Faith in Freedom: Propaganda, Presidential Politics, and the Making of an American Religion 9781501759239

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FAITH IN FREEDOM

FAITH IN FREEDOM

P R O PAG A N DA , P R E S I D E N T I A L P O L I T I CS , A N D T H E M A K I N G OF AN AMERICAN RELIGION

Andrew R. Polk

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS Ithaca and London

  Copyright © 2021 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress​.­cornell​.­edu. First published 2021 by Cornell University Press Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Polk, Andrew R., 1980–­author. Title: Faith in freedom: propaganda, presidential politics, and the making of an American religion / Andrew R. Polk. Description: Ithaca [New York] Cornell University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021007033 (print) | LCCN 2021007034 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501759222 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781501759239 (pdf ) | ISBN 9781501759246 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Chris­tian­ity and politics—­United States—­History—20th ­century. | World War, 1939–1945—­Propaganda. | Cold War—­Propaganda. | Propaganda, American—­Moral and ethical aspects. | Roo­se­velt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882–1945—­ Influence. | Truman, Harry S., 1884–1972—­Influence. | Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890–1969—­ Influence. Classification: LCC BR115.P7 P575 2021 (print) | LCC BR115.P7 (ebook) | DDC 303.3/75097309044—­dc23 LC rec­ord available at https://­lccn​.­loc​.­gov​/­2021007033 LC ebook rec­ord available at https://­lccn​.­loc​.­gov​ /­2021007034

  For Rachel Now and Forever

Co n te n ts

Acknowl­edgments  ix

Introduction: Religion, War, and Unity

1

Part One: Roo­se­velt

1. Removing Unnecessary and Artificial Divisions

13

2. Uniting against a Common Foe

38

Part Two: Truman

3. Building a Better World

73

4. Filling the Void

96

Part Three: Eisenhower

5. Creating the Space between Church and State

125

6. Being Religious in Amer­i­ca

155

Conclusion: Lasting Legacies of an American Faith

180

Notes  185 Bibliography  231 Index  243

A ck n o w l­e d gm e n ts

This book is my first and, consequently, is not only the product of years of research, writing, and revision but also the culmination of de­cades of experiences and conversations that s­haped me as a scholar and a person. I could never hope to thank all of the ­people who have ­shaped my life over the years, but t­ here are a ­great many who have had such an impact on my academic and personal development that they deserve special mention ­here. At Lipscomb University, I was blessed with many fine teachers and mentors, including Mark Black, John York, and Lee Camp, who gave of their time, energy, and seemingly unending patience. I want to especially thank Richard Goode, who instilled in me both a love of Amer­ic­ a’s religious history and a healthy distrust of the intellectual and bureaucratic vagaries of the acad­ emy. At Yale, Jon Butler, John Demos, Joanne Freeman, Randall Balmer (on loan from Columbia at the time), Adela Yarbro Collins, and Harry Stout together expanded my thinking and imagination, while grounding me in the scholarship of the past. At Florida State University (FSU), John Corrigan, Amy Koehlinger, and Adam Gaiser challenged my assumptions and forced me to grow, ­whether I liked it or not. Fi­nally, Amanda Porterfield was a wise and patient adviser. She is still as kind as she is brilliant, and I w ­ ill forever be grateful for her ability to steer me in the right direction while still allowing me to forge my own path. Although I have heavi­ly revised it in the ensuing years, this work owes a ­g reat deal to conversations with my fellow gradu­ate students at FSU. Their insight and intellect made this work better, in both its original and pre­sent forms. I have been helped in my research by numerous archivists and librarians, particularly at the Institute on World War II and the H ­ uman Experience at FSU, the Presbyterian Historical Society, Yale Divinity School Archives, and the Roo­se­velt, Truman, and Eisenhower Presidential Libraries. I am grateful to FSU’s Gradu­ate School for awarding me a research grant that allowed me to travel to ­these essential archives. I would also like to thank Cambridge University Press for giving me permission to use much of the material in chapter 1, which was previously published as an article in Church History: Studies in Chris­tian­ity and Culture in September 2013. ix

x

A c k n ow l­e d g m e n ts

I am especially grateful for ­those who have supported me as I have revised this work over the past several years. I am indebted to my colleagues at M ­ iddle Tennessee State University, particularly the excellent scholars and teachers of the History Department. The demands on ju­nior faculty can be intense; the fact that my colleagues not only wanted me to succeed but also actively gave of their time and wisdom to ensure that I did made all the difference. Michael McGandy at Cornell University Press helped lead me through what turned out to be a meandering pro­cess with many fits and starts. I appreciate his patience and support throughout the pro­cess. I am also grateful to Cornell’s readers, who not only evaluated the book but also took the time to offer insightful and incredibly helpful ways to improve its argument and impact. Likewise, Mark Fisher, Eric Collins, and Julianna Coughlin took the time to read the work at vari­ous stages, noting my many errors and offering valuable advice. I would particularly like to thank Ryan Korstange, who went through an e­ arlier draft with a fine-­tooth comb. His deft hand at editing is matched by his generous spirit and steadfast friendship. Fi­nally, I would like to thank ­those whose love and support have sustained me over the years and enriched my life in innumerable ways. Clint Walker and Brent Hamric have proved to be better friends than I deserve, but without whom I would not be the person I am ­today. My parents, Bobby and Marie, and ­sister, Kristy, have shown me what unconditional love ­really is, and I am humbly aware of how blessed I have been to have such a supportive ­family. Similarly, I would like to thank my c­ hildren, Eva, Ender, and Ronan, who could not care less about this book or any titles or awards I have collected over the years. They love me ­because I am their dad, and that is enough. I ­will always try to be worthy of their love. Fi­nally, I would like to thank my wife, Rachel. Like our c­ hildren, she loves me regardless of any accomplishment, yet constantly supports me and sacrifices to make sure I can achieve my goals. A Valkyrie through and through, she has enriched my life in ways I can barely fathom, but for which I am eternally grateful. It is to her that I dedicate this book.

FAITH IN FREEDOM

Introduction Religion, War, and Unity

Dwight D. Eisenhower sat calmly at his desk, flanked in the foreground by two phones and in the background by two American flags. His speech started off rather predictably. Eisenhower expressed his good wishes to his successor and his thanks to Congress and the American ­people. As he had done so many times before, he then lauded the nation’s “­free and religious ­people” and warned against the constant threat of the Soviets, a foe “global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method.”1 It was January 17, 1961, and Eisenhower would soon turn over the White House to a young senator from Mas­sa­chu­setts, John F. Kennedy. George Washington began the tradition of farewell addresses, and virtually ­every president since has followed suit, but few men between Amer­i­ca’s first and thirty-­fourth presidents had chosen to leave office in such a way. Eisenhower went out with a rhetorical bang. A ­ fter repeating his common tropes of Amer­ic­ a’s moral strength and foundational religious heritage, he pivoted in a surprising direction. He first counseled Americans to seek balance in their public and private affairs and then identified two potential threats to that balance, threats that served both to warn of ­f uture peril and to criticize the nation’s current state of affairs. The first derived from Amer­i­ca’s “military establishment.” Although he maintained that it was “a vital ele­ment in keeping the peace,” Eisenhower also noted the im­mense size of Amer­i­ca’s military and its increasing reach in American society. “Our military organ­ization 1

2 I NT R OD U CT I ON

t­ oday bears ­little relation to that known by any of my pre­de­ces­sors in peacetime or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or ­Korea,” he asserted. The threat, he explained, was the expanding influence the military establishment had on American life. “We must guard,” he famously declared, “against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, w ­ hether sought or unsought, by the military-­industrial complex.” In his view, Americans must make sure that the nation’s “machinery of defense” was always in line with its values. Although scholars have rightly focused on his warning against the “military-­industrial complex,” Eisenhower went on to identify another threat to American balance and prosperity, namely, its increasing consumerism and economic shortsightedness. He was concerned that Americans had forgotten to balance short-­term desires with long-­term essentials. Specifically, he worried that Americans too often concentrated on fulfilling their own immediate desires for new products and the latest trends without considering how their actions might affect their, or the nation’s, ­future. “We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their po­liti­cal and spiritual heritage,” he cautioned. ­After warning Americans of ­these two potential pitfalls in their newfound prosperity and global dominance, he concluded his speech with a note of hope for the f­uture. “Protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength,” he declared, Americans must strive to achieve a peaceful world and never give in to despair over the many barriers to that peace. “You and I—my fellow citizens—­need to be strong in our faith that all nations, ­under God, w ­ ill reach the goal of peace with justice.”2 Eisenhower’s warning that the nation’s increasing militarism and consumerism ­were affecting its spiritual well-­being was almost laughably hypocritical. First, social critics had been pointing out ­these tendencies for many years, and this criticism would only intensify as the nation’s wealth gap widened and its interventionist policies further entrenched it in foreign conflicts.3 However, ­those critics rightly noted that Eisenhower had long promoted t­ hose same policies. If, as Eisenhower claimed, the military had grown so large by 1961 that the fighting men and w ­ omen of World War II and K ­ orea would not recognize it, that growth came ­under Eisenhower’s watch and, by most accounts, with his approval. Although the military’s size and bud­get certainly shrank ­after the close of the Korean War, Eisenhower did not dismantle the military as American tradition dictated. For instance, military expenditures reached a high of 13.5 ­percent of gross national product by 1953, yet this only dropped to around 10 ­percent ­after the war and remained at that level for the rest of the de­cade.4 Economists Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy have actually argued that “the difference between the deep stagnation of the 1930’s and the relative prosperity of the 1950’s is fully accounted for by the vast military outlays



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of the ’50s.”5 Furthermore, Eisenhower did not seem terribly concerned with mortgaging “the material assets” of the nation’s youth when he twice enlisted the aid of the Advertising Council (or Ad Council), an assembly of advertising executives ­eager to loan their expertise to the U.S. government, during periods of economic slowdown to encourage Americans to buy goods without worrying about the ­f uture.6 Yet Eisenhower’s disingenuous critique of his own policies is not the most glaring hy­poc­risy of his farewell address; it is the fact that he warns against their threat to Amer­i­ca’s religious heritage and its spiritual foundations. Not only did Eisenhower help bring about the developments he laments in his farewell address, but he also spent eight years using religious propaganda to justify and garner support for t­ hose same policies. The supposed religious heritage Eisenhower claimed to value so dearly was the product of a coordinated campaign of religious propaganda that he ­adopted and expanded from his two immediate pre­de­ces­sors. For example, when Eisenhower directed the Ad Council to bolster Americans’ material consumption, the organ­ization subsequently mounted public relations campaigns to explain that buying goods demonstrated Americans’ faith in the “American way of life” and their dedication to both the nation’s essential religious freedoms and its God-­g iven place in the world.7 In fact, Eisenhower had made so many declarations of Amer­i­ca’s religious heritage during his presidency that years before he left the office his staff had begun denying requests for speaking events so that the president’s seemingly endless religious references would not annoy the public.8 Although Eisenhower’s religious rhe­toric is well known, scholars have yet to examine adequately the ways he and his immediate pre­de­ces­sors, Franklin D. Roo­se­ velt and Harry S. Truman, constructed an American religion to advance their po­liti­cal objectives. In truth, the extent to which so many po­liti­cal, military, and business leaders coordinated with the White House to advance public policies through religious propaganda during the mid-­twentieth c­ entury is astounding. This book exposes the ways that t­ hese three presidents, in coordination with other politicians, advertising executives, and military public relations experts, employed religious propaganda to create an American religion that best suited their purposes and promoted their preferred policies. The po­liti­cal propaganda of the period was not religious ­because its chief advocates ­were intent on crafting an American religion as an end unto itself; they w ­ ere concerned with influencing the American public. They found, early in the Second World War, that religion best suited their purposes, and so they created an American religion that advanced their own agendas and then sold that religion to the American public. Roo­se­velt called this Amer­i­ca’s “faith in freedom,” a term that both

4 I NT R OD U CT I ON

Truman and Eisenhower ­adopted, though they both adapted the specifics of that faith for their own purposes.9 Amer­i­ca’s faith in freedom was purposefully vague, centering on appeals to an ill-­defined Judeo-­Christian tradition on which the nation had supposedly been founded. Borrowing from a long tradition of patriotic and militant religion, midcentury propagandists reinterpreted the trope of Amer­i­ca’s providential destiny for their own uses and applied it most forcefully to the organ­ization of a militaristic, Cold War state.10 In keeping with their own individual and sometimes competing aims, they also imbued their preferred American religion with the necessity of a large military force and the essential need for a consumer-­driven economy, while tying all three ele­ments together in an ambiguous appeal to freedom. Social unity was the principal selling point of their propaganda efforts, even if it was primarily a means to other ends. Consequently, Roo­se­velt, Truman, and Eisenhower, along with their vari­ous allies, intentionally concealed Amer­i­ca’s growing racial divide by subsuming race ­under religion and insisting that confronting racial injustice inevitably divided and, consequently, weakened the country. The religious patriotism and facade of national unity that the period’s religious propaganda produced was not an accident, but they ­were not the point, ­either. They ­were the by-­product of a po­liti­cal proj­ect. This book exposes and examines that proj­ect, a multifaceted campaign of religious propaganda that spanned three presidential administrations. Religious leaders and organ­izations w ­ ere certainly involved in the period’s religious propaganda. Several works have rightly noted the centrality of religion during the mid-­twentieth c­ entury or placed religious elites as central players in many developments of the period.11 For example, some religious elites ­were assiduously transforming Amer­i­ca from a Protestant nation to a “tri-­faith” country of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews.12 ­Others leveraged their cultural and even po­liti­cal influence to advance their vision of “God’s totalitarianism” in a new world order.13 During Eisenhower’s administration, several pastors, notably Billy Graham, worked directly with the president even as they coordinated with conservative business interests to overturn New Deal policies and promote an American faith that fit their interests and vision.14 Eisenhower certainly shared a common understanding of Amer­ic­ a’s providential place in the world with Graham, but Eisenhower’s view did not originate with Graham or Graham’s business associates. The faith Eisenhower promoted, though certainly molded by his own personal upbringing, was also an extension and escalation of a program of religious propaganda already established by Roo­se­velt and Truman. Simply put, despite their promotion and even manipulation of the period’s religious propaganda, religious leaders ­were not its primary



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5

architects.15 Instead, they w ­ ere commonly, though often unknowingly, reacting to the machinations of po­liti­cal operatives who held ­little regard for the religious content or ramifications of their creations. During the 1940s and 1950s, the principal religious propagandists ­were not ministers, priests, or rabbis; they ­were agents of the state: advertising executives, politicians, and military commanders. This book is not the first to examine the supposed consensus, intersection of religion and politics, or expansion of the government during this period. Rather than discount ­these previous works, this book connects, compliments, and advances t­ hese studies by exposing the central proj­ect that united ­these actors and developments: the White House’s religious propaganda. For instance, several works have rightly noted the role that religion played in Amer­ i­ca’s understanding of the Cold War, especially in its rhetorical fight against “godless communism.”16 ­Others have correctly argued that the consensus narratives of the mid-­twentieth ­century ­were not “natu­ral” developments but “a po­liti­cal proj­ect” that sought to create at least the veneer of national consensus through the promotion of “the American Way.”17 However, this work enhances both of t­ hese perspectives by demonstrating that “the American Way” of the period was strategically centered on a “faith in freedom” that was, itself, a product of religious propaganda. The source of that propaganda and the religious nationalism it promoted is impor­tant for understanding both its origins and its repercussions. The period’s propagandists can rightly be said to have borrowed from a long tradition of “civil religion,” which sociologist Robert Bellah identified in the late 1960s.18 However, that term was problematic from its very inception, a fact that Bellah freely admitted.19 Sociologist Marcela Cristi has already demonstrated that most of the weaknesses in Bellah’s concept stem from his assumption that Amer­i­ca’s civil religion arose spontaneously from the collective beliefs and hopes of the public, with no outside or “top-­down” influence.20 Instead, she refers back to Jean-­Jacques Rousseau’s original concept of civil religion as a coercive invention of governmental elites both to validate and to gain popu­lar support for their rule. Cristi argues that in Amer­ic­ a and throughout the world, elites often intentionally create or endorse civil religion “to force group identity and to legitimize an existing po­liti­cal order, by injecting a transcendental dimension or a religious gloss on the justification.”21 It is this “po­liti­cal” aspect of civil religion that I examine in Amer­i­ca’s mid-­twentieth ­century, a period that demonstrated its most explicit manifestation. Speaking of t­ hese po­liti­cal constructions as religious propaganda rather than civil religion both avoids confusion with Bellah’s original notion of the nascent beliefs of the American public and more accurately labels the explicit and strategic

6 I NT R OD U CT I ON

machinations of t­ hese presidential administrations to create an American religion that supported their preferred policies. The term “religious propaganda” is, of course, problematic for a variety of reasons. Apart from the seemingly inherent polemic of labeling anything propaganda, designating something as religious propaganda seems particularly troubling, especially since, as cultural anthropologist William M. O’Barr has rightly noted, “propaganda, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.”22 However, the “informational” and “public relations” campaigns detailed in this study easily fit into the accepted scholarly definitions of propaganda. For instance, scholar Richard Alan Nelson defines propaganda as “a systematic form of purposeful persuasion that attempts to influence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and actions of specified target audiences for ideological, po­liti­cal or commercial purposes through the controlled transmission of one-­sided messages (which may or may not be factual) via mass and direct media channels.”23 The campaigns also fit media historian Philip M. Taylor’s shorter definition of propaganda as “a deliberate attempt to persuade p­ eople, by any available media, to think and then behave in a manner desired by the source.”24 Through religious language and images, the individuals, groups, and their public relations campaigns examined in this book sought to define Amer­i­ca and Americans in a specific and limiting way, in order to promote desired policies and be­hav­iors. For example, the Ad Council and the American Heritage Foundation, a conglomeration of business and advertising executives, Hollywood moguls, l­abor organizers, politicians, and religious leaders, collaborated with the U.S. attorney general, Tom Clark, to promote an American identity that cast f­ree market economics as the po­liti­cal and spiritual foil to godless communism in 1947. Their campaign, called the Freedom Train, toured the country with many of the nation’s founding documents, all while working with local groups to or­ ga­nize “patriotic revival meetings.”25 When a full third of the nation participated in the campaign’s events, the organizers taught them through images, songs, speeches, and tele­vi­sion and radio programs that Americans ­were joined together through a dual love of God and freedom. The group considered using “equality” or “democracy” as defining ele­ments, but ultimately chose “freedom” ­because it was con­ve­niently ambiguous and held fewer troublesome implications, especially in the American South.26 Attorney General Clark saw the campaign as an essential way to “blend [the nation’s] varying groups into one American f­amily” through “indoctrination in democracy.”27 Thomas D’Arcy Brophy, the Ad Council executive who or­ga­nized the campaign, put it another way; the Freedom Train was about “re-­selling Americanism to Americans.”28



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The fact that many of the organ­izations charged with carry­ing out such campaigns considered their activities to be domestic propaganda, including the Office of War Information (OWI), Ad Council, United States Information Agency (USIA), and American Legion, further supports their inclusion as such.29 For further corroboration, one need only look to 1947, when Congress convened a special subcommittee to investigate the public relations activities of the Army Ground Forces in promotion of their Fort Knox Experimental Unit, which was explic­itly designed to convince the American ­people that ser­ vice in the army would strengthen the moral and spiritual fiber of Amer­i­ca’s youth. ­After an extensive investigation, Congress ultimately censured the army for “propaganda activities” against the American p­ eople.30 Although they might not fit the popu­lar understanding of propaganda as psychological warfare enacted abroad, the domestic nature of such programs does not disqualify them as ave­nues of propaganda. Along t­ hese same lines, historian Kenneth Osgood has expertly demonstrated that t­ hese same organ­izations “blurred any lingering distinctions between ‘domestic’ and ‘international’ propaganda by both ‘targeting’ the American ­people and enlisting them as active participants in the war of persuasion being waged abroad.”31 For the purposes of this book, “religious propaganda” is defined as a strategic public rhe­toric that uses religious language and imagery both to promote an advantageous definition of American identity and to support specific policy goals. This term is employed in much the same way scholar Shawn J. Parry-­ Giles writes of propaganda during the presidencies of both Truman and Eisenhower. Parry-­Giles connects the many ways the two presidents formalized and institutionalized previous war­time propaganda techniques for the sake of their rhetorical presidencies during peacetime. By expanding the concept of the rhetorical presidency beyond the bully pulpit to coordinated and tangential activities of the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, Parry-­ Giles demonstrates that state-­sponsored propaganda became a vital way that ­these presidents defined both themselves and the nation in light of their po­ liti­cal goals. Unfortunately, Parry-­Giles fails to account for the extensive role religion played in ­these presidents’ propaganda, even while noting religion’s essential place in Eisenhower’s rhetorical presidency.32 In truth, this religious rhe­toric was a vital tool for civic leaders of the day and scholars must account for it in any accurate investigation of t­ hese presidents and the period as a w ­ hole. The religious propaganda of the mid-­twentieth ­century did not have a straightforward or ­simple development, but the byzantine nature of that development is key to understanding how the propaganda’s legacy became a commonplace part of American politics and the American imagination. Consequently, the book is arranged chronologically. In broad strokes, the

8 I NT R OD U CT I ON

propaganda was first developed and employed during Roo­se­velt’s presidency, ­adopted and developed during Truman’s, and extended and institutionalized during Eisenhower’s. Roo­se­velt’s first attempts to use religion to promote national unity in the lead-up to Amer­i­ca’s entry into the Second World War did not go well. Although he sought both to woo and to compel religious institutions to support his efforts, religious leaders never backed him to the extent he desired, and his efforts tended to expose more divisions than create unity. A ­ fter Amer­i­ca entered the war, Roo­se­velt only increased his efforts. Although he continued to court religious leaders, the OWI and the War Advertising Council (WAC) proved to be more willing and capable allies. All agreed that religion was a better framework for promoting national unity than class, race, or ethnicity ­were, so their public relations campaigns began portraying religion as quintessentially American. As Roo­se­velt and his allies toiled to convince Americans that they w ­ ere joined together by common religious traditions, military members crafted a similar form of religious unity, but their brand of American religion eschewed religious distinctions to an extent far beyond which e­ ither Roo­se­velt or his military commanders ­were comfortable. Ultimately, the elevation of national identity over denominational or religious distinctions proved to be a vibrant template for the type of religious propaganda that emerged ­after the war. Truman, for his part, sought to capitalize on both that template and Roo­ se­velt’s previous efforts in order to support his postwar goals of military expansion in the new world order. However, like his pre­de­ces­sor, Truman found religious institutions too cumbersome for his purposes, despite numerous efforts during the first years of his administration to harness their influence in support of initiatives like universal military training (UMT) and an international condemnation of communism as antireligious. ­After rejecting religious institutions as allies, and the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in Amer­ i­ca (FCC) specifically, he utilized professional propagandists to promote the type of religious unity he desired, most notably the Ad Council and U.S. Army public relations experts. As Truman collaborated with ­these groups to develop an American religion that could support their overlapping and sometimes competing aims, all agreed that racial divisions w ­ ere the principal threat to the religiously maintained unity they envisioned. Consequently, they intentionally ignored race in their religious propaganda. Unlike his pre­de­ces­sors, but b­ ecause of their example, Eisenhower immediately looked beyond religious institutions to craft and promote his own brand of religious propaganda. Although he ­adopted and utilized the same faith in freedom as Roo­se­velt and Truman, Eisenhower was more interested in using it to advance national security than national unity. His extensive use of nonre-



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ligious agents like the USIA, American Legion, and Foundation for Religious Action in the Social and Civil Order (FRASCO) produced initial church-­state conflicts, but the subsequent creation of what ­these agents termed “social issues” that ­were supposedly neither religious nor po­liti­cal defied the traditional church-­state dichotomy. Eventually, several religious leaders and organ­izations came to Eisenhower ­either in opposition to or in solidarity with the social issues he and his allies promoted. Most notably, Protestant evangelicals, led by Billy Graham, a­ dopted Eisenhower’s social issues and the supposed religious heritage they endorsed, even while the veneer of national unity t­ hose same issues ­were supposedly protecting unraveled. The lasting legacy of the period’s religious propaganda solidified as liberal and conservative Protestants began both arguing about and defining themselves in relation to the American religion created over the previous two de­cades by politicians in support of their own po­liti­cal aims. With a few exceptions, the civic leaders in this study, though intentionally employing religious rhe­toric in their propaganda, w ­ ere not particularly concerned with theological content or proper religious ritual in that propaganda. Although they might have personal opinions or even deeply held beliefs about doctrine or practice, they w ­ ere more concerned with the benefits of religion for their own po­liti­cal ends and the creation of a par­tic­u­lar type of American religion that advanced their agendas. Consequently, this study ­will spend far more time investigating how and why t­ hese actors crafted Amer­i­ca’s faith in freedom rather than the accuracy or authenticity of the religious propaganda they employed or the societal value of the policies they used to promote it. ­There w ­ ere certainly numerous facets to Amer­i­ca’s holy fifties, and the individual experiences of everyday Americans are far too complex to be wholly attributed to public relations campaigns. However, the fact that advertisers, politicians, and military leaders chose to define American identity in religious terms to suit their own ends is itself impor­tant, especially since that same patriotic religious rhe­toric has come to define the period during which they employed it. Examining how t­ hese civic leaders crafted religious propaganda, as one of Eisenhower’s allies put it, to prompt “religiously-­motivated action” ­toward common po­liti­cal goals also sheds light on the ways ­others have used and continue to use religion to promote their own agendas.33 In truth, although their contexts and policy goals have changed over time, most of the presidents since Eisenhower have a­ dopted Amer­i­ca’s faith in freedom.34 However, since the 1980s, the conflation of ­free market economics and military strength with religious nationalism has been closely associated with white evangelical Protestants, the Republican Party, and the many organ­izations and leaders who blur the lines between the two. Donald J. Trump, who garnered the votes of more

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evangelical Protestants than any presidential candidate in American history, won the White House in 2016 by promising to “make Amer­i­ca ­g reat again” in part by “stopping cold the attacks on Judeo-­Christian values.”35 Yet both the criticisms that Trump characterized as attacks and the so-­called Christian nationalism of his most ardent supporters ­were as much a by-­product of the mid-­twentieth ­century’s religious propaganda as the alignment between conservative Protestants and politicians that propelled Trump to the White House.36 In other words, the formation of two seemingly incompatible notions of Amer­ic­ a that has plagued American society over the past de­cades actually emerged from the proj­ect of a unified nation in the 1940s and 1950s. The fact that t­ hose who still sell Amer­i­ca’s faith in freedom seem as much, if not more, interested in par­tic­u­lar economic and military policies as in theological or ethical commitments is not a coincidence; it was the very purpose of the enterprise from the beginning.

C h a p te r  1

Removing Unnecessary and Artificial Divisions

The first manifestation of the mid-­twentieth c­ entury’s religious propaganda did not emerge from some smoky back room of an elite social club near the National Mall. Nor was it the opening salvo of a calculated, national public relations campaign, though ­there would be plenty of ­those over the next two de­cades. It was more of a recce mission or scouting trip, whereby the president could test the ­waters of public opinion and see how amenable religious leaders w ­ ere to open cooperation with the White House. Throughout 1939, President Franklin D. Roo­se­velt was increasingly concerned with the evolving situation in Eu­rope, and though the American ­people had been clear they wanted the nation to stay out of what looked to be yet another Eu­ro­pean conflict, he was certain the nation needed to become more involved. To garner support for a more forceful response to Adolf Hitler’s expansionist agenda, Roo­se­velt de­cided a unified denunciation of German aggression by Amer­ic­ a’s, and perhaps even the world’s, religious leaders would put diplomatic pressure on the Nazi Party and elicit public support for his own policies.1 Consequently, on December 24, 1939, Roo­se­velt’s Office of Communications widely disseminated to national and international media outlets three “personal” letters addressed to the respective leaders of the three more dominant religious traditions in Amer­ic­ a and, as far as Roo­se­velt was concerned, the world. Roo­se­velt’s administration painstakingly constructed the letters over the preceding weeks and held them in strict secrecy ­until it released them 13

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to the media. The letters ­were portrayed as both a goodwill gesture and a Christmas greeting from the president. The administration chose Rabbi Cyrus Adler, president of Jewish Theological Seminary, to represent American Jews and George A. Buttrick, president of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in Amer­ic­ a (FCC), for American Protestants. The last letter went to Pope Pius XII, head of the Roman Catholic Church. Roo­se­velt offered each man warm wishes and his hearty thanks for all that each had done for his p­ eople and the world. Yet Roo­se­velt also noted the fear and uncertainty of the time; war had again come to Eu­rope and threatened to envelop the globe. It was the responsibility of all ­people of goodwill, Roo­se­velt insisted, to come together in any way they could for the cause of peace. He hoped the three men and ­those they represented would put aside religious differences and join together for the common good. He also proposed that the three men, or representatives of their choosing, should regularly come to the White House to share with him the opinions and concerns of their respective congregants. Such visits would also allow Roo­se­velt to share with them his own concerns for p­ eople of faith throughout the world.2 Roo­se­velt had often lobbied for the common good during his implementation of the New Deal, though he had only recently expanded the appeal to international affairs, and the letters w ­ ere the president’s first overt petition to a national religious community. The administration certainly had ulterior motives ­behind the letters, not least of which was the letters’ assumed positive public reception on the eve of an election year. However, President Roo­se­velt, at least, saw the effort as a necessary step to gaining the type of public support he sought. Germany and the Soviet Union had invaded Poland merely three months prior, and many in the administration believed the war would only escalate in the coming months. Roo­se­velt thought getting American Protestants, Catholics, and Jews both to publicly cooperate in m ­ atters of humanitarian aid and to pre­sent a united front to the world would go a long way to securing the strategic peace he sought, a peace that, he assumed, corresponded to the type of peace for which each tradition advocated. The Christmas letters w ­ ere his first public overture ­toward such collaboration and his first foray into employing religion as a central ele­ment in domestic propaganda. The letters also provided the first evidence that religious institutions w ­ ere insufficient promoters of that propaganda; they w ­ ere too unruly and resisted Roo­se­velt’s efforts to define an American religion on his own terms and for his own purposes. Roo­se­velt had reasons for his initial optimism, though. Since the close of the First World War, calls for reconciliation and cooperation had become popu­ lar in Amer­i­ca, particularly among Protestants. Northern and Southern Methodists, divided since before the Civil War, negotiated a merger in the



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spring of 1939. In a letter of congratulations on the unification, Roo­se­velt wrote that he hoped t­ hose outside of the Methodist fold would see the ­union as a sign that the “spiritual forces” of the nation w ­ ere determined to minimize the differences that had thus far produced “unnecessary and artificial divisions.”3 A loyal Episcopalian, Roo­se­velt genuinely seemed to believe that religious unity was better for all involved, yet he did not publicly advocate for such unity ­until war prompted him to do so and never grounded that unity in theological terms. In Roo­se­velt’s eyes, war necessitated a cooperation and unity that the American public seemed ill prepared to accept, but he believed that the promotion of a common religious heritage was the best way to motivate Americans to protect that heritage by entering the conflict. Through the next two years, Roo­se­velt would work hard to rally religious groups in support of his goals and insisted that they eliminate their religious divisions, which he portrayed as a reflection of Amer­i­ca’s general disunity. Through appeals to religious organ­izations and then directly to the American ­people, Roo­se­velt attempted to eliminate religious discord as a means to unite the country in support of his policies and plans, particularly as he prepared the country for a war he deemed inevitable. Yet, as the Christmas letters demonstrate, Roo­se­velt’s assumptions ­were misplaced. First, his proposed religious unity was grounded in a decidedly liberal, Protestant framework. For instance, his letter to Rabbi Adler often referred to the common faith of Amer­i­ca’s diverse religious traditions and their love for a common God, but argued for religious unity through an explicit allusion to Christian belief. In what is a particularly puzzling argument to pre­sent to a Jewish leader, Roo­se­velt suggested that just as the shepherds first saw the star heralding the birth of Christ, so do the common p­ eople long for a guiding light in this time of chaos and uncertainty and implored Adler to be such a light. In a more pointed example, during a working lunch in 1942 Roo­se­velt told two of his advisers, Leo Crowley and Henry Morgenthau Jr., a Catholic and a Jew, respectively, that Amer­i­ca was “a Protestant country, and the Catholics and Jews [­were] ­here ­under sufferance.” It was up to the two men and ­those within their religious traditions, Roo­se­velt proclaimed, to “go along with anything I want.”4 This Protestant bias resulted in consistent misunderstandings with American Catholics and Jews and constantly undermined Roo­se­velt’s machinations. Ironically, Roo­se­velt also misunderstood the current state of American Protestantism. Despite Roo­se­velt’s own Protestant bias, or perhaps ­because of it, he based his own appeals for religious harmony on Protestant declarations of unity that had l­ittle basis in real­ity. A g­ reat many Protestants still held a gross mistrust of Catholicism and, in spite of their rhe­toric, ­were unwilling to meet Catholics as equal partners. American Protestants ­were also divided among

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themselves. A split over the proper response to modernity and the nature of biblical authority had polarized Protestantism in the preceding years. In addition, opposing interpretations of the New Deal in the 1930s further divided American Protestants along po­liti­cal and economic, as well as religious, lines.5 As Eu­rope fell further into war, arguments over pacifism, patriotism, and realism further fragmented already tenuous alliances.6 ­These divisions undermined Roo­se­velt’s efforts, especially since his calls for religious cooperation ­were matched by offers of po­liti­cal access. Amer­i­ca’s fragmented Protestants had ­little interest in sharing po­liti­cal or cultural power with each other, much less with American Catholics or Jews. Roo­se­velt’s push for a national religious consensus was ultimately a means to an end, a way to use religion for po­liti­cal purposes. He was certainly not the first to use religion for po­liti­cal gain, nor would he be the last. However, the overt way he positioned himself as an arbiter of religious unity only heightened the tensions within Amer­i­ca’s religious community, since his position as president automatically colored his efforts with notions of po­liti­cal and cultural power in the eyes of Protestant leaders. Roo­se­velt insisted that the world situation necessitated the type of religious cooperation, if not consensus, for which he was advocating, and he cared l­ittle for the theological, social, or po­ liti­cal reasons ­behind the “unnecessary and artificial divisions” that hampered that cooperation. Amer­ic­ a’s religious leaders resisted the president’s attempts to define proper and useful religion, even ­those liberal Protestants and Jews who had advocated for the same type of religious pluralism Roo­se­velt was proposing. They insisted that such movements w ­ ere simply not the purview of the president, regardless of the fact that Roo­se­velt was drawing from his own liberal Protestant heritage to guide his efforts. Thomas Jefferson’s “wall of separation between church and state” was always porous, but when explic­itly breached religious leaders had traditionally been the ones crossing over to the po­liti­cal realm. Roo­se­velt sought to reverse that influence, and his attempts convinced him of both the usefulness of religion to promote his goals and the inadequacy of religious institutions in that endeavor. The lessons he learned would come to shape the burgeoning religious propaganda he would employ through the rest of his term and throughout the next two presidential administrations.

Against a Contentious Ecumenism Roo­se­velt’s initial appeal to religious leaders and the institutions they represented certainly made sense. Working through institutional channels offered



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numerous benefits, including reduced points of contact, a wide network of or­ga­nized constituents, and, at least ostensibly, a preexisting movement ­toward increased unity and cooperation. Throughout the twentieth ­century, numerous interdenominational Protestant groups emerged with the explicit intent of reducing or eliminating their divisions. Religious leaders had or­ga­nized similar organ­izations in the nineteenth ­century as the means through which in­ de­pen­dent Protestant groups could pool their resources for the sake of social and religious ­causes such as education, Christian missions, and reform efforts. The twentieth-­century iterations cooperated on such endeavors but also sought to create a more unified theological and doctrinal approach to life in Amer­i­ca and, consequently, a more po­liti­cally and socially power­ful public presence. Although t­here ­were groups and movements within American Judaism and Catholicism that insisted on maintaining a distinct and separate identity, ­there ­were other voices emphasizing commonalities between their beliefs and traditions and t­ hose of Protestant groups. In this context, Roo­se­velt’s Christmas letters and his intended mobilization of religious support for his preferred brand of national unity seem understandable. However, his actions in the ensuing years proved ­there ­were large gaps in his understanding of Amer­i­ca’s religious landscape and public proclamations of cooperation w ­ ere not the same as concrete steps ­toward social and po­liti­cal equality. Despite their intended purpose, Roo­se­velt’s Christmas letters of 1939 blatantly exposed many of the divisions, resentments, and rivalries within Amer­i­ca’s religious community, especially ­those related to public power. Roo­se­velt did not create such divisions; they had long simmered just beneath the surface, even within organ­izations explic­itly created to remove them. A prime example of the complicated relationship between public pronouncements of unity and the far messier realities of interreligious cooperation during this period is the National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ). Founded in 1927 and fully operational in 1928, the NCCJ soon found firm grounding in Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish communities, sending trios of rabbis, priests, and ministers across the country with messages of goodwill and religious cooperation. Although its membership remained relatively small, the NCCJ’s financial backers ­were generous, allowing the organ­ization to gain notoriety through national advertising and speaking campaigns.7 In spite of ­these moves t­ oward religious reconciliation, old animosities remained and, in many ways, the emergence of larger, more power­ful religious groups only intensified religious discord. The very founding of the NCCJ demonstrates the tense relationships among American religious groups of the period. The NCCJ traced its origins to a parachurch group called the Committee on Good W ­ ill, which was an outgrowth of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in

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Amer­i­ca (FCC), a conglomeration of Protestant denominations founded in 1908.8 The FCC was a decidedly Protestant organ­ization and showed l­ittle promise of uniting all of Amer­i­ca’s diverse religious communities, so the Committee on Good W ­ ill was formed to promote religious cooperation. However, the group gained ­little traction and soon fell apart as Catholic and Jewish organ­izations increasingly rejected its overtures as insincere and manipulative. Apparently, many Protestant members saw the organ­ization as a way to befriend and then convert Jews and Catholics. Though amicable on the surface, their ulterior motives w ­ ere understandably offensive to the men and ­women they ­were evangelizing and undermined their stated goals of religious unity.9 Forming in the aftermath of the Committee on Good ­Will, the NCCJ arose both as a renewed effort ­toward the committee’s original purpose and as a reaction to the vitriolic opposition to Albert “Al” Smith’s 1928 presidential campaign. Smith, a Catholic, was the Demo­cratic nominee and former governor of New York. Smith already faced an uphill ­battle for the White House since the Republicans and their nominee, Herbert Hoover, w ­ ere associated with the economic boom of the 1920s in the minds of the public.10 Yet Smith also faced vicious attacks centered on his Catholic faith. Many Protestants, especially in the South and rural Midwest, feared that, as a Catholic, Smith would be a mere puppet of the papacy. The Ku Klux Klan’s reemergence further exacerbated ­these anti-­Catholic sentiments. While most know it for its violent racism, the Klan also held a paranoid anti-­Catholicism as a motivating force, contained a decidedly Protestant membership, and espoused many Protestant ideals and theology in its campaigns.11 American Jews also faced both discrimination and, in some cases, persecution in the 1920s and 1930s. Representing a noticeable anomaly in race theories of the time, American Jews w ­ ere neither wholly white nor “colored.”12 The prominence of Jewish immigrants, combined with long-­held anti-­Semitic prejudices, gave Protestant nativists enough reason to disassociate themselves from Jews, but the fact that so many Jews excelled eco­nom­ically and academically despite the barriers against them only elevated Protestant paranoia and prejudice.13 Encouraged by the anti-­Semitic priest Charles Coughlin, among ­others, American Catholics also discriminated against their Jewish neighbors, a fact that both confused and concerned Roo­se­velt.14 Although some Jews managed to e­ ither circumvent or overcome such prejudices, particularly many secular Jews in the acad­emy, many Americans still considered them outsiders and “­others,” especially the Protestant majority.15 Even speaking of a Protestant majority implies a level of unity and cooperation among American Protestants that simply did not exist in the era. Despite the efforts of the FCC and the NCCJ, American Protestants w ­ ere divided



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on numerous levels. Conservative and progressive Protestants had been arguing over the nature of the Bible, the proper motivating force ­behind Chris­tian­ ity, and dozens, if not hundreds, of smaller concerns throughout the past ­century. Many of ­these contentious issues had come crashing together in 1925 during the media sensation of the “Monkey Trial” in Dayton, Tennessee, of John T. Scopes. Ostensibly a case about a teacher’s violation of a state law banning the teaching of evolution in the classroom, the trial was more a public debate over the nature of the Bible and a referendum on the public power conservative Protestants had held for so long in Amer­i­ca. Although conservatives won in the courtroom—­the judge found Scopes guilty and fined him—­they lost prestige and power in the eyes of the American public.16 The result was a divide that, while complicated with numerous internal differences and disputes, would continue to grow throughout the twentieth ­century. This divide, though certainly religious, had as much to do with po­liti­cal and social power as theological distinctions. Conservative Protestants wanted to continue to legislate the nation’s morality, ensuring that Amer­i­ca would remain a “godly” nation.17 Liberal Protestants ­were convinced that God used culture and society’s systems for God’s own ends. Although still concerned with public morality, they w ­ ere far more willing to accept and use both modern philosophy and governmental policies to bring about what they considered a more just society. The two groups both believed that Christians should be in charge of Amer­i­ca’s development, but they vehemently disagreed on where Amer­i­ca should be headed and the means by which they should move the nation t­ oward their desired ends. Protestantism, like all of Amer­ic­ a’s religious institutions, was also plagued with the same color divide that afflicted the larger American society. Although only the Jim Crow South had institutionalized segregation, churches across Amer­i­ca designated themselves exclusively white or Black. African Americans had created their own Christian denominations as early as the eigh­teenth ­century with the establishment of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and numerous o ­ thers had developed since, most notably within the American Pentecostal movement. Yet t­ here ­were also numerous Black subdenominations within white-­dominated organ­izations like the Southern Baptist Convention, where Black and white congregations of the same denomination had ­little to no contact. Ministers in ­these predominantly Black congregations and denominations had long enjoyed prestige and at least some power within the African American community. Some of that power had begun to wane in the mid-­twentieth c­ entury as several Black professionals disparaged the often uneducated clergy, but they w ­ ere still central to most of their communities and retained a ­great deal of re­spect and influence.18 Outside of ­those communities,

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their skin color disqualified them as anything but e­ ither nuisances or ste­reo­ types of white expectations. ­There ­were also numerous organ­izations, institutions, and movements that did not fit into the ecumenical scheme Roo­se­velt and numerous spokespersons for American culture ­were beginning to accept. African American followers of ­Father Divine, Noble Drew Ali, and Elijah Muhammad eschewed the more prevalent Black churches in ­favor of other faith perspectives. American Mormons, Christian Scientists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses excluded themselves from the white Christian mainstream, who excluded them in turn. The growing influence of charismatic and Pentecostal Christians of all colors similarly flaunted the inadequacy of the emerging ecumenical model to describe the American religious landscape with any accuracy. Scholar R. Laurence Moore has rightly noted the ways that ­these “religious outsiders” often intentionally placed themselves outside of the American mainstream as a tactic of identity formation and regulation.19 It seems likely that Roo­se­velt was only passingly familiar with the many differences and disagreements between and within ­these organ­izations. It is also highly probable that he did not r­ eally care and was only hoping to enlist their rhe­toric of religious unity for his own ends. He was certainly ­doing the latter, but he did not believe that his ends ­were all that dif­fer­ent from, or at least not inherently opposed to, t­ hose of the religious leaders he was courting. He was, ­after all, using their own rhe­toric to garner support for the war. Consequently, Roo­se­velt seemed genuinely surprised that the groups he recruited, and especially American Protestants, reacted to his overtures with a suspicion and hostility that belied their public rhe­toric. The official replies to the letters showed a ­g reat deal of promise, at least. All three ­were warm and gracious. Adler wrote, “It is a noble deed to bring the forces of religion together. I have a confident hope that the leaders ­will unite the members of their churches and synagogues into a unan­i­mous support of your efforts.”20 Archbishop Francis Spellman of New York, who also wrote a personal note of thanks to the president, delivered Roo­se­velt’s letter to Pope Pius XII. The Catholic press expressed g­ reat satisfaction over the president’s overtures for peace, and favorable tele­g rams flooded the White House almost immediately ­after the letters ­were made public. One enthusiastic Catholic even called Roo­se­velt a “gift from God” in his congratulatory message.21 FCC president George A. Buttrick issued a formal reply that was equally gracious. He echoed Roo­se­velt’s belief that in the pre­sent world of “chaos and darkness” ­people of faith offer the best hope of finding “a better way.”22 However, Buttrick’s public response was not his only reply to the president. Even as tele­g rams of congratulations and thanks ­were coming in from Amer-



