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Kevin Kruse: One Nation Under God
Sep. 7th, 2018 04:14 amIt’s hard to deny that the United States is teetering on the edge of becoming a theocracy, in fact, if not in name. The religious right, a minority among American citizens and voters, holds an undue amount of influence over one of the country’s two main political parties, and its purported values influence the national conversation on social policies to an extent much greater than its numbers would warrant.
Many words have been written about just how this has come about, that a nation founded by religious dissenters who, informed by their experiences as a disadvantaged religious minority, sought to create a political system that embraced the separation of church and state, has become by far the least secular of the developed, democratic nations. A commonly accepted analysis points to the alliance of politicians and evangelicals in the late 1970s, that made abortion a key issue dividing the country into two political camps. However, in his book One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America, historian of religion Kevin Kruse places the turning point much earlier, during the Eisenhower era. In his Introduction, Kruse notes:
“In his acceptance speech at the 1952 Republican National Convention, he promised that the coming campaign would be a “great crusade for freedom.” As he traveled across America that summer, Eisenhower met often with Reverend Billy Graham, his close friend, to receive spiritual guidance and recommendations for passages of Scripture to use in his speeches. Indeed, the Republican nominee talked so much about spirituality on the stump that legendary New York Times reporter Scotty Reston likened his campaign to ‘William Jennings Bryan’s old invasion of the Bible Belt during the Chautauqua circuit days.’ On election day, Americans answered his call. Eisenhower won 55 percent of the popular vote and a staggering 442-to-89 margin in the Electoral College. Reflecting on the returns, Eisenhower saw nothing less than a mandate for a national religious revival. ‘I think one of the reasons I was elected was to help lead this country spiritually,’ he confided to Graham. ‘We need a spiritual renewal.’ “
Indeed, as one reads Kruse’s account of Eisenhower’s inauguration, it’s hard to argue with this. Eisenhower was the first to encourage his entire cabinet to attend religious services with him before the inaugural ceremonies began. He chose to be sworn in on two separate bibles, each opened to a verse chosen by Billy Graham, about Christian stewardship. He offered a prayer if his own writing following the taking of the oath. The inaugural parade opened with a float that, while ecumenical in nature, proclaimed that “In God We Trust.” And four days later, Eisenhower attended the first ever National Prayer Breakfast. None of this was traditional in the event.
Kruse goes on to say: “All this activity took place in just the first week of February 1953. In the months and years that followed, the new president revolutionized public life in America. In the summer of 1953, Eisenhower, Vice President Richard Nixon, and members of their cabinet held a signing ceremony in the Oval Office declaring that the United States government was based on biblical principles. Meanwhile, countless executive departments, including the Pentagon, instituted prayer services of their own. The rest of the Capitol consecrated itself too. In 1954, Congress followed Eisenhower’s lead, adding the phrase “under God” to the previously secular Pledge of Allegiance. A similar phrase, “In God We Trust,” was added to a postage stamp for the first time in 1954 and then to paper money the next year; in 1956, it became the nation’s first official motto. During the Eisenhower era Americans were told, time and time again, that the nation not only should be a Christian nation but also that it had always been one. They soon came to believe that the United States of America was ‘one nation under God.’ “
It is Kruse’s thesis that this was the consequence of a campaign begun during the 1930s by industrialists concerned over the effects of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ‘leftist’ New Deal policies on what had been up to that point relatively untrammeled capitalism. Having tried, and failed, to convince the public directly of the benefits of minimally regulated free enterprise, corporate interests took a leaf from Roosevelt’s own book, which promoted his reforms with biblical references and the preaching of a social gospel, and began to develop their own theological argument in favour of free enterprism, Christian libertarianism. One of the leaders of this theological movement, James W. Fifield Jr., went so far as to label the vaguely socialist reforms of Roosevelt as “state paganism” and likened them to Germany and Italy under the fascist totalitarianism of Hitler and Mussolini. This argument was based in a concept of parallelism between free enterprise and Christian salvation - that just as capitalism rewarded the individual efforts of the capitalist, Christ rewarded the individual efforts of the penitent with salvation. Policies that aimed at collective good sought to replace individual striving toward both wealth and grace with dependence, replacing Christ as the giver of all good with the state.
