more upon Bernard Shaw than the Bible.
Seated alphabetically for inauguration into Phi Beta Kappa, to Paul's left was Julia Sweet Anderson. A romance and normal courtship was followed by an unusual "Marriage Ceremony for Revolutionists". The eschewing of a Christian ceremony while still at Harvard Divinity School was a portent. The couple humorously described this as "term insurance for our marriage in stead of a straight life policy". The young couple became close friends with both Helen Keller and Margaret Sanger. In 1916, the Congregational church urgently dispatched Paul and Julia Blanshard by ship to Tampa, Florida where a breakaway congregation was conducting interracial worship services and angering the community. Paul Blanshard was ordained in a ceremony which first must conclude that the candidate is fit.
"There is no doubt that I was unfit, but when I was examined in an open hearing the ministers failed to ask those questions that would have exposed my unfitness. No one asked me if I believed in the Virgin birth - I did not - or in the bodily resurrection of Jesus - I did not - or in the complete uniqueness of Jesus - I did not. In stead, 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. As I knelt at the end of the proceedings to become, by the laying on of hands, the Reverend Paul Blanshard, I had such an inner sense of tension and conflict that I almost stood up and said: Look here, gentlemen, I agree with your moral aspirations and I love the concept of the church as a center for moral discussion, but I am much more of a heretic than you think, and I really don't belong with your bunch at all."
Those thoughts notwithstanding, Paul Blanshard later finalized a divinity degree at Union Theological Seminary. From his Tampa pulpit, 1916–1917, Blanshard preached against US entrance into the Great War. American entry in April 1917 did not stifle his opinion and soon a Tampa daily printed of him: "we do not condone treason". 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.
By nature and personality he was a reformer and muckraker. Blanshard decided to pursue credentials in Law, completing much of his studies in night school, and graduating LLB in 1937 from Brooklyn Law School.
He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto.
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