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ican Catholics, Buttrick called the White House to clear up an issue that had troubled him in Roo­se­velt’s letter to Pope Pius XII. In his letter to Buttrick and Adler, Roo­se­velt had expressed his desire that, as representatives of their respective religious communities, each man come to the White House from time to time to inform the president of his p­ eople’s concerns and desires. Buttrick was open to such an arrangement, since it opened up equal access for all three men. However, in his letter to the pope, Roo­se­velt also announced that he was sending a personal representative to the Vatican, Myron Taylor. Taylor would be the president’s intermediary between the Vatican and himself. Buttrick worried that such an appointment signaled the inauguration of formal diplomatic relations between the U.S. government and the Vatican. Although it is not clear exactly with whom Buttrick spoke, he received assurances that Taylor’s appointment meant no such ­thing. The White House’s assurances ­were not enough for Buttrick. On January 16, he again wrote to Roo­se­velt asking for a formal declaration of Taylor’s exact purpose and role in Rome. Roo­se­velt, thinking that the issue was merely a m ­ atter of diplomatic position, referred the letter to the Department of State. George S. Messersmith, the assistant secretary of state, subsequently wrote Buttrick that Taylor’s appointment was both unofficial and personal and, therefore, did not establish formal diplomatic relations with the Vatican. ­After Roo­se­velt had expressly invited Buttrick to come to him with any concerns he or his group had, a formal and curt reply from the assistant secretary of state did not sit well with Buttrick or the members of the FCC.23 During a meeting of the executive committee of the FCC on January 26, 1940, committee members crafted an official response to Taylor’s appointment. The issue, they claimed, was not with Taylor himself. A former steel magnate, Taylor had earned the re­spect of many American liberals for being relatively progressive in negotiating with l­abor ­unions. This re­spect only increased when, a­ fter retiring from U.S. Steel, Roo­se­velt appointed Taylor as a U.S. delegate to Eu­rope and placed him in charge of humanitarian aid and relief to Eu­rope’s many refugees. For the FCC, Taylor was not the prob­lem; Catholicism was. Several liberal Protestant leaders had well-­documented disagreements with, and even prejudices against, Catholicism as a faith, including Buttrick and Charles Clayton Morrison, editor of liberal Protestantism’s flagship publication the Christian ­Century, who would publicly lament a few years ­later that Protestantism’s “former pre-­eminent position in public re­spect [was] being superseded by Catholicism.”24 Despite Buttrick and the FCC’s prejudices, the committee members claimed that their objection to Taylor’s appointment only stemmed from its implications for the separation of church and state in Amer­i­ca. The issue, they claimed,

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was po­liti­cal, not theological. In their view, diplomatic ties with the Vatican would give both undo privilege and presidential access to one religious group, which would ultimately be to the detriment of all ­others. Consequently, a formal diplomatic relationship between the Vatican and the U.S. government could very well serve as an “ultimate injury to all faiths.” However, the committee members also made it clear that they took Roo­se­velt at his word that the appointment was both temporary and unofficial.25 The FCC was not the only Protestant group to object to Taylor’s appointment as liaison to the Vatican. In fact, most Protestant groups took exception to Taylor’s assignment, but the Baptists ­were, by far, the most vehement. Southern, Northern, and National Baptists had not re­united like the Methodists, and few issues prompted the groups to set aside their theological, social, and racial differences to speak with one voice on much of anything. Taylor’s appointment was an exception. In a joint letter to the president, representatives of all three groups declared their united opposition to the appointment. First, they claimed that it ran contrary to the president’s stated purpose of inculcating religious unity throughout the nation. Like Buttrick, they saw the appointment as an indication of ­favor and argued that by showing preference for one group over all o ­ thers, Roo­se­velt only created further divisions. However, their primary concern centered on the po­liti­cal implications of diplomatic ties between the U.S. government and an ecclesiastical body. Such an act, they insisted, ran contrary to the separation of church and state. Religious bodies did, the letter stated, overlap the po­liti­cal sphere in that they worked t­ oward peace and justice. However, to officially blend the church and state was dangerous to both and ran contrary to the very foundation of American liberty.26 Many Baptists ­were far less gracious than their national representatives ­were. Just as the White House was flooded with congratulatory notes from American Catholics, American Baptists quickly wrote to their president expressing their dissatisfaction, anger, and disgust with Taylor’s appointment. For instance, Randolph Gregory, a Baptist from Washington, D.C., informed the president that, if Roo­se­velt did not rescind Taylor’s appointment, he and his brethren could no longer in good conscience support the federal government through income taxes.27 Another Baptist leader, Eddie Clayton, informed Roo­se­ velt that “all rulers [­were] subject to God, and [Roo­se­velt would] give account to Him for trying to get [Amer­i­ca] to take sides with the Devil,” by whom he meant the pope.28 Yet American Baptists did not reserve their ire for Catholics alone. The very idea that the U.S. president would write directly to religious groups, asking for their cooperation and support, was absurd and perhaps idolatrous in their view. Moreover, many viewed all the recipients of the Christmas letters as both



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un-­Christian and un-­American. One Baptist preacher wrote that “to employ the conglomeration of politics and heresy represented by the government, the Vatican, the Federal Council of Churches, and Judaism respectively is an effort to achieve by earthly means and from the top down what can only be done by spiritual means and from the bottom up.”29 ­After referring to the Catholic Church as Satan’s t­ emple and the whore of Babylon, Pastor Noel Smith went on to call the FCC “a conglomeration of infidelity, communism, a third-­rate paganism, with plenty of the mash of a superiority-­complex.” He displayed ­little explicit vitriol for Judaism, but merely wept that they reject Jesus as their “rightful” Christ. He then lamented that on December 23, “religious liberty in the United States was officially trampled” and may have “officially passed away.”30 Neither Roo­se­velt nor his advisers seemed to have anticipated so much re­ sis­tance. They asked nothing of the groups but rhetorical support for actions in which they ­were already engaged. A ­ fter all, each organ­ization was involved in some type of humanitarian effort in Eu­rope. The fact that he was portraying ­those efforts as support for his own preferred policies should m ­ atter ­little, as long as he was not asking them to do anything contrary to the same rhe­ toric he had borrowed from them. Granted, Roo­se­velt asked for a cooperated effort, but he never proposed an actionable plan for such cooperation and never pressed for one. The call for cooperation was enough for his purposes. As for the principal complaint of Taylor’s appointment, it was in Roo­se­ velt’s eyes a mere po­liti­cal necessity. American Protestant and Jewish leaders had more geo­g raph­i­cal access to Washington, but the pope was a foreign leader. The fact that he was in Eu­rope, where Roo­se­velt’s attention had recently been drawn, was all the more reason to create a more direct line of communication between himself and the papacy. The move was po­liti­cal and pragmatic, not theological, so Roo­se­velt did not think that other religious leaders would object. Yet t­ hose leaders ­were upset exactly ­because a direct representative to the Vatican was po­liti­cal. Despite their support for ecumenical cooperation, Protestants w ­ ere fully aware of the po­liti­cal consequences of granting equal status to their religious rivals. Well wishes and appeals to the common good w ­ ere one t­ hing, but giving Catholics greater access to po­liti­cal power was another ­thing entirely. Roo­se­velt also seemed unaware that the FCC did not represent all American Protestants, a fact that exposes his ignorance of the religious landscape he was attempting to influence. The FCC was certainly glad to coordinate with the president on m ­ atters of national importance and often presented itself, at least implicitly, as if it indeed spoke for all Protestants. However, a­ fter the Christmas letters an FCC official actually had to call to inform Roo­se­velt that

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it represented only twenty million of the approximately thirty-­five million American Protestants and that most Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians w ­ ere not members.31 Due to this glaring omission, and his inability to recognize the inherent acrimony that lay just beneath the surface of religious leaders’ public declarations of community and support, Roo­se­ velt’s public overture for religious cooperation ended up causing even more divisions. Cooperation was all well and good, but when it came to direct influence with the White House, Amer­i­ca’s Protestant leadership was far more concerned about power. For instance, when a report in the New York Times quoted an administration spokesperson as declaring that Taylor was “just as much an ambassador to the Holy See as the representatives of other nations” and that he may remain so even ­after Roo­se­velt leaves office, Buttrick and the FCC erupted.32 On February 27, Buttrick wrote Roo­se­velt yet again. Roo­se­ velt had given the FCC’s leaders personal assurances that now seemed mere lies. They felt betrayed. In his letter, Buttrick requested a personal meeting with the president, reminding him of the open invitation expressed in his Christmas letter. By elevating Catholicism beyond the station of Protestantism through Taylor’s appointment, Buttrick insisted Roo­se­velt had created “a growing disillusionment which augurs ill for inter-­faith comity, for the success of Mr. Taylor’s work for peace and for the health of [the] nation.”33 On March 4, Roo­se­velt wrote to his secretary of state, Cordell Hull, asking him for advice in ­handling the situation; Roo­se­velt had stirred up a hornet’s nest and had no idea what the uproar was about, much less how to calm the situation.34 Hull offered the draft of a letter to Buttrick for the president’s approval and signature. The letter told Buttrick that no official statement was necessary to refute an unsubstantiated news report and reiterated that no diplomatic relations existed, nor was that ever the intent. The draft insisted that Roo­se­velt had clearly stated his genuine intent of Taylor’s appointment in the Christmas letter, and he hoped Taylor would instill goodwill among Catholics and every­one who loves peace. The last paragraph stated that ­there was absolutely no intention of changing church and state relations, nor could any reasonable person think so, and Roo­se­velt hoped the confusion would not interfere with interreligious relations.35 Roo­se­velt signed Hull’s draft and sent it to Buttrick. However, he also penned a personal message in his own hand, in which he clearly showed his dismay over the entire situation. Roo­se­velt simply did not understand what the furor was about; he assumed the FCC’s rhe­toric of religious cooperation was sincere and simply sought to use that cooperation, or at least the religious rhe­toric that supported it, for the good of the nation. He genuinely believed



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that all religions, by which he seemed to mean Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism, w ­ ere, at their core, essentially the same and wanted to empower them as equals. Surely t­ here was no harm in that, he insisted. Roo­se­velt was especially confused and upset by the reaction of the Baptists. He said he was currently trying to find out if t­here was a single representative of the “Mohammedan churches” to whom he could express a similar sentiment as that in the Christmas messages. Roo­se­velt wrote of this quest as if it was both a perfectly reasonable and even a commonplace endeavor. He derisively asked if their “Baptists friends” would think such an overture to a Muslim was contrary to the Constitution or “by some wild and utterly crazy stretch of the imagination” would violate the separation of church and state. Near the end of the personal letter, Roo­se­velt recalled a song in an Episcopal hymnal he once used that advocated the killing of Jews, Turks, and other infidels. He wrote that he hoped Amer­i­ca’s churches w ­ ere beyond such notions and extolled Christ’s command that his followers love their neighbors as they loved themselves.36 Roo­se­velt never found a Muslim representative, and his search never came to public attention. No doubt his “Baptist friends” would have indeed objected to such a proposition, and it would have only heightened their fears of and distrust in the president. Roo­se­velt’s response seemed to alleviate Buttrick’s fears, at least, but in his reply Buttrick made it clear that a g­ reat many Protestants w ­ ere still angry. He asked permission to publish the president’s response, in hopes that a formal clarification might forestall official denunciations of the appointment at the annual meetings of several Protestant bodies.37 The president gave him permission to publish the first letter, but the second, personal letter was to remain private.38 Both religious and mainstream periodicals, including the New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune published the correspondence. It is impossible to know how much influence the published letter had in placating Protestants, but it is clear that it did not appease every­one. Morrison had already called Taylor’s position “un-­American, unconstitutional, illegal, and high-­ handed.” He also declared that it was the responsibility of the Protestant clergy “to bring the issue before their congregations and, through their clerical organ­izations and their official denominational convocations, to register their protest against the presidential usurpation of authority and the meshing of the functions of the state into the functioning organ­ization of a par­tic­u­lar church.”39 A ­g reat many did, and several organ­izations formally denounced the appointment at their annual meetings ­later that year. Roo­se­velt’s earliest attempt to garner institutional backing for his preferred religious affections was clumsy and ineffectual, but so ­were his reasons for the attempt. He had l­ittle understanding of the theological, doctrinal, and even

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po­liti­cal divisions within Amer­i­ca’s religious community, but he wanted to promote a unified backing for his war preparations and thought religion seemed a good way to endorse it. His seemingly innocuous Christmas letters revealed deep divisions among American Jews, Catholics, and vari­ous Protestant groups on issues of politics, church-­state relations, and war. Roo­se­velt wrongly believed that as long as he stayed away from explic­itly theological topics, he could help inculcate the religious cooperation so many American religious bodies had already extolled. He believed that ­those same religious representatives ­either would miss the po­liti­cal implications of his words and actions or would stomach them for the sake of the “greater good.” In e­ ither case, he was wrong, and he did not see a clear way around the obstruction. In his view, religion was a vital means of rallying the country ­behind his vision, and he was still convinced that persuading religious leaders to back his efforts was the best way to harness religious enthusiasm for his policies.

Against a God of Blood and Iron Despite his annoyance over the controversy his letters created, Roo­se­velt pressed on, especially in his efforts to garner support for the military draft. Two developments began to change his approach, however. First, one of his advisers, James Rowe  Jr., expanded Roo­se­velt’s appreciation for religion’s power both to influence and to distract the American public and promoted a tactic that became foundational to the religious propaganda l­ ater employed by Roo­se­velt and his successors: casting all national divisions as essentially religious. Second, for the first time Roo­se­velt attempted to bypass religious leaders and sell his preferred religious interpretations directly to the American ­people. Granted, ­these efforts proved about as problematic as the Christmas letters, but they at least demonstrated to Roo­se­velt that such a circumvention was pos­si­ble, even if it needed to be handled with more care and forethought than Roo­se­velt showed. Regardless, he became more convinced that religion was the best means of uniting the country b­ ehind his efforts. Most of t­ hose efforts ­were focused on preparing the nation for a war that the majority of the public did not want to enter.40 Confronted with a stubborn antiwar and isolationist faction in Congress, Roo­se­velt strug­gled to find a way to prepare the nation for a conflict that he was increasingly convinced was unavoidable. He worked with sympathetic politicians to raise the nation’s total defense bud­get nearly fivefold by the end of 1940. Yet a well-­f unded military meant nothing without well-­trained soldiers and sailors to use the new equipment. Accordingly, Roo­se­velt and his administration worked tirelessly



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through the spring and summer to secure the backing for the first-­ever peacetime military draft in Amer­ic­ a’s history. As a result, the Selective Ser­vice Act passed Congress in September 1940, more than a year before Amer­i­ca entered the war. On October 29, 1940, Roo­se­velt, along with several government and military leaders, gathered in Washington, D.C., to draw draft numbers, determining who would be called into military ser­vice for a war that had not yet begun. Roo­se­velt precluded all fanfare for the event and chose not to broadly publicize it. Public support of the mea­sure had been growing, but drafts had never been popu­lar in the United States, and this one was no exception.41 Roo­ se­velt was determined to drum up support for the mea­sure, but ­there ­were numerous obstacles in his way. One major sticking point was the continued segregation of the armed forces, a fact that had drawn increasing public criticism by the African American community and put Roo­se­velt in a difficult position between his New Deal allies in ­favor of desegregating the military and southern congressional representatives whom Roo­se­velt needed to pass his desired legislation. Less than a week before Roo­se­velt drew the initial numbers in Amer­i­ca’s first peacetime military draft, Rowe, one of his personal secretaries and advisers, sent him a confidential memorandum titled “The Negro Prob­lem,” which outlined potential responses to the racial issues surrounding the draft. Rowe was especially worried about an e­ arlier order defining the first quota call of recruits in terms of color. Corps area commanders would make requests of, “for example, 1,000 white men and 500 colored men from the state of X.” To Rowe’s dismay, “this [raised] the prob­lem of segregation one week before election.” Rowe offered a multistep solution. He first suggested that an immediate reversal of the e­ arlier o ­ rders be made and that the president personally order General George C. Marshall to command his subordinates not to ask for men according to color. Rowe then suggested the very public promotion of eight Black col­o­nels to the rank of brigadier general, a meeting with representatives of several “Negro newspapers,” and several additional covert appointments that would appease liberals and African Americans without inspiring the ire of American conservatives.42 Rowe also insisted that the administration’s first public action be the appointment of Campbell C. Johnson as “advisor on Negro affairs.” Johnson was the head of the Young Men’s Christian Association’s (YMCA) Negro education program and a well-­respected cultural and religious leader in the Black community.43 Rowe hoped that by framing the administration’s actions in religious rather than po­liti­cal terms, the public might be more receptive to the controversial steps. In par­tic­u­lar, Rowe argued that casting race in religious terms made the subject less controversial in the public’s eyes; p­ eople simply

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did not get as worked up over religious differences as they did over racial divisions. He hoped that by emphasizing religion when the administration talked about the draft, Americans might overlook the racial implications of the policy, a strategy that, unbeknownst to Rowe, would be a­ dopted by Roo­se­velt’s successors. Rowe closed the report with a query on the president’s ­f uture actions, wondering if he should go ahead and announce a gradual desegregation of the military, despite the po­liti­cal costs.44 Roo­se­velt apparently de­cided the cost was too high and never desegregated the military. He was also worried about utilizing religion as a principal selling point for the draft. He shared Rowe’s optimism that a religious framework would create a more positive reception but was also concerned about the very public antiwar stance of many religious leaders, both Protestant and Catholic, and w ­ hether framing the issue as religious would necessarily embolden religious pacifists. His previous overtures for cooperation and unity had gone so badly that he feared a stalwart religious opposition to the draft might crush its effectiveness and the country’s morale. He ardently believed that Amer­i­ ca’s religious communities owed allegiance to their nation and should act accordingly. He also agreed with Rowe that religion was an effective way to elicit support for the war and was intrigued by Rowe’s suggestion to reclassify the effort as a religious ­matter as a way to obfuscate its racial and po­liti­cal consequences.45 However, he was uncertain about how to elicit the aid of religious leaders in the endeavor, the only ones whom he believed could adequately sell such an overtly religious message. Roo­se­velt was also uncertain about how hard he should sell that message. Some disturbing events that summer had proved that any aggressive attempt to elevate national unity over religious freedom could have adverse, and even violent, consequences. On June 3, the Supreme Court handed down an eight to one decision in the case Minersville School District v. Gobitis. The case involved the ­children of Jehovah’s Witnesses, a radical Christian sect, who refused to salute the American flag as mandated by their Pennsylvania school district. Witnesses considered other religions, including other Christian groups, idolatrous and condemned loyalty to any nation-­state as antithetical to their all-­ consuming devotion to God. In 1935, the Witnesses’ leader, Joseph Rutherford, declared saluting the flag to be idolatry since it involved taking an oath and declaring loyalty to the nation. Consequently, Lillian and Billy Gobitis, two siblings in a ­family of devout Jehovah’s Witnesses, refused to salute the flag at school. Their classmates soon ostracized them, and administrators eventually expelled them from school. Their parents sued the school district and won. They also won the district’s appeal to the Third Cir­cuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals. The Minersville school district then appealed to the Supreme Court,



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which overturned the previous rulings in ­favor of the district. In his majority decision, Justice Felix Frank­furter argued that the state’s interest in national cohesion outweighed the ­children’s religious rights. “National unity is the basis of national security,” Frank­f urter stated, and this unity, engendered by the flag salute, trumped religious belief.46 The court’s decision generated outrage among many of the nation’s journalists as well as open vio­lence against Witnesses in American communities. Time magazine, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the New York Herald Tribune all ran scathing editorials against the court’s usurpation of individual rights.47 Yet across the nation, men and ­women had long resented Witnesses who constantly seemed to antagonize o ­ thers. The public also recently developed fears of a “fifth column” of Nazi spies and sympathizers in the country. Many interpreted the court’s decision as a condemnation of the group as un-­ American and, therefore, legitimately dangerous. Witnesses across the country ­were harassed, jailed, and beaten. When one reporter asked a sheriff of a town in the Deep South why he stood and watched as a mob beat Witnesses, he replied: “­They’re traitors—­the Supreme Court says so. ­Ain’t you heard?”48 In a report to the Justice Department, the American Civil Liberties Union noted that “1,488 Witnesses in 335 communities had been attacked by vigilantes between May and October.”49 The vio­lence, and the national outcry against it, was so pronounced that Roo­se­velt’s wife, Eleanor, and son Elliott publicly spoke out against it. Both downplayed the “fifth column” rumors and pleaded with Americans to show re­spect for and decency to their neighbors, even if they did not agree with them. The president never publicly condemned the vio­lence. He was friends with Frank­f urter and, at least in part, seemed to appreciate the ruling’s emphasis on national security and unity.50 As a liberal Episcopalian, Roo­se­velt trea­ sured religious liberty and did not want to push the bound­aries of church and state power. However, he also ardently believed that Amer­i­ca desperately needed to enter the war—he was convinced it would soon do so—as a unified front, and he needed Amer­i­ca’s religious leaders to cooperate for such a united front to emerge. He became convinced that what was best for the nation was also best for the nation’s religious communities, even if they did not agree. He reasoned that if religious leaders would not unify for the ideal of unity itself, then they must surely unify for the sake of national strength. Consequently, Roo­se­velt ignored his misgivings about both direct religious appeals and filtering t­ hose appeals through religious organ­izations and a­ dopted Rowe’s advice, demanding letters of support for the Selective Ser­vice Act of 1940 from “representatives of the three ­great faiths, Protestant and Jewish and Catholic.” Edward L. Israel, president of the Synagogue Council of Amer­i­ca,

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wrote a letter of support on behalf of American Jews. Not surprisingly, Francis Spellman, a stalwart supporter of the war effort, wrote on behalf of American Catholics. Fi­nally, Roo­se­velt called on George A. Buttrick to represent American Protestants just as he had done in the Christmas letters. Although the fiasco of the Christmas letters had proved that Buttrick could not speak for a large swath of Protestants, including many in his own organ­ization, he was still the closest t­ hing to a single representative Protestant Roo­se­velt could find, and Roo­se­velt was convinced that such single representatives ­were the most effective mouthpieces for his messages. Buttrick had also proved that he was amenable to the president’s influence. Along with the o ­ thers, Buttrick endorsed the draft and promised both prayer and aid to the men in the armed forces. Roo­se­velt read excerpts of each letter during his speech on October 29, 1940, emphasizing that the war in Eu­rope was a moral as well as martial conflict and that Amer­ic­ a’s religious leaders understood this fact.51 He might have been right on this point, but his unspoken insinuation that such an understanding implied unwavering support for his war mea­sures was certainly wrong, as he was perfectly aware. As he told Rowe, religious groups w ­ ere not of one mind when it came to war, and he did not want to poke the hornet’s nest again, as it w ­ ere. Consequently, Roo­se­velt never pushed the organ­izations for support beyond the letters. Partly in anticipation of religious antiwar and pacifist movements, Roo­se­ velt also attempted to circumvent religious leaders for the first time. Having already anticipated religious opposition to the war, the Selective Ser­vice Act of 1940 declared that anyone designated as a “conscientious objector” had to first convince a board that he had some true and legitimate reason that precluded his involvement in warfare. If someone ­were to convince the panel, it would assign him to some work of “national importance” that allowed him to avoid direct conflict but that still supported the war effort. If he refused such ser­vice, he would be imprisoned. General Lewis B. Hershey, who took over administration of the system soon ­after its creation, expressed concern to Roo­ se­velt that if religious leaders elevated religious objections over national loyalty, the number of draftees claiming objector status might quickly rise to an unmanageable level.52 Consequently, Hershey, in consultation with Roo­se­velt, drafted legislation defining the nature of the God to whom objectors might appeal, insisting that t­ here had to be a “recognition of some source of all existence, which, what­ever the type of conception, is Divine b­ ecause it is the Source of all t­ hings.”53 Lacking ­either theological or ­legal training, Hershey’s ambiguous language did l­ ittle to curtail motivated conscientious objectors and managed to create a new swell of controversy and outrage when news leaked of his proposal. In fact, Hershey’s legislation exacerbated the very prob­lem



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he tried to avoid. As historian David M. Kennedy notes, Hershey’s foray into theological distinctions actually expanded the guidelines by which men could claim conscientious objector status, and much of the opposition to the legislation died when ­others realized such.54 As a result, the ineffectual attempt made Roo­se­velt even more distraught over his seeming reliance on religious leaders to define the war in the religious terms he preferred. His frustrations only grew ­after the FCC tried to leverage its draft letter to gain concessions a­ fter the fact. The FCC’s leaders knew that Roo­se­velt considered it the representative Protestant body in the country and wanted their support. They had given Roo­se­velt what he wanted with the draft: a religious endorsement and their public backing. In the spring of 1941, they de­cided they needed something in return. When the army did not promote its chief of chaplains to brigadier general along with several other division leaders at the rank of col­o­nel that summer, Samuel McCrea Cavert, general secretary of the FCC, wrote to Roo­se­velt with a thinly veiled threat. Cavert explained that the omission “would be a serious handicap to t­ hose who [­were] making ­every effort to strengthen the influence of religion in connection with National Defense.” FCC leaders wanted to support the president, but they needed to see that he was serious about strengthening the moral defenses of the country along with its physical defenses.55 The FCC’s thinly veiled threat was a prime example of the type of vacuous support that had originally made Roo­se­velt anxious to enlist the aid of religious leaders to promote the draft. He might be convinced that he needed the religious community’s support but not enough to be pushed around, even on what he considered an unimportant issue. He curtly responded that current law dictated that the chief of chaplains could only rise to the rank of col­ o­nel, but he would certainly look into the issue.56 In practice, ­there is no evidence that Roo­se­velt ever looked into the ­matter, but his inaction did not seem to m ­ atter to the FCC’s leaders. Roo­se­velt’s response indicated that the president had gotten their message and showed that if Roo­se­velt wanted their support, he had to cater to them. That level of prestige, and the threat of its diminishment, had prompted leaders in the FCC to oppose Myron Taylor’s appointment to the Vatican a­ fter his Christmas letters and motivated much of their continued interaction with the president. Roo­se­velt knew as much, but he believed that, as the head of the state, he was obligated to deal with the heads of the churches, and they agreed. Like the rest of Roo­se­velt’s early efforts, his attempt to convince religious leaders to support the draft quickly fell apart. Even a peacetime draft was not enough to persuade Amer­i­ca’s religious leaders that war was as inevitable as Roo­se­velt claimed, and the specter of war was an insufficient catalyst for their

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sustained support. The outbreak of the Second World War in Eu­rope had only exacerbated the numerous divides among and within Amer­i­ca’s religious communities that increasingly disagreed over complex theological and philosophical distinctions within numerous communities. Roo­se­velt had ­little understanding and less concern for such intricacies. He had a prob­lem that he thought religion could help solve but felt hampered by obstructive religious elites, and he could see no clear way to apply religious forces without their aid. Nor did Roo­se­velt feel he had anywhere e­ lse to turn than the three recipients of his Christmas letters, and he was far more concerned about garnering the support of American Protestants than Catholics or Jews. However frustrating it might be, the FCC was, at the time, the more dominant Protestant group in the nation. The Christmas letters demonstrated that it was not the only group, but Roo­se­velt’s return to the FCC as a singular representative of American Protestantism reveals that he knew l­ittle about the complex shape of Amer­ic­ a’s Protestant majority or the nation’s other diverse religious groups. This ignorance may have kept him from utilizing a potential ally in his quest for religious support of the draft and his interventionist policies: Protestant fundamentalists. Such support would have been hard to generate, though. Many fundamentalists had essentially “gone under­ground” a­ fter the disastrous events of the Scopes trial in 1925. This large and once highly influential group was named ­after a series of pamphlets published between 1910 and 1925 called The Fundamentals, which supported traditional stories of Scripture like God’s six-­day creation, Jesus’s virgin birth, and the saving acts of Christ. Although they had long dominated denominational organ­izations, voluntary socie­ties, and many state legislatures, the public defeats of the 1920s caused most to set loose the reins of power and channel their energies away from the polluting influence of a world that had dismissed them. They went about setting up in­ de­pen­dent Bible colleges, congregations, mission agencies, and publishing ­houses. The fundamentalist subculture grew throughout the 1930s and had become a vibrant world outside of the cultural mainstream. Although they w ­ ere stalwart defenders of the separation between church and state, as evidenced by their vehement reaction to Taylor’s appointment, fundamentalists ­were also ardent patriots, and the pacifist movement that had so dominated liberal Protestantism found l­ittle headway into the fundamentalist subculture. One of their organ­izations, called the American Protestant Defense League (APDL), argued vociferously for Roo­se­velt during 1940 and 1941. Explic­itly decrying the Amer­i­ca First Committee, which advocated for a firm isolationist stance, and its supposed Christian roots, the group called on Americans to aid Britain in its “death strug­gle” and advocated a “demo­cratic interpretation of Americanism,” which precluded the dangers of “anti-­Christ,



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anti-­tolerance, anti-­liberty, anti-­religion,” and in a flash of exceptional circularity, “anti-­Americanism.”57 The Nazis posed a threat not just to Eu­rope, the group argued, but also to both Amer­i­ca and the very existence of religion on earth. While this latter assertion might seem extreme, it was in perfect alignment with Roo­se­velt’s own positions on Hitler and the Soviet Union.58 In June 1941, Germany had broken its nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union, launching a full-­scale invasion of the country. Roo­se­velt and most of his military advisers viewed the Soviets’ re­sis­tance as essential to an Allied victory. Consequently, Roo­se­velt petitioned Congress to extend the lend-­lease policy to the Soviets, aiding them in their strug­gle with the Nazis by supplying food, fuel, and arms in exchange for leases on army and naval bases. It was a difficult sell. Roo­se­velt himself had been anticommunist for many years, but the American public, particularly the religious community, was almost wholly opposed to the Soviets. The media had cast the Soviets as antireligious and antidemo­cratic for years, and an alliance seemed duplicitous and un-­American. Roo­se­velt faced par­tic­u­lar opposition from American Catholics, who had been stalwart anticommunists since the Bolshevik Revolution over two de­cades before. Throughout the summer of 1941, Roo­se­velt set out to convince both the papacy and the American ­people that the Rus­sian stance ­toward religious freedom was not as bad as many thought and that Germany’s threat to religion was far worse. In a letter to Pope Pius XII, personally delivered by Taylor, Roo­ se­velt laid out his hopes for the f­ uture of Rus­sia and his fears about a f­ uture ­under Hitler’s reign. He informed the pontiff that he believed that “­there [was] a real possibility that Rus­sia as a result of the pre­sent conflict would recognize freedom of religion in Rus­sia.” In case Pius did not share his optimism for Rus­sia’s religious ­f uture, Roo­se­velt then laid out the heart of his rather pragmatic argument: “I believe that the survival of Rus­sia is less dangerous to religion, to the church as such, and to humanity in general than would be the survival of the German form of dictatorship.” He closed with a criticism of the U.S. religious community, adding that he believed “that the leaders of all churches in the United States should recognize ­these facts clearly and should not . . . ​by their pre­sent attitude on this question directly assist Germany in her pre­sent objectives.”59 The pope’s response was, at best, noncommittal.60 Having tired of the FCC’s manipulations and discouraged by the pope’s reply, Roo­se­velt fi­nally de­cided to make his case directly to the American public. During an October press conference, the president made an impromptu assertion of the Soviets’ support for religious liberty, claiming that “freedom of religion [was] definitely on its way.” When reporters pressed him, Roo­se­velt

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referred them to article 124 of the Constitution of the Soviet Union, which he claimed guaranteed freedom of religion. Though expressed in dif­fer­ent terms, notably the freedom to use propaganda against religion, Roo­se­velt maintained that the article made the Soviet government as essentially neutral t­ oward religion as the U.S. government, thus granting religious liberty to the p­ eople.61 Few agreed with the president’s interpretation. As historian Andrew Preston pointedly notes, “Roo­se­velt’s clumsy portrayal of faith in a communist society was universally, indeed ecumenically, mocked.”62 Time magazine went so far as to call the remarks “a deep-­laid Roo­se­velt plan to make Rus­sia’s atheism look a bit better to U.S. churchmen.”63 ­Later that October, Roo­se­velt tried again. This time, he chose to emphasize the other side of the Soviet-­German conflict by warning Americans that the Nazis threatened more than just Amer­ic­ a’s economic and po­liti­cal interests; they w ­ ere also a direct threat to Amer­ic­ a’s religious freedom. In a widely covered address in honor of Navy Day, he announced to the American ­people that he had acquired a Nazi document detailing Hitler’s plans for the world ­after his final victory. Roo­se­velt informed the public that Hitler intended to “abolish all existing religions—­Protestant, Catholic, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist, and Jewish alike.” “The property of all churches ­will be seized by the Reich,” Roo­se­velt explained. “The cross and all symbols of religion are to be forbidden. The clergy are to be forever silenced ­under penalty of the concentration camps, where even now so many fearless men are being tortured ­because they placed God above Hitler.” Hitler’s plan would replace religious traditions with an international Nazi church. Roo­se­velt closed his address by solemnly warning his audience that u ­ nless Hitler was s­ topped, “the god of Blood and Iron w ­ ill take the place of the God of Love and Mercy.”64 Roo­se­velt’s first attempts at directly defining the conflict in religious terms ­were ineffectual, at best. Already incredulous over the president’s ­earlier claims, the media was unconvinced and thought the president was merely stirring up support through fearmongering.65 Many leaders in the FCC w ­ ere also upset that the president would dare advance such a religious interpretation of the conflict without at least conferring with them, and several even went out of their way to dismiss Roo­se­velt’s warning as po­liti­cal hyperbole.66 Yet the attempts ­were not total losses. Several American Catholics, including Francis Spellman, agreed with Roo­se­velt, having previously made a similar argument and publicly supported his interpretation of the war. The Paulist Press, a Catholic press out of New York, even published a popu­lar pamphlet in 1940 called Nazism versus Religion, which echoed Roo­se­velt’s Navy Day assertions.67 Many conservative Protestants felt a similar foreboding and had been ramping up their condemnation of the Nazi scourge over the summer.



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Roo­se­velt’s Navy Day address certainly did not receive the ­wholesale endorsement he had envisioned, but it was not a total disaster, e­ ither. Granted, the FCC still proved a thorn in his flesh, but his early attempts to circumvent it, though far from effective, ­were at least bearing some fruit in other communities. Perhaps if Roo­se­velt could have combined the po­liti­cal support of Christian fundamentalists and Catholics, he could have avoided the religious bickering and constant power plays of the FCC. He did not do so, though ­there is a very good chance he would have failed had he actually tried. As historian Matthew Avery Sutton has shown, fundamentalists’ po­liti­cal affiliations had as much to do with their view of the imminent return of Jesus and destruction of the world as any par­tic­u­lar po­liti­cal theology, and a ­g reat many interpreted Roo­se­velt’s actions as evidence that he was on the wrong side of the cosmic conflict.68 Many fundamentalists ­were worried that Roo­se­velt was the Antichrist, and Roo­se­velt barely knew fundamentalists existed. Additionally, both his Protestant biases and the FCC’s jealous defense of po­liti­cal influence kept Roo­se­velt from fully seeking the aid of American Catholics. Roo­se­velt also underestimated both the anti-­Catholic sentiment and the deep divisions within Protestantism as a w ­ hole and failed to anticipate liberal Protestants’ opposition to his po­liti­cal manipulations in their assumed realm. Ultimately, Roo­se­velt still felt like he was stuck with the FCC.

A More Useful Religion In May 1941, the APDL declared: “Faith in liberty, faith in democracy, faith in victory—­all are meaningless u ­ nless they be accompanied by deeds. Right now, the ­battle of democracy demands more than honeyed words, more than moral support.”69 This last phrase might have very well been in direct reference to Morrison’s ­earlier response to the Christmas letters in 1940. In a Christian ­Century editorial, Morrison clarified the root of his opposition to Taylor’s appointment. He wrote, “The cooperation which the president desired from the Vatican was not ‘spiritual,’ but po­liti­cal. This type of cooperation Protestantism could not give. It [was] not or­ga­nized po­liti­cally, nor [was] its federal council a po­liti­cal agency.” He went on to say that Protestants could give moral support, but the president did not desire such assistance.70 Morrison was half right. While he might have very well desired moral support, Roo­se­velt was certainly looking for po­liti­cal cooperation from Amer­i­ ca’s religious leaders. Like the director general of the APDL, Roo­se­velt thought “moral support” provided l­ittle consolation to the victims of an expanding war in Eu­rope, a war that he was convinced might soon envelop Amer­i­ca. He

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needed po­liti­cal cooperation, and he expected as much from religious organ­ izations that, he presumed, held common cause with his administration. For instance, in an ultimately terse exchange of letters between Roo­se­velt and a fellow Freemason, John H. Cowles, in 1940, Roo­se­velt told his friend that as the president and a religious man, he had as much right as religious leaders to marshal the nation’s religious forces. ­After all, he insisted, religious institutions had a civic responsibility to support their government. When Cowles quite forcefully disagreed, Roo­se­velt was surprised and offended, as he had been by the reaction of so many American Protestants.71 He simply could not understand why Protestants w ­ ere so upset that he would speak about the war in religious terms and refuse to aid him in the endeavor. He knew that religious groups had long worked with American presidents to achieve social reforms, including the enactment of public policy, and he assumed this was no dif­fer­ ent.72 A g­ reat number of American Protestants thought it was. Regardless, Roo­se­velt saw Amer­i­ca’s religious institutions racked with “unnecessary and artificial divisions” and did not believe a country at war, or one preparing for war, could harbor such divisions.73 However, ­those religious divisions, regardless of his personal distaste for them, ­were never the real point. He believed that religion was useful. As James Rowe Jr. had argued, Americans ­were far less upset over denunciations of religious divisions than ­those of race or class. T ­ here are a ­g reat many reasons for that dynamic, as other scholars have noted.74 However, Roo­se­velt’s entry into that dynamic was not for the sake of unity in and of itself. He wanted po­liti­cal support for his preferred religious interpretation of the war from Amer­i­ca’s religious institutions and leaders, so he asked for, and sometimes demanded, that support. Yet the type of support he desired from religious leaders never truly came in 1940 and 1941, at least not from the leaders in whom he was interested. Roo­ se­velt never seemed to adapt to the real­ity the Christmas letters first exposed: a religious community that often professed unity while increasing divisions. Neither appeals to the common good nor warnings of impending war could get Amer­i­ca’s diverse religious organ­izations to make good on the promises that so many of them professed. Indeed, direct appeals from, and perceived interference by, the White House proved too dangerous to the religious status quo, especially for the liberal Protestant establishment represented by the FCC. Roo­se­velt’s experiences with ­those same Protestant leaders caused him to start looking beyond them for other ave­nues to get his religious message to the American public. Although his earliest efforts ­were not particularly effective, they still demonstrated that it was pos­si­ble to advance a religious interpretation without reliance on religious institutions. A ­ fter Amer­i­ca entered



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the war, he eventually found ­those ave­nues in organ­izations that, though decidedly irreligious, w ­ ere also interested in using and creating religion as a means to advance po­liti­cal and social policies. Although personally frustrating and haphazard, Roo­se­velt’s early efforts provided essential lessons in the development of the religious propaganda he, and especially his successors, ­later employed. The trick, they all de­cided, was to find a way around the religious elites who guarded the golden gates to Amer­i­ca’s religious heritage.

C h a p te r  2

Uniting against a Common Foe

Although it took a g­ reat deal of effort and the help of several government agencies and agents, Roo­se­velt fi­nally got his wish. As early as November 1942, sociologist F. Ernest Johnson declared that “the government, rather than the Christian message and spirit, does our basic thinking for us, and gives the cue to the church in the war situation” and that the Second World War was publicly cloaked in “some sort of religious interpretation and justification, be it ever so thin and vulnerable.”1 The religious interpretation Johnson decried was the same one that Roo­se­velt had hoped to create through his Christmas letters and Navy Day address, but his early efforts had proved unsuccessful. Roo­se­velt needed help, but the religious, and particularly liberal Protestant, establishment was not initially inclined to provide it. Yet when Roo­se­velt found allies outside of that establishment and sold his preferred religious interpretation directly to the American ­people, many of t­ hose same leaders came to him. In this way, the war’s “religious interpretation and justification” did not occur immediately and resulted from a begrudging, and often contentious, collaboration among Amer­i­ca’s po­liti­cal, business, and religious elite. Although each group had its own agenda, the brand of religious patriotism they created built on and expanded James Rowe Jr.’s ­earlier suggestion that the war effort necessitated that racial, ethnic, and class distinctions be subsumed ­under a cloak of religious unity. Regardless of their personal religious beliefs, or the lack thereof, they all de­cided 38



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that religion was useful, both as a rhetorical tool for advancing their vari­ous agendas and as a means of creating a unified American populace. T ­ hese politicians and propagandists all shared this latter goal, though often for dif­fer­ent reasons and with dif­fer­ent ends in mind. The fact that this national unity was more rhe­toric than real­ity was beside the point. The rhe­toric did m ­ atter, though. In this sense, Johnson was correct; the government, and its emerging religious propaganda, did give the “cue to the church in the war situation,” even if Roo­se­velt and his allies borrowed the rhetorical core of their propaganda almost exclusively from liberal Protestants. Roo­se­velt’s previous dealings with the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in Amer­i­ca (FCC) made him hesitant to enlist its aid openly and prompted him to look beyond religious institutions to promote the kinds of religious ideas he favored. Ironically, when the allies Roo­se­velt found, most notably the Office of War Information (OWI) and War Advertising Council (WAC), w ­ ere able both to sell the supposed common religious heritage of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews as a defining ele­ment of American identity and to define the war as a b­ attle to save religion against an evil e­ nemy, the FCC came to Roo­se­velt.2 Enlivened by the upsurge in religious devotion, liberal Protestants joined the chorus of patriotic zeal and helped advance the idea that Amer­i­ca’s military men and w ­ omen, joined together in their common religious beliefs, would serve as the loci of a new religious age. However, Roo­se­velt refused to work with them u ­ nless they adhered to his own preferred interpretation and all but ignored them when they would not. The U.S. Army and Naval Command took a similar approach, even as it ­adopted liberal Protestants’ ecumenical vision as a means of managing the religious diversity within its ranks. Refusing to let ­either Roo­se­velt’s propagandists or religious leaders define the religious meaning of the conflict for the troops, it also set about an audacious program of religious instruction and spiritual guidance. Though still seen as something apart from the normal military structure, chaplains, a­ fter having been trained in the military’s preferred religious schema, took on a more prominent role on military bases across the world and on the front lines.3 Yet even as Roo­se­velt and his allies on the home front fought to advance the interreligious, ecumenical language of the propaganda in which they had so invested themselves, the schema produced a level of religious consolidation on the battlefield that went far beyond even their intentions. The context of the war resulted in a conflation of national and religious identities that went too far for many of the religious leaders who had recently begun endorsing the schema, but it served as a vital template for religious propaganda during and a­ fter the war. Although many Catholics, Jews, and liberal Protestants became concerned over the conflation of their unique religious traditions as one

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essentially “American” religion at their core, the White House and its allies found such innocuous religion extremely useful in advancing their own goals, especially when it was so readily spread during the war, both to civilians at home and to the armed forces abroad. Consequently, religion became a vital part of Americans’ understanding of World War II, but religious leaders w ­ ere not the ones who created that understanding. Neither Roo­se­velt nor the military ­were content to let religious leaders interpret the war or define the type of religion Americans should practice and cooperated with religious leaders only insofar as they promoted their preferred interpretations. If t­ here was to be an American faith, civic and military leaders ­were determined to be the ones to define or, if necessary, create it.