Funded and supported by wealthy industrialists, politicians and public figures such as former president Herbert Hoover and Hollywood celebrities Cecil B. deMille and Ronald Reagan, Fifield and others, among them his long-time friend Norman Vincent Peale, conducted wide-ranging campaigns to bring as many clergymen - mostly Protestant ministers, but also some conservative Catholic priests and rabbis - across the country into the fold, persuading them that the New Deal was just one step away from a rejection of God and an embrace of National Socialism. Their organisation, Spiritual Mobilization, would eventually claim over ten thousand “minister-representatives” prepared to “....exalt the dignity of individual man as a child of God, to exalt Jesus’ concept of man’s sacredness and to rebuild a moral fabric based on such irreducibles as the Ten Commandments.” The equation of Christianity with individual freedom, and the construction of the welfare state as the enemy of both, ensured that policies ranging from taxation to pensions for the elderly were identifies as not just liberal, but immoral, against the natural order as created by God.
Advocates of Christian libertarianism also sought to bring political and economic leaders into their movement. One key tool was the promotion of prayer breakfasts across the country, and particularly in Washington DC, where prominent men of government and industry were invited to meet with their peers, pray, and discuss the ways in which partnering with God - and rejecting government interference - could improve their business prospects. Soon both the
Senate and the House of Representatives hosted regular prayer meetings, largely attended by conservative politicians already opposed to New Deal policies.
By 1949, the gospel of Christian libertarianism had been taken up by a charismatic young preacher, Billy Graham, who fed on the anxieties of an America that was no longer the world’s only nuclear power to promote the message of individuality, reliance on God rather than the state, and free enterprise as the answer to the threat of Godless communism.
“In 1954, Graham offered his thoughts on the relationship between Christianity and capitalism in Nation’s Business, the magazine of the US Chamber of Commerce. “We have the suggestion from Scripture itself that faith and business, properly blended, can be a happy, wholesome, and even profitable mixture,” he observed. “Wise men are finding out that the words of the Nazarene: ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you’ were more than the mere rantings of a popular mystic; they embodied a practical, workable philosophy which actually pays off in happiness and peace of mind. . . . Thousands of businessmen have discovered the satisfaction of having God as a working partner.” “
Graham was instrumental in persuading Eisenhower to run for President, and while he did not openly declare his support, many in the Christian libertarianism movement urged voters to think carefully and choose the candidate God would want as president, and suggested issues to consider that strongly favoured the Republican candidate. The strategy was effective, Eisenhower was successful, winning with a strong majority in the electoral college. The prayer breakfasts continued, emphasising the essential connection between Christian libertarianism and political policy. “In February 1954, Eisenhower, Nixon, and several cabinet members returned to the Mayflower ballroom, along with nearly six hundred figures from government and business. Chief Justice Warren offered the main address of the morning. Speaking at length on the role of religion in American political life, he concluded that “no one can read the history of our country without realizing that the Good Book and the spirit of the Savior have, from the very beginning, been our guiding genius.” Looking forward, the chief justice urged the crowd to adhere to “the spirit of Christian religion” to ensure that the country remained strong both in spirit and substance in the days and years to come. In the end, Warren stated emphatically: ‘We are a Christian nation.’ “
Under Eisenhower, meetings of senior officials in the executive branch - many of them new appointments with ties to the corporate sphere - routinely opened with prayer, either silent or spoken. Employees were urged to attend services regularly, and to facilitate this, Protestant, Catholic and Jewish services were offered in several government buildings, including the Pentagon, on a regular basis.
While Eisenhower did remove many of Roosevelt’s regulations on corporate enterprise, he failed to kill the welfare state, thus losing some of the support of the Christian libertarian movement. He did, however, succeed in “sacralsing” government and linking the American ideal of freedom with the importance of religion. He made Independence Day a National Day of Prayer. The success of this movement to brand the United States as a Christian nation and to establish “faith as the foundation of freedom” was demonstrated when, in 1954, both Republicans and Democrats supported the bill that added the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. Around the same time, the motto already found on most coins, “In God We Trust,” was added to the design of paper currency, and a very popular stamp bearing the motto was issued. In 1956, “In God We Trust” replaced “E Pluribus Unum” as the official national motto. In the public eye, the connection between religion and government was well established, though the principle of separation of church and state was still observed in the insistence on nondenominational language. Indeed, some stressed that the God of America was the God not only of Christians of all kinds, but also the God of Jews and Muslims. Only pagans snd atheists, it seemed, were unAmerican.