Moral Support Was Never Enough Ironically, Roo­se­velt found allies for his religious propaganda at the same time religious institutions became increasingly amenable to the type of religious patriotism and cooperation he had been advocating. ­After the Japa­nese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and Amer­i­ca officially entered the Second World War, Roo­se­velt received at least a portion of the religious backing he had been courting the previous two years. The divisions and animosity previously revealed had not simply vanished, but the overwhelming majority of religious groups suppressed their apprehensions for the sake of patriotic support and a public sense of unity, the very approach Roo­se­velt had been advancing since his Christmas letters of 1939. Yet Roo­se­velt saw the backing most religious institutions offered as a type of mere equivocal, moral support, and that was no longer enough, if it ever had been. He had already made it clear he wanted religious support not only for the war effort but also for the policies and strategies he and his administration designed to wage and win that war. He did not simply want religious leaders to support the war; he wanted their help selling the “religious interpretation and justification” he preferred.4 Despite the newfound patriotic zeal, Roo­se­velt ultimately de­cided that the religious institutions amenable to his plans w ­ ere too scattered or weak to help, and the FCC, the one he had long wooed as an ally, was too obstinate to serve his purposes. Although he appreciated that the FCC was now offering what Charles Clayton Morrison, the liberal Protestant editor of the Christian ­Century once called “moral support” for war, Roo­se­velt wanted more.5 Moral support for the war did abound ­after Pearl Harbor, though. Despite Roo­se­velt’s and General Lewis B. Hershey’s ­earlier fears over religious opposition to the war, the g­ reat flocks of American pacifists almost unanimously



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made an about-­face and publicly supported Congress’s declaration of war. Compared to the First World War it was a tempered support, but it was support nonetheless. In large mea­sure, only members of the historic peace churches—­ the Society of Friends, Mennonites, and the Church of the Brethren—­petitioned for objector status in large numbers, and t­ here ­were intense debates even within ­these traditions.6 In total, the government designated less than 0.5 ­percent of all draftees as conscientious objectors.7 Despite ­earlier avowals to the contrary, American religion had gone to war. Some groups went enthusiastically. Most w ­ ere conservative Protestants who garnered the name fundamentalists before their embarrassment at the Scopes “Monkey Trial” of 1925 and subsequent retreat from the public sphere. Eschewing institutional power to create their own subculture of lit­er­a­ture, education, and social life, most of ­these theologically, and often socially and fiscally, conservative Protestants ­were content for over a de­cade to fill up the church pews but let more liberal-­minded leaders hold public and ecclesiastical positions of prominence. Although still po­liti­cally active, particularly through their connections with prominent businesspeople, their sectarian leanings too often precluded the type of institutional cooperation that afforded the FCC so much influence in Roo­se­velt’s eyes.8 Yet as the FCC reminded Roo­ se­velt ­after his Christmas letters, the council did not represent all American Protestants, and, by 1940, a ­g reat many conservatives w ­ ere tired of the organ­ ization acting, and being treated, as if it did. In 1941, Carl McIntire founded the American Council of Christian Churches (ACCC) as a direct and explicit challenger to the FCC. McIntire was an ordained Presbyterian minister who studied at Prince­ton Theological Seminary during the climax of the institutions’ fundamentalist-­modernist controversies. McIntire fell decidedly on the conservative side of the debate and, alongside his mentor J. Gresham Machen and several faculty members, left the seminary in 1929 ­after it reor­ga­nized in a way that strengthened the position of liberal faculty members. McIntire became embroiled in several additional controversies among American Presbyterians and eventually helped found the Bible Presbyterian Church, a denomination that embraced the fundamentalist label along with apocalypticism, social conservatism, and active involvement in po­liti­cal affairs.9 McIntire intended the ACCC to promote similar values among like-­minded denominations and oppose the dominance of the liberal FCC, an organ­ization that, McIntire believed, worked against both God’s and Amer­i­ ca’s interests.10 Less than a year l­ ater, other conservative Protestants founded the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) in St. Louis, Missouri, in April 1942. The NAE also viewed itself as an alternative to the FCC but was not nearly as

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combative or theologically militant as the ACCC.11 The group intentionally abandoned the divisive language and public vitriol of its past, along with the name “fundamentalist.” Members instead called themselves evangelicals, a term that both clearly delineated their top priority of Christian practice and harked back to the days when Protestants held greater sway in American public life. Hoping to regain that public power, the NAE looked to reinvigorate conservative Protestants, most notably through the practical use of mass media.12 The NAE counted, among o ­ thers, the Associated Gospel Churches, Assemblies of God, Christian and Missionary Alliance, and Southern Baptist Convention as members or allies. Although the ACCC and NAE publicly decried each other, and had many legitimate theological and orga­nizational differences, both felt that a Christian’s love of country was a vital ele­ment of their faith and publicly supported the war and all efforts to raise Americans’ patriotic fervor.13 Publications from the two groups clearly demonstrated their distrust, and seeming disgust, for American Jews and Catholics, both of whom they considered threats to their chosen religious orthodoxy and national identity. However, they saw the Nazi threat to both Amer­i­ca and American religion as even more dangerous and advocated a public cease-­fire in Amer­i­ca’s religious ­battles for the sake of the war effort. American freedom was at stake, and all Americans had to do their part. Despite sharing a common vision of the war, Roo­se­velt, much as in previous years, never sought out the ACCC or NAE as formal allies or mouthpieces. As his Christmas letters demonstrated, he barely knew their congregants existed and thought the newly formed groups ­were too small and inconsequential to provide much help. Many American Jews and Catholics also shared Roo­se­velt’s interpretation of the conflict, though few ­were as militant as conservative Protestants in their support of the war. Archbishop Francis Spellman, thanks to his widespread influence and prominence, serves as an appropriate example. Two weeks a­ fter the attack on Pearl Harbor, Spellman spoke to a packed ­house at the formal blessing of the National Catholic Community Ser­vice Club­house in New York City, a speech that the Columbia Broadcasting System aired nationally and numerous newspapers and magazines l­ater published. Spellman declared that though Americans had “prayed for peace, through justice,” such “peace through justice [could] now come only through victory.” Amer­i­ca was fighting for the very survival of freedom and democracy on earth, and it was the responsibility of all Americans, ­whether in the military or at home, to work together for that victory.14 Yet he also warned that “democracy without the props of religion and morality collapses into anarchy and tyranny,” and the abandonment of such props abroad had brought every­one “to the end of the world [they had] known.”



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Quoting from Pope Leo XIII, Spellman declared that “the super­natural love of the Church and the natu­ral love of country [­were] twin loves, d­ aughters of God Himself.” God and country w ­ ere intimately connected, and therefore, if Amer­ i­ca was to survive and prosper, all Americans must love both equally. Spellman never declared the war God’s ­will or that Amer­i­ca was on God’s side. He instead linked Amer­i­ca’s strength with its moral character, thus limiting the scope of acceptable action while si­mul­ta­neously offering heartfelt support. Closing with a sentiment that would become a common trope in public speeches from politicians, businesspeople, and religious leaders alike, Spellman declared that victory would only come through “the united efforts of the united ­people of the United States of Amer­i­ca.”15 American Jews offered a similarly ­wholehearted yet theologically reserved support of the war. ­Eager to show their patriotic zeal, organ­izations and individuals from ­every facet of the diverse Jewish population gave their support for the war effort, yet few declared Amer­ic­ a an agent of God. ­There was simply too much evidence to the contrary. American anti-­Semitism reached a fevered pitch during the war, despite the efforts of many religious and po­liti­cal leaders to curtail it. Even as organ­izations such as the Jewish Publication Society, the Jewish Welfare Board, and even the Protestant-­dominated National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ) noted the impressive participation of American Jews in the military and the domestic war effort, historian David S. Wyman had already noted the many ways “anti-­Jewish hatreds that had been sown and nurtured for years ripened into some extremely b­ itter fruit.”16 Jewish stores, cemeteries, and even entire neighborhoods w ­ ere vandalized and defaced, anti-­Jewish publications ­were circulated, and anti-­Semitic slander became commonplace.17 Ironically, one of the more common slurs was that Jews stayed home and prospered while American Christians fought and died overseas. In truth, American Jews fought in numbers that ­either equaled or exceeded t­hose of American Christians in ratio to the general population.18 Like many Catholics, American Jews called for national unity and a victory for freedom and religious liberty and did so with a far deeper understanding and perhaps longing than most of their white, Protestant neighbors. It was ­those neighbors that Roo­se­velt saw as having the widest reach and, consequently, the best allies in advancing his religious propaganda, and a ­great many ­were members of the FCC, an organ­ization that had expressed a resounding opposition to Amer­i­ca’s entry into the war ­until the last few months of 1941. Some of the leaders of the organ­ization, such as Morrison, the Christian ­Century’s editor, had been ardent pacifists. Yet ­after the attack on Pearl Harbor, even Morrison capitulated. In the first editorial written a­ fter Pearl Harbor, he called Amer­ic­ a’s entrance into the war an “unnecessary necessity.” As

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much as the Christian ­Century despised war and the death and destruction it engendered, Morrison lamented, Amer­i­ca was “our” country, Roo­se­velt was “our” president, and the acts of his administration w ­ ere “our acts.” Peace was the Christian’s goal, but the events of the world w ­ ere not always up to the w ­ ill of Christians. The editorial closed with a rather tepid endorsement of the war: “The Christian ­Century goes into the war with the consciousness of having to make a tragic choice, and therefore with the haunting doubts and all the reservations which this writing has suggested.”19 In light of this restraint, religious scholar Gerald Sittser has rightly called the FCC’s support of the war a “cautious patriotism.”20 That caution certainly both­ered Roo­se­velt, but it was not an impediment to cooperation. The trou­ble is that the FCC had its own understanding of what new world should come from the war, even if it was willing to speak of that war in religious terms. Though willing to work for American victory, the FCC almost immediately created a committee to plan for the war’s end, with the hopes of bringing about a “just and durable peace.” John Foster Dulles chaired the committee. He was an accomplished diplomat and impor­tant adviser to Thomas Dewey, who would become the Republican candidate for president in the 1944 and 1948 elections. Dulles and the committee advocated the just administration of Western colonies and a more potent international system of economic, military, and l­ egal control, in addition to asserting the centrality of the Christian message to a peaceful world.21 The FCC might agree that religion was an essential ele­ment of American identity, but it also had its own ideas of what that identity should look like when translated to public policy, ideas that did not easily conform to Roo­se­velt’s own plans.

Finding Other Allies Consequently, Roo­se­velt no longer directly requested support from religious organ­izations ­after the Christmas letters and draft declarations. He still wanted Americans to unite in support of his war programs, and he saw religion as a vital ave­nue for that unity. The fact that so many of the nation’s religious bodies echoed similar sentiments ­after the attack on Pearl Harbor meant that Roo­se­velt got part of what he wanted from the groups. However, the FCC was right that nebulous religious support was not all Roo­se­velt desired. He also hoped to use that support as a means of garnering public backing for domestic and military policies, and religious leaders proved difficult to harness for such purposes. Subsequently, Roo­se­velt became further convinced that he needed to look beyond religious institutions to advance the kind of religious



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unity he envisioned. Since class and race ­were too divisive, Roo­se­velt and his allies began lumping all divisions as quintessentially religious, even when such constructions ignored or even covered up the injustices pervasive in American society. However, as Rowe made clear when he first suggested the strategy, part of the reason religion was so useful was that it did just that. Ultimately, the allies Roo­se­velt found to aid him in this endeavor ­were far more aligned with traditional propaganda than with religion of any sort. The first was Archibald MacLeish, a poet, the librarian of Congress, and director of Roo­se­velt’s office of propaganda. MacLeish shared the president’s understanding of the Nazi threat against religion. His agency, which was eventually integrated as a branch of the new Office of War Information (OWI), was at first charged with enacting a “strategy of truth,” in which only facts of the war would be delivered to the national media for dissemination to the public. Roo­se­velt had been wary of stirring up the kind of public hysteria that ran rampant during the previous war. Yet soon ­after the OWI’s founding, both Roo­se­velt and MacLeish concluded that they could not trust the media to come up with the appropriate interpretations of the information the OWI provided. Consequently, it would be up to the OWI to educate the American p­ eople, and ­later the e­ nemy’s populace, on the nature and meaning of the war. With this new mandate, MacLeish de­cided to follow Abraham Lincoln’s example. He interpreted Lincoln as having “reduced the vio­lence and confusion of his time to the essential moral issue,” and he hoped to do the same for the pre­ sent conflict.22 For MacLeish, Roo­se­velt, and the OWI, the “essential moral issue” of the war was that Hitler and the Axis powers hated Amer­i­ca’s religion. At least that is what they told the American p­ eople. Contrary to the fascists, they explained, Americans w ­ ere an inherently religious ­people. It was their greatest strength and, therefore, what its enemies most wanted to undermine. Roo­se­velt often reminded Americans of the “Nazi technique”: “Pit race against race, religion against religion, prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer.”23 The OWI took g­ reat pains to let Americans know that anyone who fueled division was aiding the e­ nemy. The OWI was not alone in this, however. Some religious groups, rather than merely assent to an inherently religious construction of American identity, chose to aid the OWI in its newfound religious propaganda. One such organ­ization, the American Jewish Committee, spent tens of thousands of dollars and untold hours informing the public that only unity, and specifically religious unity, would win the war. In 1944, it took credit for making the phrase “divide and conquer” a ­house­hold phrase in American life.24 The OWI also worked closely with Hollywood’s movie studios to craft images of Amer­i­ca and the war that would sway the public to support the war

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effort. One strategy was the suppression of racial discrimination, and in many cases Black Americans, from Hollywood films. They achieved this by “writing out” troublesome Black characters who drew attention to racial divides. For instance, when MGM began producing a screenplay called “­Battle Hymn,” the Motion Picture Bureau of the OWI recommended the omission of a group of African Americans in a scene set during the American Civil War. Although the film did not explic­itly designate the men as such, the bureau knew the public would interpret them to be slaves, and it did not want to draw attention to that unfortunate period of Amer­i­ca’s past. The bureau informed the production com­pany, “The fact that slavery existed in this country is certainly something which belongs to the past and which we wish to forget at this time when unity of all races and creeds is all-­important.”25 The bureau did not deny that slavery existed but insisted that it be relegated to the past. Any attempt to bring up such a divisive subject, even in the background of a film, only served to weaken and disparage Amer­i­ca and that could not be tolerated. The OWI similarly worked to discourage opposition to the war and promote the government’s diplomatic and military initiatives. One of the more fruitful attempts, in terms of commercial and propaganda success, came with the 1943 film adaption of Joseph Davies’s best-­selling book Mission to Moscow. Davies, the U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1936 to 1938, was prominently featured in the film, which managed to gloss over the rather troubling features of the Soviets’ past and cast them as worthy allies in the fight against Hitler’s evil. The film also lambasted American isolationists, especially Protestant minsters, who ­were portrayed as both naive and unpatriotic. In one of Davies’s many on-­screen narrations, he explained to the audience that Amer­ i­ca could not be “an island of Christian individualism in a sea of totalitarian dictatorship.” In a dramatic turn to the camera, he added: “You c­ an’t negotiate with evil.”26 The second, and more influential, group to advance Roo­se­velt’s burgeoning religious propaganda named itself the War Advertising Council (WAC). The group’s found­ers first conceived of the organ­ization in November 1941 but did not formally found the WAC ­until the next year. Executives of the expanding advertising industry w ­ ere concerned that as Amer­i­ca’s entry in the Eu­ro­pean conflict seemed increasingly inevitable, the U.S. government might intensify regulations on advertising or use the war’s inevitable rationing to expand New Deal policies on American businesses and corporations. They also feared that the consumerism the advertisers inculcated might be wrongly viewed by government officials as antithetical to the war effort or detrimental to the economy and American society.27 Hundreds of t­hese executives, most working on Madison Ave­nue in New York City, met to discuss pos­si­ble actions.



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To avoid the government’s ire, they de­cided to fashion themselves as public servants, offering their valuable expertise to the American ­people to educate and motivate the citizenry. Such patriotic ser­vice would, at least for a time, demonstrate their utility, even if many businesses ­were forced to scale back their advertising bud­gets and reallocate their production for the war effort. The group also hoped that serving the government might result in greater access to and influence on Amer­i­ca’s politicians. Most advertisers of the day held to a concept of public opinion leadership, and the members of the WAC w ­ ere no dif­fer­ent. They believed that the p­ eople at large looked to certain leaders, ­whether they be celebrities, politicians, or even ministers, for information and opinions, which then greatly affected their own beliefs. In other words, if the WAC could get influential government officials e­ ither to echo or to simply support a message, that message would hold sway over the American public. As historian Daniel L. Lykins has demonstrated, “this understanding of public opinion leadership became central to war­time and postwar propaganda.”28 The government quickly accepted their offer of ser­vice a few months ­later, and the WAC quickly got to work. It sold war bonds, facilitated national rationing movements, and produced such notable campaigns as “Rosie the Riveter,” Smokey the Bear’s “Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires” (from the rumored Japa­nese loyalists seeking to start fires in the Pacific Northwest), and “Loose Lips Sink Ships.”29 The council also worked with business and industrial leaders on campaigns that promoted national unity on primarily religious terms. For instance, it worked with the Congress of Industrial Organ­izations, a conglomerate of ­labor ­unions much like, and in competition with, the American Federation of ­Labor, to sponsor numerous advertisements in 1943 and 1944 warning of Nazi attempts to destroy Amer­i­ca’s religious foundations. The ads always carried a line at the bottom urging ­people to buy war bonds, but they ­were primarily meant to educate the populace on the nature of the threat leveled against them. For example, one such advertisement showed a rather demonic Nazi sniper and his victim, lying dead on a city street. The ad warned of snipers among the populace, but ­these snipers did not always kill with bullets. Some dressed in American garb and played “Hitler’s game” of sniping at “ ‘­those Catholics,’ ‘­those Jews,’ or ‘­those Protestants.’ ”30 The OWI’s and the WAC’s choice to promote unity through religion while ignoring race and class was strategic and generally successful. Although t­ here ­were worker strikes and a race riot during the war, government officials and advertising executives w ­ ere able to spin the events as exceptions to the general rule. Their core message was that Americans might look, speak, and act differently, but they all held the same values; they all worshipped the same God. This last claim was, of course, not true, but it was useful, especially when combined

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with their successful strategy of insisting that anyone who pointed out Amer­ i­ca’s warts only helped the nation’s evil Japa­nese and Nazi enemies. The warts still existed, obviously, but the religious propaganda the OWI and WAC created had no room for such flaws. In fact, their insistence on religious belief as a unifying feature of American identity often caused them to fold ethnic, racial, and class strug­gles into obtuse forms of religious identity that e­ ither ignored systemic injustices or exacerbated them. For instance, both the OWI and the WAC identified American Jews as primarily religious, a tactic that concealed, and allowed too many Americans to ignore, the rampant anti-­Jewish sentiment in Amer­i­ca. Far more disturbing was the fact that neither organ­ization was willing to lend its considerable influence to the American Jewish Congress when, in late 1942 and early 1943, the association’s planning committee implored them to publicize recent reports of a planned extermination of Jews in Eu­rope. Hesitant to broach the subject, both groups demanded that the association first get an endorsement from the State Department, for which they insisted they worked. With the State Department unwilling to publicize external reports, both the OWI and the WAC dropped the m ­ atter.31 Emphasizing unity through religion also served to obscure Amer­i­ca’s most obvious duplicity: purporting to fight for freedom and ­human rights while si­ mul­ta­neously denying freedoms and rights to some of its own citizens. A concerted effort to do just that came in February 1942, when Roo­se­velt issued Executive Order 9066, which gave the secretary of war the right to designate any area of the United States a military zone and exclude anyone from that area for security reasons. The order established the ­legal basis of the relocation and internment of tens of thousands of Japa­nese Americans on the West Coast, where many Americans ­were convinced the Japa­nese would strike next. To their credit, liberal Protestants almost unanimously opposed the internment camps and publicly said so. Few ­were ­either vehement or persistent—­ after all, Americans, and especially religious Americans, felt tremendous pressure to support their government—­but they did speak up. One cannot say the same for most other religious groups in Amer­i­ca. American Catholics and Jews could ill afford to appear to oppose the government in any way, especially at the war’s onset, and few conservative Protestants seemed to find the situation troubling; American lives w ­ ere at stake, and the government had a God-­ given right to protect its p­ eople.32 Ironically, perhaps the greatest example of religious unity and cooperation during the war came from within the internment camps, as liberal and conservative Protestants, Catholics, and Buddhists worked, and often worshipped, alongside one another in impressive harmony. The government did not advertise such religious unity to the American p­ eople,



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though. It is not that the government did not know about the religious pluralism within the camps; such pluralism simply did not suit its purposes and undermined the type of unity its religious propaganda was promoting: uniting ­behind governmental policies. Religious unity was not actually the point. As Rowe had first noted in preparation for the draft, religious unity was merely an easier sell than class or racial unity.33 The government even linked opposition to the internment camps with stirring up racial divisions or, to be more accurate, the possibility that some might publicly note the racial divisions that already existed. For example, one extremely out­spoken critic of the internment camps was Catholic Worker Dorothy Day. Even ­after being reprimanded for her out­spoken pacifism by Francis Spellman, Day maintained her pacifist stance throughout the war and occasionally, if discreetly, criticized the way Amer­i­ca was waging its just war.34 However, she was quite vocal about her feelings t­ oward the internment camps and the government’s draft policies, which she thought put too g­ reat a burden on minority groups and the poor. She protested so loudly that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began reading, listening to, and even following the movements of the Christian activist. In a telling phone conversation, one of the agents following Day reported his thoughts on her actions and attitude. In short, he was “getting pretty sick of [her].” He did not think her pacifist stance or even her criticism of the government posed any current danger, but he did see a potential threat lurking in the f­ uture. He feared that she would eventually start “stirring up the Negro question about race equality and God knows, you know how bad that is!” The agent’s superior apparently knew enough to echo the agent’s fears when he reported to the FBI’s director, J. Edgar Hoover.35 The FBI never arrested or even directly approached Day, nor did she, in any truly public way, call attention to the so-­called Negro question in Amer­i­ca. It was the proverbial elephant in the room, and the government’s hy­poc­risy was evident. On the home front, millions of African Americans relocated to work in munitions and industrial factories supporting the war or simply moved to urban areas where they might find work. Yet city councils, governmental housing policies, and real estate agents still forced them into segregated neighborhoods in ­those new cities and, explic­itly in the South and implicitly in the North, denied them equal access to ser­vices and goods. The many tensions created by the sudden commingling and intense competition between displaced southern Black and white workers in northern cities reached a boiling point in Detroit in 1943. A three-­day riot resulted in over four hundred injuries and thirty-­four deaths. In stark contrast to its omnipresent promotion of national unity through its religious propaganda, the OWI spent a ­g reat deal

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of time and effort censoring the information about the riots, and particularly the photo­g raphs of the vio­lence, in the national press.36 African Americans worked tirelessly for the sake of the war but, as one foreign reporter surmised, “knew that the demo­cratic war aims ­were not meant for them.”37 The hy­poc­risy of Black ser­vicemen remaining segregated from their white brethren while fighting for freedom and justice was glaring. Roo­se­velt wrestled with the issue throughout the war. In 1944, he wrote a letter to Henry St. George, then president of the FCC, in support of its Race Relations Sunday. Organizers hoped the event would draw attention to the deplorable status of Black Americans and encourage Americans to display national unity in their attitudes and actions ­toward all Americans, no ­matter the color of their skin. Although moderately successful within member churches of the FCC, the WAC did not see Race Relations Sunday as in sync with its overall program and de­cided not to promote the event. Nor did Roo­se­velt direct it to do so, despite his letter of support demonstrating his personal feelings on the ­matter. For instance, he wrote, “The unity of the nations fighting for a ­free world includes men of ­every color and race, and the strength which this nation contributes to that unity depends at home on men of all races who are also all Americans.” He added that some Americans have damaged the nation’s reputation abroad by their bigotry and racially motivated vio­lence, thus earning both his censure and contempt. He concluded that all Americans “require the never-­ceasing reiteration of the Christian and American faith in the dignity of all ­peoples and the right of all men to equal treatment in this land and on the earth.” Yet Roo­se­velt neither publicly expressed t­ hese feelings nor took action to make them a realization at home or in the military. He did not feel it was the right time to press the issue.38 Many Black ser­vicemen disagreed. One soldier captured the sentiment of many of his comrades when he quipped: “Just carve on my tombstone, ‘­Here lies a black man killed fighting a yellow man for the protection of a white man.’ ”39 Charles Byrd, the African American chaplain of an all-­Black battalion of the U.S. Army Air Forces, wrote to Roo­se­velt in 1943. Local citizens had repeatedly harassed and even physically assaulted the chaplain’s men whenever they left their army base in the Florida panhandle. Byrd pointedly asked the president “why the War Department [did] not think it necessary to protect its loyal Negro soldiers against such race hatred which would rather lose the war than treat [them] as h ­ uman beings.” Roo­se­velt chose not to send a personal reply.40 Despite such treatment, Black soldiers and sailors continued to fight and die in the good war. When asked by another African American why he, knowing the hy­poc­risy of American society, would willingly fight in its war, famed boxer and literal poster boy for the military Joe Louis re-



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sponded with a quip that summed up the feelings of many African Americans: “Lots of t­ hings wrong with Amer­ic­ a, but Hitler a­ in’t ­going to fix them.”41 Nor was the U.S. government, at least not when it came to the plight of African Americans during the war. Race was too divisive and potentially explosive. Although government officials, the OWI, the WAC, and many religious leaders called for an end to racial, class, and ethnic divisions in their perpetual calls for unity, they projected religious diversity as their chief image for American pluralism. Some propagandists and even Christian ministers began casting “Negro” as a fourth religious class alongside Protestants, Catholics, and Jews near the end of the war. T ­ here is l­ittle evidence of a strategic decision for such a move. Perhaps the classification of Jews as a religious sect rather than a racial or ethnic group had simply worked so well that some made the same distinction for African Americans. Regardless of the motivations, the classification became popu­lar as a rhetorical and advertising trope. For instance, one widely disseminated OWI-­sponsored advertisement before its disbandment pictured an “invitation to commit suicide” from the Nazis. The ad featured a revolver sitting above a card that read, “Hate the Negroes, Hate the Protestants, Hate the Catholics, Hate the Jews,” with an RSVP at the bottom.42 Similarly, the incredibly popu­lar preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick, supported by the WAC’s organ­ization and publicity, began advocating reconciliation dinners across Amer­ic­ a in 1945 as a way to get Americans of all stripes to unite ­under their common beliefs and values. He promoted them as including all branches of American religion: “Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Negroes.”43 Stepping out of such a construction had significant consequences, as the OWI discovered in 1943 when it explic­itly highlighted Amer­i­ca’s racial sins during an advertising campaign. Conservative politicians and businesspeople had already become concerned with some of the group’s advertisements, which continued to portray the government as having some responsibility for much of the nation’s economic prob­lems, including housing, fair pay, and food shortages. Such portrayals also upset the WAC and its corporate partners, which saw the ads as supporting and extending New Deal policies in direct opposition to their promotion of f­ ree enterprise.44 However, l­ ittle came of the m ­ atter ­until the OWI, pursuing African American support for the war, openly and explic­itly referred to racism as un-­American. The reaction was swift and decisive. Southern Congress members, joined by business leaders, challenged the OWI’s efficacy and relevance in domestic affairs, noting that the WAC was ­doing far more for the American cause at home.45 Consequently, Congress all but disbanded the OWI’s Domestic Branch in 1943, greatly reduced its bud­ get for direct “domestic propaganda” efforts, and transferred most of its old appropriations to the WAC, which proved a better purveyor of the type of

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unity ­those leaders envisioned.46 Challenging f­ ree enterprise was bad enough, but openly discussing Amer­i­ca’s racial divide was simply too far for too many politicians and businesspeople alike. Congress’s decision to cut the OWI’s bud­get effectively combined the OWI’s activities with ­those of the WAC. ­After Congress dismembered the OWI’s Domestic Branch, Elmer Davis, who had recently taken over as director of the OWI, de­cided to fold the Bureau of Campaigns, which used to coordinate the Domestic Branch’s operations, with the Office of Program Coordination. The latter agency mostly coordinated the WAC’s campaigns, ensuring they met the government’s intended directives.47 The merger both gave more governmental oversight to the WAC and provided a consistent revenue stream for its campaigns. Consequently, the WAC became largely an extension of the government throughout the rest of the war. Although it was certainly advancing the business interests of its corporate partners, it was careful to ensure ­those interests never stepped beyond or contradicted the government’s intended message. As Charles G. Mortimer Jr., a member of the WAC’s executive committee, once complained, neither the government nor the public was impressed when “the agony of death on the battlefield” was used to entice ­people to “consider the superlative qualities of a cigarette.”48 Davis kept the advertising community in line, consolidating direction of all war advertising u ­ nder the auspices of the OWI. He made it clear that e­ very war-­themed advertisement should have three functions: “It should tell the ­people how they could help win the war, it should inspire ­people to take the desired action, and it should make them want to do so immediately.”49 Roo­ se­velt was pleased. Asked to provide a statement to the Advertising Federation of Amer­i­ca’s annual convention in 1943, Roo­se­velt wrote, “Splendid support has been given to many campaigns in the war effort, for which your organ­ization is to be congratulated.” Nevertheless, he also noted, “We can, however, in this day and time always do more than we are already ­doing.”50 ­After reading the WAC’s annual report the next year, Davis described the WAC as the government’s “most power­ful focal point for directing vital information on home front prob­lems to the American ­people.”51 Roo­se­velt made the relationship both more official and more secretive when he invited members of the WAC executive committee to the White House for “off-­the-­record indoctrination talks” with the president and members of the War Department, Navy Department, and other executive agencies. The meeting would become an annual event in the coming years.52 Chief among the government’s “home front prob­lems” was the racial, ethnic, and class divisions that, it thought, threatened to undermine the war effort. Consequently, the WAC learned from the OWI’s previous misstep and



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ensured that a central part of its war-­themed campaigns was the classification of all divisions as inherently religious. As historian Wendy Wall aptly writes, “By casting pluralism in religious terms, public intellectuals, government officials, and o ­ thers could stress Amer­i­ca’s demo­cratic diversity without reinforcing potentially divisive loyalties.”53 Unity was needed above all, they argued, and religion was the most useful means to achieve that unity. Even if that unity was only rhetorical, numerous politicians, businesspeople, and advertising executives thought it was still effective since it fit with their po­liti­cal goals. As the WAC became the government’s preeminent propagandist by 1944, it tried to ensure that only religious differences counted in the minds of the American ­people.

Giving Cues to the Church Although Roo­se­velt and his propagandists certainly understood the benefits of, and intentionally employed, religion as a means of national unity, many religious leaders like Fosdick may not have fully understood what they ­were ­doing or, at the very least, what the government was using them to do. A g­ reat many of Amer­i­ca’s ministers, priests, and rabbis clearly understood and craved the potential influence and power an emphasis on religion presented, but many also seemed genuinely swept up in the increased emphasis on religion during the war. For the most part, Roo­se­velt and his allies in the OWI and WAC used this to their advantage, working with religious institutions when they echoed the type of unity they endorsed and ignoring them when ­those same religious groups sought to use that unity for their own aims. As Johnson had criticized in late 1942, the government both created the “religious interpretation and justification” for the war and gave “cue[s] to the church” about when and how to promote them. Such cooperation was not always smooth, but as the war developed, the OWI and WAC became more ­adept at enlisting the aid of vari­ ous religious representatives in their propaganda campaigns. Fosdick’s reconciliation dinners are a typical example of such cooperation, though Fosdick himself was far from typical. In fact, expressing the popularity Fosdick enjoyed, even before the war, in modern terms is difficult. His Riverside Church in Manhattan looked out at the world as a neo-­Gothic watchtower. Supported financially by wealthy and power­ful Americans, including John D. Rocke­fel­ler Jr., Fosdick’s congregation became highly influential in New York and throughout Amer­i­ca. A prolific author, Fosdick’s books ­were widely read across the country, and seminarians, including t­hose outside of liberal Protestantism, used Fosdick as a model for reaching an audience with

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a message they longed to hear. His National Vespers radio program was wildly popu­lar, and he was widely covered in the national press. Like many liberal, Protestant ministers of his day, Fosdick was an ardent pacifist before the war. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Fosdick did not reject pacifism a­ fter the attack on Pearl Harbor, but he did consent to keep his view to himself and support the nation, if not the war. In his first radio address ­after the attack, Fosdick called all p­ eople of faith to stand together against a cowardly and dastardly foe. He could not, and would not, call the war a holy war or give it any divine sanction, but he insisted that, despite any theological reservations, American Christians ­were still Americans and “must stand by [their] ­people.”54 He also called not for an end to interdenominational strife but for at least a cease-­fire in that theological ­battle so that ­people of faith could assist in the far more dire b­ attle before them, a sentiment that the WAC was especially ­eager to promote. Fosdick was not alone in expressing such a sentiment, nor was he the only religious leader the WAC and OWI cooperated with. Catholic priest Fulton Sheen, perhaps the only religious figure in Amer­i­ca more prolific, charismatic, and popu­lar than Fosdick, concurred with his assessment of the war. Sheen’s radio program was one of the more popu­lar in Amer­i­ca, with Catholics and non-­Catholics alike hanging on his ­every electrifying and insightful word. Although Sheen attracted a diverse following, he was not an ecumenist in any sense. He explic­itly and unequivocally affirmed the authority of the pope and publicly hoped that a­ fter the war the nations of the world might see that they must give up some of their national sovereignty to the international sovereignty of the papacy. Yet Sheen also insisted that, despite their many differences, all Americans must join together in a fight against not just totalitarianism but irreligion and antireligion, a theme that the WAC then amplified in several campaigns, including its Loyalty Days program.55 Some religious support was more generic. Nearly all religious groups ­were happy to emphasize the importance of religion and plead with the nation for religious unity. They also craved a greater national prominence, and Roo­se­ velt was happy to give it to them, as long as it benefited his own goals. For instance, in April 1942, Roo­se­velt happily wrote a lengthy and public endorsement letter to L. O. Hartman of the Associated Church Press, a conglomeration of religious periodicals. Roo­se­velt lauded the organ­ization’s work t­ oward national unity, extolled its importance in American society, and stressed that though religion must be a unifying force in Amer­i­ca during such times, unity did not demand uniformity of thought or practice.56 However, whenever religious leaders used the same calls for religious unity Roo­se­velt and his propagandists so adamantly endorsed to promote policies or plans that did not align



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with his own, Roo­se­velt ignored their requests for correspondence or meetings and the WAC refused to promote their activities. For example, the same month he wrote and publicized his letter to the Associated Church Press, the president curtly dismissed a proposal for Walter W. Van Kirk, general secretary of the FCC, and John Foster Dulles to come to the White House to pre­ sent the findings of the Committee for a Just and Durable Peace. Van Kirk noted that the FCC was fully ­behind the war effort and praying for Roo­se­velt and the troops daily. However, he also hoped to speak with Roo­se­velt about the group’s plans for both a more religious and just Amer­i­ca and a more promising postwar world. Van Kirk assured the president that the American p­ eople wanted and needed to see their commander in chief consulting with religious leaders about the nation’s spiritual and material well-­being. Roo­se­velt was not interested in their plans and declined their request for a meeting.57 In a clear example of what kind of consultations Roo­se­velt was looking for, he was incredibly interested when a group of prominent Methodists, many of whom held leadership positions in the FCC, petitioned to come to the White House a year l­ater. This meeting would be private and confidential, rather than a publicity stunt on behalf of the religious leaders. The Methodists also wanted to speak about the nation’s spiritual health and Amer­i­ca’s postwar plans, but they additionally proposed to assist the president in swaying public opinion in ­favor of his programs.58 This was a reversal from many of the men’s e­ arlier stances and in complete disharmony with the stated goals of the FCC, as Charles Clayton Morrison so pointedly reminded Roo­se­velt two years e­ arlier. Morrison had claimed that the FCC could not lend assistance to Roo­se­velt’s policies ­because it was not a po­liti­cal institution and, pursuant to the foundational separation of church and state in Amer­ic­ a, could only lend moral support. The Methodist leaders had recently developed a dif­fer­ent understanding of what was moral and what was po­liti­cal, and their understanding fit perfectly with the religious propaganda Roo­se­velt had recently begun developing with the OWI and WAC. In a move that would become a common notion ­after the war and unto the pre­sent day, the Methodists claimed that since God cared about the spiritual well-­being of the nation, m ­ atters of national security and public decency w ­ ere, at their heart, moral rather than po­liti­cal issues. ­Later champions of the concept would call this gray area between religion and politics the “social and civil order” and refer to “social” issues, but ­these Methodist ministers simply labeled them as moral concerns. This put the issues u ­ nder the purview of religious representatives who could then, and ­were indeed obligated to, work within the public realm for the good of Amer­i­ca. Roo­se­velt heartily welcomed their offer and met with them for far longer than their allotted time.59

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This was the type of cooperation for which Roo­se­velt had been craving since before Pearl Harbor, and its absence was why he was hesitant to work directly with the FCC and like-­minded groups during Amer­i­ca’s first year in the war. However, he had been encouraged to seek such cooperation from business and advertising leaders, as well as his own assistant secretary of the navy, Ralph A. Bard, so he welcomed the cooperation of religious leaders, as long as they did not try to use the exposure to push their own agendas.60 The FCC’s leadership often fell into this category, and its per­sis­tent criticisms frustrated Roo­se­velt tremendously. However, he was still convinced that it was the one Protestant group that could offer him the religious platform and audience he desired. One business leader, Joseph M. Proskauer, suggested the president completely circumvent the FCC and wage his own religious public relations campaign. He went so far as to draft a public statement for Roo­se­velt, which he had run by some of his “best PR men.” Proskauer wanted Roo­se­velt to contend that “Hitler frankly avow[ed] the purpose to destroy the very basis of the Hebraic-­Christian civilization.” Hitler’s hatred of religion manifested in “no mere bigotry against a sect; no mere persecution of a group.” It was instead an “explicit threat to undermine the foundations of religion itself; to pervert the ethical and moral implications of ­every creed that exist[ed] in [the] western world; to substitute the barbarities of a primitive Teutonic paganism for the spirituality of Moses and of Jesus and to tear asunder the very fabric of the freeman’s right to worship God.”61 Roo­se­velt likely agreed with Proskauer’s assessment of the Nazi threat; he had publicly made such statements numerous times. However, he did not appear ready to completely circumvent, and therefore outright provoke, the FCC if he did not have to. Nor did his own “PR men” in the OWI want him to do so. They had a plan that harnessed the FCC’s existent religious infrastructure, while changing the nature of the religious conversation. Unable to control the FCC directly, Roo­se­velt’s propaganda machine rather chose to work with it, while si­mul­ta­neously instructing the council on the easiest way to achieve the public influence it desired. For instance, in the summer of 1942, a few months ­after the FCC’s failed attempt at a meeting with Roo­se­velt, Elmer Davis helped arrange another meeting.62 Davis reiterated that “the Protestant churches [had] been made to look pretty sour on the war.” This, according to Davis and his compatriots in the OWI, was due to only a small group of out­spoken ministers who “want[ed] to sit out this war while ­others [won] it for them.” The group petitioning for the meeting contained none of t­hese men, and members carried with them a statement of religious support for the war signed by almost two hundred religious leaders, including many from outside of the FCC, such as several leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention. Davis hoped



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the meeting could be “played up in news and newsreels and might have a highly beneficial effect on public morale.”63 Unlike the previous request from Van Kirk and Dulles, this meeting would be on the White House’s terms and promoted with its ends in mind. Davis thought the meeting went well and wanted to build on its momentum by organ­izing a more public display of religious support. He worked for the next few months to arrange a publicly televised conference of religious leaders in Washington, D.C. Davis’s plans proved too g­ rand for Roo­se­velt, though. Although Davis eventually received permission to go ahead with the conference, he was forced to drastically scale back the event from his original vision, mostly due to Roo­se­velt’s hesitance to become too entwined with the FCC. One of Davis’s assistant directors, Gardner Cowles Jr., managed to arrange for a more l­imited conference with religious leaders, which Roo­se­velt approved.64 ­After receiving permission from Roo­se­velt to “go ahead with the Protestants,” Davis contacted an editor at the Columbia Broadcasting System, Ruth Lang, to devise an appropriate list of representative Protestants.65 The president had already approved a similar list, but de­cided to employ a tactic that the OWI and WAC would integrate into their campaigns. He insisted that the group could not completely signify all of American religion ­unless the “Negro Churches” w ­ ere also represented.66 Organizers billed the conference as a united appeal of “fifteen of the major faiths, Christian and Jewish” for religious unity against the Axis powers. Charles “Electric” Wilson, who, that same month, would leave his position as president of General Electric to become vice-­chairman of the War Production Board, headed the conference’s chief committee. Wilson was highly respected by both Roo­se­velt and Davis and would become instrumental in transforming Amer­i­ca into a war economy and driving the production of munitions, aircraft, and shipbuilding. ­After the war, he also became an essential promoter of religion as a foundational ele­ment in American life, a role he began at the conference. In a letter to Henry St. George Tucker, presiding bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Amer­i­ca and one of the conference’s leading figures, Roo­se­velt expressed his hope that the conference would be successful at advancing religious cooperation. In what could serve as a synopsis of Roo­se­velt’s burgeoning religious propaganda, he wrote, “What a ­grand ­thing it would be if, as part of the war effort, our religious impacts could cease being separate forces in competition with each other, presenting instead a united front against our enemies who are also the enemies of religion.”67 Thanks to the cooperation of the OWI and FCC, Roo­se­velt had fi­nally found a common ground with the nation’s leading Protestant figures and an institutional platform for his propaganda.

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Much of this cooperation came as liberal Protestants fi­nally agreed with the president’s assertion that the Axis powers ­were “enemies of religion.” With Amer­i­ca’s most influential religious group joining with Catholics, Jews, and conservative Protestants in this assertion, Roo­se­velt was able to achieve at least a modicum of the unity he desired. By 1943, the Nazi threat to religion became a common trope in po­liti­cal and religious speeches throughout the country. Roo­se­velt and the OWI encouraged the FCC, now headed by Tucker, to note Hitler’s threat in their publications, and they fi­nally agreed to do so.68 Even the National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ) began advocating religious unity not as a noble goal unto itself but as a potent weapon against a common foe.69 Through the next two years, a gradual development took place over the national definition of the war, at least in regard to the Eu­ro­pean theater of operation. “Remember Pearl Harbor” remained the driving force in the Pacific, as Americans vowed to get revenge on the Japa­nese.70 American attitudes ­toward the conflict in Eu­rope ­were more complex. Some Americans supported Benito Mussolini.71 Americans opposed to the Nazis often cast the war as a ­battle against evil, but few knew the extent of the concentration camps or the Nazis’ many horrors ­until ­after the war. More properly, few paid attention to the American Jews who ­were attempting to publicize the scant reports of the ongoing Holocaust. However, once the Axis powers became the enemies of religion and Roo­se­velt and his propagandists w ­ ere, as Johnson stated, giving the “cue to the churches” about the nature of the war, a more definitive understanding of the war took hold, and Americans soon characterized themselves as the inherently religious ­enemy of the Nazi scourge.72 The assertion that a religious sentiment lay at Amer­ic­ a’s heart was certainly not new, but during the l­ater years of the war, it became a strategic national identity and the foundation of the religious propaganda advanced by the WAC and echoed by Amer­i­ca’s religious elite. The “twin loves” of God and country that Francis Spellman had proclaimed at the war’s onset became entwined with the national ethos. For example, the Golden Rule Foundation of New York, a bipartisan and interfaith organ­ization, collaborated with the WAC to sponsor Loyalty Days across the nation. They designed the events as a “mobilization of moral and spiritual forces,” in which “­every citizen [was] cordially invited and ­every member [was] confidently expected in a h ­ ouse of worship for meditation, self-­examination, prayer, and life adjustment.” Explic­itly and unabashedly fusing patriotic and spiritual devotion, the program was a smashing success. Both Roo­se­velt and the OWI enthusiastically supported the campaign.73 As the war progressed, the WAC ramped up its production of patriotic posters and pamphlets, often touting Amer­i­ca’s moral and religious foundations as its



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reason for imminent victory. Religious celebrities like Sheen, Fosdick, and Norman Vincent Peale preached love of country and a return to Amer­ic­ a’s religious foundations, which they defined as Judeo-­Christian, inherently patriotic, and ­little ­else.74 Fosdick even went so far as to write, publish, and give away a small pamphlet titled For Americans Only, which detailed the extent to which Hitler hated and sought to destroy Amer­i­ca’s religious character.75 Racial, ethnic, and even gender differences still divided the country, as immigrants, African Americans, and w ­ omen ­were allowed access to jobs and at least a modicum of social prestige that they did not, and could not, enjoy before the war. Amer­ i­ca’s religious, po­liti­cal, and business elite ­were aware of ­these changes and the potential tensions they would likely create when the war was over, but as long as the war remained, Americans simply needed to remember their faith. Roo­se­velt gave perhaps the most resounding endorsement of this vague “American faith” during the 1943 Religious Education Week. In a statement overseen by his chief propagandist, Elmer Davis, Roo­se­velt proclaimed that if the war was to be won, all Americans “must avail [themselves] of the full extent of [their] spiritual heritage.” Though Amer­i­ca had already established itself as the arsenal of democracy, it must now prove to be an “arsenal of spiritual values.” Americans, no ­matter their race or creed, ­were joined in a common character that set them apart from the rest of the world. This gave them their strength of w ­ ill and would ultimately propel them to victory. T ­ here was a warning, however. ­Unless Americans had a “faith in freedom . . . ​a faith undismayed by all obstacles, [their] l­abor and [their] strug­gles in the pre­sent strug­gle must as­suredly be in vain.”76 Such proclamations would become the cornerstone of the religious patriotism that scholars would ­later call Christian nationalism or Amer­ic­ a’s civil religion, but, for Roo­se­velt, they w ­ ere not natu­ral expressions of some deep-­seated national heritage. They ­were calculated manifestations of a developing religious propaganda and carefully orchestrated for specific purposes. For example, in preparation for the president’s statement at the next year’s Religious Education Week, Roo­se­velt’s staff penned a draft that followed the spirit of Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address. The ­middle section of the speech noted the Nazis’ aggression and Japan’s cowardly attack, yet it also placed responsibility of the world’s affairs on the shoulders of the United States. It then looked to the world beyond the war and called for Americans to strive for peace rather than retribution. The “­trials of peace,” ­after the war would “call upon [Americans] for sacrifice, and often for the suppression of personal advantage that the greater good may be evoked.” The White House removed the section from the final statement. Congress had already cut the OWI off at the knees by that time for drawing too much attention to Amer­ic­ a’s

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divisions, and the administration de­cided that the sentiment, though not technically the same, was still a step too far.77 Instead, Roo­se­velt echoed a sentiment that Amer­i­ca’s religious leaders had begun extolling over the past year: Amer­i­ca’s fighting forces had “exemplified the religious background of [American] culture.” Roo­se­velt praised the ser­ vicemen not only for their ser­vice and sacrifice but also for their love of God and devotion to Amer­ic­ a’s moral foundations.78 As with all wars, Americans back home had longed for the return of their sons, husbands, and f­ athers since they left for b­ attle. Yet near the end of the war, many religious leaders cast their return in a dif­fer­ent light. As Roo­se­velt echoed in his address, they saw the fighting men as Amer­i­ca’s best and brightest, in their courage and work ethic but also in their spirituality. Groups like the NCCJ and the governing chaplains’ boards had worked very hard to promote a revival of religion among the ranks, and, indeed, t­ here was an upsurge of religious devotion in the military. Religious leaders even portrayed ser­vicemen as spiritual ideals, perfectly representing the religious unity and “twin loves” t­ oward which all Americans ­were supposed to strive. A growing number of priests, ministers, and rabbis began to teach that when the troops came home, all would be well with God and the world.79 The 1944 publication Faith of Our Fighters was the most prominent and popu­lar work to advance this idea. The book provided almost no original material, but instead took excerpts from the speeches and essays of prominent religious and po­liti­cal leaders and combined them to pre­sent the picture of an ideal military force. Eschewing religious and cultural distinctions, Amer­i­ ca’s fighting men worked together in perfect harmony, the essays contended, and they would bring that harmony back home with them a­ fter they finished bringing freedom to the rest of the world.80 The book closed with an original message from Vice President Henry Wallace, who stated that “democracy [was] the only form of government which harmonize[d] fully with the religious princi­ples of the Bible.” He then equated American history with the biblical story.81 That dichotomy between the religious, freedom-­loving Americans and the antireligious, nearly demonic forces of Nazi Germany became a mainstay by the war’s end. Roo­se­velt’s strategic use of the OWI and WAC allowed him to establish it as both a po­liti­cal and religious trope, and the FCC’s adoption of the rhe­toric gave it religious authority. Guided by professional propagandists, Amer­i­ca’s religious leaders rejoiced that the nation had come together despite differences of opinion and interest. American ser­vicemen, they claimed, had experienced equal divisions but had collaborated in a far more profound way to achieve the religious harmony all Americans desired. They w ­ ere a shining



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example of what all Americans should strive to be: a diverse group united in a common cause. A ­great many religious leaders hoped ­those brave men would return from war to teach all Americans how to have that same, uniting faith.