The reinterpretation of the founding fathers as intending to create a Christian nation, one based in biblical faith, grew common in public discourse, normalising a relationship between church and state that was in fact a relatively new development. A consortium of advertising companies, seeing the importance to their own industry of promoting the aims of the corporate movement to bring religion into politics to support their interests, began producing “public service” copy for newspapers, magazines, radio and television. These campaigns stressed the importance of religious institutions in American life, reminding Americans that “religious faith, cultivated by our churches and synagogues, is one of the foundations of our nation and of our dedication to human rights and individual liberty, as suggested in our national motto, ‘In God We Trust.’”
At the same time, the work of the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities and the flood of anti-communist propaganda created a fear of ‘godless communists’ aiming to destroy both secular snd religious freedom by undermining the free and Christian nation they lived in. Using a trope many of today’s progressives would recognise, Americans were warned that a secular, socialist society would take away their freedom to celebrate Christmas. Anti-communist organisations, funded and supported by corporations who feared the impact of labour unions on their bottom line, produced propaganda and media spectacles, often featuring some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, all expounding on the evils of communism - which was often framed as anything much further left than the John Birch society.
And the people, their receptivity to this message enhanced by the fear of communism and the anxieties of the Cold War Era, adopted this concept of extreme, public religiosity as an essential part of the American way of life. Religious-themed books proliferated on best-seller lists - Angel Unaware, The Robe, Life Is Worth Living, A Man Called Peter, This I Believe, and The Greatest Faith Ever Known, The Power of Positive Thinking, The Silver Chalice. Televangelism began, with popular ministers having their own local and national prayer programs. Hollywood turned to Biblical themes for its blockbusters. In the wake of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, four thousand stone monuments bearing those Bible verses were erected on public land across America.
Kruse presents his argument carefully and in great detail, showing the growing presence of religion in the workings of government during Eisenhower’s administration, and detailing the network of connections between Christians liberationists and government officials, from Eisenhower and his vice-president, Richard Nixon, down. He also looks at the conflicts initiated by the encroachment of specific religious practices into daily life - for instance, the controversies over prayer and the distribution of King James Bibles by the Gideon Society in schools.
In a striking example if the success of this campaign for religion in public life, a legal challenge against the introduction of a prescribed prayer in the schools in New York state was rejected on the grounds that public religious observance was a traditional aspect of the American way if life. In support of their decision, one if the judges cited: “the references to the Deity in the Declaration of Independence; the words of our National Anthem: “In God is our trust”; the motto on our coins; the daily prayers in Congress; the universal practice in official oaths of calling upon God to witness the truth; the official thanksgiving proclamations beginning with those of the Continental Congress and the First Congress of the United States and continuing till the present; the provisions for chaplaincies in the armed forces; the directions by Congress in modern times for a National Day of Prayer and for the insertion of the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag; [and] innumerable utterances by our presidents and other leaders.”
Kruse goes on to observe: “Most of these were recent innovations not yet reviewed by the courts, but no matter. In a sign of how swiftly and thoroughly the religious revival of the 1950s had taken root, these judges cited changes that had occurred in their own recent memory as proof that the country’s religious roots stretched back to time immemorial.”
When the Supreme Court reversed this ruling and agreed that there should not be mandated prayer in schools, the majority of Americans were angered by the decision, engaging in ‘slippery slope’ arguments that, once again, ended up with the spectre of a ban on Christmas. When the .supreme Court later ruled that mandated devotional readings from the Bible in schools were also unconstitutional, the demand for a constitutional amendment, which had ben broached from time to time in the past, began to gain more support. A petition was submitted to Congress which read: “Whereas the Supreme Court of the United States by its decisions has virtually outlawed the right to pray or read Scripture in public schools and other institutions, we, the undersigned citizens, respectfully petition you to take the initial steps necessary to bring about an amendment to the Constitution which will forever guarantee the protection of our Christian traditions and the right of our people to pray and honor Holy Scripture in their institutions.”
The election of Richard Nixon only served to heighten both the trappings of religion that now surrounded the office of the President, and the partisan nature of this display of piety. Nixon had worked closely with Billy Graham for many years on the Christian libertarian project, and now welcomed him into the White House as an advisor. Both Graham and Norman Vincent Peale spoke during Nixon’s inaugural ceremonies, which included a full church service. Nixon, with Graham’s encouragement, ordered that weekly religious services be held in the White House. Officiating ministers frequently delivered sermons that stressed not only Christian values, but conservative political policies. A decade later, Ronald Reagan upped the piety content further: “Rather than simply reaffirm the old faith of the Eisenhower era, Reagan created new political rites and rituals suited to his own time. The silent prayer at the end of his speech was one innovation; the sign-off of “God bless America” was another. While the phrase had a long history in American culture, it had actually been used only once before in a major address by a president or presidential candidate. ... Earlier presidents and presidential candidates had used other forms of divine invocation, of course, but only sparingly. ...the eight presidents from FDR through Carter called for God’s blessing in less than half of their speeches; indeed, most of them did so in only a quarter. But from Reagan on, presidents have asked for God’s blessing in roughly nine out of every ten speeches they made. Reagan’s campaign represented a turning point, a moment when this “God strategy” became the new norm.”
Any objective observer can confirm that, in recent decades, the rhetoric and ritual of Christian piety has become an integral part of the American political scene, to a degree unknown in any other major modern democracy. While Republicans presents themselves as the party of Christian values, Democrats have also adopted the cloak of public religiosity. The country as a whole has accepted this relatively recent cultural shift as a long-standing tradition, believing without question that the United States us, and always has been, a Christian nation, ‘one nation under God’ destined to lead the world because it, like no other country, is founded in religious truth. It’s a dangerous myth, and taken too far, can lead to the establishment of a repressive theocracy - as the critics of this movement have argued at every step along the way.
In the current American political environment, I doubt there are enough people willing to read this book, or other critiques of the entanglement of religion and governance, to effect any kind of change. And that gives me yet another reason to worry for the future of America, and the world that must live with whatever it does.
Many words have been written about just how this has come about, that a nation founded by religious dissenters who, informed by their experiences as a disadvantaged religious minority, sought to create a political system that embraced the separation of church and state, has become by far the least secular of the developed, democratic nations. A commonly accepted analysis points to the alliance of politicians and evangelicals in the late 1970s, that made abortion a key issue dividing the country into two political camps. However, in his book One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America, historian of religion Kevin Kruse places the turning point much earlier, during the Eisenhower era. In his Introduction, Kruse notes:
“In his acceptance speech at the 1952 Republican National Convention, he promised that the coming campaign would be a “great crusade for freedom.” As he traveled across America that summer, Eisenhower met often with Reverend Billy Graham, his close friend, to receive spiritual guidance and recommendations for passages of Scripture to use in his speeches. Indeed, the Republican nominee talked so much about spirituality on the stump that legendary New York Times reporter Scotty Reston likened his campaign to ‘William Jennings Bryan’s old invasion of the Bible Belt during the Chautauqua circuit days.’ On election day, Americans answered his call. Eisenhower won 55 percent of the popular vote and a staggering 442-to-89 margin in the Electoral College. Reflecting on the returns, Eisenhower saw nothing less than a mandate for a national religious revival. ‘I think one of the reasons I was elected was to help lead this country spiritually,’ he confided to Graham. ‘We need a spiritual renewal.’ “
Indeed, as one reads Kruse’s account of Eisenhower’s inauguration, it’s hard to argue with this. Eisenhower was the first to encourage his entire cabinet to attend religious services with him before the inaugural ceremonies began. He chose to be sworn in on two separate bibles, each opened to a verse chosen by Billy Graham, about Christian stewardship. He offered a prayer if his own writing following the taking of the oath. The inaugural parade opened with a float that, while ecumenical in nature, proclaimed that “In God We Trust.” And four days later, Eisenhower attended the first ever National Prayer Breakfast. None of this was traditional in the event.