A New American Faith In the end, the hope ­these priests, pastors, and rabbis put in the military was rewarded, though the type of uniting faith Amer­i­ca’s soldiers, sailors, and marines brought home went far beyond their intentions or control, especially when the religious propaganda promoted so assiduously at home produced a religious uniformity among ser­vicemen in the field. That propaganda found fertile ground in the military, even if commanders insisted that only they, or the chaplains they commissioned, directed any religious education among the troops. Many in the military establishment resented the mismanagement and overall confusion created by the competing programs and goals of Amer­i­ca’s religious bodies during the First World War.82 Furthermore, the military tended to eschew difference for the sake of uniformity and cohesion, including religious differences. This held true before and ­after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Consequently, the armed forces embraced an interreligious schema of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews who all believed in the same core values, and they ­either encouraged or outright mandated religious cooperation by chaplains and religious organ­izations serving the nation’s soldiers, sailors, and marines. However, like Roo­se­velt, military commanders ­were not content to let religious leaders define the type and purpose of religion their forces should embrace and constructed their own programs of religious education. Although the military’s religious interpretation fit incredibly well with the religious propaganda Roo­se­velt, the OWI, and the WAC developed over the ensuing years, the military command also insisted that it control such impor­tant communications within the armed forces and did not actively cooperate with the WAC or OWI, despite promoting the same religious propaganda in its ranks. The military’s desire for a more structured and purposeful religious organ­ ization first manifested in how it designated religious authority in its ranks. Hoping to avoid the internecine religious rivalries of the G ­ reat War, it set up a structured system of repre­sen­ta­tion for chaplains and the religious traditions they represented. All Catholic chaplains w ­ ere ­under the purview of the Military Ordinariate and Archbishop Francis Spellman, the apostolic vicar of the armed forces. The ordinariate was responsible for the se­lection, support, and, at least in m ­ atters of theological and doctrinal orthodoxy, oversight of Catholic chaplains. Similarly, the National Jewish Welfare Board oversaw Jewish

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chaplains. It in no way represented ­every American Jewish community or individual Jew. The country’s Jewish population had already become incredibly diverse, often disagreeing over theological, cultural, and national perspectives. Yet the board did represent a large cross-­section of the American Jewish community, and the War Department subsequently authorized it “with the responsibility of granting ecclesiastical endorsement of rabbis for ser­vice as chaplains and of supervising and assisting them in their work.”83 The endorsement of Protestant chaplains was more complicated. The War Department devised a quota system for each recognized Protestant denomination in the nation based on both national statistics and the internal numbers of the armed forces, though the former w ­ ere the primary determinant due to internal statistical challenges. However, the military did not want to cooperate with dozens of religious bodies to ensure fair repre­sen­ta­tion and competent training and support. Consequently, the War Department designated the FCC as the primary contact between American Protestant chaplains and the armed forces and, like Roo­se­velt, found itself beholden to, and often frustrated with, the FCC.84 Ironically, the War Department’s desire for a Protestant consensus, at least or­gan­i­za­tion­ally, contributed to the further fracturing of American Protestant institutions. Both the fundamentalist American Council of Christian Churches (ACCC) and the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) formed in opposition to the perceived influence of the FCC. The FCC’s claim to represent all American Protestants and the federal government’s apparent ac­cep­tance of that claim incensed both organ­izations. The War Department’s authorization of the FCC to designate and or­ga­nize Protestant chaplains proved to be the proverbial straw. Both the ACCC and the NAE established their own commissions on chaplains in the armed forces soon ­after their formation and quickly petitioned the War Department for an equal status with the FCC. Although ­there ­were long delays, the officially in­de­pen­dent standing of Protestant denominations meant that individual groups w ­ ere able to effectively support and oversee the chaplains of their respective members u ­ ntil they re85 ceived institutional support in 1944. The continued segregation of the armed forces and nearly all American churches meant that many African American denominations and even individual congregations felt l­ittle repre­sen­ta­tion by any of ­these groups, including the supposedly racially enlightened FCC. Consequently, some of t­ hese groups de­cided to provide their own support for the almost 125,000 Black soldiers and sailors in the armed forces and the Black chaplains who served the segregated units, further fragmenting the religious repre­sen­ta­tion and support of the military.86 Despite this fragmentation, the military put forth a concerted effort to head off the growing religious diver-



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sity of its soldiers, sailors, and marines before it could cause prob­lems. The explicit differentiation of only three religious groups—­Protestants, Catholics, and Jews—­served to rein in this diversity.87 In addition to limiting the number of official religious traditions chaplains could represent, the War Department also insisted that they cooperate with each other, including in the per­for­mance of religious duties, regardless of their personal beliefs. The military drilled this form of liberal ecumenicity, where chaplains subsumed distinct theological differences ­under common beliefs and for a common goal, into the chaplains at the beginning of their training.88 At the chaplains’ school, the military forced them into conversation and cooperation with men of other faiths and taught them to encourage the same among the men u ­ nder their care.89 In the field, Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish chaplains usually shared the same worship space, which forced them to coordinate with each other to ensure every­one had equal access. Each chaplain’s monthly reports even included a question on what he was ­doing for men of other faiths. The religious competition so common in civilian life did not altogether dis­appear in the chaplaincy, but t­ here was a commonly accepted understanding that all chaplains, though bound to their own doctrinal and theological commitments, w ­ ere ­there to serve the spiritual needs of their men, without distinction. In one instance, the army even discharged a Baptist chaplain too zealous in his approach to evangelism and antagonistic to his fellow chaplains, especially Catholics and Jews.90 Although insisting on retraining its chaplains according to the military’s own values and traditions, the War Department also cooperated with religious organ­izations, as long as t­ hose groups promoted the type of religious patriotism the military preferred. Few groups objected to such a stipulation; many had already ­adopted the same schema and would actively coordinate with the OWI and WAC to promote it at home. T ­ hose who objected simply could not pass up the evangelistic opportunities the military afforded. American Christians, in par­tic­u­lar, had long looked to the military as a ripe field for the harvesting of souls. During the Civil War, many ministers saw revival meetings in both Union and Confederate encampments as the surest ways to a hopeful ­future and God’s divine presence.91 As Amer­i­ca’s religious communities led the pro­cession to the ­Great War, they also inundated the troops with religious pamphlets and Bibles, along with their famed coffee and doughnuts.92 The Second World War was no dif­fer­ent. Protestant, Catholic, and now Jewish organ­ izations flooded the troops with pocket-­size prayer books, designed to give the troops an immediate resource for religious reflection and a handy reference book for their understandable questions. Fulton Sheen’s The Armor of God was one of the more popu­lar prayer books available, even among non-­Catholics,

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despite being written for Catholic soldiers. Although it contained numerous references to Catholic thought and practice, Sheen primarily or­ga­nized it as a sort of “frequently asked questions” book for men in war.93 As with its chaplain schools, the military did not merely concede religious education to religious institutions, however; it also offered its own religious instruction to the troops that presented patriotism and religious devotion as nearly synonymous or, at least, symbiotic. For instance, the War Department, through the Office of the Chief of Chaplains, supplied a “Testament” to ­every soldier and sailor in the armed forces. The pocket-­size books contained Scriptures, but ­were also or­ga­nized much like Sheen’s The Armor of God, providing religious advice and prayers of comfort and courage. Holding to the military’s established religious model, the Testaments w ­ ere available in three versions: Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish.94 The War Department also provided the Song and Ser­vice Book for Ship and Field. Split into two parts, the books w ­ ere intended by the War Department as a resource for religious ser­vices throughout the army and navy, but they also contained personal devotionals for use by the soldiers and sailors. The first part provided devotionals and a short liturgy, divided into Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish sections, followed by a second part containing songs to be shared by all. Explic­itly intended to “raise morale” and promote a “common unity,” the songs made no distinction between traditions, though, tellingly, the vast majority w ­ ere Christian hymns.95 Neither did the song book separate patriotic songs from religious hymns. For instance, “O Beautiful for Spacious Skies” was preceded by “God Be with You Till We Meet Again” and followed by “Watchman, Tell Us of the Night” and “Blessed Assurance, Jesus Is Mine.”96 The effect, quite possibly intentionally, was to suggest that love of God and love of country ­were, if not synonymous, then perfectly compatible. Perhaps the most explicit examples of this proposed compatibility, and the cooperation between the military and religious groups to promote it, w ­ ere the educational rallies and programs of the NCCJ. The NCCJ saw the military as a unique situation, where war threw diverse men and w ­ omen who would likely never interact ­under normal circumstances into intimate situations. The NCCJ hoped to use this situation to promote its vision of Amer­i­ca as a land where Protestants, Catholics, and Jews found common ground in their love for freedom and God. Well-­matched with the military’s own concept of religion in the armed forces, the War Department invited the NCCJ not only to hold its rallies on military bases but also to participate in the indoctrination and education of military recruits and the civilian personnel who would serve within and around military installations.97 By the end of the summer of 1943, the NCCJ participated in the education of over two million men



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and w ­ omen in just over two hundred military camps.98 Produced in coordination with the War Department, the NCCJ’s indoctrination videos The World We Want to Live In and Why We Fight ­were shown in over one hundred additional installations. The educational videos and programs taught trainees to “[re­spect] honest differences, yet [work] together in a common cause,” and ­there was no greater cause than the protection of American freedom.99 The NCCJ was correct about the unique situation created by the military, though its own perspectives and goals certainly colored its evaluation of the program’s benefits and promise. The military did force diverse p­ eople into close contact. That contact did not always result in new, harmonious relationships as the NCCJ was prone to claim, but, despite the numerous conflicts common on first contact, soldiers and sailors w ­ ere more often inclined to accept differences when they worked closely with someone of a dif­fer­ent culture, experience, or religion. Since they w ­ ere forced to work with them anyway, they had ­little choice but to accept ­others’ differences and, sometimes begrudgingly, learn about other cultures and perspectives. On most bases far from the front lines, both at home and abroad, the military’s system of religious cooperation worked well. The military expected chaplains of all faiths to work together and for the common good but also expected Jewish and Catholic chaplains to provide unique religious ser­vices for their respective adherents. The War Department also sanctioned Protestant chaplains, each officially endorsed by one of the dozens of Protestant denominations, to provide ser­vices to ­those of their own tradition. However, ­there was an understanding, and sometimes explicit o ­ rders from base or field commanders, that Protestant chaplains ­were to provide at least one “nondenominational” ser­vice for all Protestants on base.100 Other­wise, chaplains from each of the three faiths w ­ ere to assist in the spiritual education and aid of the troops ­under the guidance of their respective institutional leaders. They ­were to cooperate with each other, and be able to actively work with each other, but their spiritual purview was l­imited to their respective religious traditions. Yet the military’s brand of structured ecumenicity produced unforeseen consequences as soldiers and sailors left their bases for the war’s battlefields. On the front lines, men ­were far less likely to care about any doctrinal or theological distinctions. They simply wanted God. Not all soldiers, certainly. Some cared very deeply about their theological heritage and even denominational identity. Many ­others cared ­little for God u ­ nder any banner or name. The adage that “­there are no atheists in foxholes” was simply not true, much to the chagrin of many chaplains. In a letter to his f­amily, one combat chaplain, fatigued ­after days ­under ­enemy barrage and by the lack of religious enthusiasm among his troops, complained that the adage was “tommyrot” and

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a “damnable lie.” The chaplain, Russell Cartwright Stroup, might have been so upset b­ ecause he thought the idea besmirched the religion of his few faithful soldiers or simply ­because he bemoaned the fact that it did not hold true to his own experience. ­Either way, he insisted that atheists abounded.101 As chaplains like Stroup left the rear bases for the open seas or t­ oward the battlefields, they began eschewing many of the distinctions the military had so carefully constructed. Faced with hundreds, if not thousands, of disparate men u ­ nder their care, many chaplains found it difficult to turn away a soldier seeking spiritual guidance or ser­vice b­ ecause he was from another tradition. As a Catholic publication of the time noted, “The wide dispersal of men in military units and the wide diversity of religious beliefs and practices [made] it difficult ever to give complete religious coverage. Chaplains [­were] expected to serve the men of vari­ous religious beliefs, each to the best of his ability.”102 The specific motivations b­ ehind ­these interfaith ser­vices and practices ­were diverse. Sometimes the men themselves demanded that the chaplain serve every­one. Other times, a field commander might order the same. Some chaplains voluntarily shunned religious lines for the sake of ­either conversion or a genuine concern for the men’s spiritual health. ­There was usually a special exception for providing spiritual comfort to the d­ ying, regardless of religious affiliation.103 As the war progressed, more and more interfaith ser­vices and even public rallies ­were held, with Catholic priests offering seder ser­vices for all Jewish men on base or Jewish chaplains offering Communion ser­vices for Christian soldiers in the field. More commonly, however, Protestant chaplains took it upon themselves to represent religion of all stripes, even offering Holy Mass to Catholic troops. Some of t­ hese interfaith ser­vices developed out of necessity or a perceived opportunity for advancing the stated goals of interreligious unity advocated by the military. For instance, Daniel Fredrick, a Protestant naval chaplain, conducted numerous interfaith ser­vices for Catholic troops. The first such ser­ vice came almost immediately upon his deployment, when he was expected to provide religious ser­vices for all of the sailors aboard his naval vessel bound for New Guinea in June 1944. Since he was the only chaplain on board, the Catholic sailors asked him to conduct a ser­vice for them as well. Fredrick agreed, though his conscience would not allow him to offer the men the Eucharist.104 Occasionally, Fredrick even offered Catholic ser­vices alongside a Catholic priest, such as at a rededication ser­vice for a chapel in the Philippines. Fredrick led most of the ser­vice, but he had the Catholic chaplain step in during ­those activities that Catholic doctrine declared only an ordained priest could perform.105 Granted, official Catholic doctrine forbade Fredrick from per-



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forming any part of the ceremony, but he saw no issue with “helping out” his fellow Christians. Indeed, the military had taught him to do just that. During the first years of the war, ­these interfaith ser­vices w ­ ere rather sporadic and situational. As the war progressed many chaplains began adapting an already established practice, called general ser­vices, for use as an interfaith ser­vice, thus making them far more common. The Office of the Chief of Chaplains designed general ser­vices to accommodate both the diversity and wide dispersal of troops during the war. Officially distinguished from the more common divine ser­vices, the chaplains office or­ga­nized the events to provide nondenominational Protestant religious ser­vices to the troops and allowed ­either a Protestant or a Catholic chaplain to lead them. Although not officially sanctioned to do so, some Jewish chaplains also offered the ser­vices.106 This inconsistency did not seem to attract much attention. However, by 1943, many Protestant chaplains had begun hosting general ser­vices for all troops who ­were willing to attend, regardless of religious faith. The ser­vices ­were still predominantly Protestant in nature, but, hoping to attract Catholic ser­vicemen as well, some Protestant chaplains also included practices that the chaplains office had l­imited to Catholic divine ser­vices and Catholic theology declared only ordained Catholic priests should offer. The rosary was sometimes included in the ser­vice and Protestant ministers offered the troops Holy Communion, though they often still spoke of the sacrament in Protestant terms. ­These ministers treated the ser­vices as something par­tic­ u­lar to the military. Just as the WAC and OWI ­were insisting that Americans on the home front subsume class, ethnic, and racial distinctions in ­favor of a religious identity, military chaplains often demanded that ser­vicemen subsume former religious distinctions u ­ nder one’s identity as an American soldier or sailor. The practice became so widespread in the navy that the Office of the Chief of Chaplains released a memorandum to navy chaplains properly defining the terms and forbidding Protestant chaplains from providing general ser­vices or Catholic divine ser­vices or promoting a “religious ser­vice which is peculiar” to the navy.107 The general ser­vices and the increasingly popu­lar idea that one’s religious practice and identity came ­behind one’s patriotic devotion incensed the Military Ordinariate. ­After the navy’s memorandum and official ­orders attempting to eliminate the practice in 1944, the ordinariate republished the o ­ rders in its circular letter, “­because [it had] found that they [had] escaped the notice of some chaplains.108 It also reiterated that the ordinariate forbade “participation by Catholic chaplains in inter-­faith rallies” and rejected the concept “that dogma no longer counts—­that what counts is ‘fellowship.’ ” It then declared,

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“With men of all creeds and no creed, we rally to the defense of our country when it is attacked, we rally also to the defense of social ideals, of social justice, of common decency, of Americanism.” However, “to rally again in the name of religion, when the name ‘religion’ means a thousand dif­fer­ent ­things to a thousand dif­fer­ent ­people, this we cannot see.”109

A Most Useful Religion The Military Ordinariate was right, of course. Religion did mean “a thousand dif­fer­ent t­ hings to a thousand dif­fer­ent ­people.” However, that was the point all along, both for the military command and for Roo­se­velt and his propagandists. The religious propaganda they advanced demanded that certain distinctions ­were ­either modulated or outright ignored in ­favor of a religious identity. Yet the advent of general ser­vices demonstrated that such a religious identity was difficult to control and tended to eschew all distinctions in f­ avor of an amorphous American religion. That religion was not yet fully developed by the end of the Second World War, but as religious propagandists discovered its usefulness ­after the war, they would develop and expand it into their campaigns. Religious leaders participated in t­ hose campaigns both during and a­ fter the war, but they w ­ ere never the central players, at least not in defining the nature and purpose of Amer­i­ca’s faith in freedom. Politicians, advertisers, and military commanders had their own religious interpretation of the conflict and, increasingly, the type of religion that Americans should be practicing. They ­were happy to work with religious leaders to promote that religion, but always on their own terms. The amorphous religious ecumenism a­ dopted by so many ser­vicemen went beyond civic leaders’ intentions, but it was also useful and allowed them to achieve the unity they desired in ways that fit their vari­ous personal and professional interests. Consequently, they w ­ ere far more willing to adapt to the soldiers’ patriotic faith than w ­ ere the religious leaders who once promoted the ideals on which the soldiers based that faith. The White House’s use of that faith, through the OWI and WAC, to elevate religion over class, ethnicity, and especially race had significant consequences, though. Positively, it allowed many Catholics and some Jews to sidestep established social and racial barriers in ­favor of a religious identity that promised access to the American mainstream.110 However, the rampant anti-­Semitism during the war proved that a religious identification produced barriers of its own and did far more to publicly hide prejudices than erase them. Most notably, white leaders ­eager to squash discussions of Amer­i­ca’s racial divide found g­ reat promise in the religiously derived narrative of unity so



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prominent during the war. They could admit to diversity and difference, while still extolling the benefits of unity and suppressing race as a divisive and un-­ American topic of conversation. The concealment of race through religious devotion served leaders’ plans for a nation at war, but it was similarly wielded to maintain a status quo of white authority ­after the war’s conclusion. Few expected the conflict’s end to usher in a utopian age; the First World War had all but eliminated such auspicious hopes. However, a ­g reat many Americans saw the promise of a new, better world emerging from the ashes, at least in terms of American freedom, unity, and dominance. A ­ fter all, military, po­liti­cal, and even religious leaders framed the war as a ­battle for the survival and flourishing of freedom itself and cast religion as the primary symbol of that freedom. Religious leaders especially hoped that when the soldiers, sailors, and marines who represented the best about Amer­i­ca returned home they would bring a more unified, cooperative concept of both Amer­i­ca and American religion with them. When the nearly sixteen million men and ­women of the armed forces returned to their friends and families, a ­g reat many did, in fact, bring this religious nationalism with them and found that many of their loved ones shared similar commitments.111 A g­ reat many religious leaders expected that as the nation dismantled its military and returned to a state of “normalcy,” the war’s end would usher in a new era of freedom and religious zeal. Yet the form of unified, cooperative religion that took root during the war went beyond the original intent of the liberal Protestants who had first envisioned it and aligned far more closely with the po­liti­cal, military, and business leaders who worked so hard to promote it. Furthermore, many po­liti­cal and military leaders saw a dif­fer­ent vision of the new postwar world that ran directly contrary to that of many religious leaders. Roo­se­velt had already demonstrated that he would only cooperate with religious elites when they advocated for religious unity in accord with his polices and in coordination with his agents. That one-­sided relationship only intensified a­ fter the war, as Harry S. Truman, Amer­i­ca’s military leadership, and Amer­i­ca’s power elite concluded that traditional approaches to the military and American power would no longer suffice. Religion had proved an effective ave­nue for national unity, even if that unity was only rhetorical. As civic leaders tried to sell Americans on new visions of the country and its place in the world, rhe­toric mattered. So, then, did religion. A new world was, indeed, emerging from the fog of war, and it would have profound consequences on American religion and the nation itself.

C h a p te r  3

Building a Better World

The new, postwar world so many Americans had longed for emerged from a cloud of dust, ash, and death. The cloud was figurative in the case of the war’s devastating effects on Eu­rope and Asia, the increasingly apparent rise of Soviet ambition and aggression, and the emerging realities of the Nazis’ unpre­ce­dented slaughter of innocents. In the case of the two mushroom clouds that erupted over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in August 1945, it was all too literal. The surprising death of President Franklin D. Roo­se­velt nearly four months before had already deflated American hopes. He had been in poor health for many years, but the White House had taken g­ reat pains to keep that fact from the American public. Consequently, when he died on April 12, 1945, just a few months a­ fter both his inauguration and his historic peace conference with Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin at Yalta, the public reacted with shock, grief, and trepidation. When ­running for his fourth term, Roo­se­velt dropped his often erratic and Soviet-­friendly vice president, Henry Wallace, and opted instead for a Missouri senator who had garnered a reputation for combating public grift and inefficiency, Harry S. Truman. It thus fell to Truman to end the war.1 Less than a month ­after his ascension to the presidency, the Allies officially defeated the Nazi scourge in Eu­rope. Almost three months ­later, Truman made the fateful decision to drop the atomic bombs, nicknamed ­Little Boy and Fat Man, over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. 73

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As the clouds cleared, more difficult decisions faced American leaders. Truman adamantly believed that the war had permanently changed the international situation and that Amer­i­ca must confront this new world head-on. During Truman’s first term as president, his administration fought both alongside and against other American leaders and institutions to determine Amer­ i­ca’s postwar identity and the type of world it would lead into the ­f uture. Despite their many differences, nearly all agreed that American leadership must be based, or at least seem to be based, on Amer­i­ca’s foundational religious heritage, though they often disagreed on what that heritage was. The devil, as they say, was in the details, and Truman, who had invested himself in the same harmonious and nationalistic American religious identity as his pre­ de­ces­sor and ­adopted much of the same religious propaganda he used to promote it, found that his chief opponent over t­hose details was the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in Amer­i­ca (FCC). The FCC’s Protestant leaders had gained an unpre­ce­dented influence over American and international policymaking during the formation of the United Nations (UN), and they had their own plans for forming a just and durable peace in the new world. Although they seemed as interested in promoting national unity through religion as Truman, the FCC’s leaders ­were extremely skeptical of the extensive reach of the military, its increasingly prevalent connection with American values, and Truman’s insistence that Catholic influence was essential for postwar peace. They also thought that Truman’s approach to interreligious unity went too far, though not in the same way as the military’s general ser­ vices during the war; the FCC’s leaders w ­ ere far more concerned with power than uniformity. Cooperation was one ­thing, but giving all groups equal access to po­liti­cal and cultural influence was too much for the FCC, which had always promoted a schema that conspicuously sought to define unity on its own terms and with its own ends in mind. Likewise, Truman thought the type of religious unity for which he advocated was best for both his policies and the world and, much like Roo­se­velt, initially thought the best resource for promoting his brand of American religion was the nation’s institutional religious bodies, most notably the FCC. Although FCC leaders promoted a nearly identical brand of religious unity, they adamantly opposed both the po­liti­cal goals Truman hoped to bring about through its promotion and his assumed guidance of its implementation through Amer­i­ca and the world. Consequently, they increasingly considered what Truman was advocating to be a dif­fer­ent kind of religion, not just a dif­fer­ent application of the same religious faith. For years, Truman disagreed and saw his own religious interpretation of the world as being at least compatible with that of the FCC, even if he saw the council’s application of that similar religious message as naive, at best.



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However, in his opinion that naïveté meant the FCC could not be trusted to marshal the world’s or even Amer­i­ca’s religious forces effectively in the postwar order. Due to their growing mistrust and perceived superiority over the nation’s religious calling, Truman and the FCC tried to interfere with the affairs of the other. When the FCC openly opposed Truman’s advancement of universal military training (UMT) for Amer­ic­ a’s youth and his desired public condemnation of communism from international religious leaders, Truman rejected it as a po­liti­cal ally and sought alternative means for promoting an American religion that advanced his own goals. Although he eventually ­adopted and expanded the same religious propaganda as Roo­se­velt, he also followed nearly the same pro­cess of determining how to, and who should, promote it and consistently wrestled with the FCC over cultural authority over Amer­i­ca’s religious identity. While Amer­ic­ a’s religious elite entered the postwar world with an extraordinary amount of public power, their skirmishes with Truman caused him to ultimately look beyond established religious institutions to create and promote the national religion he envisioned as professional propagandists set about creating Amer­ic­ a’s faith in freedom.

Wooing a Potential Ally Truman’s religious upbringing offered him a dif­fer­ent perspective from that of his pre­de­ces­sor. Whereas Roo­se­velt had been steeped in the rhe­toric of ecumenical cooperation and the theological openness of his Episcopalian roots, Truman was raised first as a Presbyterian and then as a devout Baptist. His parents tutored him in the biblical narrative and taught him that God was actively involved in the affairs of history, though his upbringing did not result in regular church attendance during Truman’s adult years, including his time in the Oval Office. He was also highly skeptical of public displays of piety and tended to avoid religious discussions during his presidency, even more than Roo­se­velt did. Yet Truman’s reputation as an irreligious man has far more to do with comparisons with his overtly religious successor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, than his a­ ctual religious orientation.2 Truman rejected both the sectarian views and rather strict piety of his Baptist heritage, even at an early age. As he wrote to his ­future wife, Elizabeth “Bess” Wallace, in 1911, Truman was “a member [of a Christian church], but not a very strenuous one.” He liked ­music, dancing, and playing cards, and he resented the boring lifestyle and hy­poc­risy so often produced from prohibiting such activities. “I am by religion like every­thing e­ lse,” he explained. “I think ­there is more in acting than in talking.”3 He was also highly suspicious of

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anyone who prominently displayed his or her religion for o ­ thers. “I’ve never thought that God gives a damn about pomp and circumstance,” he once wrote. “[Public] forms and ceremonies impress a lot of ­people, but I’ve never thought that the Almighty could be impressed by anything but the heart and soul of the individual.”4 Yet Truman had retained the idea that God was in control of history and asked the faithful to participate in God’s plans. Truman viewed the close of the Second World War as a momentous point in ­these plans. Providence had given Americans an excellent opportunity at the close of the ­Great War to lead the world t­ oward justice and peace. They had failed. Now, thirty years ­later, Providence gave them a second chance, and Truman did not intend to let it pass again.5 One can best witness Truman’s understanding of religion and its place in the burgeoning Cold War in a letter addressed to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States on April 29, 1946. Understandably, Truman’s letter included far more religious language than was common, yet he described concepts of Amer­i­ca and American religion that would become far more pervasive ­later in his presidency and come to epitomize Amer­i­ca’s national identity in the first de­cades ­after World War II. Truman began the letter by declaring, “Religion and Democracy in this country have risen side by side.”6 Echoing Francis Spellman’s sentiments at the outbreak of the Second World War, Truman went on to describe how religion and democracy strengthen each other and ­will always prosper together. In Amer­i­ca, this symbiosis between religion and democracy had produced a shining example of freedom and cooperation to the rest of the world, Truman claimed. Specifically, “Religion in Amer­i­ca is a supreme demonstration of unity in diversity.” Echoing the Office of War Information’s (OWI) and the War Advertising Council’s (WAC) World War II campaigns, Truman insisted that despite the ­great diversity of American life, religion was the glue that held Americans together. “Ours is a religious unity,” Truman wrote, “without prejudice to any worthy loyalty of faith or creed. . . . ​What we have ­here achieved among dif­ fer­ent races, colors and faiths points the way and offers encouragement to all other [nations].”7 African Americans of the day would have surely disagreed. So too would American Catholics and Jews who had suffered prejudice and discrimination throughout the war and who had long been wary of Protestant definitions of “worthy” faiths and creeds. Although he often used inclusive language to describe Americans’ “several faiths,” Truman made it clear that in his mind American “religion” was Chris­ tian­ity. “­Here, as perhaps nowhere ­else in the world,” he wrote, “the fundamental unity of Chris­tian­ity and freedom has been demonstrated.”8 He went on to quote Jesus and the biblical Acts of the Apostles as demonstrations of



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universal religious thought. This conflation of Chris­tian­ity with religion, spoken of in decidedly Protestant terms, helped thwart Truman’s attempts to unite the world’s religious leaders against communism l­ ater in his presidency, but it resonated with American Protestants who had long held similar biases. Perhaps this common understanding of Amer­i­ca as a Protestant nation caused Truman to look to the FCC as a power­f ul ally in Amer­i­ca’s second chance at world leadership and redemption. He was most certainly attracted to the public influence the council could potentially muster. Truman had personally witnessed this influence with the congressional approval of the UN charter in 1945. The FCC had been a vigorous supporter of the UN throughout the war, sometimes to Roo­se­velt’s frustration. Led by John Foster Dulles’s Committee for a Just and Durable Peace, the FCC and its members both provided intellectual groundwork for the UN and led a public relations campaign on its behalf from their pulpits, through their publications, and in public rallies. Four of the FCC’s proposals w ­ ere included in the UN’s official charter, and Dulles was one of the few American delegates sent to its convening assembly in San Francisco in the late spring of 1945.9 John Mott, famed Protestant minister and leader of the ecumenical movement and world missions, won the Nobel Peace Prize the following year, thanks in large part to his efforts on behalf of the UN and the promise his life’s work offered to the postwar world. During his ac­cep­tance speech, Mott did not offer a clear vision of the new world he hoped was emerging. Instead, he lauded efforts ­toward international cooperation by the “constructive forces of the world” and called for wise leadership in the coming months and years.10 Truman hoped the FCC would support his own leadership and petitioned it for such on March 6, 1946, in Columbus, Ohio. The previous day, he had accompanied British prime minister Winston Churchill to Fulton, Missouri, where Churchill gave his “Iron Curtain” speech, warning the world of the growing Soviet threat. Truman outlined his own understanding of this threat before the FCC assembly in Ohio, which had officially convened to discuss the postwar world and the group’s ongoing financial and material aid efforts in Eu­rope.11 Echoing Roo­se­velt’s definition of the Nazi threat, Truman declared that Amer­i­ca had “just come through a de­cade in which forces of evil in vari­ ous parts of the world have been lined up in a b­ itter fight to banish from the face of the earth . . . ​religion and democracy.” ­After asserting the foundational unity of ­these two core American princi­ples, he warned that “dictatorship, on the other hand, has always rejected” them. Clearly conflating Nazism and communism u ­ nder the banner of totalitarianism, Truman then set the United States as an opposing force, founded on spiritual values that w ­ ere the ultimate answer to the world’s prob­lems. “If men and nations could but live by the

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ancient prophets and the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount,” Truman argued, “prob­lems which now seem so difficult would soon dis­appear.” It was up to Amer­i­ca’s religious institutions to lead the nation in a spiritual awakening, so that Amer­i­ca might reclaim its religious heritage and, consequently, take its rightful place as leader of the new world order. “The Protestant Church, the Catholic Church, and the Jewish Synagogue—­bound together in the American unity of brotherhood—­must provide the shock forces to accomplish this moral and spiritual awakening,” he insisted.12 The next month he would pre­ sent a more sophisticated understanding of Amer­i­ca’s religious identity and responsibility before the Presbyterian assembly, an understanding that reached its deepest form during Truman’s 1948 State of the Union address, but in Ohio Truman was clearly recruiting the FCC as an ally. He was even more explicit in his personal correspondence with the group’s leaders, particularly Dulles. Dulles was a registered Republican and a regular adviser to Republican operatives, but his position with the FCC gave him a modicum of bipartisanship that was enough for Truman. For instance, in November 1945, Truman wrote a personal letter to Dulles apologizing for not being able to receive him and a del­e­ga­tion of the Committee for a Just and Durable Peace at the White House that week. Truman wrote that the group, the same one Roo­se­velt had spurned a year ­earlier, stood for “the highest values in American life” and, in a phrase that revealed Truman’s hopes more than base real­ity, “the Church militant.” Truman thanked Dulles for his work at the inaugural UN assembly in San Francisco and for assisting the secretary of state in London. He lauded Dulles as a prime example of how Americans could lift themselves “out of the realm of partisan politics.”13 Truman also praised the work of the FCC, claiming that “if ­today, we Americans have a clearer understanding of our place in the world community, a stronger sense of fellowship with other p­ eoples . . . ​it is due in no small part to the advanced position in international thinking taken by the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in Amer­i­ca.” He concluded that “in the f­uture as in the past, men w ­ ill look to their churches for leadership in this good fight. To the Federal Council of Churches I believe they w ­ ill not look in vain.”14 The American p­ eople might not have looked to the FCC in vain, but, in the end, Truman certainly did. Despite their mutual understanding of Amer­ic­ a’s postwar responsibilities and the need for religious strength, Truman and the FCC had strong disagreements over both what the postwar world should look like and how ­those visions should come to fruition. T ­ hese disagreements centered on opposing views of military strength and necessity. Former pacifists filled the FCC’s leadership, which only begrudgingly supported the war ­after the attack on Pearl Harbor. As soon as the war began, FCC leaders planned for its end and as-



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sumed Amer­i­ca would follow its traditional model of military dismantlement a­fter the war’s conclusion. Granted, both the FCC and the liberal, Protestant bodies that constituted its membership had supported the near deification of the military at the end of the war, actively participated in the OWI’s and the WAC’s religious propaganda campaigns, and extolled stories of religious devotion and cooperation among the armed forces. They also participated in the vision of American veterans bringing this devotion home to a war-­weary nation. By the end of 1945, they no longer held t­ hese hopes. The FCC’s sudden opposition to the military, and seeming reversal of its stance on the formerly devout and almost messianic ser­vicemen, is certainly odd and cannot be fully explained. However, two events did clearly hasten the change. The first was Amer­i­ca’s use of atomic bombs on Japan. FCC leaders w ­ ere at first as ambivalent about the A-­bombs as they w ­ ere about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Dulles and G. Bromley Oxnam, president of the FCC, wrote a public letter to Truman just a­ fter the military dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. They neither celebrated nor condemned the attacks and never mentioned the deaths of so many Japa­nese civilians. They did, however, advise Truman and the government to exercise self-­restraint and cease the bombings ­until the Japa­nese government had time to consider and respond to American demands.15 They ­were obviously unaware that Amer­i­ca possessed only the two atomic weapons it had already used. Samuel McCrea Cavert, general secretary of the FCC, wrote his own, more critical letter to the president the same day as Dulles and Oxnam. Truman seemingly ignored the first letter and responded with somewhat surprising indignation to Cavert. Truman wrote that, like Cavert, he was “disturbed over the use of atomic bombs” but was also “greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack of the Japa­nese on Pearl Harbor.”16 If Truman held Cavert’s criticisms against the entire FCC, he gave no public or private indication.17 In March 1946, the same day Truman spoke in front of the FCC assembly in Ohio, the FCC’s Commission on the Relation of the Church to the War in the Light of the Christian Faith, commonly called the Calhoun Commission for its chair, Robert Calhoun, released its official report on the use of the atomic bombs. The FCC’s most prominent and respected theologians and ministers sat on the commission, including Calhoun, H. Richard Niebuhr and Roland Bainton from Yale, as well as Reinhold Niebuhr and Henry Van Dusen from Union Theological Seminary. They decreed the use of the atomic bombs to be “morally indefensible” and concluded that Americans had “sinned grievously against the law of God and against the p­ eople of Japan.”18 A week a­ fter the report’s release, Reinhold Niebuhr changed his stance and, affirming the government’s position, stated that the bombs ­were necessary to prevent the

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massive loss of life that an American invasion of the Japa­nese homeland would have produced.19 Having already separated himself from his liberal colleagues just before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Niebuhr’s abrupt change did not surprise many of the FCC’s leaders, but they ­were disappointed. The postwar world was in a delicate state, and they had de­cided that they w ­ ere in the essential position to direct the world away from the vio­lence and military posturing that atomic weapons so devastatingly represented. They said so explic­itly that same month in yet another commission report, this time from Dulles’s Committee for a Just and Durable Peace. Titled “A Report on World Order,” it was officially ­adopted a day ­after Truman’s speech to the Ohio assembly. The report declared that “the ­people of earth [had] a new opportunity, ­under the Providence of God, to bring in an order of brotherhood, freedom, and justice.” The time, however, was short. The advent of the atomic bomb had brought new dangers out of the “dust and rubble of the Second World War,” and a “world of fear, hatred, cruelty, misery, and violent death [was] closing in on the prospect of a world of fellowship and love.” The FCC, however, had a solution to this ­g reat danger, especially for Amer­i­ca. It advised the government to abandon the arms race and eschew a military buildup of any kind. Such actions could only exacerbate a feeling of dread and hasten a return to war. Amer­i­ca should also give international authority to the UN, on which the FCC placed its greatest hopes for a peaceful world.20 The FCC’s leaders did not go so far as to suggest the government give up military or legislative authority to the UN, mea­sures they would adopt within two years, but they clearly opposed any attempts to maintain a strong military presence, ­either at home or abroad. If a spiritual awakening and religious unity strengthened the nation, it was not to expand its military might but to elevate the UN as a symbol of hope for a lost world.

Universal Military Training Truman had a decidedly dif­fer­ent interpretation of the nation’s destiny, and it certainly included an expansion of Amer­i­ca’s military presence. The exact nature of that expansion was not well defined in the years immediately following the war, mostly due to changing strategies and shifting po­liti­cal necessities, but Truman and the military leadership ­were clearly moving ­toward a greater, and more permanent, military presence abroad. The threat of this expanded military power, and the manner by which Truman proposed to establish it, was likely the second reason the FCC’s members so quickly abandoned their faith in Amer­i­ca’s military ser­vicemen ­after the war. It is also why they began



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to so openly oppose both Truman and his religious propaganda, despite both their agreement with the propaganda’s ecumenical message and their willing participation in its promotion in the preceding years. Although Truman and the FCC might both be promoting messages of religious unity for Amer­i­ca and the world, they each had very dif­fer­ent ideas of what ends that message should serve. Truman and his administration saw Amer­ic­ a as the protector and enforcer of freedom throughout the world and viewed religion as both a foundational American ideal and a vital weapon in the country’s arsenal. The FCC opposed military expansion as a fundamental threat to world peace and balked at the idea of using religious unity as a means of promoting such expansion. The two would spar numerous times over their opposing applications of the same religious propaganda they each promoted, but the first explicit conflict came almost immediately a­ fter the war’s end as they debated a new program that would radically change the way Americans trained for the next war: universal military training, or UMT. The idea of UMT did not originate with Truman. Even during the war’s last year, Amer­i­ca’s po­liti­cal and military leaders w ­ ere convinced that the postwar world must be dif­fer­ent. Military leaders, in par­tic­u­lar, ­were adamant that po­liti­cal isolationism must never again cause Amer­i­ca to be caught unawares. Many also conceived of a new American responsibility to the rest of the world as the defender of freedom everywhere. They planned accordingly. In August 1944, then army chief of staff General George C. Marshall released War Department Circular 347. Section 3 of the report, titled “Military Establishment,” set forth “general princi­ples of national military policy to govern preparation of postwar plans.” The circular assumed that for some time a­ fter cessation of hostilities, the United States and its allies would maintain a sizable military force in order to “lay the foundations for a peaceful world order.” Yet a­ fter this period ended, an international military presence would still be required and, above all, the nation must be adequately prepared to enter into new conflicts as they arose. One pos­si­ble option that ensured this preparation, and the option endorsed by Marshall, was the advent of UMT for Amer­ i­ca’s youth, whereby ­every able-­bodied American boy would serve at least some time in the military or in a training program designed by the military in preparation for another worldwide conflict.21 ­Others had proposed some variant of UMT before Marshall. Some government and military officials proposed it a­ fter the First World War, and it was a standard of life for many countries, including numerous American allies. During the same month Marshall presented his proposal for UMT, both Franklin and Eleanor Roo­se­velt made their own cases for the program to the public.22 Although both Marshall and Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal advocated

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a purely military training system, Roo­se­velt insisted that some civic and skills training would also be involved, though he never fully articulated his vision.23 By January 1945, Roo­se­velt asked Congress to look into the possibility of adding UMT a­ fter the war. In June of that year, the Select Committee on Postwar Military Policy held hearings on the subject and, a month ­later, submitted a report that ­wholeheartedly endorsed the program.24 Roo­se­velt had already passed away by the time the committee announced its findings, but Truman was also in ­favor of UMT. On October 23, he spoke before a joint session of Congress to outline his vision for the program. Truman insisted that Amer­ic­ a must maintain a “sense of leadership in the world for justice and peace,” but that leadership would be tested in the months and years to come. “We can ensure such a peace,” Truman contended, “only so long as we remain strong. We must face the fact that peace must be built upon power, as well as upon good w ­ ill and good deeds.” He insisted that such a fact showed no lack of faith in the UN but that the realities of the world dictated that “­f uture aggressors” could only be contained if they knew that Amer­i­ca would “tolerate no threat to peace or liberty” and would react with its military might if necessary.25 Truman then presented Congress and the nation with two options for achieving the requisite military power: a “large standing army, navy, and air force,” which Truman knew the American public would never accept, or UMT. Truman proposed that a small regular force, when bolstered by a trained citizenry in times of need, would be the best way to defend Amer­ic­ a and its freedoms and would follow more closely to “long-­standing American tradition.” In modern warfare, Amer­ic­ a’s enemies would not afford the nation the luxury to mobilize and train the specialized soldiers, sailors, and airmen it required. The military must train them before the ­enemy strikes. Unlike ­after the last world war, Amer­i­ca must not slip “back into helplessness.” Truman noted that his vision of UMT did not equal conscription, and t­ hose young men trained by the program would not be forced into full military ser­vice ­unless Congress declared it necessary due to a national emergency. He then listed the benefits he thought such a program would offer to the nation’s youth, including greater educational preparation, patriotic and civic leadership skills, and, in what would become a cornerstone of his own brand of religious propaganda, moral and spiritual training. Truman fi­nally set forth what he considered the “fundamental need” for UMT: “the national security of the United States, and the safety of our homes and our loved ones.”26 The American ­people agreed, at least in the de­cade and a half following the war. A November 1945 Gallup poll found that 75 ­percent of the ­people polled favored some sort of compulsory military ser­vice.27 That number would



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slowly decrease as the specter of the Second World War dissipated, dropping by nearly 10 ­percent in less than two years, but polls showed that the majority of Americans ­were still in f­ avor of such a program well into the 1950s.28 Many of Amer­i­ca’s social and religious leaders, however, vehemently opposed UMT, with over 650 ministers, priests, and rabbis signing a public petition in June 1947 calling the program “un-­American.”29 Not least of ­these ­were leaders of the FCC, who sent their president, Oxnam, and general secretary, Cavert, to the congressional select committee in 1945 to petition against the program. The armed forces had acquired a reputation for corrupting youth long ago. The rates of drunkenness and venereal diseases among veterans of the ­Great War ­were staggering, and the FCC, despite its prior rhe­toric of religious fervor and unity among the armed forces, was afraid the soldiers and sailors of the Second World War would come home with similar afflictions.30 Numerous religious groups shared ­these fears, including the American Council of Catholic Bishops, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), and the fundamentalist American Council of Christian Churches (ACCC).31 Yet none actively opposed UMT quite like the FCC, which considered the program a threat to both the moral welfare of the nation’s youth and its own postwar plans. Truman’s postwar vision was precarious at best. His military advisers’ and his own understanding of the war’s ­causes and consequences demanded a reor­ ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­ca’s military structure. This reor­ga­ni­za­tion culminated in the National Security Act of 1947, which, among other t­ hings, combined the Departments of War and Navy into a unified Department of Defense, formalized the creation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, established the air force as a separate branch of the military, and founded numerous intelligence and logistics agencies to work with the military branches ­under the auspices of the National Military Establishment.32 The occupations of Eu­rope and Asia demanded the maintenance of over two million troops overseas, but volunteers would come nowhere close to meeting the military’s demands if World War II veterans ­were allowed to come home, which both military commanders and the American public demanded. Consequently, Truman needed Congress to extend the draft and was forced to walk a tightrope between military needs and congressional politics.33 He was balancing this all with his domestic agenda, including the establishment of a robust postwar economy and the expansion of New Deal social programs. Yet, through all of t­ hese po­liti­cal ­battles, as historian Michael  J. Hogan notes, “none was more hard fought than the one over universal military training,” and the FCC proved to be the principal thorn in the president’s side.34 Truman responded to UMT’s opponents by creating the President’s ­Advisory Commission on Universal Training, a collection of influential and respected

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leaders from ­those sectors of society that w ­ ere most opposed to the program. Truman picked Carl Compton and Harold Dodds, presidents of the Mas­sa­ chu­setts Institute of Technology and Prince­ton University, respectively, to address the concerns of the education sector. He chose Charles “Electric” Wilson, former president of General Electric and the chief architect of Amer­ i­ca’s transition to a war economy, to advise on economic and l­abor issues. He then appointed Truman Gibson, a Black l­awyer from Chicago, to address the concerns of African Americans and, in what Truman considered to be an astute po­liti­cal maneuver, was careful to include at least one member of each of Amer­i­ca’s “three g­ reat faiths.” Edmund A. Walsh, vice president of Georgetown University, represented Catholics. Anna Rosenberg and Samuel Rosenman, a respected industrial leader and a l­awyer, respectively, ­were Jewish and chosen to represent all American Jews. Fi­nally, Reverend Daniel Poling represented American Protestants on the committee.35 Poling was the ­father of a navy chaplain, Clark Poling, who famously died when his ship, the USS Dorchester, was sunk in the Atlantic in February 1943. When the ship ran out of life jackets, Clark Poling, along with his fellow chaplains—­a Jew, a Catholic, and another Protestant—­gave away their own jackets. Survivors saw the men holding hands and praying together as the ship sank beneath the waves. The event became a symbol of the interfaith cooperation that the military and liberal Protestants had advocated, and Hollywood turned it into a movie called Four Men of God. The United States Postal Ser­vice placed the Four Chaplains, as the public came to know them, on a stamp. Daniel Poling soon maximized the interfaith image of his son and his friends with the establishment of the Chapel of the Four Chaplains in Philadelphia.36 Even before that, when Truman convened the first meeting of the advisory board in December 1946, Poling was the editor of the Christian Herald, a regular columnist for the New York Post, and an influential, and patriotic, Protestant leader. The committee was not merely a “yes” committee ­under Truman’s control, though it was close. To their credit, committee members elected Carl Compton to be the committee’s chair at the group’s first meeting even ­after Compton admitted that he was not convinced UMT was a good idea. They de­cided to perform an in­de­pen­dent and fair study of the program to determine if it was both ­viable and advisable. Early in the meeting, Poling expressed the religious community’s worries, namely, that the proposed year of military training would become a spiritual burden to Amer­i­ca’s youth. He advised an emphasis on the social and religious effects of UMT and, if the committee found that Truman’s contention that the program would be spiritually beneficial was true, then the government should sell the program to the public as such. However, Poling was the only member of the committee concerned with



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exclusively religious ­matters, and the other members de­cided to go in another direction.37 The committee’s other members argued that in Truman’s speech before Congress that October, he claimed that the program was essential for the nation’s security. They felt it was significant that few opponents of UMT opposed it solely as a national military program, while acknowledging that Americans had been extremely distrustful of such large military endeavors since the nation’s founding. According to Walsh, the public’s new stance meant that an “impor­tant transition in [American] psy­chol­ogy since 1789” had, “in large mea­ sure, been made.”38 Truman’s distinction between UMT and a large standing army was vital to this transition. Despite Poling’s objections, the committee’s members concentrated their inquiries on the program’s importance to national security, though they did agree to incorporate Poling’s ideas of the program’s spiritual benefits into their preferred emphasis on national security. They did not designate exactly how they would do so and ultimately advised the president to create yet another committee to explore such options.39 ­After all, Joseph Davies argued, when all was said and done, Americans simply “want[ed] to be safe as far as their living conditions [­were] concerned.”40 Professional propagandists would further flesh out the combination of Amer­i­ca’s spiritual well-­ being and its national security over the coming years, and the two concepts would find full synthesis in Eisenhower’s brand of religious propaganda. However, the committee did not see its mandate as g­ oing that far and all but ignored the FCC’s reservations other than to affirm Poling’s position that the program could be a spiritual boon to Amer­i­ca’s youth. The committee instead spent the next year and a half investigating UMT’s efficacy and importance, ultimately concluding that the program was both v­ iable and essential to national security and that any religious objections must take a back seat to such a cornerstone of national interests.41

Separate Spheres of Influence The FCC’s opposition to UMT and the military ­after the war certainly presented an obstacle to Truman’s early hopes for a coordinated effort in the fight over the postwar world. Truman saw Amer­i­ca as the guardian of freedom and viewed religion as both a foundational American ideal and a vital weapon in the country’s arsenal. The FCC’s leaders, by contrast, considered such power politics to lie at the heart of the world’s ills and eschewed even the threat of vio­lence for the thoughtful and informed diplomatic options represented by the UN. Religion was neither a social nor a po­liti­cal tool, but a separate and

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superior sphere of cultural authority and influence, they insisted. They adamantly believed that only religion, exemplified in their own liberal, Protestant ethos, could save the world from itself. However conflicting t­ hese views might have been, both the Truman administration and the FCC’s leadership still saw each other as potential allies during the first years a­ fter the war. Their differences over military policies alone, as exemplified in their positions on UMT, might very well have ended any potential alliance, but they did share a common sense of Amer­i­ca’s unifying religious heritage, even if their bickering over UMT and the UN demonstrated the opposing goals ­toward which each thought such unity should be applied. For a time, the Truman administration and the FCC continued to cooperate on a consistent message of a unifying faith in freedom.42 The fracture came when each recognized that the other believed it was the guiding force b­ ehind that vision and properly wielded the influence it engendered. When the FCC’s leadership and Truman began to believe that the other was crossing the institutional line between church and state, and, therefore, impeding on the other’s sphere of influence, all hopes for an alliance ­were dashed. As with President Roo­se­velt, this power strug­gle centered on Myron Taylor and his appointment as the president’s personal representative to the pope, though Truman had far grander plans for Taylor than did his pre­de­ces­sor. Roo­se­velt had previously insisted that Taylor’s appointment was a war­time necessity and vital to the Allies’ chances of victory. Although they never agreed with Roo­se­velt’s assessment and relentlessly hounded him about the appointment, American Protestants assumed that with the war’s conclusion, the president would recall Taylor from Rome. When that did not happen, even by the spring of 1946, they w ­ ere incensed. G. Bromley Oxnam and Samuel McCrea Cavert of the FCC petitioned Truman for an audience, and the White House granted them a meeting.43 At the same time, Louie Newton, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, was also requesting a meeting for himself and a del­e­ga­tion of “other distinguished leaders of the evangelical churches of the United States of Amer­i­ca.”44 In perhaps the single most unified episode in American Protestantism of the mid-­twentieth ­century, this del­e­ga­tion of evangelicals agreed to combine with that of the FCC to complain to Truman collectively about Taylor’s appointment and its gross violation of Amer­i­ca’s traditional separation of church and state.45 They did not represent all American Protestants, of course. For instance, soon ­after the meeting, leaders of the ACCC wrote to Truman. They w ­ ere annoyed that they had not also been included in such an impor­tant gathering and asked that their own representatives be allowed to come to the White House and speak to Truman about Taylor. In an exchange eerily similar to Roo­



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se­velt’s Christmas letters, Truman asked William “Bill” Hassett what the ACCC was. Hassett had been the intermediary between the FCC and the White House for Roo­se­velt and was now a secretary and close adviser to Truman, who considered Hassett his “go-to” man for all religious m ­ atters. Hassett did not know about the ACCC, though, and had to check with the FCC for clarification. He had assumed the del­e­ga­tion represented ­every significant American Protestant denomination and was himself annoyed to have other groups vie for a seat at the t­ able. When he found out that the ACCC was even more conservative than the Southern Baptist Convention, Hassett recommended that its request be turned down, lest it “let down the bars for the admission of vari­ous and sundry minor religious bodies” to gain access to the president. The White House did not have time to cater to the needs of ­every religious sect. Truman was ­after the big fish, and, in Hassett’s eyes, the ACCC did not mea­sure up.46 The big fish came to the White House on June 5, 1946. Altogether, a combined del­e­ga­tion representing nearly thirty-­five million American Protestants, roughly a quarter of the U.S. population at the time, met with Truman.47 During the meeting, Truman was polite and conciliatory; the gathering came at the height of Truman’s wooing of the FCC. He and his staff considered the del­e­ga­tion to be the most “truly representative” group of American Protestants ever assembled, and he did not intend to let such a minor issue as Taylor’s work derail his objectives.48 He assured the group that Taylor’s continuance was both necessary and temporary and would conclude as soon as he helped finalize a few lingering Eu­ro­pean peace treaties. The del­e­ga­tion seemed convinced. Oxnam wrote to Truman a few months ­later and noted that the group’s constituent bodies had remained ­silent over the issue, as agreed, but that silence did not mean that they condoned Taylor’s mission and was necessitated on Truman’s assurances that it was only temporary.49 Truman lied. By the next summer, he officially announced Taylor’s reappointment as his personal representative to the pope. A Baptist spokesman told the Associated Press that the announcement was a “tragedy” and, in a statement rife with anti-­Catholic sentiment, that Truman had made the United States “an ally of clerical totalitarianism.” He went on to claim that although Truman pretended the appointment was part of a “crusade apparently against communism,” it was r­eally a grab for Catholic votes at home and as “closely connected with the presidential elections [the] next year as it [was] connected with events in Eu­rope.”50 In January 1948, F. A. Fink, managing editor of the Catholic newspaper Our Sunday Visitor, openly proposed that very t­ hing. Noting the vehement Protestant opposition to Taylor’s status, Fink asked Truman to make a public statement refuting the Protestant lie that the Catholic hierarchy

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both requested Taylor’s original appointment and pressured Truman into extending it a­ fter the war. He concluded the letter with a rather obvious threat. A ­ fter noting that Catholics made up at least half of all u ­ nion members, he observed: “If their vote should be lost in the states which have a large electoral vote it would mean, of course, a crushing defeat for the Demo­cratic Party.”51 In other words, support us or ­else. Truman neither made such a statement nor wrote Fink a reply, and it seems doubtful that Taylor’s appointment made much of an impact on the election. Although American Catholics certainly appreciated Taylor’s appointment, just as they did when Roo­se­velt originally made it, the issue did not seem to carry nearly as much weight with ­either the Catholic press or Catholic authorities as it did with American Protestants. However, Truman did have a reason for extending Taylor’s mission, and it did have far more to do with his official duties at the Vatican. He had de­cided to unite the world’s religions against the atheistic and antireligious Soviets, and he planned to use Taylor to do it. Truman’s first plan was to persuade the world’s religious leaders—­Taylor’s activities clearly demonstrate that he had Christian leaders principally in mind—to sign a joint declaration advocating the abiding spirits of God and ­human liberty in the world. Ambiguous and more than a ­little confusing, the purported statement, Truman and Taylor hoped, would “arouse religious unity among all denominations in an effort to combat the propaganda and accomplishments of communism, particularly related to Rus­sia.”52 During the last months of summer 1947, Taylor traveled throughout Eu­rope recruiting the West’s Christian leaders, including the archbishop of Canterbury, the Lutheran bishop of Berlin, and Pope Pius XII. Taylor achieved a modicum of success, but his stated goal was indefinite, and the support he garnered was, consequently, noncommittal. He did find an ally in Otto Dibelius, Lutheran bishop of Berlin, who even traveled to Washington to speak personally with Truman about the proposed declaration. Much to Truman’s and Taylor’s chagrin, the trip also alerted American Protestants to Taylor’s activities over the previous months. Taylor’s subsequent publication of the correspondence between Truman and Pope Pius did not help m ­ atters.53 American Protestants 54 ­were not pleased. Cavert wrote to Truman on September 2, 1947, requesting another meeting between the president and the same Protestant del­e­ga­tion that came a year previous.55 The White House initially put off a response u ­ nder the premise that Matthew Connelly, Truman’s personal secretary, was out of the country at the time of their writing.56 White House staff, and possibly Truman himself, told Connelly to reject the del­e­ga­tion’s request. Truman felt he had already resolved the ­matter in the first meeting and did not want to rehash an



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old, and unnecessary, argument. Connelly wrote to William Hassett, asking about the best way to refuse the request politely. Hassett had grown tired of the FCC and its seemingly endless supply of committee reports and policy recommendations. He responded to Connelly’s memo with a rather unhelpful, and mocking, one of his own. He wrote simply, “Dear Sir and ­Brother: What­ ever you write to ­these buzzards, you ­will wish it had been dif­fer­ent. Thine in the Lord, W.D.H.”57 Cavert had become impatient ­after waiting almost a month for the White House’s reply and subsequently tele­g rammed Connelly directly on September 30. Left to his own devices, Connelly fi­nally wrote Cavert on October 2. Falling on the tried-­and-­true White House response, Connelly cited the president’s busy schedule and denied the request. He added that Truman’s position had not changed since their prior meeting the previous year and that he considered the published correspondence to be proof that his intentions w ­ ere both essential to world peace and in line with the traditional separation between church and state.58 Neither Cavert nor Oxnam was satisfied with Connelly’s response, but Myron Taylor assuaged their anger when he agreed to fill in for Truman and meet with the group that month. An experienced diplomat, Taylor thought the best way to ­handle the situation was a face-­to-­face meeting, during which he could patiently and rationally explain the im­mense benefits of his current activities. On Monday, October 20, 1947, Taylor met with a del­e­ga­tion of six FCC leaders, including Cavert, Oxnam, and Edwin T. Dahlberg, president of the Northern Baptist Convention. Taylor began the meeting with a defense of his appointment at the Vatican, including a synopsis of his work u ­ nder Roo­ se­velt, his personal relationship with Pope Pius XII, and a list of countries, including numerous American allies, that had formal diplomatic relations with the Vatican.59 Yet Taylor soon made it clear that he did not call for the meeting merely to defend himself against Protestant accusations; he was t­here to recruit ­these six men in his and Truman’s religious assault on communism. He recounted the pope’s consistent opposition to communism and the advantages of a unified religious opposition to the Soviet scourge. He even brought a map of Eu­ rope to show the influence of vari­ous religious groups on the Continent. The intended message was that Americans needed Catholicism if the West was ­going to oppose the spread of antireligious communism across the globe. Taylor ended his pre­sen­ta­tion with a plea for understanding and cooperation. “Without g­ oing into denominational discussions or affairs,” he asked, “can we not or­ga­nize all believers in God, to try to save this world of ours?”60 ­After all, Truman and the FCC both advocated the same type of religious cooperation;

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this was a chance to see that cooperation put to, what he and Truman considered to be, a good use. His plea was both pragmatic and heartfelt. The group was unimpressed. The White House and the FCC might both promote religious cooperation and unity, but they had very dif­fer­ent plans for the application of that unity. Furthermore, the FCC delegates feared that Truman equated religious unity with religious equality, and they would have none of that. They insisted that any entanglement with the Vatican would only lead to more trou­ble for the American ­people. Oxnam had long complained of Catholic oppression of Eu­ro­pean Protestants and raised the issue yet again. He and Taylor had actually met about the issue in Florence, Italy, in 1945, a­ fter repeated letters to both Truman and Taylor. Taylor promised to mention the ­matter to Truman personally, but neither man wrote back to Oxnam for several months, apparently hoping Oxnam would drop the m ­ atter.61 He did not. ­After further letters, Taylor fi­nally drafted a response that Truman personally approved.62 Taylor ironically wrote Oxnam that it was not his job to deal with Catholic policies or interreligious issues.63 Taylor’s recent activities proved other­wise, and Oxnam was not oblivious to this fact. Dahlberg proved to be the group’s most prominent anti-­Catholic voice, though. A cofounder of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and a prominent pacifist, Dahlberg was highly critical of Truman’s UMT program, but in this meeting he was far more concerned with the intentions of the Catholic hierarchy. In a statement that demonstrated both the group’s conflation of Amer­ i­ca and Protestantism and its inability to even agree with the terms on which Truman and Taylor founded their mission, Dahlberg told Taylor that he would “hate to see [Amer­i­ca] in any kind of diplomatic relationship that seems to unite Protestantism with Catholicism in a common war against Rus­sia.” Taylor was dumbfounded and stumbled through a conciliatory reply, when Dahlberg interrupted him to continue his line of thought. He went on to say that he was as opposed to the Catholic Church’s “ecclesiastical totalitarianism” as he was to communism and would not support one to fight the other. To Dahlberg, Catholicism and communism ­were equally threatening. Though none of the other religious leaders in the meeting seconded his appraisal, neither did they contradict it.64 Near the meeting’s conclusion, the discussion turned in a dif­fer­ent direction. Taylor noted a suggestion from the archbishop of Canterbury that the Catholic Church send observers to the convening assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Amsterdam, planned for the following year. Taylor admitted that neither he nor Truman knew much about the organ­ization but that it sounded like a good idea. This time it was Cavert who was dumbfounded. ­After he collected himself, Cavert proceeded to chide Taylor for his



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ignorance of Protestant activities and the impor­tant work of the worldwide ecumenical movement. The fact that Truman was also oblivious to t­ hese developments, even as he sent Taylor on his own personal agenda to unite Christian forces, was “quite appalling” to Cavert. He then closed with his own plea. “The unity that the president wants he can secure,” Cavert explained, “if he proceeds in terms of American princi­ples.”65 FCC officials made the nature of ­these “princi­ples” clear a month ­later. Oxnam was not satisfied with Taylor’s assurances and again insisted on a meeting with Truman, who fi­nally relented the next month. The meeting contained a much smaller group than that of the previous year, though it again included Newton of the Southern Baptist Convention. During the meeting, Oxnam suggested a solution to the controversy and subsequent “disunity” created by Taylor’s appointment. Whereas FCC leaders had previously insisted that an official representative to any religious leader was both absurd and un-­American, Oxnam suddenly proposed that Truman change Taylor’s title to “the personal representative of the president to the religious leaders of the world.”66 Oxnam could have argued that, due to Taylor’s recent activities, Truman had already made him such in fact, though not in name. He instead argued that the change would secure equal repre­sen­ta­tion and po­liti­cal access to all religious leaders. In other words, FCC officials would not allow Catholics to have more access than they did. If Taylor was g­ oing to serve as a direct line to the president, they wanted Taylor to consult them on a regular basis. The proposal went directly against the FCC’s insistence on a strict separation between church and state, but the separation had always been more rhetorical than practical in the minds of the FCC’s leaders. Their numerous policy recommendations proved that they ­were perfectly fine steering the state ­toward their own objectives; they simply did not want anyone e­ lse, especially Truman or the pope, stepping on their turf. In 1948, Truman and Taylor did just that. In many ways, they simply heeded Cavert’s advice to take the WCC seriously, though not in the way Cavert had intended. Once they figured out what it actually was, the WCC intrigued them. Billed as an international extension of the religious unity and cooperation exemplified by the FCC, the WCC fit in perfectly with Truman’s vision of a united religious front against communism, and Truman set out to use its convening assembly in August as a pivotal moment in his own plans. He sent Taylor back to Eu­rope with two primary goals: to ensure that the Catholic Church was included in the assembly and that the Rus­sian Orthodox Church was not. Granted, such a position was inherently contradictory to Truman’s stated goal of religious unity, but he was not ­after unity for its own sake; he wanted religious unity against communism and based his conception of religion and r­ eligious

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organ­izations in harmony with that goal. Both Taylor and Truman had long feared that the Soviet propaganda machine used the Rus­sian church as an amiable front for its own ends, and Truman did not want its machinations obstructing his own plans for the assembly. Due to assurances from the archbishop of Canterbury, Taylor assumed that a Catholic del­e­ga­tion would be welcome, and he assured the pope of the same.67 He was mistaken. Taylor soon found out that the archbishop’s openness ­toward the Vatican was quite unusual. ­Every other leader in the organ­ization opposed any official participation by the Catholic Church, a sentiment echoed by Nobel laureate John Mott. Despite Taylor’s careful diplomacy over the first half of 1948, WCC officials merely conceded to “consider” including Catholic observers if the pope sent a formal request to the council. Both Taylor and WCC officials ­were amply aware that such a request would put the pope in a weakened position and went against Taylor’s prior assurances.68 WCC leaders also considered the inclusion of the Rus­sian Orthodox Church to be an essential ele­ment of the assembly. They criticized Truman’s stark dichotomy between the West and the Soviet sphere, citing Truman’s overt militarism and unwillingness to negotiate as key reasons for the current crisis. As a religious organ­ization, it was the WCC’s duty to reach ­behind the Iron Curtain and extend an olive branch to the Rus­sian church.69 Truman considered such an olive branch to be both hypocritical and reckless. In addition to spoiling his plans, the move was yet another example of the religious pomp and circumstance that had always personally offended Truman. In May, Taylor, with Truman’s support, de­cided to put some public pressure on the WCC and leaked a report to the New York Times about his recent efforts to ensure the WCC assembly in Amsterdam would be truly inclusive of all of Chris­tian­ity and to direct such a power­f ul constituency ­toward world peace.70 The attempt backfired. It insulted WCC officials in Switzerland, France, and Germany and incensed Protestant leaders in Amer­i­ca. They ­were angry that Taylor and Truman would attempt to influence their assembly for their own purposes, but they w ­ ere especially outraged that Taylor had the nerve to refer to himself as the president’s representative to the assembly. They neither invited nor wanted Taylor at the event. The WCC was a wholly religious organ­ization and no po­liti­cal agent was welcome, especially one explic­ itly trying to manipulate the religious sphere.71 In truth, Taylor and Truman ­were trying to do just that. They saw religion as a useful weapon in the emerging Cold War and intended to employ it as they saw fit. National security trumped all, and Truman genuinely seemed to believe that religious leaders could, and would, see communism as an existential threat to religion itself. He considered his directives to Taylor not to be



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an infringement on the traditional separation of church and state but rather to be a push for the cooperation of two overlapping spheres of influence. Granted, it did not hurt that he was the one directing that influence. Despite FCC leaders’ protestations, Truman was not alone in his conflation of religion and politics. Liberal Protestants had gotten a taste of po­liti­cal power during the formation of the UN, and they wanted more. The FCC and other religious bodies had long issued reports and declarations on po­liti­cal ­matters whenever they intersected with the spiritual realm. Since the FCC saw the postwar world as both precarious and in need of spiritual enlightenment, all ­matters of peace and justice, however ambiguous, suddenly fell u ­ nder the FCC’s purview ­after the war’s end. Its committee reports looked remarkably like policy recommendations, and the White House received a steady stream of such reports from 1945 to 1948. Opposition to Truman’s militant posture in world affairs became a consistent theme of t­hose reports. To the FCC, Amer­i­ca’s participation in the arms race, combined with the proposed UMT program, looked like a country preparing for, and therefore hastening, yet another war. On April 30, 1948, a del­e­ga­tion from the FCC went to the White House to pre­sent a copy of its newest report, “A Positive Program for Peace,” to Truman. The report primarily involved suggestions on the proper course of ­future U.S. and Soviet relations, but it also included a now ubiquitous critique of military policy.72 The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and numerous Protestant ecclesiastical bodies endorsed the report.73 The meeting did not go well. The report addressed the nation’s international policies, particularly the government’s attitude ­toward the Soviet Union. FCC leaders informed the president they ­were concerned that the nation’s growing militarism, which they had e­ arlier attributed to Truman’s domestic and international policies, might lead to another world war rather than prevent it. Instead, the FCC advocated “positive programs of an economic, social, po­liti­cal, and moral character.” The report never suggested what such programs should look like or gave specific details or recommendations for their adoption. FCC leaders did propose that the government work t­ oward policies that advanced “greater economic well-­being throughout the world, greater emphasis on increasing social welfare, greater observance of h ­ uman rights to check terrorism, and greater use of pro­cesses of international conversation and negotiation.” They also insisted that the Christian churches had the responsibility not only to pray for the world situation but also to directly engage it for the better. Too many politicians acted as if “even necessary legislation [could] be obtained only by frightening the American ­people.” ­Others sought to “­ride into power on a wave of emotion.” Such demagoguery could only serve to inflame an already volatile situation. The answer, according to the FCC, was organ­izing the world’s

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Christian forces for peace and applying Christian princi­ples to American politics and the world situation.74 Truman had already tried the former and had come close to suggesting the latter. That the FCC would propose the two as solutions, while si­mul­ta­neously criticizing his policies, likely infuriated Truman. He had complained about such issues in the past, but the FCC had never before claimed its moral and po­liti­cal superiority in such an overt way. Yet Truman had not risen to such po­liti­cal heights without learning to bite his tongue. He listened to the ministers’ pre­sen­ta­tion, then thanked them for their time and assured them that he would take their concerns and suggestions ­under careful consideration.75 He seemed to have even read the personal copy of the program they had left him, ­because he made some notations at the top before handing it to Hassett, one of his chief aides. “Bill: This is a perfectly asinine document as full of sophistry as a communist manifesto. Let’s analyze it for what it is.”76 The extent of Truman’s ill feelings ­toward the FCC’s leaders became even more obvious a few months ­later. In a sign of his increasing frustration, Truman fi­nally met with representatives of the ACCC, including their founder, Carl McIntire. The ultraconservative Protestant council had attempted to secure a meeting at the White House since its formation in 1941, but the White House had always denied it due to its relatively small size and cultural influence. Truman had similarly rejected the ACCC in 1946. Yet in October 1947, Truman agreed to meet with McIntire and a small group. The meeting was short and private, but they w ­ holeheartedly supported Truman’s UMT initia77 tive. He subsequently invited the group back the next May for a more public meeting. The White House invited the press to photo­g raph the meeting, and both the president and McIntire made some remarks. McIntire publicly criticized the FCC for many of the same reasons Truman had privately, but the FCC was used to McIntire’s criticisms and generally dismissed him out of hand. It was not dismissive, however, when Truman greeted McIntire by saying that he was “glad to meet a bunch of preachers who w ­ ere not pacifists,” and the Associated Press published the quotation, which the New York Times picked up the next day.78 The White House ­later denied that Truman directed the comments ­toward members of the FCC, but his intent was plain. The ACCC never became a ­viable alternative to the FCC as a representative Protestant body. Its members ­were too prone to the type of religious grandstanding that so offended Truman. While they ­were certainly more amenable to Truman’s Cold War policies, their doctrinal commitments and strict theology ran directly c­ ounter to the type of interreligious unity Truman promoted. Consequently, Truman never again hosted a public meeting with the group. He had made his point.



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Upon Losing the Common Ground By the end of 1948, Truman had rejected the FCC as a ­viable partner in his plans. FCC representatives would still come to the White House during his second term, but such visits ­were exceedingly rare compared to his first four years and ­were never publicized as well. At the beginning of Truman’s presidency both he and liberal Protestant leaders saw each other as natu­ral allies, but as each attempted to control the shape of the postwar world, and, in so ­doing, trespassed on the institutional power of the other, it became apparent to all that they w ­ ere working at cross-­purposes. In truth, they had much in common. Both thought deeply held ethical standards should drive public policy, even if one had to achieve ­those policies through manipulation. Both also saw the world through a decidedly Protestant lens and spoke of religious cooperation with an understanding that Protestant Chris­tian­ity determined what was au­then­tic and worthy spiritual expression. Yet this same paradigm prevented e­ ither from cooperating with the other in an equal and respectful dynamic. Each presumed superiority over the other and assumed to understand the true nature of the world’s prob­lems and their subsequent solutions. The fact that each thought religion played a vital role in t­hose solutions did not ­matter. Their understandings of the world’s prob­lems ­were simply too dif­fer­ ent, and both refused to consider alternatives. Too much was at stake. The clash between Truman and the FCC was more than a mere religious soap opera. It inhibited Truman’s early efforts to harness religious opinion for po­liti­cal gain, halted any momentum on his UMT proposal, and, at least in his eyes, undermined the nation’s b­ attle with the Soviet Union for ideological, if not spiritual, superiority in the eyes of the world. The conflict also denied the FCC a direct link to the American government’s institutional power and, since the FCC’s leaders ­were unable to conceive of power as anything other than institutional, effectively neutralized its control over the emerging religious identity. O ­ thers w ­ ere not so restricted, and as Truman’s second term began, ­those outside of e­ ither religion or politics waged and won the b­ attle to define both the type and purpose of Amer­ic­ a’s faith in freedom.

C h a p te r  4

Filling the Void

Although the mid-­twentieth ­century’s religious propaganda was slow to develop during and immediately ­after the Second World War, Truman’s rejection of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in Amer­i­ca (FCC) was a turning point. When Truman rejected the FCC as a po­liti­cal ally, other religious representatives did not immediately fill the ensuing vacuum. Instead, the professional propagandists of the Advertising Council (or Ad Council) and the U.S. Army stepped forward to direct the nation’s growing interest in Amer­i­ca’s religious heritage. Both had a­ dopted the FCC’s ecumenical vision during the war but, like Truman, had adapted it to serve their own goals. T ­ hose ends, and the type of religious propaganda used to promote them, would have a profound effect on the American religion created during the period. The Ad Council saw religion as a means of achieving the unity-­in-­diversity that both Truman and the FCC held so dear but also thought such unity would be advantageous to the consumer-­driven, postwar economy it desired. By recycling many of their war­time tropes, Ad Council executives ­were able to build on their previous campaigns and define the emerging Cold War in the same way as the Second World War: a ­battle for the survival of freedom and religion. Funded by the government, they then set about convincing the public that only a large military force could possibly defend ­those sacred American virtues. Yet, as they did during World War II, they also con-

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sidered race far too divisive and preferred religion as a means of national unity, thereby subsuming racial issues ­under the guise of religious unity. Notably, the U.S. Army also had a hand in constructing religion as a vital component of Amer­ic­ a’s postwar identity as it aggressively advertised its new army a­ fter the war. Although it supported Truman’s universal military training (UMT) program and new selective ser­vice legislation, the army chose to emphasize the moral and religious components of its forces through the Fort Knox Experimental Unit and Character Guidance programs rather than solely base its publicity on national security concerns. In ­doing so, it reinforced the ecumenical scheme of liberal Protestants, even as ­those same Protestants protested Amer­i­ca’s increasingly militaristic stance and the ensuing, and unpre­ ce­dented, size of the military during peacetime. The army also battled with Truman over his attempt to integrate the armed forces, declaring that they would not, and should not, serve as a means of social change. Yet the army’s promotion of military ser­vice as a physical, ­mental, and spiritual boon to Amer­i­ca’s youth sought to do that very ­thing. During the Second World War, Amer­i­ca’s elite set aside their many differences and, at least publicly, promoted unity, and particularly religious unity, as a vital part of the war effort. In the years leading up to yet another American war, many of t­ hese leaders employed that same religious unity to promote a religious propaganda that subsumed race with religion, promoted ­free market capitalism as a religious derivative, and endorsed the military as the ultimate protector of American values. Truman worked with, and often funded, the vari­ous propagandists who championed ­these three issues, despite the fact that they undermined his attempts at achieving even a modicum of racial justice and reconciliation. Liberal Protestants came to publicly oppose all three issues, yet it was their own vision of religious unity that allowed public relations experts to shape the patriotic, militant religious propaganda that would soon come to define Amer­i­ca’s holy fifties.

Freedom over Equality Truman should have been able to work with the FCC; they had much in common, not least of which was their nascent efforts to alleviate Amer­i­ca’s affliction of racial segregation and discrimination. Yet their rivalry over Amer­i­ca’s religious identity and purpose in the early Cold War precluded a truly collaborative effort. By the time Truman began making public stands on behalf of African Americans, he had rejected the FCC as a ­viable partner. Instead, he

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found new allies who w ­ ere also convinced that religious propaganda, in the form of calls for religious unity and an essentially religious heritage at the heart of American identity, was the best way to promote Amer­i­ca’s turn ­toward a power­ful and expansive military, even in peacetime. However, ­these allies w ­ ere also convinced that any explicit reference to Amer­i­ca’s racial divide, even calls to bridge it, ran ­counter to the national unity that same religious propaganda sought to promote. It was better e­ ither to ignore race or, as the Office of War Information (OWI) and War Advertising Council (WAC) had done during the Second World War, to subsume it ­under the guise of religious distinctions. Although Truman publicly promoted racial reconciliation, even to his po­liti­cal detriment, he did not insist that the purveyors of his preferred religious propaganda adhere to the same standards. In many ways, Truman’s stance on civil rights seems odd when one considers his upbringing. The Christian Gospel his Baptist Sunday schools taught him in racially segregated Missouri did not include racial equality. Nor did he learn such an idea at home. His grandparents on both sides w ­ ere slave ­owners, and his ­mother, Martha Young Truman, was even “evacuated” and detained by Union soldiers when she was eleven.1 Her ­family’s harsh treatment and embrace of the slave economy caused Martha to maintain a deep hatred for Abraham Lincoln her entire life, once prompting Truman to refer to his ­mother as an “unreconstructed rebel.”2 As historian Michael R. Gardner succinctly writes: “Harry Truman was conditioned to be a racist.”3 Yet he did not become one. By the time he ran for his first public office in 1922, the local Ku Klux Klan opposed him for being too racially tolerant. He brought that same tolerance to the White House, but ­there is ­little indication that he intended to act on it ­either when he was sworn in or ­after he secured an Allied victory in World War II. His pre­de­ces­sor had also been in f­avor of racial integration and civil rights for African Americans, as evidenced by his personal correspondence and out­spoken support of the FCC’s Race Relations Sundays. Yet Roo­se­velt was not willing to push the issue po­liti­cally, and Truman seemed poised to follow in his footsteps. That changed ­after Truman found out about the open and often violent discrimination experienced by so many of the nation’s almost nine hundred thousand returning Black veterans. According to presidential aide George Elsey, news of numerous incidents of racial vio­lence against Black veterans convinced Truman that he had to take a stand.4 He was particularly disturbed when Walter White, executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored P ­ eople (NAACP), informed him of a South Carolina police chief ’s abuse of a Black sergeant, Isaac Woodard.5 A mob in Batesburg, led by the chief, dragged the uniformed sergeant, whom the army had honorably discharged just three

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hours previous, from a bus for disturbing the peace and summarily beat him on the street and l­ ater in jail. The beatings resulted in permanent blindness in both of Woodard’s eyes. Truman brought the m ­ atter to the attention of his attorney general, Tom Clark, who filed federal charges against Lynwood Lanier Shull, the police chief who had blinded Woodard. Southern congressional Demo­crats w ­ ere appalled that Truman would use the power of the federal government to punish racial vio­lence in a small southern town. On November 6, 1946, ­after a trial that lasted a ­little over twenty-­four hours and with less than thirty minutes of deliberations, a white jury acquitted Shull of all charges.6 Truman was disappointed, but not deterred. Consequently, on December 6, he officially announced the formation of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights and publicly charged it to investigate the nature and extent of the nation’s racial divide. The committee released its report, To Secure ­These Rights, on October 29, 1947. It was a scathing condemnation of American bigotry and intolerance. It detailed the prevalence of lynchings, the systematic disenfranchisement of Black citizens, and the gross inequalities in American education. It also contained an especially harsh criticism of racial segregation in the military, stating that the policy flew in the face of the stated goals of the military and American life.7 The report exasperated southern politicians and journalists. Despite the few private, and many very public, criticisms from southern leaders, Truman embraced the report and pushed his civil rights agenda in the early months of 1948, including in his State of the Union address and a special message to Congress on February 2. A few months ­later, on July 26, 1948, Truman signed Executive Order 9981, which directed the integration of the armed forces. It was a momentous action and stayed true to Truman’s promises to Amer­i­ca’s Black leaders, but it all but lost Truman the support of the power­f ul southern contingent of the Demo­cratic Party. Standing in stark opposition to Truman’s reforms, South Carolina’s Demo­cratic governor Strom Thurmond entered the presidential race as a third-­party candidate of the States’ Rights Demo­cratic Party (Dixiecrats) and took the majority of southern Demo­ crats with him. Conventional wisdom, national polls, and common sense said that Truman was headed for a resounding defeat in November to his Republican rival Thomas Dewey, due in no small part to his push for civil rights reforms and his momentous integration of the armed forces. Yet Truman won narrow victories in Ohio, Illinois, and California that pushed him to a 303 to 189 victory in the Electoral College and secured him four more years in the White House.8 Truman continued to face strong opposition from southern Demo­crats, many of whom chaired key congressional committees. ­Whether he wanted it or not, he did receive resounding support for his civil rights initiatives from

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the FCC. It de­cided to increase its own efforts to oppose racial discrimination in 1949 and, despite their recent altercations, asked Truman to contribute a public message in support of its Race Relations Sunday that year.9 The FCC had held similar events since the 1920s. Aimed at educating the public about racial issues and, in some ways, creating spaces for open dialogue about race in Amer­i­ca, Race Relations Sunday was the signature program of the FCC’s Department of Race Relations. It was a small department, led by the only African American on the professional staff of the FCC. That would remain true into the 1950s, a fact of which Black members of the FCC w ­ ere painfully aware. Members of the African American Episcopal Church and the large Black contingent of the American Baptist Church had long been weary of the FCC’s timid public stance on racial issues and, especially, integration. By limiting its public stance on race relations to resolutions and committee reports and restricting public actions to one Sunday each year, the FCC took the cautious, incremental approach favored by so many white members. It also left change in the hands of local white leaders, which too often resulted in no real change at all.10 The FCC did increase its activism over the ensuing de­cades. It ­adopted a forceful “Statement on the Churches and Segregation” in 1952, though the issue had to be forced by Adam Clayton Powell’s Abyssinian Baptist Church.11 It also ramped up support of the burgeoning civil rights movement in the 1960s, backing both Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This type of positive activism was lacking in the 1940s and 1950s, though the FCC was certainly far more vocal about racial equality than most other predominantly white Christian groups of the day. In 1949, the FCC was intent on capitalizing on Americans’ newfound interest in religion ­after the war. Still supporting the same interreligious ecumenism that had so influenced the military and so frustrated Truman, the FCC intentionally included racial discrimination as antithetical to the type of ecumenical cooperation it placed at the nation’s heart. That year’s Race Relations Sunday was designed to demonstrate the ways that Amer­i­ca’s devotion to freedom demanded that its religious communities extend that freedom to all, including African Americans. The FCC believed Truman held similar convictions, and its leadership still wanted to work with him to sway the American public ­toward a just and durable peace.12 Truman had a very dif­fer­ent view of that peace, even if he agreed with its implications for African Americans. He had already dismissed the FCC as a ­viable ally but saw the benefits of Race Relations Sunday, especially since it reinforced his previous positions on racial justice. However, he was also wor-

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ried about connecting such issues to religious unity and cooperation; unity was not the a­ ctual purpose but a means to an end, and Truman worried that marshaling religious unity to promote racial harmony was a step too far. He had already begun linking religious unity with national security and military expansion, and he did not want to muddy the ­waters.13 Uncertain about the implications of the event, Truman conferred with William Hassett, as he had done so many times in the past. ­After consulting David Niles, the only other Truman aide to have also served ­under Roo­se­velt, Hassett advised Truman to write a short statement on behalf of the event, despite his personal feelings for the group. Hassett was as sick of dealing with the FCC as Truman, but Niles made a persuasive argument.14 As Niles had noted, Truman had been a consistent supporter of the National Conference of Christians and Jews’ (NCCJ) efforts in race relations, and it might prove po­liti­cally damaging to support one while refusing the other.15 Significantly, Hassett’s argument was not that Truman needed the FCC or that the group might hurt his agenda. Both men had begun to believe that they did not ­really need the FCC’s support at all, even in religious m ­ atters. Other options had presented themselves, and Truman became increasingly convinced that institutional religious leaders ­were not nearly as indispensable or even influential as he had once believed. Hassett agreed, simply arguing that, since the FCC and NCCJ w ­ ere so similar in leadership, constituencies, and, in this case, c­ auses, supporting one while dismissing the other might look bad in the press.16 Truman begrudgingly acquiesced; he had already de­cided that positive media attention was essential for his plans. Beyond his apathy for the FCC, Truman was more inclined to support the NCCJ’s campaign for that very reason. The NCCJ’s Brotherhood Week was far more popu­lar and influential, most notably since the Ad Council sponsored, and for the most part ran, the event. Truman valued the Ad Council’s work on behalf of his own programs and was keen to help out with its other activities. Truman did not need the FCC to promote or even endorse his version of American religion; the Ad Council was both more willing and better equipped to sell the type of religious propaganda he preferred. As Truman shifted from the FCC to the Ad Council, the latter’s relationship with the federal government deepened and expanded. Known during the Second World War as the War Advertising Council (WAC), its advertising executives had already developed a back-­scratching relationship with Roo­se­velt, who had asked the group to continue its relationship with the government ­after the war ended.17 The group was happy to do so. Public relations campaigns linking patriotic support with brand recognition and consumer expectations for the postwar world drove rec­ord profits for the advertising industry

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during the war.18 The group’s public ser­vice work also garnered it far more influence over public opinion than it could have ever achieved on its own, making it both the intermediary between the government and the private sector and the architect of both sectors’ public messages. Most often, this happened when the government gave it specific issues to promote, such as when seasoned propagandist Archibald MacLeish, former director of the OWI and then assistant secretary of state in charge of public and cultural relations, came to WAC executives in 1945 asking them to generate public support of international cooperation. The advertisers then sold the idea to the business community as a way to promote international trade and f­ ree enterprise and to the American media as a way to demonstrate patriotic duty and public ser­vice. The resulting funds and f­ ree advertising space gave the WAC the means to craft messages that appealed to the American p­ eople and w ­ ere guaranteed to be 19 echoed by Amer­i­ca’s influential leaders. In this way, the line between advertising and propaganda became razor thin with the WAC. For the advertisers themselves, the distinction was essentially irrelevant and had far more to do with polemics than substance.20 By combining governmental policies with corporate objectives, they could sell both as a public ser­vice. Consequently, the group rebranded itself the Advertising Council in November 1945 and set about finding ways to link governmental policies with the needs and desires of the business community.21 That link became more official as the Ad Council ingratiated itself to the White House. With the war’s conclusion and the dismantling of the OWI, the Ad Council did not want to lose access to the president. Consequently, a­ fter the Media Programming Division, the peacetime progeny of the OWI, asked the Ad Council to coordinate all messaging, outdoor advertising, and radio allocations for the government, the Ad Council requested that the White House formally integrate the Media Programming Division into the Executive Office of the President, ensuring a close relationship with the president.22 It then leveraged that relationship to ensure Congress funded the newly created office, with Truman personally interceding on the Ad Council’s behalf.23 Thus securing its position, the Ad Council ensured that it maintained the same system as it had developed during the war; it would promote the business interests of its corporate sponsors, but only insofar as it did not overstep or overshadow the government’s aims. In other words, it could promote the White House’s propaganda and fold corporate interests into ­those programs, as long as it could persuasively argue that the campaigns ­were always advancing the government’s preferred ­causes. In 1946, the government chose atomic energy, world trade, and religious unity as its three chief ­causes.24 The first two easily fit into the Ad Council’s

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objectives. Atomic energy promoted both technological innovation and national security, and world trade advanced both Truman’s interventionist policies and the business community’s interests in an expanded consumer economy. Religious unity might seem odd, but the Ad Council had found throughout the war that religion was a useful means of promoting American unity while necessarily admitting to its g­ reat diversity. It was also happy to discover that liberal Protestants publicly affirmed its message. The council based the language and general schema of its campaigns on the FCC’s Judeo-­Christian ecumenism. Consequently, whenever liberal Protestant leaders spoke of Amer­ic­ a’s foundational alliance of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, they would implicitly, and sometimes even explic­itly, endorse the Ad Council’s efforts. In the Ad Council’s hands, that religious unity reinforced the government’s continued calls for American patriotism and sacrifice to keep the nation safe and for the business community’s advancement of a prosperous, and consumeristic, nation. Dubbing its religious campaign “United Amer­i­ca,” the Ad Council ran it alongside, and in support of, the NCCJ’s Brotherhood Week. Executives throughout Amer­i­ca’s burgeoning advertising industry supported the campaign, even t­ hose with no direct link to the Ad Council. Catholic and Jewish advertisers, who had only recently entered the industry in significant numbers, ­were especially supportive. By all accounts, United Amer­i­ca was an unqualified success. It ran from 1946 to 1952, but reached its height of exposure and influence in 1949. That year, over twelve thousand newspapers throughout the country received full advertising kits with cartoons, proof sheets of photos, and editorials written by some of the nation’s leading journalists. Hundreds of newspapers pledged their own, personal coverage of the event through editorials or essays.25 Eigh­ teen thousand movie theaters received kits with win­dow cards and posters personally delivered by the National Screen Ser­vice, and ­every major Hollywood studio pledged significant time in its newsreels to the event. The most prominent coverage came from the nation’s radio stations, which almost unanimously used the organ­ization’s prerecorded “live” spots featuring notable actors and celebrities such as Bing Crosby, Red Skelton, Jane Wyman, and Jack Benny.26 All four major networks dedicated time to United Amer­i­ca, including six thirty-­minute broadcasts and even two tele­vi­sion shows. Although the true impact of such a massive promotion cannot be completely mea­sured, advertising agencies used listener impressions to determine the overall public exposure to a message. According to the Ad Council’s mea­sure­ments, one listener impression meant that ­either one person or ­house­hold heard or viewed the message once. United Amer­i­ca’s radio spots produced over one billion listener impressions in 1949 alone.27

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Although the NCCJ had long advertised Brotherhood Week as a reminder of Americans’ religious and patriotic duty to seek equality and cooperation among all groups, the Ad Council had a narrower focus in mind and equality went farther than it cared to go. The council was particularly concerned about placing race in too prominent a role. It was simply too divisive an issue, as evidenced by the 1948 election and Thurmond’s defection from the Demo­cratic Party. The Ad Council actually refused to air United Amer­i­ca during the second half of 1948 due to the tense po­liti­cal climate generated by issues of race. From 1949 on, it continually kept all groups that put a significant emphasis on race at arm’s length, including the NAACP, the American Council on Race Relations, and the Council for Democracy.28 United Amer­i­ca did not ignore race in its program, but it always paired race with religion and emphasized the latter as the primary definition of American diversity. Billed as a promotion of “the truly American benefits of inter-­ group, inter-­faith, inter-­American democracy,” the Ad Council relied on patriotic duty, in an almost nonsensical form, to promote American unity.29 The council also warned of the disastrous consequences of disunity. “In the pre­sent unstable condition of the world,” a United Amer­i­ca radio advertisement declared, “the United States needs unity among its citizens perhaps more than ever before.” The country “simply cannot afford to be divided by religious and racial antagonisms.”30 Such antagonisms, the program explained, made Amer­i­ca look weak abroad and, in an assertion that revealed the advertiser’s true concerns, disrupted the national economy through a loss of workplace production. The Ad Council had used religion to promote unity throughout the Second World War, but it found that the idea met with far greater ac­cep­tance in the postwar years. At the same time the FCC was beginning to use religious unity to at least raise questions about Amer­i­ca’s race relations, the Ad Council was using it to dismiss t­ hose same questions as unpatriotic. United Amer­i­ca was not inherently racist; its explicit message of racial cooperation and calls for the end of racial discrimination in business forbid such a conclusion. However, the Ad Council carefully avoided any call for legislative or judicial action and promoted a version of color blindness that did more to dismiss racial issues than confront them.31 The point was not to end discrimination as much as promote an innocuous unity. The Ad Council realized that promoting American unity based on shared religious values not only allowed leaders to speak of unity-­in-­diversity without directly broaching Amer­i­ca’s race issues but also proved to be incredibly accommodating to the promotion of capitalism and a f­ree market economy. A ­ fter all, atheistic communism was also an economic system and, as such, was just as much the ­enemy of capitalism as it was of religious freedom.