Kruse goes on to say: “All this activity took place in just the first week of February 1953. In the months and years that followed, the new president revolutionized public life in America. In the summer of 1953, Eisenhower, Vice President Richard Nixon, and members of their cabinet held a signing ceremony in the Oval Office declaring that the United States government was based on biblical principles. Meanwhile, countless executive departments, including the Pentagon, instituted prayer services of their own. The rest of the Capitol consecrated itself too. In 1954, Congress followed Eisenhower’s lead, adding the phrase “under God” to the previously secular Pledge of Allegiance. A similar phrase, “In God We Trust,” was added to a postage stamp for the first time in 1954 and then to paper money the next year; in 1956, it became the nation’s first official motto. During the Eisenhower era Americans were told, time and time again, that the nation not only should be a Christian nation but also that it had always been one. They soon came to believe that the United States of America was ‘one nation under God.’ “
It is Kruse’s thesis that this was the consequence of a campaign begun during the 1930s by industrialists concerned over the effects of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s ‘leftist’ New Deal policies on what had been up to that point relatively untrammeled capitalism. Having tried, and failed, to convince the public directly of the benefits of minimally regulated free enterprise, corporate interests took a leaf from Roosevelt’s own book, which promoted his reforms with biblical references and the preaching of a social gospel, and began to develop their own theological argument in favour of free enterprism, Christian libertarianism. One of the leaders of this theological movement, James W. Fifield Jr., went so far as to label the vaguely socialist reforms of Roosevelt as “state paganism” and likened them to Germany and Italy under the fascist totalitarianism of Hitler and Mussolini. This argument was based in a concept of parallelism between free enterprise and Christian salvation - that just as capitalism rewarded the individual efforts of the capitalist, Christ rewarded the individual efforts of the penitent with salvation. Policies that aimed at collective good sought to replace individual striving toward both wealth and grace with dependence, replacing Christ as the giver of all good with the state.
Funded and supported by wealthy industrialists, politicians and public figures such as former president Herbert Hoover and Hollywood celebrities Cecil B. deMille and Ronald Reagan, Fifield and others, among them his long-time friend Norman Vincent Peale, conducted wide-ranging campaigns to bring as many clergymen - mostly Protestant ministers, but also some conservative Catholic priests and rabbis - across the country into the fold, persuading them that the New Deal was just one step away from a rejection of God and an embrace of National Socialism. Their organisation, Spiritual Mobilization, would eventually claim over ten thousand “minister-representatives” prepared to “....exalt the dignity of individual man as a child of God, to exalt Jesus’ concept of man’s sacredness and to rebuild a moral fabric based on such irreducibles as the Ten Commandments.” The equation of Christianity with individual freedom, and the construction of the welfare state as the enemy of both, ensured that policies ranging from taxation to pensions for the elderly were identifies as not just liberal, but immoral, against the natural order as created by God.
Advocates of Christian libertarianism also sought to bring political and economic leaders into their movement. One key tool was the promotion of prayer breakfasts across the country, and particularly in Washington DC, where prominent men of government and industry were invited to meet with their peers, pray, and discuss the ways in which partnering with God - and rejecting government interference - could improve their business prospects. Soon both the
Senate and the House of Representatives hosted regular prayer meetings, largely attended by conservative politicians already opposed to New Deal policies.
By 1949, the gospel of Christian libertarianism had been taken up by a charismatic young preacher, Billy Graham, who fed on the anxieties of an America that was no longer the world’s only nuclear power to promote the message of individuality, reliance on God rather than the state, and free enterprise as the answer to the threat of Godless communism.
“In 1954, Graham offered his thoughts on the relationship between Christianity and capitalism in Nation’s Business, the magazine of the US Chamber of Commerce. “We have the suggestion from Scripture itself that faith and business, properly blended, can be a happy, wholesome, and even profitable mixture,” he observed. “Wise men are finding out that the words of the Nazarene: ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you’ were more than the mere rantings of a popular mystic; they embodied a practical, workable philosophy which actually pays off in happiness and peace of mind. . . . Thousands of businessmen have discovered the satisfaction of having God as a working partner.” “
Graham was instrumental in persuading Eisenhower to run for President, and while he did not openly declare his support, many in the Christian libertarianism movement urged voters to think carefully and choose the candidate God would want as president, and suggested issues to consider that strongly favoured the Republican candidate. The strategy was effective, Eisenhower was successful, winning with a strong majority in the electoral college. The prayer breakfasts continued, emphasising the essential connection between Christian libertarianism and political policy. “In February 1954, Eisenhower, Nixon, and several cabinet members returned to the Mayflower ballroom, along with nearly six hundred figures from government and business. Chief Justice Warren offered the main address of the morning. Speaking at length on the role of religion in American political life, he concluded that “no one can read the history of our country without realizing that the Good Book and the spirit of the Savior have, from the very beginning, been our guiding genius.” Looking forward, the chief justice urged the crowd to adhere to “the spirit of Christian religion” to ensure that the country remained strong both in spirit and substance in the days and years to come. In the end, Warren stated emphatically: ‘We are a Christian nation.’ “
Under Eisenhower, meetings of senior officials in the executive branch - many of them new appointments with ties to the corporate sphere - routinely opened with prayer, either silent or spoken. Employees were urged to attend services regularly, and to facilitate this, Protestant, Catholic and Jewish services were offered in several government buildings, including the Pentagon, on a regular basis.
While Eisenhower did remove many of Roosevelt’s regulations on corporate enterprise, he failed to kill the welfare state, thus losing some of the support of the Christian libertarian movement. He did, however, succeed in “sacralsing” government and linking the American ideal of freedom with the importance of religion. He made Independence Day a National Day of Prayer. The success of this movement to brand the United States as a Christian nation and to establish “faith as the foundation of freedom” was demonstrated when, in 1954, both Republicans and Democrats supported the bill that added the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. Around the same time, the motto already found on most coins, “In God We Trust,” was added to the design of paper currency, and a very popular stamp bearing the motto was issued. In 1956, “In God We Trust” replaced “E Pluribus Unum” as the official national motto. In the public eye, the connection between religion and government was well established, though the principle of separation of church and state was still observed in the insistence on nondenominational language. Indeed, some stressed that the God of America was the God not only of Christians of all kinds, but also the God of Jews and Muslims. Only pagans snd atheists, it seemed, were unAmerican.
The reinterpretation of the founding fathers as intending to create a Christian nation, one based in biblical faith, grew common in public discourse, normalising a relationship between church and state that was in fact a relatively new development. A consortium of advertising companies, seeing the importance to their own industry of promoting the aims of the corporate movement to bring religion into politics to support their interests, began producing “public service” copy for newspapers, magazines, radio and television. These campaigns stressed the importance of religious institutions in American life, reminding Americans that “religious faith, cultivated by our churches and synagogues, is one of the foundations of our nation and of our dedication to human rights and individual liberty, as suggested in our national motto, ‘In God We Trust.’”
At the same time, the work of the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities and the flood of anti-communist propaganda created a fear of ‘godless communists’ aiming to destroy both secular snd religious freedom by undermining the free and Christian nation they lived in. Using a trope many of today’s progressives would recognise, Americans were warned that a secular, socialist society would take away their freedom to celebrate Christmas. Anti-communist organisations, funded and supported by corporations who feared the impact of labour unions on their bottom line, produced propaganda and media spectacles, often featuring some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, all expounding on the evils of communism - which was often framed as anything much further left than the John Birch society.
And the people, their receptivity to this message enhanced by the fear of communism and the anxieties of the Cold War Era, adopted this concept of extreme, public religiosity as an essential part of the American way of life. Religious-themed books proliferated on best-seller lists - Angel Unaware, The Robe, Life Is Worth Living, A Man Called Peter, This I Believe, and The Greatest Faith Ever Known, The Power of Positive Thinking, The Silver Chalice. Televangelism began, with popular ministers having their own local and national prayer programs. Hollywood turned to Biblical themes for its blockbusters. In the wake of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, four thousand stone monuments bearing those Bible verses were erected on public land across America.