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The Ad Council had already established the connection between religious freedom and the f­ ree market before its incredible success with the 1949 United Amer­i­ca campaign. Two years before, it was the driving force b­ ehind the Freedom Train, one of the more popu­lar patriotic endeavors in the twentieth ­century. The train was the brainchild of Truman’s attorney general, Tom Clark, and the Ad Council was brought on board to spearhead the proj­ect. Hoping to bring together numerous stakeholders, and potential beneficiaries of such an endeavor, the Ad Council facilitated the founding of the American Heritage Foundation, a conglomeration of business and advertising executives, Hollywood moguls, l­abor organizers, politicians, and religious leaders. The group consequently or­ga­nized the Freedom Train out of the conviction that the nation could win an impending war with the Soviet Union only if Americans w ­ ere both convinced of the threat and understood it as a primarily religious issue.32 As Clark stated in reference to the train’s purpose: “Indoctrination in democracy is the essential catalytic agent needed to blend our varying groups into one American ­family.”33 Alternatively, in the words of Thomas D’Arcy Brophy, the Ad Council executive who coordinated the proj­ect, the Freedom Train was about “re-­selling Americanism to Americans.”34 The train carried a specific definition of “Americanism” with it. Its organizers originally conceived of it ­after World War II as a witness of the stark differences between the United States and the recently defeated Nazi scourge. As more American leaders became convinced of a Soviet threat to the country, the Ad Council was able to recycle some of its old World War II rhe­toric to fit a new e­ nemy that was cast as a greater threat to Amer­i­ca and American religion than Hitler ever was. As the Ad Council would reiterate in its United Amer­i­ca campaign, the new e­ nemy, communism, also presented a stark contrast between American ­free market economics and socialist manipulation.35 The train transported dozens of original historical documents across Amer­ i­ca, including Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of In­de­pen­dence, George Washington’s copy of the Constitution, and Abraham Lincoln’s handwritten copy of the Gettysburg Address. It also contained a special collection of religious documents such as the Mayflower Compact and the Bay Psalm Book, which presented the documents as equally foundational to the American founding. In the most explicit example of the train’s conflation of religious devotion and American patriotism, hundreds of local cele­brations and parades, dubbed “patriotic revival meetings” by the American Heritage Foundation and Ad Council, accompanied the train’s sixteen-­month journey. The train’s reach was incredibly broad, with local and national media outlets giving extensive coverage to both the train and the patriotic revival meetings that accompanied it. More than twenty-­six thousand advertisements and two thousand articles

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and editorials filled the country’s newspapers in promotion of the train, with over six billion listener impressions being generated through a multifaceted radio campaign.36 In all, over three and a half million ­people visited the train itself and an estimated one in three Americans participated in one of its associated events.37 The American Heritage Foundation used the train to define Amer­i­ca for Americans. Numerous po­liti­cal, economic, civil, and religious individuals and groups vied over the train’s message. Through ­these many machinations, a central message emerged: freedom. They defined Amer­i­ca as both the land of freedom and freedom’s ardent protector. Some ideologically liberal leaders, including Attorney General Clark, advocated for ­either “democracy” or “equality” and conceived of the enterprise as a way to mobilize sufficient public support to mandate equal opportunity in hiring and housing, at the very least.38 However, as they had with United Amer­i­ca, Ad Council executives de­ cided that the latter term carried too much baggage along with it. “Equality” meant too many ­things to too many dif­fer­ent p­ eople. Granted, “freedom” was just as vague, but organizers felt that ­people held more firmly to their vari­ous interpretations of equality, whereas every­one loved freedom, no ­matter what they thought it actually was. Organizers ­were especially cognizant of the many divisive connotations that equality held in the southern states.39 Freedom was better, they thought. Specifically, they designated religious freedom, which they vaguely defined as a sort of Judeo-­Christian heritage rather than religious disestablishment, as a core tenet of American life and the vital ele­ment that both Amer­i­ca’s enemies threatened and the American military had to protect. Thanks to the goading of business leaders, organizers also intimately linked f­ ree enterprise with freedom of religion as the communists’ target. The Freedom Train taught Americans that their country was a bastion of religious freedom and the land of opportunity, where f­ ree enterprise meant that anyone could pull himself, or less commonly herself, up by the bootstraps.40 When visitors learned that the communists hated Americans’ freedom, they learned that both Amer­i­ca’s material and spiritual prosperity represented this freedom and, consequently, Americans had to defend them at all costs. Vari­ous social organ­izations embraced the Freedom Train’s message. The Good House­keeping Club’s Laymen’s Committee or­ga­nized a National Bible Week in 1947, which promoted the reading of the Bible in communities through newspapers, radio programs, and luncheon clubs. According to the Good House­keeping Club, the committee “was created for the purpose of bringing about a more somber realization of the impor­tant part religion played in the creation of [the American] government.”41 The organ­ization highlighted

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Amer­i­ca’s religious foundations, as expressed through the Freedom Train, and called for unity through a rededication to God’s word. It hoped to impress upon the nation “the realization of the fundamental truth that Amer­i­ca was founded on man’s consciousness of God, man’s daily ­labor, and the fruits therefrom.”42 The Ad Council also sponsored the most vehement promotion of Amer­i­ ca’s religious foundations, Religion in American Life (RIAL), a campaign that paralleled United Amer­ic­ a’s success in 1949. The campaign was dif­fer­ent from both United Amer­ic­ a and the Freedom Train, however. Outside groups or­ga­ nized the first two, with the Ad Council giving financial and material support. Conversely, both religious and po­liti­cal groups supported RIAL, but it was almost wholly an Ad Council endeavor. Now fully aware of the public’s ac­cep­ tance of religious propaganda and the benefits that religious ecumenism could produce, the Ad Council combined its previous themes of the Soviet menace, religious unity, and material and spiritual prosperity into one unified message centered on Amer­i­ca’s religious heritage.43 To or­ga­nize its endeavor and promote its message, the Ad Council chose the only person with the requisite experience and reputation: Charles “Electric” Wilson. Wilson immediately recruited Truman for the campaign. With RIAL set to run on November 1–24, 1949, Wilson asked Truman to help kick it off with a public message. All four national radio networks agreed to give fifteen minutes of f­ree airtime on October 30 for the president’s message. Truman was not hard to convince; he had backed the Ad Council for nearly identical campaigns in previous years. RIAL, like United Amer­i­ca and the Freedom Train, fit well with Truman’s own understanding of the Cold War as a ­battle between religion and its enemies and provided national exposure for what he considered a worthwhile cause. When Truman agreed, Wilson sent him a short, yet startlingly candid explanation of the campaign’s purpose. “In a world sorely troubled by dissensions among men,” Wilson wrote, “we still stand a united nation, mighty in our material resources and mightier still in our faith in one to whom, since the days of the pilgrims, our nation has been dedicated.”44 In other words, the world was a dangerous place, but Amer­i­ca would be fine ­because it was united, rich, and religious, as it had been from its inception. Truman got the message. He began his fifteen-­minute national broadcast with a retelling of American origins that deserves a full recounting: The United States has been a deeply religious nation since its earliest beginnings. The need which the found­ers of our country felt—­the need to be ­free to worship God, each man in his own way—­was one of the strongest impulses that brought men from Eu­rope to the New World. As the

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pioneers carved a civilization from the forest, they set a pattern which has lasted to our own time. First, they built homes and then, knowing the need for religion in their daily lives, they built churches. When the United States was established, its coins bore witness to the American faith in a benevolent deity. The motto then was “in god we trust.” That is still our motto and we, as a ­people, still place our firm trust in God.45 Rife with historical inaccuracies, Truman’s mythic account included no mention of Native Americans or the horrors of slavery, but it did recall the nation’s faith in God, a faith that prompted the found­ers to include “In God we trust” on their coinage. In truth, the phrase was not included on American coinage ­until the Civil War. Northern preachers ­were concerned that the Confederacy explic­itly and unequivocally called on God in both its constitution and official proclamations, while the Union included no such declarations. Although Abraham Lincoln opposed the numerous amendments designed to add an acknowl­edgment of God to the U.S. Constitution, he did agree to have the motto added to the coinage. The Union was in the midst of a war, and it needed to show that it was on God’s side.46 Truman and his speechwriters might have genuinely believed their erroneous version of the story, but it seems unlikely. Regardless, historical accuracy might not have mattered. Truman understood that, even if their current rivalry had not yet escalated into all-­out war, Americans needed once again to demonstrate their devotion to God if they w ­ ere to gain the upper hand, and RIAL was g­ oing to make sure they did. The campaign was a resounding success. Local newspapers and advertisers supported over three thousand print ads. Besides si­mul­ta­neously broadcasting Truman’s speech, the American Broadcasting Channel, Mutual Broadcasting System, National Broadcasting Channel, and Columbia Broadcasting System dedicated commercials and airtime to the campaigns’ message, generating over five hundred million listener impressions just in the month of November. The U.S. population was around 150 million in 1949, meaning that public exposure to the RIAL radio program alone was astonishing. The Ad Council also blanketed the nation’s outdoor billboards with over fifty-­two hundred advertisements.47 Intentionally set during the buildup to Thanksgiving Day, RIAL taught Americans throughout November that “families that pray together stay together” and inundated them with tales of the religious foundations of the country, the Soviet threat to American prosperity, and, for the sake of their freedom, the need for national unity.48 According to the Ad Council, Americans could demonstrate that unity by affirming their faith and “attending and supporting the churches and synagogues of their choice.”49

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Despite Wilson’s leadership on Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights as well as RIAL, race was rarely, if ever, included in RIAL’s calls for unity. When it was, RIAL simply continued the proclamation that religious, patriotic Americans need not concern themselves with issues of race. ­After Wilson put im­ mense pressure on the American Heritage Foundation and the Ad Council, they did decide that the Freedom Train would not be segregated and even canceled stops in Memphis, Tennessee, and Birmingham, Alabama, ­after local officials insisted on a segregated event. However, Black Americans had almost no say in the train’s creation or production, and the Ad Council purposefully left the ­Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments out of the program for fear of putting race in too prominent a position.50 That had been the Ad Council’s stance during the Second World War, as well. Drawing attention to Amer­i­ca’s racial divide did not promote national unity, the council had continually de­ cided; religious diversity was all the diversity Amer­i­ca need think about. Such a position squarely contradicted Truman’s personal and po­liti­cal positions, but his propagandists had a job to do, and, by all accounts, they did it well. By positioning their brand of religious freedom as both a foundational tenet of American identity and the locus of Soviet contempt for the nation, they sold the idea of Truman’s expanded peacetime military as the necessary steward of American religion. By tying that same religious freedom, and the Soviet threat, to the f­ ree market, the Ad Council successfully promoted the interests of its corporate backers. Freedom worked, even if it came at the expense of a concerted push for equality.

Protecting Amer­i­ca’s Values The Ad Council was not alone in that assessment. The U.S. military, by this time headed by the Department of Defense rather than the War Department, came to similar conclusions, both in terms of the prob­lems posed by directly addressing racial divisions and the usefulness of employing religion as a unifying force. As during the Second World War, the military followed a parallel course to the president’s religious propaganda, even as it insisted on using its own propagandists to promote it. The military also greatly expanded the scope and intensity of its religious propaganda a­ fter the war. Consequently, the military created what Jonathan Herzog has called a “spiritual-­industrial complex” in the years immediately following the war.51 Yet that enterprise was not merely a result of the b­ attle against godless communism, nor was it an offshoot of liberal Protestants’ endorsement of ecumenical cooperation in the

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military; the spiritual-­industrial complex was part of a larger program of domestic religious propaganda in which the military actively cooperated. Like that of the Ad Council, the military’s religious propaganda was concerned with unity as a means to an end. Granted, group cohesion had a far dif­fer­ent context in the military than in civilian life, but the military was no more promoting social equality with its calls for religious unity than was the Ad Council. That fact is apparent by the military’s complicated reaction to Executive Order 9981, which Truman intended to integrate the armed forces. ­There was widespread opposition to such a drastic change in military policy throughout military command, though that opposition was much stronger in the army than in other branches. Although ­there was a g­ reat deal of re­sis­tance in the navy and the newly in­de­pen­dent air force, both branches’ civilian secretaries and prominent officers did not publicly oppose the mea­sure and fully cooperated with the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Ser­vices, which was created to enforce the president’s order. Nicknamed the Fahy Committee for its chairman, Charles Fahy, the committee was charged with overseeing the integration of the military branches, but almost immediately a­ fter its formation the committee de­cided to work to convince the branches to voluntarily cooperate rather than force them to do so.52 The army de­cided not to volunteer. Many prominent army generals, including Chief of Staff Omar Bradley, publicly criticized the order and insisted that integration could not work in the armed forces. Bradley informed the Washington Post: “The Army is not out to make any social reforms. The Army ­will put men of dif­fer­ent races in dif­ fer­ent companies. It ­will change that policy when the nation as a ­whole changes it.”53 Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall backed Bradley, with Royall g­ oing before the Fahy Committee and refusing to cooperate in any meaningful way. His arguments centered on the idea that “history” proved Black Americans to be less suited for combat roles than whites. Arguing for efficiency, Royall insisted on Black ser­vicemen’s better aptitude for support tasks vital to the army’s total organ­ization and effectiveness. He ended his testimony by echoing Bradley’s assertion that Truman’s executive order attempted to use the army for something it could not, and should not, be. The army, Royall insisted, “was not an instrument for social evolution.” Designed to protect American culture, not change it, the army had no place challenging social mores or modeling a new form of American culture.54 Yet when it came to the religious character of both the army and American culture, that is exactly what the army tried to do. Truman reacted to religious leaders’ stark opposition to universal military training (UMT) with his creation of the President’s Advisory Commission on Universal Training, which,

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a­ fter first deciding to support the program, elected to sell UMT to the public as an essential part of national security. The commission, spurred by Reverend Daniel Poling, also insisted that the program would be spiritually beneficial to the nation’s youth, though it awkwardly lumped ­those benefits in with its national security argument. The army also supported UMT, but it de­cided to go the opposite way as the commission to sell the program. In what might seem like an unusual move, the army de­cided to focus on the religious benefits of military training rather than its essential function for security. In other words, Amer­i­ca’s youth should join the armed forces not primarily ­because the country needed them to protect itself, but rather b­ ecause such ser­vice would be good for their souls, in addition to their bodies and minds. However, before the army could sell the religious benefits of military ser­vice, it had to create them, and, unlike Truman, the army never looked to religious organ­izations to spearhead its efforts. As during World War II, it was also hesitant to let civilian propagandists control the military’s narrative with the public. If a religious revival in the ranks was needed, then the army would create one itself, and it set out to do so at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Arthur  L. Williston, secretary of the National Council of the Citizens Committee for a National War Ser­vice Act, first proposed the Fort Knox Experimental Unit to the War Department in the summer of 1946.55 The Army Ground Forces officially approved the experiment in December and bused the first recruits into the fa­cil­i­ty early the next year. Six hundred and sixty-­ four volunteers filled out the first training, with recruits having an average age slightly younger than eigh­teen. In keeping with the racial standards Bradley and Royall l­ater defended, all ­were white. They stepped out of the buses into a fa­cil­i­ty that ­little resembled its environment. The quarters looked more like college dormitories and ­were far more comfortable than common army barracks. Recruits ­were able to exercise in the state-­of-­the-­art gymnasium or even catch a movie or show in the fa­cil­i­ty’s theater.56 The unit also included a large chapel. Both geo­g raph­i­cally and symbolically, the chapel stood at the center of the Fort Knox Experimental Unit. The army entrusted the unit’s commander, Brigadier General John Devine, with an unusual charge: to create an alternative military system that put moral and spiritual strength on par with the army’s traditional physical and vocational emphases. Devine started by forbidding his officers from ­either yelling at or publicly embarrassing the recruits, even as a disciplinary mea­sure. ­There would be no screaming drill sergeants on Devine’s base. The American p­ eople, unbeknownst to them, had entrusted their new army with the protection and strengthening of the nation’s youth, and Devine intended to demonstrate that to Amer­ic­ a’s ­mothers and ­fathers.

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Although he insisted that young men w ­ ere good at heart, he also set about instilling “Christian morals” in the recruits. He forbade swearing, alcohol, gambling, and suggestive lit­er­a­ture, including the ever-­popular pinup girls. Devine even went so far as to convince local bartenders to refuse the recruits ser­vice when they ­were off duty. Since they ­were required to wear their uniforms off base, the recruits ­were easily recognizable.57 They also went to sex education classes. Devine once stated that the purpose of ­these classes was to teach the recruits “the place of sex in the plan of God and the necessity for keeping one’s body and mind pure.” He forbade condoms on base, and the unit’s sex education classes taught abstinence ­until marriage as the best way to live a productive and moral life.58 The army did not design Fort Knox simply to instill morality in the recruits. As soon as they arrived on base, one of the base’s chaplains personally interviewed each man, with the subsequent religious profile becoming part of the recruit’s permanent rec­ord. The profile gauged each man’s religious feelings and orientation, as well as his past religious practices. Regardless of ­these past practices, Devine required ­every recruit to attend religious ser­vices each Sunday for the first four weeks. They also went to mandatory lectures and classes throughout the week, most often led by one of the chaplains. Their very first lecture was on Amer­i­ca’s religious foundations and the spiritual princi­ples that still resided at the nation’s heart. By the end of this introductory period of basic training, priests confirmed 26 Catholic recruits and baptized 2 ­others. The unit’s Protestant chaplain converted and baptized 102.59 When ser­vices ­stopped being mandatory, chaplains introduced the recruits to local religious leaders, many of whom sat on the unit’s religious advisory board. The board reported that over 90 ­percent of the recruits kept attending religious ser­vices once they became voluntary.60 The Fort Knox Experimental Unit also contained its very own Public Information Office (PIO), which the army generously funded. Though the Ad Council might have officially walked a tight rope between advertising and propaganda, the PIO had l­ittle need. A ­ fter all, the army designed the unit not only to create a more spiritual force but also to sell that new military vision to the rest of the country. The unit’s officers gave over two thousand politicians, journalists, and religious leaders tours of the fa­cil­i­ty between January and July of 1947. PIO staffers also personally assisted nearly one hundred journalists with their stories on the program and provided background material and public statements to many more. Local support committees provided ­free press, and the PIO supplied national civic organ­izations with pamphlets, pictures, and posters.61 Although they thought that a direct advertising campaign like that of RIAL or United Amer­i­ca would be too crass for the army, the PIO had the

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cooperation of the White House, numerous social organ­izations, and the national press, as well as an astounding bud­get. Its bud­get was so large, and its publicity campaign so pervasive, that in June 1947 the special Subcommittee on Publicity and Propaganda of the House Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments convened to decide if the Army Ground Forces had acted inappropriately in trying to influence civilian organ­izations to support, and lobby Congress in support of, the military and UMT. The subcommittee ultimately concluded that the army was guilty of inappropriate “propaganda activities supporting compulsory military training.”62 Congress censured the War Department in early 1948, and the Department of Justice subsequently opened its own investigation.63 However, both the War Department and the army had already ended their propaganda efforts by that time. They had originally designed the Fort Knox experiment in support of UMT, with the hopes of convincing the program’s opponents that mandatory military training would be morally and spiritually beneficial to Amer­i­ca’s youth. Truman and the ser­vice secretaries had even agreed to give up the fight to extend the draft by the time the Fort Knox unit opened and officially let the Selective Ser­vice Act expire in March 1947 in hopes of garnering support for UMT. The support did not come. The nation’s economy had gained a solid footing, and the American ­people ­were far too concerned with getting back to their normal, and they hoped more financially stable, lives to push for the universal ser­vice they purported to support in opinion polls. Recruitment projections ­were holding, even without the draft, but the newly formed National Military Establishment was growing wary over the Soviets’ increasing aggression in the early months of 1948. Consequently, Truman spoke before Congress on March 17 and asked for passage of the Marshall Plan, a new draft law, and UMT. He also, for the first time, publicly condemned the Soviet Union as Amer­i­ca’s rival in world affairs and a potential threat to world peace.64 Within a month, Congress enabled the full enactment of the Marshall Plan. In June, less than a week ­after the onset of the Soviets’ blockade of West Berlin, Truman signed the Selective Ser­vice Act of 1948 into law. The country never ­adopted UMT. The new draft did pre­sent many of the same challenges as UMT, but on a much smaller scale. The military still incorporated tens of thousands of American youth into its ranks during peacetime, with many hundreds of thousands already deployed overseas. Americans had long been wary of a large, standing army during peacetime, and opposition to UMT had proved that some Americans, or at least many religious and social leaders, believed that military ser­vice could be detrimental to Amer­ic­ a’s youth. Both the Truman administration and the army set out to prove to the American p­ eople that this

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unpre­ce­dented size of Amer­i­ca’s peacetime military force was good for the nation and its young ser­vicemen. As before, they generally cooperated, though each ran its own public relations campaigns. However, by 1948, both of their campaigns had begun to blend national security and spiritual development into a homogenous w ­ hole, whereby strengthening the religious fiber of Amer­i­ ca’s youth somehow, in itself, fortified the country against its godless foe. For instance, on October 27, 1948, Truman announced the formation of the President’s Committee on Religious and Moral Welfare and Character Guidance in the Armed Forces. The executive order creating the committee declared it to be “the policy of the government to promote and encourage the religious, moral, and recreational welfare of the Armed Forces and thereby to enhance the military preparedness and security of the nation.”65 In his public announcement, Truman went on to declare: “The spiritual and moral health of our Armed Forces is a vital ele­ment in our national security. Together with a universal understanding of the princi­ples of citizenship and American democracy, it constitutes the bedrock on which security and the success of military preparedness depend.”66 Due to its cumbersome name, many simply referred to it as the Weil Committee a­ fter its chair, Frank Weil, a New York attorney and president of the National Jewish Welfare Board. Truman retained several members of the former committee on UMT on the new committee, including Edmund A. Walsh and Daniel Poling, who, along with Weil, completed the now obligatory tri-­ faith membership. Truman Gibson also remained and once again served as the committee’s Black representative. The president filled out the committee with representatives from the education, health, and business industries, as well as one representative chosen by both the National Military Establishment and the governing board of the vari­ous intelligence agencies.67 The army, navy, and air force all had input on ­those chosen, although the White House had the final say. For instance, when the army pushed for Harry Emerson Fosdick’s inclusion, the White House objected, stating that he was both “opposed to UMT” and “about 90 years old.” Truman made it clear that he would not appoint anyone who had publicly come out against the draft.68 Truman outlined the nature and purpose of the committee to its members and the public. “For the first time in our history,” Truman wrote, “the national security requires that we rapidly expand our Military Establishment when no ­g reat war is raging.” This unpre­ce­dented action meant that the nation suddenly had a huge force filled with scores of teen­agers, many of whom had never before left their hometowns. The White House and the National Military Establishment ­were as concerned about this development as Amer­i­ca’s parents, and they intended to ensure that the boys not only ­were well cared

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for but also came out of their ser­vice as better, more spiritual men and Americans.69 The committee worked ­until February 1951 to ascertain the most pressing prob­lems related to such a large peacetime force and suggest ways to alleviate ­those prob­lems. Despite encouragement by the president and the committee’s own concerns over opposition from religious groups, it did not focus on religion or the troops’ spiritual health ­until the last months before its disbandment.70 The committee actually identified a lack of married housing and proper recreational opportunities as the two worst morale prob­lems in the current military structure and the greatest threats to a thriving and healthy peacetime military program.71 Congress hampered the committee’s proposed plans to bolster troop morale and living conditions when it disbanded the United Ser­vice Organ­izations (USO) in 1950. The committee had initially delegated responsibility for enacting its recommendations to the USO and was subsequently left with no apparent way to implement its suggestions. The committee also faced a public relations dilemma. Although he had not specifically charged them with such, it was clear that Truman expected the group to garner public support for the draft and military ser­vice in general. It had continually failed to do so.72 As Frank Weil once wrote to Truman, the group was struggling to “find new and effective ways for dispelling public apathy and awakening an interest and understanding on the part of the public for the peacetime ser­vice man.”73 Hesitant to use the Ad Council for fear of too obviously expanding beyond the committee’s public mandate of investigation to outright propaganda, it hired its own public relations expert in the last months of 1949, but he failed to produce any significant public interest in the committee’s activities.74 Its next PR man, Edward Kirby, did have more success, especially with his biweekly series of stories titled “Warm Facts in a Cold War,” which ­were picked up by vari­ous national newspapers and radio stations.75 The group’s report on the military chaplaincy echoed Truman’s emphasis on Amer­ic­ a’s spiritual foundations and the nation’s accepted vision of an antireligious Soviet bloc, but by that time U.S. involvement on the Korean peninsula had reached a boiling point, and the need for a committee to examine Amer­i­ca’s peacetime military force was soon to be irrelevant. The army thought the committee was irrelevant from its very inception, particularly ­because the committee had l­ittle control over its actions. When James Forrestal, the newly designated secretary of defense, forwarded Truman’s decision to form the committee to the branch secretaries in September 1948, Army Secretary Royall was incensed that the president was yet again interfering with the army’s organ­ization and activities. He was already upset with Truman’s order to integrate the armed forces six months ­earlier, and the idea that yet another presidential committee would direct his organ­ization was

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insulting. Besides, the army had already enacted its own Character Guidance program months ago and, with the success of the Fort Knox experiment, proved it was far better at both implementing and publicizing the military’s moral and spiritual overhaul.76 Royall wrote to Forrestal on September 15 to inform him of the army’s “aggressive leadership” in the area of recruits’ spiritual formation and protection through its Character Guidance program. The army “defined ‘Character Guidance’ as all acts which tend[ed] to encourage the development of moral responsibility, spiritual values, and self-­discipline” and had been diligent in instilling such values in its recruits. If the president’s committee wanted to emphasize such values, it should follow the army’s lead. Royall also included a note on the successful public relations achievements of the program, which was “well-­publicized throughout the Army and [was] becoming increasingly well-­known in civilian circles.”77 For all his bravado, Royall did not overestimate the army’s public relations achievements. The Fort Knox Experimental Unit had proved so successful that Devine pushed for its programs throughout the army, and Royall agreed. During the summer of 1947, both commissioned and noncommissioned officers began arriving at Fort Knox ­every two weeks to be trained in the unit’s techniques. The army soon extended the training program to its chaplains, who, along with their commanding officers, took the Fort Knox methods to their own bases.78 Due in large part to the congressional probe into its propaganda efforts, the army transitioned the Fort Knox methods into its Character Guidance program and shifted its public relations campaign to the new program. The military’s official guidebook to the program, disseminated to the military chaplains who would oversee it, explic­itly stated that all of the moral princi­ples taught in the program “came from the same source, God, and w ­ ere universal, unchanging and eternal.”79 Lectures and pamphlets given to military recruits taught that the worship of God was a requirement for moral living and that ser­vice to the nation was most effective when religion became a vital aspect of one’s life. Still concerned with the type of nebulous religiosity so prevalent in the general ser­vices during the war, the army made sure to emphasize that it allowed and encouraged soldiers to maintain the beliefs of what­ever tradition they chose. Such disparate traditions w ­ ere no threat, b­ ecause, as the army also insisted, they all worshipped the same God and clung to the same values. In other words, soldiers could maintain their religious distinctions b­ ecause, in the end, t­ here w ­ ere no real distinctions between religious traditions. As with Fort Knox, the army gave the Character Guidance program a dedicated public relations department, which supplied the press with a steady stream of stories, quotations, and moving photo­graphs of the army’s spiritual

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values, its vital mission to protect the country’s religious traditions, and its commitment to maintaining and advancing the religious tenets on which the country was founded.80 As it had during the Second World War and throughout the Fort Knox experiment, the army borrowed freely from liberal Protestants’ ecumenical schema, endorsing religious unity and cooperation between Amer­i­ca’s Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, who all worshipped the same God and loved the same country. Secretary of State George C. Marshall lauded the program’s “development of moral, spiritual, and religious values” in the country’s young men, and the New York Times praised its dedication to “nonsectarian religious values.”81 The program inundated both army recruits and the American public with tales of the essential connection between religion and democracy and the imminent danger the communist “faith” posed to Amer­i­ ca’s religious core.82 The army’s Character Guidance program focused on both internal reform and public relations. When the air force, recently reor­ga­nized as an in­de­pen­ dent branch, began its own Character Guidance initiative in 1948, it had a more ambitious goal. The program’s director, Charles Carpenter, chief of Air Force Chaplains, had a vision of reforming not just air force personnel but also the entirety of American culture. As historian James Gilbert aptly writes, Carpenter’s goal was a “national crusade, an evangelizing of civilian as well as military life.”83 Representatives of the Moody Institute of Science, an evangelical organ­ization formed to combat the public ac­cep­tance of Charles Darwin’s theories and the increasing secularization of American society, joined Carpenter in this audacious plan. Like the NCCJ and its ecumenical mission during World War II, the Moody Institute of Science saw the military as an opportunity to educate Amer­ic­ a’s f­ uture leaders in an isolated environment and then send ­those converted ser­vicemen into the larger culture as missionaries of an essential cause. The air force showed recruits, veterans, and officers numerous films produced by the Moody Institute, which promoted biblical literalism in addition to Amer­i­ca’s religious character and the Soviet threat to American values.84 Despite its more intense religious backing, the air force focused its program more internally than the army, and, in the end, the latter’s propaganda efforts proved more directly influential.85 Combined with the Ad Council’s massive publicity campaigns, the army, navy, and air force taught the American public what it stood for and, consequently, for what it was fighting. Not content to let Truman or his propagandists define the military and military ser­vice for them, they developed their own public relations campaigns that emphasized the religious and moral advantages to military ser­vice over national security. In other words, military ser­ vice was not only essential to Amer­i­ca’s safety; it was also critical to the physical

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and moral development of Amer­i­ca’s youth. ­After UMT was abandoned for yet another draft, Truman, his allies, and the military managed a synthesis of their two emphases and began promoting a common trope that would come to define the religious propaganda of the next administration: Amer­i­ca’s religious character was the bedrock of its national security. For Amer­i­ca to be ­free, it must also be religious.

Race, Rhe­toric, and Real­ity Less than five years a­ fter the close of the Second World War, Amer­i­ca’s armed forces w ­ ere fighting once again. The nation became embroiled in a conflict with no clear objectives and no definite e­ nemy in a country that a ­g reat many Americans could not even locate on a map. Termed the “Forgotten War,” the Korean conflict drew a strange mixture of public support and apathy. The war was, in the words of David Halberstam, “a puzzling, gray, very distant conflict . . . ​about which most Americans, save the men who fought ­there and their immediate families, preferred to know as ­little as pos­si­ble.”86 The public’s disinterest presented an in­ter­est­ing situation for Amer­i­ca’s religious community, which showed almost unan­i­mous support for the war. Many supported the defense of ­Korea, which had been the site of numerous Christian missions over the previous few de­cades. For instance, Clare Boothe Luce, former congresswoman and wife of the media magnate Henry Luce, referred to K ­ orea as a “bulwark of Christian democracy.”87 Despite their stalwart opposition to Truman’s expansion of the military, most liberal Protestants accepted Truman’s portrayal of the war as a UN police action. Subsequently, they saw the conflict as an opportunity to demonstrate the efficacy of a world order regulated by UN directives.88 ­These religious groups, supported by the Ad Council, certainly continued their proclamations of Amer­i­ca’s religious heritage, the centrality of religious unity for American prosperity, and the need to defend American freedoms. However, domestic programs ­were subdued and tended t­oward generic, ambiguous declarations of American superiority and religious unity. Thanks to the public’s apathy, specific details mattered less than nebulous declarations of patriotic religiosity, a theme that would persist in the de­cade a­ fter the war’s conclusion. The public’s disinterest in the war also had numerous ramifications for the military beyond the tremendous strain public disfavor always puts on both resources and morale. First, the logistical realities of the war forced the army to fi­nally implement Executive Order 9981 irrespective of its desires and vaunted public relations efforts to sidestep the issue. Despite the Fahy Committee’s ef-

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forts, Royall, Bradley, and the rest of the army’s command structure had been able to resist integrating their forces, and they continued to segregate Black soldiers into support units in the early months of the conflict. Yet a devastating offensive by the North Korean army left white combat units grossly depleted, and commanders begrudgingly requested Black soldiers to fill the void. When unit morale did not break down, and Amer­i­ca’s Black ser­vicemen proved to be as faithful and efficient as their white brethren, army officials gave in. By the summer of 1951, the army reported that over 95 ­percent of African American soldiers ­were serving in integrated units.89 The realities of war had prompted the army to take one step closer to Amer­ i­ca’s promises of freedom and justice for all, yet the move directly contradicted the army’s previous efforts and public statements. It also put the army in a position to serve as an example of racial cooperation for civil rights advocates, which the army’s command had expressly avoided in the preceding years. The new army’s vaunted defense of freedom and American virtues looked decidedly dif­fer­ent when that rhe­toric of freedom visibly included racial integration. Yet a military at war has far more to worry about than public relations, and the army dropped the PR portion of its Character Guidance program during the conflict. Although the war pushed the military to integrate its forces, it also further established the national identity that Truman, the Ad Council, and the army had so diligently and effectively promoted in the preceding years. For instance, Truman went before Congress in May 1951 to promote the Mutual Security Program, an extension of the Marshall Plan that established deep economic and military ties with Amer­i­ca’s allies. He cast the program in much the same way he had originally proposed UMT, though his successful work with the Ad Council had further emboldened his religious interpretation of the Cold War and the spiritual stakes of the conflict. To lose any allied nation to Soviet influence “would be more than a blow to our military security and our economic life,” he proclaimed. “It would be a terrible defeat for the ideals of freedom—­ with grave spiritual consequences for men everywhere who share our faith in freedom.”90 According to Truman and his military commanders, the Korean War made the protection of that faith in freedom all the more apparent. American soldiers ­were once again fighting and ­dying in a conflict against an antireligious ­enemy hell-­bent on destroying American freedom. The military told them so on an almost daily basis. The army’s and the air force’s Character Guidance programs ­were firmly established when Truman committed troops to ­Korea. Although they ­stopped advertising their effects through the American media, ­these programs spent the conflict educating tens of millions of additional

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young men about the intimate link between American freedom and religious devotion and lauding the noble values of Amer­ic­ a’s religious unity. Between June 1950 and the summer of 1952, military chaplains conducted over seventy-­ eight thousand courses on religious instruction for military recruits.91 True to its former stance, the military did not give special attention to or meaningfully connect its new racial policies with its religious program. Religious organ­izations aided the military by sponsoring hundreds of religious revivals and campaigns for the troops. The FCC, which changed its name to the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. (NCC) in 1950, supported over two hundred such events. It designed its preaching missions “to strengthen the moral and spiritual life of [the] Armed Forces” and intentionally emphasized the spiritual values on which the found­ers built the country.92 Although it had recently linked religious unity and racial equality, such a connection did not garner a prominent position in the NCC’s military revivals. By 1951, the army’s recent integration made the discussion less immediately pressing. Not that such forced integration did not create numerous conflicts among the troops, who might well have needed their religious leaders to extoll and explain the spiritual benefits of racial cooperation. Yet the NCC did not do so. The army and the Ad Council had been telling the American public that the precarious times meant that emphasizing national and religious unity was more impor­tant than divisive discussions of race. In the U.S. Army camps in ­Korea, at least, the NCC seemed to agree. Yet again, it insisted that despite their reservations the war demanded that all Americans unite ­behind the cause. The fact that both the White House and the military crafted that unity on liberal Protestants’ own terms did not hurt m ­ atters. They had already lost the White House’s backing, and their programs, though still popu­ lar, did not receive the same public exposure as t­hose recently advocated by the Ad Council. In ­Korea, they seemed content to preach patriotic duty to the captive audience they had before them. Liberal Protestants ­were not the only ones to take advantage of that audience. The American press took special notice of the time evangelical revivalist Billy Graham and military vicar Cardinal Francis Spellman spent in K ­ orea, encouraging the troops and ensuring that they understood the religious values for which they fought. As with the NCC, neither man included racial cooperation in ­these values. Much like the Freedom Train years before, both men did, however, extoll the essential character of American freedom as inherently religious and noted the communists’ desire to see that freedom destroyed.93 Like veterans of the Second World War, the troops brought their understanding of t­ hese values home with them ­after the war’s conclusion.

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The exact reasons ­behind the war w ­ ere ambiguous. The e­ nemy was ­either the oppressive North Korean faction or the Soviet communists who supposedly pulled its strings.94 The exact reasons ­were unimportant, though, at least to the majority of Americans. They w ­ ere clear that the communists hated Americans’ freedom, and only a strong, united Amer­i­ca could adequately stand against their oppressive onslaught. It was the nature of this American freedom, a freedom consistently defined in religious terms by the religious propaganda of the military, Truman, and his allies, that would mark Amer­i­ca’s holy fifties. It was a freedom that promoted capitalism and materialism as much as liberty and that suppressed race u ­ nder the guise of Amer­i­ca’s religious diversity. American leaders used religious propaganda to sell the nation on a par­tic­u­lar kind of freedom and then integrated that brand of freedom into an American faith. By the time Dwight D. Eisenhower entered the White House and the Korean conflict ended, that faith had been used to circumvent traditional, institutional bound­aries of church and state and had allowed propagandists to create a space between the two: the social and civil order.

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Creating the Space between Church and State

­After writing of the recent upsurge in church attendance and the general interest in religion, a Time magazine reporter opined in April 1954 that “­today in the U.S. the Christian faith is back in the center of t­ hings.”1 One must forgive the journalist his momentary lapse from the established interreligious schema; occasionally ­people accidentally express what they ­really think. Most journalists, politicians, and even ministers, priests, and rabbis would have written that “religion” was in the center. Religion was becoming the new American shibboleth by 1954. As the Military Ordinariate had argued during the Second World War, “religion” meant “a thousand dif­ fer­ent t­hings to a thousand dif­fer­ent ­people.”2 Liberal Protestants, who had been promoting that sense of ecumenical religion for de­cades, found the vagueness helpful. Old distinctions of theology, liturgics, and doctrine ­were too specific and limiting; they delineated too many competing identities. Religion, however, was accessible to all. Regardless of their par­tic­u­lar circumstances or beliefs, all Americans could be religious. By 1954, nearly all claimed that they w ­ ere. The Advertising Council, or Ad Council, ­adopted this sense of ecumenical religion during the Second World War. Ever since, the council used it almost exclusively in its vari­ous campaigns and, subsequently, made religion an advertising and media byword. Granted, a g­ reat many Americans conceived of religion in Christian terms, but their journalists, representatives, and pastors 125

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increasingly contended that in Amer­i­ca, the bastion of religious freedom, ­people of all faiths w ­ ere welcome and vital. Yet the Ad Council and the American Heritage Foundation had already de­cided that freedom, like religion, meant a thousand dif­fer­ent ­things as they planned the Freedom Train. Ever since, Amer­i­ca’s propagandists had declared that religion was the cornerstone of American democracy and the only ave­nue through which Americans, and all citizens of the world, might maintain their freedom. T ­ here was perhaps no greater champion of this faith in freedom than Dwight D. Eisenhower, who famously declared in 1952: “Our form of government has no sense u ­ nless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I ­don’t care what it is.”3 Critics of the period often quote Eisenhower’s quip as proof of the shallowness of postwar Amer­i­ca’s religious revival. It may very well have been shallow. Yet the religious authenticity of even a single individual is difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain, much less that of tens of millions of p­ eople. Likewise, religious authenticity is embroiled in a myriad of personal religious convictions and paradigmatic assumptions of what religion, belief, and faith consist of and how one should, or can, properly express them. Such debates also obscure the functions of religion and religious rhe­toric. Eisenhower and, it seems, a g­ reat many Americans of the day ­were more concerned about what religion did for themselves and their country than about establishing firm theological systems to contain and explain their faith. For Eisenhower, religion was of l­ ittle use if it put one’s head in the clouds but did nothing to place one’s feet solidly on the ground.4 The authors of the nation’s many best-­selling religious books agreed. The fact that their books flew off the shelves suggests that a significant percentage of the American public did as well. In postwar Amer­ic­ a, such religious constructions changed the nature of public discourse and, at least attempted to, set the bound­aries of an “acceptable” public identity. The increasingly popu­lar tendency to pair and contrast religion and politics as separate but overlapping spheres of public concern, as opposed to the traditionally institutional designations of church and state, created a ­middle ground between the two. As Charles W. Lowry, a vaunted pioneer of that space, once wrote, this new “no man’s land in American culture” between secular politics and or­ga­nized religion created the opportunity for individuals or groups to utilize the energy and power of both spheres for what they considered, and could convince o ­ thers was, the public good.5 The Ad Council and even the military had been attempting to erect “­battle stations” in this no-­man’s-­land for years, but it was not ­until Eisenhower’s ascendency that an identifiable concept took hold as a ­viable construct: the social and civil order.6

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That this transition happened u ­ nder Eisenhower’s watch was no mere coincidence. Though he certainly used Americans’ growing interest in religion to his advantage, Eisenhower genuinely embraced his pre­de­ces­sors’ religious propaganda. Yet he also advanced that propaganda for his own purposes. For instance, he was far less enamored with religious unity as a rhetorical trope than w ­ ere Franklin D. Roo­se­velt and Harry S. Truman. Eisenhower thought their ­earlier efforts had proved that appeals for religious unity only highlighted the many theological and doctrinal differences among Amer­i­ca’s diverse religious communities. He instead chose to adopt Truman’s ­later construction of religious patriotism as a bulwark of national security, for which the military had so vociferously advocated in its support of universal military training (UMT) through the Fort Knox Experimental Unit and the Character Guidance program. For instance, in his third State of the Union address, Eisenhower declared, “The military threat is but one menace to [Amer­i­ca’s] freedom and security.” The Soviets w ­ ere trying to undermine freedom all over the globe and weaken ­people’s resolve. To combat t­ hese nefarious schemes, he insisted, “­free nations must maintain and reinforce their cohesion, their internal security, their po­liti­cal and economic vitality, and their faith in freedom.”7 Unity, in this case characterized as cohesion, was certainly useful and necessary, according to Eisenhower, but he also explic­itly connected it to national and international security. By emphasizing a shared religious heritage as a source of security, and then basing a plethora of favored “social and civil” issues on that heritage, Eisenhower and his allies gave authority to their religious propaganda in a way that had immediate and obvious po­liti­cal ramifications. Eisenhower also differed from his pre­de­ces­sors in his refusal to woo religious organ­izations. He instead found allies like the American Legion and the Ad Council that existed outside of the institutional categories of church and state and which he hoped could bridge the two spheres in ways the established institutions could not. When they did not fully serve his purposes, he helped create the Foundation for Religious Action in the Social and Civil Order (FRASCO), an organ­ization that explic­itly existed to work in the space between religion and politics and beyond the limitations of the institutions that controlled them. By identifying issues such as national defense, ­free market economics, and anticommunism as social rather than po­liti­cal or religious issues, FRASCO, the American Legion, and the Ad Council w ­ ere able to normalize much of the period’s religious propaganda, while still claiming to uphold the nation’s traditional separation of church and state. Since t­ hese operatives w ­ ere officially in­de­pen­dent of both church and state institutions, they could stringently claim to uphold the traditional separation between the two realms. Yet

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their appeal to a common religious heritage for all Americans let them define social issues that bridged religion and politics in explicit, yet publicly palatable, ways. As long as the institutional bound­aries ­were still set, they could freely blend the categories of religion and politics in ways that fit their objectives. That the proponents of Amer­i­ca’s faith in freedom tied their version of American freedom to military and economic expansion and wrapped it in explic­itly religious language with l­ittle religious content was not lost on all Americans. Many American intellectuals bemoaned the increasingly conservative bent such constructions assumed, and numerous liberal religious leaders assailed the upsurge in religious piety as vapid and self-­serving. Some liberal Protestants even began to notice the ways po­liti­cal operatives bent their ecumenical vision to other purposes. Yet Americans still went to religious worship ser­vices in rec­ord numbers, devoured books and movies with overtly religious themes, and enthusiastically pledged allegiance to a country established “­under God.” Consequently, when civic leaders attempted to harness religion for their own purposes, they no longer needed to first promote religious unity as they had done in the previous de­cade. They rather used declarations of a common spiritual heritage to define what it meant to be a true American and then connected that Americanism to the polices and positions they preferred. ­After all, statistics showed that a ­g reat many Americans ­were content to declare themselves religious regardless of w ­ hether or not their actions backed that up. In the 1950s, some civic leaders realized that they did not need Americans to act on their religious convictions; they simply needed to define t­ hose religious convictions in ways that supported their positions or, at the very least, kept Americans from acting against them.