Kruse presents his argument carefully and in great detail, showing the growing presence of religion in the workings of government during Eisenhower’s administration, and detailing the network of connections between Christians liberationists and government officials, from Eisenhower and his vice-president, Richard Nixon, down. He also looks at the conflicts initiated by the encroachment of specific religious practices into daily life - for instance, the controversies over prayer and the distribution of King James Bibles by the Gideon Society in schools.
In a striking example if the success of this campaign for religion in public life, a legal challenge against the introduction of a prescribed prayer in the schools in New York state was rejected on the grounds that public religious observance was a traditional aspect of the American way if life. In support of their decision, one if the judges cited: “the references to the Deity in the Declaration of Independence; the words of our National Anthem: “In God is our trust”; the motto on our coins; the daily prayers in Congress; the universal practice in official oaths of calling upon God to witness the truth; the official thanksgiving proclamations beginning with those of the Continental Congress and the First Congress of the United States and continuing till the present; the provisions for chaplaincies in the armed forces; the directions by Congress in modern times for a National Day of Prayer and for the insertion of the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag; [and] innumerable utterances by our presidents and other leaders.”
Kruse goes on to observe: “Most of these were recent innovations not yet reviewed by the courts, but no matter. In a sign of how swiftly and thoroughly the religious revival of the 1950s had taken root, these judges cited changes that had occurred in their own recent memory as proof that the country’s religious roots stretched back to time immemorial.”
When the Supreme Court reversed this ruling and agreed that there should not be mandated prayer in schools, the majority of Americans were angered by the decision, engaging in ‘slippery slope’ arguments that, once again, ended up with the spectre of a ban on Christmas. When the .supreme Court later ruled that mandated devotional readings from the Bible in schools were also unconstitutional, the demand for a constitutional amendment, which had ben broached from time to time in the past, began to gain more support. A petition was submitted to Congress which read: “Whereas the Supreme Court of the United States by its decisions has virtually outlawed the right to pray or read Scripture in public schools and other institutions, we, the undersigned citizens, respectfully petition you to take the initial steps necessary to bring about an amendment to the Constitution which will forever guarantee the protection of our Christian traditions and the right of our people to pray and honor Holy Scripture in their institutions.”
The election of Richard Nixon only served to heighten both the trappings of religion that now surrounded the office of the President, and the partisan nature of this display of piety. Nixon had worked closely with Billy Graham for many years on the Christian libertarian project, and now welcomed him into the White House as an advisor. Both Graham and Norman Vincent Peale spoke during Nixon’s inaugural ceremonies, which included a full church service. Nixon, with Graham’s encouragement, ordered that weekly religious services be held in the White House. Officiating ministers frequently delivered sermons that stressed not only Christian values, but conservative political policies. A decade later, Ronald Reagan upped the piety content further: “Rather than simply reaffirm the old faith of the Eisenhower era, Reagan created new political rites and rituals suited to his own time. The silent prayer at the end of his speech was one innovation; the sign-off of “God bless America” was another. While the phrase had a long history in American culture, it had actually been used only once before in a major address by a president or presidential candidate. ... Earlier presidents and presidential candidates had used other forms of divine invocation, of course, but only sparingly. ...the eight presidents from FDR through Carter called for God’s blessing in less than half of their speeches; indeed, most of them did so in only a quarter. But from Reagan on, presidents have asked for God’s blessing in roughly nine out of every ten speeches they made. Reagan’s campaign represented a turning point, a moment when this “God strategy” became the new norm.”
Any objective observer can confirm that, in recent decades, the rhetoric and ritual of Christian piety has become an integral part of the American political scene, to a degree unknown in any other major modern democracy. While Republicans presents themselves as the party of Christian values, Democrats have also adopted the cloak of public religiosity. The country as a whole has accepted this relatively recent cultural shift as a long-standing tradition, believing without question that the United States us, and always has been, a Christian nation, ‘one nation under God’ destined to lead the world because it, like no other country, is founded in religious truth. It’s a dangerous myth, and taken too far, can lead to the establishment of a repressive theocracy - as the critics of this movement have argued at every step along the way.
In the current American political environment, I doubt there are enough people willing to read this book, or other critiques of the entanglement of religion and governance, to effect any kind of change. And that gives me yet another reason to worry for the future of America, and the world that must live with whatever it does.