The Advantages of Being a Role Model Religion was, ­after all, “in” during the 1950s. American churches and synagogues logged rec­ord enrollments. A ­g reat many religious bodies ­were rather enamored with statistics at the time and began posting attendance numbers on large placards in their buildings and publishing them in their bulletins. Newspapers and magazines got into the numbers game as well, continually publishing stories on religious attendance and its impact on the American character.8 According to Yearbook of American Churches, a publication dedicated to cata­loging Amer­i­ca’s religious growth, the number of persons officially connected to a church or synagogue grew by almost 31 ­percent in the 1950s, compared to a population growth of only 19 ­percent. By the close of the de­cade, religious institutions counted over 65 ­percent of the American

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population as members, up from 59 ­percent in 1950. Catholics saw, by far, the greatest gains among Amer­i­ca’s “three g­ reat faiths,” with Jews experiencing only modest increases.9 Protestants of all va­ri­e­ties swelled their ranks. The Episcopal Church gained over a million adherents, with Presbyterians and Methodists making similar gains. Southern Baptist congregations grew at a smaller rate, though they did gain nearly two and a half million members over the de­cade.10 However, the smaller, conservative, and especially charismatic, Protestant denominations achieved the greatest gains. For instance, the highly conservative and spirit-­infused Assemblies of God increased its membership by nearly 500 ­percent. Yet the gains of the Church of God in Christ, which grew by over 1,000 ­percent during the de­cade, dwarfed even this monumental upsurge.11 Thanks to consistently growing memberships, a religious building boom ensued. Americans gave to religious c­ auses, including their local congregations and synagogues, in rec­ord numbers, peaking at $3.4 billion in 1957. The value of religious buildings more than doubled between 1950 and 1957, as many Protestant traditions abandoned their traditionally plain architecture for a more elaborate or evocative design in their new edifices.12 Religious groups spent a total of $3 billion on new church architecture from the end of the Second World War to the summer of 1955.13 A ­g reat many of ­these new buildings went up in Amer­i­ca’s burgeoning suburbs and catered to the needs and desires of a growing ­middle class, particularly the desire to network and socially mingle before, during, and a­ fter ser­vices. Movable seats, large spaces for social interaction, and bright, airy worship spaces ­were the new norm.14 National opinion polls confirmed the questionable rolls of religious institutions. The U.S. government’s Bureau of the Census inquired about Americans’ religious affiliations in 1957 and confirmed George Gallup’s results, finding that over 96 ­percent of the adult population identified with some religious tradition. Interestingly, this meant that far more p­ eople considered themselves affiliated with a tradition than the total number of p­ eople actually counted by t­ hose institutions. This phenomenon was most prevalent among Protestants. In 1957, Protestant denominations reported a total membership of less than sixty million, yet just ­under seventy-­nine million Americans considered themselves to be Protestants. The fact that this number only accounts for Americans over the age of fourteen, in contrast to membership numbers that often counted ­children, only exacerbates the issue.15 Millions of Americans considered themselves to be religious, even though they did not regularly attend worship ser­vices and no religious institution counted them as members. For ­these Americans, institutional affiliation did not determine their religious standing. ­After all, one did not have to be an official member of a

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po­liti­cal party to think of oneself as po­liti­cal. Why, many Americans of the day thought, should it be any dif­fer­ent with religion? Eisenhower was well suited to capitalize on Amer­i­ca’s growing religious revival; the nationalistic, theologically vague aspects of the revival fit with his own personal religious convictions. In fact, historians have often cast Eisenhower as the high priest of the period’s vapid, civil religiosity. They are mostly correct. However, both Eisenhower and the patriotic religion he embodied ­were, though often shallow, also incredibly pragmatic. Eisenhower certainly cared ­little for theological or doctrinal differences and conceived of the Cold War in religious terms. However, one could say the same of Eisenhower’s rival, Truman.16 The difference between the two lay in each man’s public displays and references to such beliefs.17 Eisenhower spoke often of religion and explic­itly referenced religious values and traditions as the bedrock of Amer­ i­ca. He began his inaugural address with a personal prayer and all of his cabinet meetings with ­either a prayer or a moment of silence. He endorsed and helped bring about the addition of “­under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance and the adoption of “In God we trust” as the national motto. In ­these ways, Eisenhower exemplified the national religious identity he si­mul­ta­neously helped to promote. However, that repre­sen­ta­tion was intentional and served a specific purpose. Eisenhower included an astounding amount of vague religious references in many of his speeches, so much so that the Republican National Committee declared that the president was “not only the po­liti­cal leader, but the spiritual leader of our times.”18 Yet Eisenhower constantly fought against such depictions and insisted that he was merely a po­liti­cal representative with a personal religious faith that informed his decisions. He explic­itly referenced the Cold War as a religious strug­gle between the forces of truth and freedom and a godless foe but rejected religious portrayals that w ­ ere merely symbolic and had no practical effect on ­people’s lives. He was, in the words of biographer Piers Brendon, a “conventional individualist” who insisted on personal freedom and responsibility, while constantly endorsing conformity to national ideals and norms.19 Eisenhower’s inherent paradox both reflected and helped produce the religious ethos of 1950s Amer­i­ca. He developed that paradox at an early age. Eisenhower’s ­family belonged to a Mennonite sect called the River Brethren. The group was incredibly small, and, ­because Eisenhower’s hometown of Abilene, Kansas, had no Brethren congregation, his ­family did not attend formal worship ser­vices at any of the other churches with their “man-­made” creeds and doctrines. Instead, the f­ amily worshipped at home, and his parents, David and Ida, led the kids in f­ amily Bible readings twice daily. They taught their c­ hildren an abiding re­spect for au-

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thority alongside a veneration of individualism and self-­determination. Both of Eisenhower’s parents eventually left the Brethren. Ida ­later joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses, but his ­father, fully embracing the factionalism of his heritage, de­cided that no single denomination had escaped the dogmatism that had so perverted Chris­tian­ity and, therefore, refused to join any sect. Eisenhower’s religious upbringing had a profound effect on his ­later religious views, in both his rejection of his parents’ strict moralism and his embrace of their eschewal of religious doctrine and creeds.20 When Eisenhower left Abilene for the army’s military acad­emy at West Point, he began to adopt his ­father’s aversion to institutionalized Chris­tian­ity, though likely for less ideological reasons. He maintained a re­spect for religious princi­ples and a firm belief that religious values ­were central to a proper ­family and civic life but rejected theological and doctrinal systems as unnecessary burdens. He attended interdenominational ser­vices during his time at West Point, but he dropped the practice almost completely during the rest of his illustrious military ­career. When General Douglas MacArthur once chided Eisenhower for conspicuously avoiding the chapel, Eisenhower replied that he had “gone to the West Point Chapel so g.d. often” that he would never need to go to another church ser­ vice again.21 When Eisenhower ran for president in 1952, a ­g reat many of his advisers felt that he had a very pressing need to go to church ser­vices. Amer­i­ca needed a leader with a deeply held faith. Eisenhower was such a man, his confidants argued, but the public would not know that, and he, therefore, could not properly lead them ­unless he made a public display of his personal faith. Both Billy Graham, with whom Eisenhower had recently struck up a friendship, and Clare Boothe Luce lent their voices to the effort, but Eisenhower was firm. Although he agreed with them, he refused to join a church just to garner votes. He would do so a­ fter the election, but not before.22 Graham was especially convinced that Eisenhower needed to publicly embrace religion, yet he was also aware that such an embrace had to be on Eisenhower’s own terms. In January 1953, Graham wrote to Edward L. R. Elson, the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. Elson had formerly served as an army chaplain during the Second World War and, as he would often remind the president, was Eisenhower’s emissary to the German Protestant churches at the war’s end. Graham thought Elson would be the perfect religious adviser to the president-­elect and had told Eisenhower so when they met the previous week. However, Graham thought Eisenhower was in a precarious state and wanted Elson to have some understanding of the president-­ elect’s mind-­set before Elson approached him about joining First Presbyterian. Graham wrote that Eisenhower was a religious man but rarely went to

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chapel since before World War II and had seemingly “lost confidence in the church.” The reasons, according to Graham, ­were impor­tant for Elson to understand. Eisenhower “felt the church had gone into socialism and, as he told [Graham], the church had left the Bible and gone into politics and other ­things that it had no business delving into.” Eisenhower preferred “strictly biblical sermons with practical, everyday applications” and insisted that the church and its representatives stay away from po­liti­cal ­matters. Graham thought ­there was hope, however. If handled adroitly, as he expected Elson to do, he believed Eisenhower’s inherent faith could be a g­ reat boon to the nation and, if that faith was properly harnessed in the fight against communism, Eisenhower might very well “go down in history as the greatest of all Americans.”23 Elson heeded Graham’s advice and baptized Eisenhower in a private ceremony l­ ater that month, with the president and his wife formally placing membership at First Presbyterian a­ fter the inauguration.24 The fact that Eisenhower did not join, or even attend, a church during his election bid did not mean that he was s­ ilent on what he thought was the nature and effect of religion. Eisenhower had retained his belief that religion was necessary for the formation and maintenance of social order and, as Graham had hoped, saw the fight against communism in this light. In one election speech, he made his feelings explicit when he asked, “What is our ­battle against communism if it is not a fight between anti-­God and a belief in the Almighty? Communists know this. They have to eliminate God from their system. When God comes in, communism has to go.”25 It was in this same context that he gave his most famous, or infamous, declaration on American religion. ­After meeting with Georgy Zhukov, a Soviet officer and his former colleague and friend from the Second World War, Eisenhower hosted a press conference to discuss the meeting. He told the press that the two former allies discussed the nature of American faith and freedom. Eisenhower explained to his friend what he thought was the difference between the two nations and why the United States would inevitably triumph. Amer­ i­ca was founded on a belief that all ­people w ­ ere created equal, and that belief, as described in the Declaration of In­de­pen­dence, was founded on the fact that God created all p­ eople in God’s own image. Eisenhower never identified the found­ers as particularly religious, but rather that the nation itself held this religious foundation as an essential ele­ment of its being. He then offered a further explanation. “In other words, our form of government has no sense u ­ nless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I ­don’t care what it is. With us of course it is the Judeo-­Christian concept but it must be a religion that all men are created equal.”26 Eisenhower then explained to the press that it was impor­tant for Zhukov to understand what religion was and, more importantly,

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what it did for Americans and all ­free ­people. For Eisenhower, religion was the cornerstone of American freedom and the necessary ingredient for any society to prosper. As long as the Soviets maintained a belief that religion was a mere illusion, they could not truly flourish, and hostilities between the two nations would inevitably occur.27 Eisenhower further advanced his understanding of the relationship between religion and the nation, and its implications for the Cold War, in his inaugural address. Although his speechwriters had already laced the address with religious references, Eisenhower thought it lacked a personal touch and, consequently, wrote his own prayer the morning of the inauguration and had it included in the speech, thereby becoming the first president to give his own inaugural benediction.28 The prayer was short, asking God to allow him and the nation to “discern clearly right from wrong,” work on behalf of all ­people, and work t­ oward cooperation, even between ­those who “hold to differing po­ liti­cal faiths.” He closed the benediction with the hope that “all may work for the good of our beloved country and [God’s] glory.”29 The rest of the speech echoed his ­earlier proclamations. He enjoined Americans to embrace the “abiding creed of [their] ­fathers” that “define[d]” their “full view of life.” He then declared that communists ­were “the enemies of this faith,” who knew “no god but force.” He made it clear that the pre­sent strug­gles between Amer­ i­ca and the Soviet Union w ­ ere more than a m ­ atter of mere economic or po­ liti­cal ideologies. Establishing a dichotomy that clearly defined where each side fell, Eisenhower affirmed that “freedom [was] pitted against slavery; lightness against the dark.” It was each American’s individual responsibility to ensure the collective good of the nation, and the nation’s God-­g iven responsibility to lead the world in the cause of freedom.30 Organizers followed the speech with a ten-­mile-­long ­g rand parade led by “God’s Float,” a befuddling, and apparently quite ugly, structure dedicated to the Almighty and his f­ avor ­toward the nation.31 Presidential inaugurations can be opulent, inspiring, garish, or crass. Eisenhower’s was all of ­these. The parade was a cele­bration of every­thing American, including odes to American freedom, ingenuity, and innovation. It also included numerous cowboys, circling blimps, and even a live turtle trained to wave a tiny American flag with its front legs.32 Two separate inaugural balls, both hosted by the ­Grand Old Party, followed the parade. Organizers inundated the entire inauguration festivities with symbols of American dominance and the precarious nature of the world’s affairs. W ­ hether it was through references to military might, material affluence, cultural superiority, or spiritual ascendancy, the ceremonies constantly compared Amer­i­ca to the Soviet Union. Eisenhower’s inauguration, replete with shallow showmanship, confusing

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symbolism, and downright contradictions, was a rousing success and accurately set the tone for his presidency. Like his inauguration, Eisenhower’s Amer­ic­ a celebrated its power and influence, while si­mul­ta­neously bemoaning their loss and promising a return to greatness. The country was totally secure yet constantly ­under threat. Americans ­were increasingly wealthy but, at least rhetorically, insistent that ­family and honor brought far more happiness than material gain. Corporations emerged as a bulwark of the economic boom as the ever-­increasing number of corporate employees, controlled by an ever-­increasing number of regulations and contractual obligations, si­mul­ta­neously reveled in their freedom and in­de­pen­dence. Above all, though, the citizens of Eisenhower’s Amer­i­ca ­were religious. They might not know the Ten Commandments or be able to name more than one of the four Christian Gospels—­national polls showed very few could—­but they adamantly claimed that they, and their country, loved God. They thanked God for their freedoms and thanked their country for giving them the freedom to worship their God. American leaders made them painfully aware that the Soviets did not share the same religious convictions or spiritual foundations. Therefore, it was the solemn duty of Amer­i­ca and its citizens to defend both God and freedom against the communist hordes. If Americans ever forgot their duty or what it meant to be this paradoxical American, they need only look to their commander in chief to remember what “Americanness” looked like.

From Unity to Security As his famous quip demonstrates, Eisenhower’s version of “Americanness” had a decidedly religious bent, and he clearly considered religion foundational to Amer­ic­ a’s God-­g iven responsibility to lead the world in the cause of freedom.33 Eisenhower would spend much of his presidency convincing the American ­people of the “deeply felt religious faith” on which the nation was founded, using a religious propaganda similar to that employed by his two immediate pre­de­ces­sors. However, unlike Roo­se­velt and Truman, he did not feel beholden to enlist the aid of religious organ­izations to advance that propaganda. He was undoubtedly aware of Truman’s and Roo­se­velt’s frustrations with the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in Amer­ic­ a (FCC) and difficulties in navigating the intricacies of interreligious cooperation. Eisenhower’s move beyond religious organ­izations might well have been a strategy based on this history. However, he also undoubtedly had more potential allies outside of the religious establishment than his pre­de­ces­sors, even if ­those options w ­ ere partly a

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result of Roo­se­velt’s and Truman’s ­earlier efforts. Some of ­those allies, such as the Ad Council, had already proved their effectiveness in the previous de­ cades, but Eisenhower also benefited from other groups that saw the advantages of advancing a religious nationalism for their own purposes in Amer­i­ca’s holy fifties. ­These new allies w ­ ere also more inclined to promote Amer­i­ca’s faith in freedom as a means of national security rather than national unity, which more closely aligned with Eisenhower’s own objectives. Eisenhower also inherited a national obsession with religion, due at least in part to his pre­de­ ces­sors’ work to advocate the same patriotic religious zeal he thought was so vital to American interests. His principal concern was directing that zeal t­ oward concrete goals. Although he was able to bypass religious institutions in ways his pre­de­ces­sors ­were not able to do, he still strug­gled to find an organ­ization that could harness religious enthusiasm and advocate for an American religion that supported his preferred policies. Eisenhower first turned to the organ­ization that had already proved itself successful in directing and harnessing the nation’s religious enthusiasm: the Ad Council. ­After his inauguration, Eisenhower recorded an enthusiastic message on behalf of the Ad Council’s still popu­lar Religion in American Life (RIAL) campaign’s Thanksgiving program. He reminded Americans of the days when Thanksgiving was a religious cele­bration of what God had given, especially in regard to the f­ amily. He also reminded the country that they lived in troubling times, and he believed that the current upswing in religious interest might remind the nation that only faith in, and reliance on, God could sustain the nation as it confronted the many challenges that lay ahead. He closed with the hope that “in e­ very American f­amily some place is made, on this Thanksgiving Day, for an expression of our gratitude to Almighty God, and for a frank acknowl­edgment of our faith that he can supply that additional strength which, for ­these trying times, is so sorely needed.”34 A year l­ater, he delivered a taped speech for broadcast on all four major radio networks and over the American Broadcasting Com­pany’s tele­vi­sion stations. He emphasized the importance of religion in American life and argued that it was vital for Amer­i­ca’s ­f uture prosperity. “Spiritual concepts,” the president contended, ­were “the inspiration of the American way.”35 Eisenhower would repeat such sentiments throughout his tenure, but his enthusiasm for RIAL quickly waned. In many ways, the RIAL campaign was pushing a message that was dear to Eisenhower’s heart, which was both good and bad for the Ad Council. It meant that the president supported the council’s RIAL program, but it also meant that he did not need RIAL to get his message to the nation. He issued similar statements throughout the year and quickly found that RIAL was unnecessary for his own agenda. In 1954, members of

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the White House staff ­were concerned that the president had appeared on tele­ vi­sion and radio so often throughout the midterm election season that another appearance, and yet another appeal to Amer­i­ca’s religious heritage, might be too much for the public to stomach.36 Consequently, Eisenhower’s staff delayed a firm commitment of his participation ­until it had become so late that they ultimately de­cided not to participate in that year’s program. Eisenhower’s participation was simply unnecessary.37 The Ad Council thought other­wise. Charles “Electric” Wilson was no longer spearheading the RIAL campaign, a fact that hurt the committee’s influence in Washington, but the Ad Council still directed the campaign’s staff, and it knew, and happily enlightened ­others on, the benefits of good public relations. During the ramp-up to the 1955 campaign, a former advertising executive and then current director of the RIAL campaign, Edward Thomas, wrote to L. Richard Guyley, the publicity director of the Republican National Committee. Thomas extolled the campaign’s many virtues and asked Guyley and the committee to urge the president to take part in that year’s program. RIAL’s message was directly in line with the president’s vision, and the national exposure it garnered could only be good for Eisenhower, especially with so l­ittle commitment involved. Thomas concluded the letter by noting that, due to his own po­liti­cal work, he knew that the president’s involvement would also pay dividends for the Republican Party as a w ­ hole.38 Guyley agreed, and the committee urged Eisenhower to send at least a message for the RIAL campaign’s use each year for the rest of his tenure in the White House.39 Eisenhower sent the messages, but t­ here seemed to be l­ittle enthusiasm in his effort. His cooperation appeared to be ­little more than an acknowl­edgment of the RIAL committee’s calculus. Much as Truman participated in the National Conference of Christians and Jews’ (NCCJ) Brotherhood Week, Eisenhower de­cided he could use RIAL for his benefit without making himself beholden to the committee. With minimal effort, Eisenhower could offer a small message or make a short speech and po­liti­cally benefit from the group’s multimillion-­dollar campaign. He certainly did not reject the Ad Council itself, often using it to promote his preferred policies through its advertising campaigns. For instance, during periods of economic slowdown he twice directed the Ad Council to encourage Americans to buy goods without worrying about the ­f uture. As with previous proj­ects, its subsequent “Confidence in a Growing Amer­i­ca” campaigns advocated the f­ree market and consumerism as expressions of the same American faith that held the godless communists at bay.40 Such programs applied religious devotion to Eisenhower’s preferred policies, but RIAL never moved beyond promoting religion as a vital part of American life. Eisenhower certainly agreed, but he did not need RIAL to get that mes-

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sage to the American p­ eople. By 1957, when RIAL expanded its massive media campaign by directly advertising on products, such as one hundred million loaves of bread, Eisenhower merely sent a copy of a speech that he previously gave to the White House staff on the occasion of his sixty-­seventh birthday.41 His participation with RIAL was simply good math and good politics. By that time, other groups w ­ ere similarly offering their influence and public relations acumen for the president’s use. One such organ­ization was the American Legion, a veteran’s group that, since its creation immediately following the First World War, had expanded its purview from strictly veterans’ affairs to all of American culture and politics. Eisenhower, a renowned military commander, had long favored the organ­ization, especially its stalwart sponsorship of UMT.42 The Legion had long supported Eisenhower as well, with many Legionnaires campaigning on his behalf. The relationship between Eisenhower and the Legion had to do with more than camaraderie among veterans, however. They both shared a vision of and for Amer­i­ca, with the Legion advocating the same sense of patriotic religious values that ­were so integral to Eisenhower’s own religious propaganda. A ­ fter all, the Legion’s official motto was “For God and country.” In truth, the Legion would have been just as happy to have worked closely with Eisenhower’s pre­de­ces­sors, even if many of its members did not hold them in as high a regard as they did Eisenhower. The organ­ization had been lobbying local and national politicians for the rights of veterans since their inception. By the 1920s, it had also advocated a conservative, superpatriotic version of American values, often protesting any perceived attack on Amer­i­ ca’s unique status as a bastion of freedom. Ironically, this same support of freedom also caused it to side with national interests over individual liberties, including a ­g reat deal of opposition to, and unfortunate vio­lence against, Jehovah’s Witnesses in the 1930s and 1940s. With the rising tensions with the Soviet Union a­ fter the Second World War, the American Legion saw its membership, which was both large and often highly motivated, as too ­g reat a resource for the government to ignore. It was especially interested in the Psychological Strategy Board (PSB), an executive committee composed of representatives from the Department of State, Central Intelligence Agency, and Department of Defense. Legion leaders offered the committee their assistance in April 1942, soon a­ fter the PSB’s creation, insisting that they w ­ ere ideally situated to advocate for the PSB’s preferred messages within their organ­izations and, by extension, throughout the nation. The PSB, though intrigued by the prospect, politely declined.43 However, a few months l­ater, Lewis Gough, national commander of the American Legion, secured a meeting with the PSB’s Alan Kirk and several PSB

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advisers. The meeting was as much a sales pitch as a conversation, with Gough regaling Kirk with the ways the Legion’s many overseas connections could effectively assist the committee in psychological attacks abroad and its almost four million members could disseminate PSB information and support psychological defenses at home. The offer of coordinated domestic propaganda activities went against the PSB’s directives, but the Legion did not seem ­either to know or to care about this official limitation. Gough was particularly proud of the Legion’s new “Back to God” campaign, which set out to educate the American public on its historical roots, national identity, and civic duties. According to the Legion, all three w ­ ere intimately entwined with worship of God Almighty and essential to the psychological warfare the PSB was rightfully waging both abroad and at home. Kirk and his associates, though polite, and perhaps genuinely interested in the possibilities, nevertheless seemed hesitant to enlist the Legion’s aid, particularly as a domestic arm of its foreign operations.44 Eisenhower had no such compunctions. Although he often frowned on the Legion’s aggressive defense of nationalism, he agreed that Americans needed to be protected from communism’s nefarious reach. He also agreed that one of Amer­i­ca’s greatest psychological defenses was its citizens’ belief in God. ­After all, he had already declared that “when God comes in, communism has to go.”45 The American Legion agreed and, with Eisenhower’s help, made that sentiment apparent in its 1953 “Back to God” kickoff on Sunday, February 1. All four radio networks carried the program, and the American Broadcasting Com­pany televised it. Vice President Richard M. Nixon helped host the event, along with minister and best-­selling religious author Norman Vincent Peale.46 Eisenhower had intended to host the program himself, but last-­minute scheduling conflicts precluded it. Instead, he recorded a video message that introduced “Back to God” to the American public.47 The Legion had supplied Eisenhower with a copy of a speech it had personally designed. It was more of a history of the program than a motivational address, detailing the need for the campaign and the steps taken to ensure its success. Just as the Legion had been preaching a strong military for de­cades, it now emphasized the “spiritual foundations of [American] Freedom.” It explained that “Back to God” advocated public worship, ­family prayer at meals and bedtime, and the religious instruction of youth.48 It was not a particularly moving speech and lacked the practical extension of such beliefs, an omission that had caused Eisenhower to begin losing enthusiasm for the Ad Council’s RIAL campaign. Consequently, he rejected the Legion’s draft and referred it to his own speechwriters to do a more proper job.49 Eisenhower’s ­actual speech shared some of the same sentiments as ­those provided by the Legion. He emphasized the growing threats of both the god-

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less communists and an American sensibility that favored materialistic gain over devotion to God. This latter threat was an internal weakness that, if left unchecked, would erode the foundational freedoms and values that had made Amer­i­ca g­ reat. The solution, Eisenhower claimed, was for Americans to heed the Legion’s call for an increased devotion to God and a renewed commitment to Amer­i­ca’s spiritual heritage. They should also remember and emulate the sacrifice of the Four Chaplains.50 Eisenhower’s reference to the four famous naval chaplains was not particularly unusual, as they had long been used as a symbol of religious unity by politicians, advertising executives, and religious leaders since the Second World War. However, Eisenhower did not use them as a symbol of religious unity or even national consensus, at least not in the ways that his pre­de­ces­sors and their allies had been ­doing for a de­cade. In conjunction with the American Legion—it intentionally set the “Back to God” kickoff on Four Chaplains Day—­Eisenhower attempted to redefine what the Four Chaplains should mean to the American public. Their heroism was not in their repudiation of religious animosity; it derived from the fact that due to their dedication to God and country they willingly sacrificed themselves to save ­others. They, like all of Amer­i­ca’s current military forces, Eisenhower contended, w ­ ere fighting to defend the values and freedoms that God had given to the American ­people. In light of this sacrifice, it was the responsibility of Americans to demonstrate, through their actions and dedication to the nation’s cause, that they ­were “worthy members of [the] g­ reat American f­amily of f­ree, God-­fearing ­people.”51 It was not enough to have faith, according to Eisenhower’s interpretation; Americans must, like the chaplains, be willing to sacrifice for the nation’s health and security. By emphasizing the patriotic over the religious, Eisenhower and “Back to God” reframed the meaning of the Four Chaplains. Despite what Daniel Poling, founder of the Four Chaplains Chapel, and liberal Protestants had been advocating for years, the men’s valor was in their sacrifice for country, not their willingness to set aside religious differences. They ­were united for country, not united in God. Many of Roo­se­velt’s and Truman’s previous propaganda efforts had been thwarted by the inherent difficulties of achieving religious unity. Eisenhower simply sidestepped the issue. Religion was impor­tant in what it did, and specific theological details and distinctions w ­ ere simply distractions. Eisenhower’s redefinition of the Four Chaplains demonstrates that, although Amer­i­ca’s faith in freedom did allow Catholics and Jews greater access and opportunities, the period’s push for religious unity was only a means to an end, and it demanded a specific kind of patriotic allegiance of t­ hose who wanted to be included in the American dream.52 Since Amer­ic­ a was, at its heart, a

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religious nation, “religion,” in what­ever form it might take, was what defined Americans. That religion still supported unity; it just supported a very dif­fer­ ent kind than the one liberal Protestants had originally envisioned. The 1953 “Back to God” campaign was an unqualified success, and Eisenhower was so pleased with the campaign that he was prepared to appoint an official liaison between the Legion and the White House so that the two could better coordinate efforts on behalf of the president’s legislative agenda. Truman had created a similar arrangement with the Ad Council early in his presidency, and Eisenhower saw ­little difference. However, his staff thought the appointment would set a bad pre­ce­dent and, if news of the position ever got out, would prompt other interest groups to demand the same treatment. Consequently, the White House never established an official relationship with the Legion, although Arthur Connell came to occupy this unofficial position and actively coordinated Legion activities with Eisenhower’s staff. The relationship worked well, and, in 1954, Eisenhower wrote to Connell that he had “enjoyed [their] more or less ‘official’ working relationship.”53 The next year, the Legion expanded the 1954 program, and, in an explicit example of the burgeoning relationship between the White House and advertisers on Madison Ave­nue, the media kickoff became a coordinated event between Washington, D.C., and New York City. Norman Vincent Peale returned to the program, aided by his equally popu­lar counterpart, Catholic bishop Fulton Sheen.54 The event reached an estimated forty million p­ eople in over three thousand cities nationwide. The country’s radio and tele­vi­sion stations broadcast the kickoff event. The Legion then arranged additional messages, celebrity-­sponsored addresses, and even a thirteen-­week radio series called Inheritance, about the nation’s spiritual foundations, through the National Broadcasting Corporation. Taking a cue from the RIAL campaign, “Back to God” sponsored billboards and posters across the nation. Slogans such as “Pray at mealtime: for a better Amer­i­ca and home life” and “Amer­i­ca’s first line of defense: God and His Church” inundated the nation’s highways and byways.55 President Eisenhower yet again addressed the nation on behalf of the program. His speech in 1954 focused on the country’s spiritual origins. Recounting a story that Truman had begun advancing in his second term, Eisenhower told of the Pilgrims abiding faith as they sought a land where they could worship freely and openly. He recounted the faith of both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, as Washington first sought to establish the Pilgrim’s hopes in a new nation and Lincoln attempted to preserve that same hope. Both did so ­under God’s divine sight and with the understanding that only u ­ nder God could their own hopes come to fruition. Fi­nally, he included the Four Chaplains in this same narrative arc, explaining to the American public that ­those

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four brave men laid down their lives for “freedom and faith,” the two bedrocks of the nation. The responsibility of maintaining and defending the Pilgrims’ ­g reat hope now lay with the American ­people, and “Back to God” existed so that all Americans might remember that their freedom could only exist ­under God’s good grace.56 The next year, an estimated sixty million Americans heard the president ­declare, “Recognition of the Supreme being is the first—­the most basic—­ expression of Americanism. Thus the founding ­fathers saw it, and thus, with God’s help, it w ­ ill continue to be.” Eisenhower went on to say how appropriate it was that the American Legion, a veterans group, sponsored the “Back to God” campaign, since veterans understood, better than any other, that Amer­i­ca’s greatness lay in it spiritual heritage. In a sentiment that would have made the army’s Fort Knox Public Information Office proud, Eisenhower characterized the armed forces as both the repre­sen­ta­tion and the defender of Amer­i­ca’s religious and cultural values. It was the duty of the public to live up to, and participate in the defense of, this American faith.57 The campaign had grown tremendously over the previous few years and, by 1956, had begun to rival the massive media blitz that RIAL had so long enjoyed. The Legion was similarly popu­lar, and this popularity emboldened it to push its agenda on a local and national scale, including the direct lobbying of politicians.58 As much as he agreed with its position and benefited from his relationship with the Legion, Eisenhower was becoming concerned that the group was overreaching its prescribed borders. The Legion sought to assuage what it thought ­were the president’s fears, writing that the “Back to God” campaign was “a patriotic effort rather than a religious effort.”59 It had misinterpreted the president’s recent distance, however. Eisenhower was unconcerned with the campaign’s implications for American religion; he was afraid that it was becoming an explic­itly po­liti­cal effort. When J. Addington Wagner, commander of the American Legion, visited Eisenhower in April 1956, Eisenhower cautioned the Legion against being too explic­itly po­liti­cal. Veterans groups, he explained, ­were to serve their constituents and the nation’s general well-­ being. The implication was that the group had trespassed into the formal realm of politics, and it was not welcome.60 Advancing a social agenda and advocating for a specific national identity through “Back to God” w ­ ere fine, but the group should leave politics to the politicians. In other words, influencing public opinion over, and harnessing religious devotion in ­favor of, po­liti­cal issues was a patriotic ser­vice, but direct influence over po­liti­cal institutions, and ­those who ran them, crossed the line. The Legion got the message and discontinued its direct appeals. It also began more explic­itly describing the purpose of the “Back to God” campaign

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and what it hoped it would mean for the country. In its widely distributed 1957 campaign handbook, the Legion pointedly declared that “the Back to God Movement was designed to save Amer­i­ca.” In a declension narrative that defied all statistical evidence and would become all too common with the appearance of the Religious Right two de­cades l­ ater, the handbook outlined the many signs that American character and vitality ­were dwindling, thanks to too many leaving the faith that had made Amer­i­ca g­ reat. The found­ers established the country on religious princi­ples, princi­ples that inaugurated and facilitated the many freedoms Americans enjoyed. When Amer­i­ca and its leaders forgot ­those princi­ples, the Legion warned, freedom itself was in jeopardy. However, ­there was a solution. “It behooves us as a nation,” the Legion declared, “to reaffirm our faith in Almighty God, to rekindle that spirit of h ­ umble reliance in Divine guidance which inspired the founding ­fathers, to arm our ­people in time of peril with the ageless weapons of moral and spiritual might and to uphold and preserve, unimpaired, the spiritual heritage of Amer­i­ca.”61

The Social and Civil Order It was a concern for this spiritual heritage, and its contradistinction with Soviet atheism, that motivated Edward L. R. Elson, the president’s personal pastor, and his friend Charles W. Lowry to found the organ­ization that would most explic­itly advance Eisenhower’s preferred concept of true, American religion. Of all the organ­izations that advocated for Amer­i­ca’s spiritual foundations, apart from the White House, the Foundation for Religious Action in the Social and Civil Order (FRASCO) was the most unapologetically concerned with directing the nation’s growing religious enthusiasm t­ oward par­tic­u­lar po­liti­ cal positions and, consequently, the most appealing to Eisenhower. The NCCJ and the FCC, now the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. (NCC), had both wooed po­liti­cal leaders, but both also saw themselves as uniquely religious organ­izations and ­were concerned about the state overlapping with, and contravening, the church. The Ad Council, though certainly attentive to po­liti­cal ramifications and working on behalf of the White House, focused more on establishing a religiously defined national identity as a function of sound business practices than po­liti­cal power plays. Likewise, the army’s foray into patriotic religion was a ­matter of rebranding the armed forces in the eyes of the public and, therefore, establishing a more vibrant justification for military expenditures. The American Legion certainly thought of itself in ostensibly po­liti­cal terms, but its po­liti­cal maneuvers ­were generally ineffectual, and when Eisenhower warned it to stay clear of direct po­liti­cal ac-

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tion, its campaigns became more about public relations and national opinion than po­liti­cal policy. FRASCO, however, was explic­itly po­liti­cal from the beginning, though it chose to reimagine what constituted both po­liti­cal and religious actions. FRASCO’s cofound­ers w ­ ere two very dif­fer­ent men whose interests and passions fit perfectly. Elson had long been interested in marshaling his contacts and influence for the good of the country and the church. His parishioners at First Presbyterian in Washington, D.C., already numbered a who’s who of the nation’s elite, including numerous senators and representatives, Henry and Clare Boothe Luce, and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, whom Elson considered a close, personal friend.62 Just a few months ­after personally baptizing Eisenhower, Elson wrote to him with an idea; he wanted to convene a conference on the nation’s spiritual health. Many o ­ thers, including the NCC, the Office of War Information, and Truman, had attempted similar conferences, with ­little success. The difference between t­hese previous efforts and that proposed by Elson was that Elson, unlike the o ­ thers, had ­little interest in promoting religious unity. In fact, he did not even propose a conference of Amer­i­ca’s religious leaders. Instead, Elson informed Eisenhower that his conference would declare to the nation and the world the “official desire on the part of government to achieve the moral and spiritual rehabilitation of [the] nation.” It would bring together Amer­ic­a’s leaders—­civil, religious, and political—to strengthen the country’s resolve and mount a “spiritual counter-­offensive to Communism.”63 Eisenhower loved the idea. He had already discussed the possibility of collecting an informal group of ministers “to work on [his] behalf ” with Washington governor Arthur Langlie the previous year.64 Elson provided him with such a group. His personal secretary, Sherman Adams, was concerned about the potential pitfalls of the White House aligning itself so closely with such a palpably religious effort, especially one coming from the president’s pastor. However, Eisenhower was enamored with the idea. He might fi­nally have a religious group that would bypass religious pomp to do something beneficial for the world.65 On Eisenhower’s o ­ rders, Adams supplied Elson with anything the priest might need, including advice, contacts, and even one of the White House’s staff assistants to help Elson or­ga­nize the conference and what­ever might come from it.66 Eisenhower did not officially cofound FRASCO, but he was certainly close. With Eisenhower’s endorsement, Elson called his friend Lowry, and the two began organ­izing the conference. If Elson was FRASCO’s kindly priest, Lowry was its fiery prophet. Lowry was a stern, often dogmatic man who had a penchant for flowery, complex speeches that bordered on the incomprehensible. He had gradu­ate degrees from Harvard and Oxford Universities and was

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exceedingly proud of both. He was an Episcopal priest and theologian u ­ ntil the success of his book Communism and Christ prompted him to retire from his pulpit in 1953 to dedicate himself as a “prophet” in the “crusade against Communism.”67 Communism and Christ detailed Lowry’s understanding of communism as a religion rather than a po­liti­cal theory, a religion that was wholly contrary to Christ’s teachings. He was certainly not the first to make such a declaration; former secretary of the navy and ­later secretary of defense James Forrestal had declared communism a religion as early as 1945.68 FRASCO was Lowry’s attempt to put that understanding into concrete action and defend Amer­i­ca, and all ­free, faithful ­people, from communism’s nefarious influence. Elson and Lowry quickly de­cided that the work required a standing organ­ ization, one that could possibly expand its efforts if the conference was a success. They initially named this organ­ization the Foundation for Religious Action. With Eisenhower’s encouragement and support, Lowry began recruiting high-­profile individuals from business, government, and religion and even a few celebrities to sit on a national advisory board of the new organ­ization. Both Lowry and Elson adhered to the same concept of public opinion leadership as the Ad Council, insisting that the most direct way to influence public opinion was through famous men and ­women the larger public respected. If they could convince famous and admired individuals to endorse their views, they would inevitably influence the general public to also adopt t­ hose views.69 Both men defined t­hose views, and FRASCO’s mission, which Lowry often referred to as a “crusade,” as a “spiritual and ideological counteroffensive” to communism.70 Lowry did not mince words in his recruitment. He declared that the “pre­sent planetary civil war” was “at base a religious conflict.” As a rival religion that sought to destroy all true religion, communism had to be ­stopped. The goal of the Foundation for Religious Action was twofold. First, it would “tap the vast strength of the ­free world’s mass information media in the ­battle for liberty and an open f­ uture ­under God.” Second, it would “provide a comprehensive plan of action for the religious forces of the world.”71 Elson and Lowry, already looking far beyond the upcoming conference, foresaw the organ­ization sponsoring both foreign and domestic programs, most of which involved explicit propaganda campaigns that would alert the international community and American public to the true nature of the current crisis. Recruiting influential Americans to support and publicly endorse their programs was essential to their success, and their efforts w ­ ere rewarded. Early recruits included Norman Vincent Peale, Billy Graham, Maxwell Abbell (the former president of the United Synagogue of Amer­i­ca), Henry Luce, Charles “Electric” Wilson, Henry Ford II, and Herbert Hoover.

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In what would become an essential partnership, Lowry also found a willing ally in Elton Trueblood, the newly appointed chief of religious policy at the United States Information Agency (USIA).72 In the words of po­liti­cal scientist Wilson P. Dizard Jr., the USIA was, at its core, a “propaganda operation,” but one that “added new dimensions to the old craft of propaganda,” by partnering with U.S. media companies in much the same way as the Ad Council.73 The USIA hired Trueblood to help bridge the organ­ization’s dual mandate of enacting the government’s propaganda efforts abroad, formally through the United States Information Ser­vice, and at home as the USIA.74 His assigned role was to educate both foreign and domestic audiences of essential “facts” about American life, particularly the religious foundations of American government and culture. For example, he secretly coordinated with vari­ous religious organ­izations in creating a joint statement against communism similar to the one Truman and Myron Taylor had unsuccessfully attempted. Trueblood also joined the International Christian Leadership group in crafting and publicizing an educational series called Militant Liberty, which was distributed both abroad and “to churches, schools, and clubs in the United States.”75 In addition to his own, separate programs, Trueblood also worked alongside Elson and Lowry in support of their own programs, including lending them USIA resources for their own use.76 Lowry and Elson ­were keenly aware of the theological and doctrinal squabbles that had confounded ­earlier attempts at a conference of representative religious leaders. Lowry informed Eisenhower that the organ­ization did not exist “to sponsor discussions of dogma or church unity or to engage in evangelism.”77 Lowry, and likely Elson, had no intention of mending the many, and often grievous, wounds that centuries of religious skirmishing had caused. Lowry actually envisioned the organ­ization as existing on a ­middle ground between religious and po­liti­cal institutions. It was his “intention to develop a ­battle station within what [he] believe[d] [was] a large no man’s land in American culture in between secular interest on one hand and or­ga­nized religion on the other.”78 A group of prominent Methodists had suggested a similar idea to Roo­se­velt in 1943, declaring that ­there ­were certain “moral issues” that defied the traditional separation of church and state.79 It was with this same ­middle ground in mind that Lowry and Elson changed the organ­ization’s name to the Foundation for Religious Action in the Social and Civil Order, or FRASCO. ­Later advocates of that ­middle ground would advocate for, and campaign off of, social issues facing the nation, but Elson and Lowry w ­ ere not ones for brevity. FRASCO would operate between religion and politics and, Lowry and Elson hoped, consequently achieve goals that neither secular interests nor or­ ga­nized religion could accomplish alone. American tradition determined that

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neither the church nor the state could directly influence the other; FRASCO planned to establish a third space that could influence them both. As the conference drew near, Elson wrote Eisenhower a note of thanks and encouragement. “For a year and a half,” Elson wrote, “we have worked ­toward and planned for a consolidation of the religious forces of the nation in support of your spiritual objectives.”80 Elson was certainly giving Eisenhower more credit than he deserved; Lowry and Elson had done the lion’s share of the work, and it was their own spiritual objectives that w ­ ere being advanced at the conference.81 Yet they w ­ ere also Eisenhower’s objectives, and he had gone out of his way to open the doors of power to them. He further showed his support by not only making an appearance at the conference but also giving a plenary address.82 When FRASCO’s inaugural conference convened on November 8–10, 1954, Eisenhower’s presence alone would have made it a rousing success in Lowry’s and Elson’s minds, but, to their elation, over 250 of the nation’s religious, po­liti­cal, and business elite also attended the conference. All of the major papers covered the conference, many from the convention floor.83 The USIA considered the conference “excellent material for propaganda” and, subsequently, recorded the entire event for dissemination both domestically and overseas.84 Although it was rather short, Eisenhower’s speech was, by far, the conference’s main event. The president had already shared with his pastor his views on the relationship between religion and the American government when, in private correspondence, he wrote that “our government has logically been described as a translation into the po­liti­cal field of a deeply held religious faith.”85 He reiterated this belief in his plenary address, declaring that “fundamentally Democracy is nothing in the world but a spiritual conviction” that each person is “incredibly valuable ­because of a certain standing before our God.” He also deflected ­those who, through both criticism and support, constantly noted his tendency to speak about Amer­i­ca’s religious heritage and the spiritual values that define and defend American freedoms. Lowry and Elson had chosen “The Spiritual Foundations of American Democracy” as the conference’s theme, and Eisenhower lent his full weight to the endeavor. He insisted that the “relationship between a spiritual faith, a religious faith, and [the American] form of government is so clearly defined and so obvious that we should ­really not need to identify a man as unusual ­because he recognizes it.” He then ended his address with a ringing endorsement of FRASCO, stating that the organ­ization was a “dedicated, patriotic group that [could] well take the Bible in one hand and the flag in the other, and march ahead.” That was also, Eisenhower proclaimed, “what [he was] for.”86

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Eisenhower was not the only speaker, of course, and discussion panels of prominent American leaders bolstered the plenary addresses. Liberal Protestant’s Judeo-­Christian schema had become entrenched in such m ­ atters, and FRASCO was careful to invite Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish representatives. Yet in the organ­ization’s desire to reach beyond what it considered a ­limited approach to American religion, Greek Orthodox representatives also received an intentional place at the ­table, which, much to the delight of the tradition’s leadership, corrected past rebuffs from ­those seeking religious unity in a system that recognized only Protestants, Catholics, and Jews.87 In his opening remarks, Elson declared that the event was a “singularly impor­tant moment” in the “history of American religion” but that religious unity was not one of FRASCO’s goals.88 The organ­ization existed to bring together religious leaders and traditions to work together in the social and civil order, a place where po­ liti­cal ideology and religious theology could be set aside for the common good. They ­were all united not ­because they held the same religious beliefs but b­ ecause they, as religious p­ eople, ­were all Americans. A group discussion made FRASCO’s disinterest in religious unity apparent ­after the Jewish sociologist ­Will Herberg concluded his address titled “The Biblical Basis of American Democracy.” The lecture was a mixture of American apol­o­getics and theological treatises. When the moderator, F ­ ather John Cronin, opened the floor for comment and conversation, attendees began discussing vari­ous theological and doctrinal idiosyncrasies. Although the conversation was not heated, Cronin thought it necessary to reiterate that FRASCO, and the pre­sent conference, existed to unite leaders and groups “in the social and civil order to combat Communism and secularism, and not to accomplish religious unity or to discuss academically vari­ous types of religion.”89 In this way, religion was the conference’s theme, but not its sole subject. Panels and attendees discussed, among o ­ thers, the ramifications of atomic energy, the purpose and efficacy of psychological operations, the importance of education at home and abroad, and, in a recurring motif, the dangers of communism. A U.S. senator and a federal judge co-­led one panel, titled “God and Government,” but ended up speaking far more about the need for a strong military than anything their panel’s title might have suggested. The key to understanding the nation’s precarious position, Missouri senator Stuart Symington insisted, was recognizing that Amer­i­ca must maintain both a formidable military, since it was the “last remaining power capable of defending the f­ ree world,” and a “spiritual strength,” which was the “foundation of Amer­i­ca.” Both, in an obliquely symbiotic way, ­were essential to Amer­i­ca’s defense and its defeat of communism abroad.90

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FRASCO increased its discussion of the role of the military during its conference the following year.91 Eisenhower, who had recently suffered a heart attack, could not attend the conference. However, Vice President Nixon, who had also become personally close to Elson, filled in for Eisenhower and was in good com­pany.92 The chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Atomic Energy Commission, and U.S. Chamber of Commerce and numerous religious, business, and po­liti­cal leaders also attended the conference. In addition to an increased emphasis on the military, the second annual conference, to which Lowry and Elson gave the ambiguous title of “Civilization and Religion,” also invited representatives from Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam and scheduled a session on the role the world’s religions could play in the fight against communism. In a rather confusing assertion, ­these diverse, international traditions ­were presented as American at heart, since they w ­ ere both religious and loved freedom. FRASCO also dedicated a panel to the ways that business and ­labor leaders could strengthen Amer­i­ca’s religious foundations. In a move the Ad Council would have surely relished, the panel tied ­free market economics to religious freedom, with both cast as bulwarks against the Soviet threat.93 ­After the success of this second conference and with the assistance of the USIA, FRASCO more forcefully advanced Eisenhower’s religious propaganda by sponsoring tele­vi­sion specials, public rallies, university lectures, and numerous essays in magazines and newspapers.94 FRASCO also saw a g­ reat deal of promise in Armed Forces Day, a patriotic cele­bration sponsored by the Department of Defense since 1950.95 It was a consolidation of Army Day, Navy Day, and Air Forces Day, and the Department of Defense had g­ reat hopes for its success in 1950. It had an arrangement with the Motion Picture Association of Amer­i­ca to play newsreels and specials in over fifteen thousand theaters nationally.96 Communities held public rallies and parades across the nation, and the Ad Council supported the day with posters, billboards, and radio advertisements.97 However, by 1955, public support for the day dwindled, likely due to its close proximity to both Memorial Day and I Am an American Day, which the Department of Justice had been sponsoring since 1940. Lowry and Elson saw an opportunity to once again influence and shape the social and civil order. Lowry wrote to Secretary of Defense Charles “Engine” Wilson in January 1956 to offer FRASCO’s assistance in “broadening and deepening . . . ​the meaning of Armed Forces Day and the slogan ‘Power for Peace.’ ”98 ­After giving a brief history of the organ­ization, and dropping the names of several prominent military and po­liti­cal figures, Lowry emphasized that FRASCO was “an action-­body and [did] not sponsor discussions of dogma or church unity, nor [did] it engage in evangelism with a view to making converts for any church

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or doctrine.” Instead, the foundation merely sought “religiously-­motivated action in the field of national security, especially with re­spect to cooperative action with the military establishment.”99 Wilson was convinced, and FRASCO went to work. A ­ fter the organ­ization enlisted the help of the Ad Council, the Department of Defense, and the vari­ ous military branches, Armed Forces Day returned to the public prominence it had received in its inaugural year. The military opened many of its bases to the public, communities held parades and rallies, and churches and synagogues conducted special worship ser­vices across the nation.100 FRASCO managed to attain the cooperation of an incredibly diverse swath of American religious groups for the occasion. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-­day Saints, Southern Baptist Convention, Greek Archdiocese of North and South Amer­ i­ca, and NCC joined with the National Jewish Welfare Board, Assemblies of God, and African Methodist Episcopal Church, among ­others, in the cele­ bration.101 The fact that FRASCO asked them all to participate in the event rather than cooperate with each other certainly made the pro­cess easier. Eisenhower also helped. In his official declaration, he made it clear what Armed Forces Day, and its infusion of religious imagery and rhe­toric, was all about. He invited the “participation of representatives of all religious faiths” so that the American p­ eople might fi­nally understand “the interdependence of [American] security and the deep and abiding religious faith of Americans.”102 FRASCO and the Department of Defense even provided a handbook to all local and regional event leaders. It outlined the same interdependence between faith and security that Eisenhower stressed and the points that leaders should emphasize in their cele­brations to convince participants of that interdependence.103 The Department of Defense also saw the day as an opportunity to inform the public of its newly a­ dopted code of conduct. The code gave soldiers a collection of ideals to hold on to if they ­were captured and interrogated and defined the ideals that all of Amer­i­ca’s fighting forces stood for. The last such ideal read, “I ­will never forget that I am an American fighting man, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the princi­ples which made my country ­free. I ­will trust in my God and in the United States of Amer­i­ca.”104 FRASCO liked the message and made sure it got out to the public.105 The fact that Eisenhower so personally invested himself in FRASCO’s endeavors is significant. He was active in the RIAL campaign but did not give the program the same attention or concern as he did FRASCO. He was certainly amenable to the American Legion’s “Back to God” campaign, but the group was too explic­itly po­liti­cal for his tastes. That might seem odd in light of both Lowry’s and Elson’s affinity for wooing politicians and advancing po­liti­cal agendas. However, FRASCO’s found­ers insisted that they ­were not

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being po­liti­cal or, at the very least, w ­ ere not practicing politics. They w ­ ere working in the space between religion and politics and, therefore, could address both. Such a concept mirrored Eisenhower’s own view of religion and its use within a society. One of Eisenhower’s advisers, Frederick Fox, once explained the president’s understanding of the relationship between church and state to a minister who thought Eisenhower had gone too far in his use of religious rhe­toric. Fox explained that Eisenhower saw “the American religious community” and the “official apparatus of the government” as being “distinct from each other, yet complimenting and enriching the other.” He went on to compare the relationship to the wheels of a gyroscope. The inner wheel, religion, did not directly touch the outer frame, the government; however, it produced “­g reat power over the frame.”106 In this way, Eisenhower reasoned, religious values exerted ­great influence over po­liti­cal actions, which perfectly matched FRASCO’s concept of “religiously-­motivated action.”107 Both FRASCO and the religion it endorsed ­were useful, and, unlike most religious leaders in Eisenhower’s eyes, it did not merely speak vain theology or tedious doctrine. FRASCO’s religion was practical; it did something for the country. It made Amer­i­ca stronger.

For God and Country Despite his regular use of religious language in his speeches and the media’s tendency to cast him as the nation’s priest, Eisenhower consciously avoided any indication that he was attempting to bridge the divide between church and state.108 He instead saw his religion, and use of religious propaganda, as inherently practical m ­ atters. Religion did something to and for p­ eople, and it could do something to and for Amer­i­ca. His ­father’s distaste for religious dogmas and the institutions that advanced them had likely worn off on Eisenhower, and he was wary of religion for its own sake. It was for this reason that he embraced FRASCO’s conferences and programs and avoided his pre­de­ces­ sors’ appeals to religious unity. For Eisenhower, religious pluralism was not impor­tant as an end unto itself; religion had to do something, and FRASCO’s religion not only supported his objectives in concrete ways but also created a larger space for Eisenhower and like-­minded compatriots to work. For Eisenhower, this space was founded on the idea that all Americans shared a common spiritual heritage. This sense of American faith is what took firmest root in the 1950s and replaced ­earlier appeals for religious unity and cooperation. Such appeals had proved decidedly problematic in the 1940s. Both Roo­se­velt’s and Truman’s ef-

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forts had demonstrated the fractious nature of Amer­i­ca’s religious communities and the many theological, social, and po­liti­cal barriers to truly unified efforts or even declarations from Amer­ic­ a’s religious organ­izations. Furthermore, the nation’s increasing diversity and defiance of overtly religious public displays over the following de­cades reduced all hope of e­ ither a Judeo-­ Christian cultural center or a sense of religious unity in the way that liberal Protestants had originally envisioned. That vision had already been usurped in the 1940s and 1950s by po­liti­cal, business, and military leaders more concerned with garnering public support than religious cooperation. They exchanged appeals for religious unity with declarations of a common spiritual heritage and then connected that religious Americanism to the polices and positions they preferred. FRASCO was especially successful at championing this scheme, which was the reason Eisenhower supported, and in some re­spects helped found, the organ­ization. By avoiding all appeals for religious unity, it hoped to avoid the theological and doctrinal bickering that derailed ­earlier attempts to effectively marshal Amer­i­ca’s religious forces. It also sought to define religion’s scope and effect, at least when it came to Amer­i­ca’s public sphere. By defining a space between religion and politics, a social and civil order, FRASCO managed to give authority and influence to its religious ideas in a way that had immediate and obvious po­liti­cal ramifications but would not seem threatening to the established po­liti­cal authorities. However, the way it defined this space also meant that its version of patriotic religion necessarily supported the growing militarism and ­free market capitalism that t­ hose same government officials ­were currently championing. Both FRASCO’s version of patriotic religion and the religious enthusiasm so popu­lar during Eisenhower’s tenure might very well have been shallow; ­there w ­ ere many who thought so, especially by his second term. Yet that did not m ­ atter to Eisenhower, and it seemed to m ­ atter ­little to most Americans. Religion helped define who they ­were and for what their country was fighting. By Eisenhower’s second term, to be American was to be religious, and true religion supported freedom and the American way of life; numerous politicians and religious, business, and military leaders had invested time, money, and energy to ensure that was the case. The challenge, many religious leaders found out, was establishing their place in this new landscape, especially when their religious convictions put them in direct confrontation with the civic leaders directing the religious patriotism of the day. By the mid-1950s, civic leaders institutionalized that religious patriotism and Amer­ic­ a’s faith in freedom, at least symbolically, by insisting that Americans pledge allegiance to a country “­under God” and establishing “In God we trust”

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on American paper currency and as the country’s official motto. The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organ­ization, was the first major group to petition for the addition of “­under God” to the pledge. As the Jehovah’s Witnesses cases of the late 1930s demonstrated, a ­great many Americans saw the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance as a vital exercise in Americanism, and the Knights felt that the omission of any reference to God was doubly problematic. First, it contradicted the message Amer­i­ca was trying to send to all freedom-­loving p­ eople of the world that religion and democracy went hand in hand. Second, it weakened an American populace that could only triumph against godless communism if it maintained a spiritual strength. The Knights began using the phrase when they recited the pledge and, at their annual meeting in August 1953, called on the federal government to rectify the omission.109 The issue was taken up by Michigan representative Louis C. Rabaut in April of the next year, but his bill received ­little attention or support. That changed when, on Sunday, February 7, 1954, Eisenhower attended the New York Ave­ nue Presbyterian Church. The congregation was celebrating the life of Abraham Lincoln and the minister, George M. Docherty, used the opportunity to press upon his audience, and the president, one par­tic­u­lar line from Lincoln’s vaunted works. Docherty noted that in his Gettysburg Address, Lincoln referred to the nation as existing “­under God.” Docherty went on to proclaim that just as Lincoln placed Amer­i­ca ­under such divine guidance during a time of war and distress, so too must the nation, currently embroiled in the midst of a theological as well as po­liti­cal, economic, and martial conflict, recognize Amer­i­ca’s divine origins and direction. In its pre­sent state, Docherty contended, the pledge could represent any nation, including the Soviet Union. In his conclusion, Docherty asserted that the found­ers had so entwined Amer­ i­ca with religious devotion that one could not properly be an American ­unless one was also religious. “An atheistic American is a contradiction in terms,” Docherty claimed. “If you deny the Christian ethic, you fall short of the American ideal of life.”110 The next week, Eisenhower asked Congress to formally add “­under God” to the pledge. Copies of Docherty’s sermon began circulating in Washington, and both politicians and the press brought the issue to the public’s attention.111 In May, a Gallup poll showed that 70 ­percent of the American public favored the inclusion.112 The bill amending the pledge passed the House and Senate with almost no debate, and the president signed the joint resolution into law on Flag Day, June 14, 1954.113 By 1955, politicians had moved to yet another declaration of the nation’s spiritual identity: “In God we trust.” Despite its lasting place in the American mythos and Truman’s ­earlier claim to the contrary, the phrase did not appear on American coinage at the nation’s founding. Congress did not add the phrase

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­ ntil the Civil War, when northern ministers decried the lack of divine recogu nition in the nation’s founding documents and official symbols. Their southern adversaries ­were certainly willing to openly appeal to God, and they thought it only proper that the Union act accordingly. In 1955, Florida representative Charles Bennett introduced a bill to add the phrase to the country’s paper money, as well. Recycling many of the same arguments in ­favor of the pledge’s alteration, Bennett wanted it clear that Amer­i­ca was founded and prospered u ­ nder God’s direction.114 His bill quickly passed both ­houses of Congress, and Eisenhower signed it into law on July 11, 1955. Congress finalized the nation’s third institutionalization of its faith in freedom almost exactly one year ­later. Politicians, ­eager to be on rec­ord publicly declaring Amer­i­ca’s identity and place in the world, set about creating a national motto. The Latin phrase E pluribus unum, meaning “Out of many, one,” had served as the unofficial motto since 1782, when it was incorporated into the national seal. In 1956, many de­cided the phrase did not accurately describe the nation. Although they rarely directly addressed the issue, critics of the phrase hinted at its problematic implications for immigration and its resulting diversity. They had a favored alternative, though. Purveyors of the period’s religious propaganda had been declaring for over a de­cade that Amer­i­ca was united through a common religious heritage. Using nearly identical language, many politicians claimed that “In God we trust,” rather than E pluribus unum, more accurately described the nation’s character and the guiding princi­ ples that fused so many disparate ­people into one.115 As with the addition to the pledge, the joint resolution adopting the phrase passed without floor debate. Eisenhower subsequently made “In God we trust” the nation’s defining slogan on July 30, 1956.116 The fact that all three changes passed Congress so quickly is hardly surprising. The public had readily accepted the link between faith and freedom in the mid-1950s. Politicians, even ­those who did not personally accept the construction, ­were mindful of their constituents. However, that all three passed without debate is striking.117 Gallup’s findings that 20 ­percent of the population was opposed to the addition of “­under God” to the pledge is enough to make one highly doubtful that e­ very member of Congress supported the mea­ sure. Yet no one in Congress spoke out against it or even raised a question as to its merits or pos­si­ble effects. It seems that in 1956, American politicians thought that opposing or even questioning Amer­i­ca’s providential standing would be po­liti­cally damaging. For many Americans in the 1950s and beyond, the idea that religious or po­ liti­cal convictions could challenge the American way of life became almost impossible to comprehend. They might very well oppose vari­ous politicians,

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but they would only do so when ­those politicians s­ topped supporting the Amer­i­ca they loved and which the founding f­ athers had fought so hard to establish. In other words, po­liti­cal leaders might forsake Amer­i­ca’s religious heritage, but many found it exceedingly difficult to think that Amer­i­ca might not be true to the very heritage on which it was supposedly founded. For ­those who a­ dopted Amer­ic­ a’s faith in freedom, to criticize the nation in any way or even point out actions or policies that contradicted its professed values was to fracture and weaken the country, and no patriotic American would ever aid Amer­i­ca’s enemies in such a way.

C h a p te r  6

Being Religious in Amer­i­ca

By the time Dwight D. Eisenhower began his second term in the White House, cracks had formed in the nation’s supposed consensus. Just as the government was institutionalizing the period’s religious propaganda through the adoption of “­under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and “In God we trust” on paper money and as the national motto from 1954 to 1956, a growing number of Americans ­were coming out in opposition to the national identity that same propaganda had so assiduously fostered. For instance, Amer­i­ca was still prosperous and Americans w ­ ere still ­going to religious worship ser­vices in rec­ord numbers by the late 1950s, but many w ­ ere speaking of the religious upsurge in the past tense. Racial tensions, too long ignored or suppressed, ­were also boiling to the surface. The explicit disregard for racial justice was not a core tenet of the period’s religious propaganda, but its architects had long been concerned that racial divisions would spoil the national support they had been working so hard to garner. Subsequently, they cast the issue as not only unnecessary but also inherently un-­American in that such discussions weakened the nation in the eyes of its enemies. However, by the 1950s, Black leaders began utilizing the myth of Amer­i­ca’s religious heritage in their quest for civil rights, the same myth that propagandists had too often employed to disregard racial injustices. Fi­nally, Amer­i­ca’s military had firmly established itself as vital to American security and freedom, with a defense bud­get holding steady at around 10 ­percent of the gross national product, 155

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despite the nation’s supposed move to a peacetime stance following the Korean War.1 Yet Amer­ic­ a’s policy of containment had further embroiled it in foreign affairs that it ­little understood, most recently in French Indochina, also known as Vietnam, and many Americans ­were weary of wars in countries they could not locate on a globe, no ­matter how supposedly righ­teous ­those conflicts might be. Even the public veneer of a religious unity-­in-­diversity for which Franklin D. Roo­se­velt, Harry S. Truman, Eisenhower, and their allies had worked so hard was breaking apart. Many notable Protestants welcomed American Jews and Catholics to the American “mainstream,” but the groups’ access belied old Protestant prejudices that remained just barely beneath the surface. By Eisenhower’s second term, liberal Protestants had gone from hesitant ac­cep­tance of religious patriotism to out­spoken critique of what they perceived to be a shallow endorsement of the status quo. Conversely, evangelicals, who had continued to differentiate themselves from self-­styled fundamentalists, gained both greater numbers and a more consistent, and power­ful, voice in public affairs. They would not fully reemerge onto the national scene u ­ ntil the 1970s, but many of their theological commitments fit neatly with the religious propaganda of the 1950s and would set the tone for their adoption of it in ­later de­cades. Much of the credit for that adoption, or at least the symbiotic relationship between the religious propaganda and evangelical theology, should go to Billy Graham. Graham was certainly no puppet of the state, but he did work willingly with Eisenhower to elevate religious patriotism over divisive issues like racial equality and readily a­ dopted the essential framework of the religious propaganda state operatives had carefully constructed over the past de­cade. He also added his own brand of evangelical theology to the construction, most importantly the elevation of individual over systemic sin and the insistence that one’s patriotism had profound and even apocalyptic ramifications for the nation. Graham’s contribution to the period’s religious propaganda would be vital to its ­wholehearted adoption by white, evangelical Protestants in the coming de­cades. However, despite Graham’s considerable contributions, scholars have too often inflated Graham’s influence on the period’s religious constructions and portrayed him as the architect of evangelicals’ fervent religious patriotism.2 In truth, he was merely adapting and advancing a faith in freedom that po­liti­cal propagandists had been assiduously constructing over the preceding de­cades. Similarly, scholars have noted that evangelicals in the 1930s and 1940s developed deep ties to business leaders and their opposition to New Deal policies, a fact that endeared them to the Ad Council and other fiscal conservatives with similar goals.3 This certainly contributed to the manner in which they



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burst back into the national spotlight in the 1970s. Yet t­ here was no clean torch passing between liberal and conservative Protestants during Amer­i­ca’s holy fifties. Despite Graham’s incredible popularity, even he did not represent all evangelicals, and no group emerged with enough influence to fill the power vacuum the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in Amer­i­ca (FCC) had left ­behind. Eisenhower had been wary of religious institutions since early adulthood, and he saw no need to entangle himself in internecine religious affairs when he could just as easily use groups like the American Legion, Ad Council, and Foundation for Religious Action in the Social and Civil Order (FRASCO) to advance the type of religious patriotism he preferred. Consequently, for over a de­cade professional propagandists served as Amer­i­ca’s de facto religious insiders and sold their own brand of American religion in explic­ itly po­liti­cal terms. That conflation of religion and politics had a profound effect on the nature of public discourse as conservative and liberal Protestants began trading traditional notions of church and state for the m ­ iddle ground developed in the mid-­ twentieth ­century. Divisions over American military strategy, the proper role of the United Nations (UN), the consequences of broad economic and social policies, and w ­ hether or not one was willing to openly acknowledge the racial divisions racking the country replaced old theological debates over the nature of the Bible and God’s role in ­human affairs. Religious leaders certainly understood and spoke of po­liti­cal issues in religious terms and with theological justifications, but their orientation in the American imagination, and in their own public pre­sen­ta­tions, had far more to do with their stances on the pressing po­liti­cal concerns of the day than on former theological skirmishes. Consequently, by identifying themselves in relation to the period’s religious propaganda, religious leaders did as much to institutionalize the propaganda and establish its enduring legacy as the legislative decisions to insert “­under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and adopt “In God we trust” as the national motto. Americans may recognize the social, po­liti­cal, and religious divisions of the late twentieth c­ entury as a consequence of the Religious Right’s emergence in the 1970s and 1980s, but Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority, much like Graham, ­were borrowing from an already established religious propaganda carefully orchestrated by po­liti­cal operatives in the mid-­twentieth ­century.

Choosing Sides Eisenhower never avoided working with religious groups altogether, but, unlike his pre­de­ces­sors, he never saw them as necessary for his purposes. He was

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not against or­ga­nized religion as a ­whole, but he insisted that religion serve a concrete purpose, and he saw that purpose as intimately tied to his own view of and for Amer­i­ca. Allies like the American Legion, FRASCO, and even the United States Information Agency (USIA) ­were better partners in educating both the American ­people and foreign nationals about Amer­i­ca’s faith in freedom, and Eisenhower came to believe that such education was essential in the nation’s rivalry with the Soviet Union.4 Eisenhower also did not see the need to woo religious organ­izations. They came to him, and he was happy to collaborate with them, as long as they w ­ ere advocating a faith that was amenable to his own. True to the schema FRASCO had been so instrumental in creating, Eisenhower insisted that he was neither concerned with religious content nor advocating that religious groups concern themselves with po­liti­cal affairs. He was rather interested in social issues that spanned both realms and evaluated organ­izations based on their orientation to t­hose issues. Consequently, many religious groups began defining themselves in relation to t­ hose issues as they sought to leverage the influence Eisenhower wielded. The National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. (NCC), known as the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in Amer­i­ca (FCC) u ­ ntil 1950, had been a begrudging coconspirator in Amer­ic­ a’s religious propaganda since before the Second World War. Though it resented Roo­se­velt’s incursions into its realm, it was delighted that the White House and War Department a­ dopted its ecumenical vision in their own religious endeavors. Soon a­ fter Amer­i­ca entered the war, it de­cided to focus its perceived religious influence on the establishment of the UN. Influential members of the ecumenical Protestant organ­ization w ­ ere instrumental in crafting the UN’s governing charter, and member denominations lent their pulpits and pocket­books to a public campaign on the UN’s behalf. The council’s support for the UN, rather than a buildup of American military might, was partially responsible for its rivalry with Truman, although the two found some common ground during the Korean War. In fact, Truman’s characterization of the conflict as a UN police action prompted the NCC to again sponsor religious meetings and instructional materials for the troops.5 In 1953, one of the NCC’s affiliate members, the Church Peace Union, published a small book in hopes of giving the public a “deeper understanding of the UN and its many activities.” The work, titled The United Nations and Our Religious Heritage, sought to demonstrate “how the basic princi­ples of [Amer­i­ca’s] religious heritage [­were] put into practice in the work of the United Nations.”6 The work was small, with a ­limited impact, but it accurately described the attitude of many of the NCC’s members; they saw the UN as the best hope for a peaceful world. The connection between the UN and Amer­i­ca’s religious heritage is odd,



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however, and indicates a desire to cram together two convictions—­Amer­i­ca’s spiritual foundations and the UN’s role as international panacea—­into a mangled ­whole. NCC officials might not have liked the way their ecumenical vision was being used, but they ­were committed to the concept and diligently tried to interpret it in light of their own po­liti­cal values. This odd amalgamation can also be seen in the actions of the NCC’s s­ ister organ­ization, the World Council of Churches (WCC). A short time before the FCC merged with vari­ous denominational and ecumenical groups to become the NCC, the worldwide ecumenical movement joined together to form the WCC. Truman and Myron Taylor attempted to shape the group’s composition and character but ­were unsuccessful. Ultimately, the WCC ­adopted many of the same stances as their American counterpart.7 At its annual meeting in 1954 in Evanston, Illinois, the organ­ization ­adopted a platform that condemned the U.S. military buildup as an act of aggression, endorsed the “reconciliation in a Christian spirit with potential ­enemy countries,” and advocated for a “universal enforceable disarmament through the United Nations.”8 In November 1954, a reporter for the Christian ­Century magazine recounted the WCC’s declarations to Eisenhower, even g­ oing so far as to read several sections from the platform to the president. Eisenhower remained respectful but bitterly disagreed with the statements. He reiterated his conviction that “religious belief and conviction and faith” served as the foundation of Amer­i­ca and all ­free nations. However, he quickly noted that “if anybody thinks that the United States can be in better position in the pursuit of peace by being weak,” he would absolutely “disagree with him one hundred ­percent.” Only when the nation was “secure and safe” would it be pos­si­ble to extend a hand of Christian charity and goodwill. Harking back to the military’s former warning of unpreparedness and the nation’s grave ­mistakes a­ fter the First World War, Eisenhower concluded his reply by imploring, “Let us not try again to find peace in the world by ourselves disarming and being weak and unready; I just c­ an’t go with that.”9 It must have come as a shock when, less than a year ­later, Earl Frederick Adams, an assistant secretary-­general of the NCC, wrote to Eisenhower’s administrative assistant, Gabriel Hauge, to offer the president the NCC’s insights and advice on all religious ­matters. In a letter replete with the NCC’s thinly veiled biases and passive-­aggressive statements, Adams claimed that “while no organ­ization can speak for all American Protestant or Orthodox churches, the main streams of Protestant church life . . . ​are represented by the National Council of Churches.” Liberal Protestants would l­ater adopt the title “mainstream” to designate their brand of Chris­tian­ity. Adams’s letter makes it clear that he was using the term to denigrate ­those Protestant groups outside of

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the NCC’s fold. He was concerned that the president, perhaps out of ignorance, was spending too much time with “minor” religious groups. Similarly, his decision to only appear at “minor events or privately sponsored religious movements” in Washington, D.C., might prove detrimental and cause him to accidentally neglect the “major religious bodies and conferences in other cities.” Adams wrote that he only wanted to help the president understand the sometimes complicated nature of Amer­i­ca’s many religious institutions. Claiming to re­spect the wall between church and state, he promised the NCC would only advise the president “in the realm of religion and not politics.”10 Perhaps the NCC thought it was learning from its ­earlier squabbles with Truman in making it clear that it was only interested in the realm of religion. It had not learned enough. The references to minor religious groups, privately sponsored religious events, and major religious conferences w ­ ere certainly clear. Eisenhower had spent too much time at FRASCO conferences and Prayer Breakfasts, while neglecting the country’s largest Protestant organ­ization, the NCC. The Prayer Breakfast, first or­ga­nized in 1953 by the Billy Graham Association and Abraham Vereide’s Fellowship Foundation, was especially galling to the NCC.11 Vereide had been trying for years to find ways to inspire power­f ul politicians and businesspeople more directly with his conservative, evangelical princi­ples. He had achieved a g­ reat deal of success with the many breakfast groups already in place, but the Presidential Prayer Breakfast brought his efforts to an entirely new level. When almost four hundred senators, representatives, cabinet secretaries, and financial g­ iants assembled at the Mayflower ­Hotel in Washington, D.C., on February  5, Vereide, Graham, and Eisenhower told them of the enduring benefits of a “government u ­ nder God” in ways that directly contradicted the NCC’s internationalist convictions.12 What the NCC did not realize was that Eisenhower’s main concern was not the size of religious organ­izations; he wanted to know what they ­were ­doing on behalf of the nation and its p­ eople and how closely t­ hose activities aligned with his own. FRASCO, the American Legion, and the Fellowship Foundation understood the intimate link between American security and spirituality, its faith and its freedom. Conversely, the NCC openly disagreed with Eisenhower’s understanding of Amer­i­ca’s religious heritage. Plus, Eisenhower had ­little love for religious institutions, and the NCC was institutional to its core. Nor was he worried that they might exceed their religious sphere and trespass into the po­liti­cal realm; FRASCO had offered him a space between the two. The old ways would not do. For over two weeks Eisenhower’s staff members tried to find a polite way to rebuff the offer, but in the end they simply de­cided that it was not worth the effort.13 Hauge wrote Adams a four-­



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sentence reply that the White House had read the letter with interest and would surely have opportunities to consult the NCC in the ­f uture.14 ­Those opportunities did not soon come. By 1955, the NCC, and liberal Protestants in general, was highly skeptical of both Amer­i­ca’s religious revival and the type of patriotic, cooperative religion its own ecumenism had been so instrumental in creating over the previous de­cade. Liberal Protestants still held to their institutional ecumenism, but, as before World War II, they ­were constantly battling over theological and philosophical distinctions. However, ­those debates no longer centered on what most would consider explic­itly religious issues. They instead concerned a Christian’s proper response to military policy, economic systems, and patriotic zeal. Theologians Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr, both of whom appeared on the cover of Time magazine between 1948 and 1959, as well as Niebuhr’s ­brother, H. Richard Niebuhr, led much of t­ hese debates.15 Although all three drew from a common theological tradition, each had a dif­fer­ent understanding of God’s work in history and the proper response, and responsibility, of Christians. Despite their differences, all three men w ­ ere skeptical of the veracity and efficacy of the recent upsurge in religious adherence and the many popu­lar uses of religion, particularly the type of patriotic religion advocated by Eisenhower.16 As Mark Silk has noted, liberal Protestant critiques had evolved over the previous two de­cades; by the mid-1950s, “the evils of the day ­were not faithlessness and bad morals but the idols of a modern civilization.”17 Ironically, the most influential liberal critique of the de­cade’s patriotic religious enthusiasm came from ­Will Herberg, a Jewish theologian and sociologist. Socialism and radical politics heavi­ly influenced Herberg in the early part of his life. However, he gradually drifted away from the socialist camp and found a home among midcentury liberals. Finding a mentor in Reinhold Niebuhr, Herberg considered converting to liberal Protestantism, but Niebuhr convinced him to explore his Jewish roots instead. ­After all, Niebuhr and his ilk ­were interested in Judeo-­Christian thought, and such an ecumenical vision surely had room for cooperation between Amer­i­ca’s foundational faiths. The result was a theology so closely tied to the viewpoint of his liberal Protestant friends and colleagues as to be nearly indistinguishable. An amateur yet respected sociologist and theologian—he received no formal training in e­ ither discipline—­Herberg set out to explain the nature of Amer­ic­ a’s pre­sent religious upsurge. Thus, in 1955, he composed Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology.18 Herberg wrote that 1950s religion had more to do with identity formation than faith. Americans saw religion as the chief means of “belonging” in ­Amer­i­ca.

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­ eople “­were” Protestants, Catholics, or Jews. To be anything ­else was to be P un-­American. Although Americans might cross theological, denominational, or ethnic bound­aries within ­these three groups, they rarely crossed from one group to another. Herberg also claimed that Americans understood all three groups as ­viable options of American self-­identification. ­People perceived each group as being authentically American ­because they all represented the virtues of the American way of life. The “American way of life” was an ambiguous term for Herberg, yet it held a connotation of individualism, creative action, and a “can do” attitude. The result was a “­triple melting pot,” where Americans distinguished themselves as belonging to one of ­these groups, but whose totality made up a pervasive American identity.19 Herberg concluded Protestant, Catholic, Jew with a condemnation of the “religiousness without religion” of 1950s Amer­i­ca, a religion that served more as a means of “ ‘belonging’ rather than a way of re­orienting life to God.”20 Herberg was in line with his friend and mentor Reinhold Niebuhr, who was far more nationalistic than ­those who shared his liberal Protestant upbringing, yet Herberg had ­little patience for what he considered blindly patriotic religion and shallow religiosity devoid of true commitment.21 Consequently, Herberg closed his work by calling his readers to a prophetic faith that was truer to the au­then­tic “Jewish-­Christian faith” than what he believed most Americans ­were practicing.22 Eisenhower was not particularly interested in such prophetic faith; it ran contrary to the “religiously-­motivated action” he and FRASCO had been promoting, where being an American meant being vaguely religious, overtly patriotic, anticommunist, and socially and fiscally conservative.23 He was decidedly interested in the American way of life, though. He had been using the term for years, and he and his allies had incorporated it into numerous public relations campaigns, careful to define it in ways that benefited his own preferred policies. For instance, when Eisenhower spoke at the opening of the Ad Council’s Religion in American Life (RIAL) campaign in 1953, an address broadcast on all four major radio networks and over the American Broadcasting Com­pany’s affiliate tele­vi­sion stations, he insisted that “spiritual concepts” ­were the true “inspiration” of the “American way of life.”24 The fact that he defined such “spiritual concepts” through a vague notion of freedom that supported the military and a strong economy was not coincidental. For Eisenhower, supporting the American way of life was equivalent to supporting his policies and vision for the nation. Similarly, when the economy slowed in 1954, he directed the Ad Council to bolster Americans’ material consumption. The organ­ization subsequently mounted public relations campaigns to explain that buying goods demonstrated Americans’ faith in the “American way of life” and



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their dedication to both the nation’s essential religious freedoms and its God-­ given place in the world.25 Consequently, when Herberg and Niebuhr debated the advantages and dangers of the American way of life, they did so using the very concepts religious propagandists had created over the previous de­cades and which Eisenhower had been employing for years. Despite their adoption of Eisenhower’s own notions of American religion, he had ­little patience for liberal Protestants’ critiques of that same religion and no desire to entertain what he saw as the NCC’s unpatriotic squabbling. It took over four years for the White House to give a del­e­ga­tion of liberal Protestants and Jews an opportunity to express their concerns to Eisenhower. The meeting certainly was not by Eisenhower’s request. Edwin T. Dahlberg, president of the NCC, first wrote to Eisenhower in June 1959 to request a meeting with a group of NCC leaders to discuss the group’s latest national program on behalf of education and peace.26 Frederick Fox, a former minister and Eisenhower’s chief con­sul­tant on religious affairs, noted the prob­lems with hosting the group. It was “by far the biggest and most responsible Protestant group in the country,” but it also opposed many of Eisenhower’s policies. Additionally, the previous year it had invited Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to its convention in Cleveland and, to the secretary’s surprise, proceeded to urge him to recognize Communist China. The incident infuriated Dulles, a former FCC leader, for its naïveté and lack of re­spect for all he had done for the organ­ization. Consequently, Fox suggested that Tom Stephens, the appointments secretary and one of Eisenhower’s personal advisors, ask the Department of State what it thought of the meeting.27 The State Department noted that the NCC represented over thirty-­eight million Americans and, although not always in line with the president’s policies, had supported several of his initiatives. It ultimately concluded that Eisenhower should meet with the group.28 When Eisenhower’s staff asked him about the meeting a few weeks l­ater, he adamantly rejected the idea. However, many staffers, including Fox and Wilton “Jerry” Persons, Eisenhower’s chief of staff, thought the meeting would have some merit, despite the president’s apparent dislike for the group.29 They w ­ ere fi­nally able to convince Eisenhower, who agreed to see the NCC representatives just days before the ­actual meeting. On the morning of the gathering, Fox sent Stephens two separate memoranda for the president’s use.30 Eisenhower chose not to use e­ ither bit of information. Instead, he waited patiently as the delegates told him of their numerous studies and commissions and their concerns for both the nation’s pre­sent course of action and lack of genuine religious zeal. They then proceeded to urge him to increase his support of the UN, work with other nations

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including China and the Soviet Union, and avoid the erroneous notion that military preparedness would solve the world’s many prob­lems.31 Eisenhower responded with some extemporaneous remarks. He repeated his confidence that religious values and a belief in the Supreme Being undergirded all democracies and any hopes for international peace and unity w ­ ere founded on that fact alone. ­Those values strengthened the country and would ultimately allow it to prevail over the “godless atheism” of the Soviet Union. In a remark that Eisenhower might have very well aimed more at his immediate audience than the American ­people, he also noted the necessity to educate the public about impor­tant ­matters of economics and foreign affairs. Without an informed populace, he insisted, Amer­i­ca could neither understand nor hope to reach its full potential ­under God.32 Apart from a pos­si­ble jab at the NCC’s leaders near the end, Eisenhower did not show his frustration with the del­e­ga­tion. His pastor, Edward L. R. Elson, was not as accommodating and quickly penned a scathing rebuke of the liberal Protestant leaders in Chris­tian­ity ­Today.33 Elson was associate editor of the magazine, a periodical inaugurated in 1956 as a joint venture between the popu­lar evangelist Billy Graham and oil baron-­turned-­philanthropist J. Howard Pew Jr. Graham saw the magazine as a spoil to the liberal Christian ­Century and a way to influence American Protestantism away from its liberal moorings. He assured Pew that the magazine would be decidedly “conservative, evangelical, and anti-­Communist.”34 Pew had recently split with the NCC and was looking for a forum to advance his conservative religious, po­liti­cal, and economic views. He and Graham de­cided that Chris­tian­ity ­Today would champion all three. With the help of Elson and Harold Ockenga, the National Association of Evangelicals’ (NAE) first president, they launched the magazine in October 1956. Pew bankrolled the magazine’s first year and allowed the group to send ­free copies to over one hundred thousand ministers. The magazine’s initial launch garnered 27,000 paid subscribers, a number that reached 40,000 in 1958 and over 150,000 by the early 1960s.35 When Elson found out about the del­e­ga­tion’s message to Eisenhower, he crafted a response and sent it out through Chris­tian­ity ­Today to the nation’s evangelical fold. His article not only criticized the NCC’s policies but also cast them as irrelevant to the Gospel and the nation. The NCC could muster nothing but criticism and judgment upon the American government and had few words of comfort or encouragement for the American p­ eople, Elson argued. He was especially upset that the group’s seemingly countless declarations purported to be the Christian stance. The NCC must learn that it did not speak for all of Christendom and was quickly losing the authority to speak to the American ­people.36



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In a belligerent move, Elson then labeled the group the new fundamentalists. Graham had been fighting for over a de­cade to distinguish his brand of evangelicalism from the old and current brands of fundamentalism. The difference, it seemed to Graham, was in one’s priorities; unlike the fundamentalists, Graham was far more concerned with reaching diverse p­ eoples for Christ than rehashing old sectarian arguments.37 In his Chris­tian­ity ­Today article, Elson wrote that the NCC’s panels of so-­called experts had been attempting to define the Christian message narrowly the same way fundamentalists did in the early twentieth c­ entury. The answer, Elson declared, was a new brand of “patriotic stewardship” that applied the Gospel to the world situation, but did so with an eye to pastoral care and the encouragement of all Americans. He also noted that he was not denigrating the Christian prophetic call. However, he knew of no Old Testament prophets who spoke truth to power by forming expert committees, commissioning studies, and releasing finely crafted declarations. Real prophets, Elson declared, spoke against sin from their own standing as ­free Christians rather than as paneled experts issuing decrees from on high.38 In what must surely have pleased Eisenhower, Elson also used liberal Protestants’ own values against them. While noting the value of the ecumenical movement and claiming to echo liberal Protestants’ calls for religious cooperation, he then accused them of denying their own sacred call by dividing Amer­i­ca’s religious communities and declaring themselves the ultimate interpreters of God’s ­will.39 The accusation that liberal Protestants w ­ ere being divisive was especially galling, since they had based so much of their identity on promoting religious ecumenism. However, Elson’s turn made sense from his perspective. ­After all, Americans ­were defined by their faith in freedom, so any denial of that faith or criticism of the policies it supported was, in Elson’s view, an attempt to weaken the nation’s foundational strength. In other words, any criticism of the president, his policies, or his allies was a sign of both disunity and a lack of faith. Elson’s article might seem, and might very well have been, hypocritical. Elson, Graham, and even Eisenhower had a very clear understanding of what Chris­tian­ity was to them and what it should have been to o ­ thers. They did not convene panels, commissions, and committees, though; they simply spoke from on high themselves. Eisenhower seemed to do so on an almost daily basis. He also had the Ad Council, FRASCO, the American Legion, and even the USIA. They might not be religious, but, for Eisenhower, they understood proper religion better than minsters who had their “head[s] in the clouds” but neglected to plant their “feet on the ground.”40 Consequently, he did not want or need the NCC or anyone ­else to serve as a repre­sen­ta­tional Protestant body.

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This was just as well, since t­ here ­really was no other Protestant group that could have done so. Conservative Protestants’ theological and po­liti­cal temperaments precluded the type of institutional power the NCC had once enjoyed. The NAE and American Council of Christian Churches (ACCC) made half-­hearted attempts. Both had formed at the onset of the Second World War as ­counters to the FCC, and when it became clear that the NCC had lost all ­favor with Eisenhower, both began wooing the president. He jilted them both, however. Despite the influence conservative evangelicals would command in the coming de­cades, no organ­ization commanded widespread authority in the mid-­twentieth ­century. That was partly b­ ecause Eisenhower had long been opposed to religious institutions and the pomp and circumstance they represented in his mind.41 The fact that his po­liti­cal propagandists had proved to be so ­adept at promoting his vision of American religion mean that he had l­ittle need for such organ­izations. He was far more interested in pastors like Elson and Graham, in whom he found a personal and professional kinship. He thought Graham was especially successful in reaching beyond religious and po­liti­cal lines to preach a faith for all Americans, which was the only kind of faith that mattered in Eisenhower’s view.42 Granted, for Eisenhower being a good American meant sharing his brand of American faith. The ACCC shared a version of that faith, though its application of it was both too religiously orientated and too extreme for Eisenhower’s tastes. For instance, in May 1953, the group’s founder, Carl McIntire, wrote to the president both to offer support for Eisenhower’s leadership and to condemn the NCC for publicly criticizing the president’s agenda. In his letter, McIntire noted that he daily prayed to God on Eisenhower’s behalf as he led the nation “in the preservation of [American] freedom.”43 He also included a copy of a speech he was to deliver that night. It was a scathing rebuke of the NCC, in which he flatly accused numerous NCC officials of being ­either communist sympathizers or spies. He defined the ACCC as a group that loved the “Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, the land in which we live, and the cause of freedom throughout the world.” He went on to warn that “­there is a Communist Party line in American religion.” Through a series of quotations, allusions, and often circular logic, McIntire proceeded to locate this party line in the NCC. For instance, he declared that the NCC’s new “Revised Standard Version [of the Bible] aids the communist cause.” “Communism advances its cause by destroying confidence in the Bible as God’s Word,” he wrote, and the NCC had filled the Revised Standard Version with so many contradictions and liberal interpretations that the translation eroded such confidence. Many of his arguments ­were more direct, citing past affiliations with communist or socialist organ­ izations; any mention of the words “socialism,” “equality,” or “world order”;



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and public criticisms of American institutions. McIntire even declared that “ ‘social justice’ and ‘economic justice’ [­were] terms used to assail the capitalistic order as we know it in the United States.”44 His speech was not all negative, however. McIntire affirmed many of the princi­ples that Eisenhower, FRASCO, and even the Ad Council had also promoted. He asserted that Americans derived their “liberty and ­favor with God” from the Bible, which Amer­ic­ a’s “forefathers brought with them,” and “believed and preached.” He recounted the biblical support of “­free enterprise” and “private property.” He also warned his listeners to be constantly on guard against communism, which he defined as “a diabolical conspiracy for the destruction of h ­ uman freedom and Chris­tian­ity.” Although such declarations fit perfectly with Eisenhower’s own religious propaganda, the rest of McIntire’s speech was too extreme for the White House, which subsequently filed both the letter and its accompanying speech without reply.45 The ACCC waited u ­ ntil 1958 to seek out the president’s ear yet again. An ACCC representative, Clyde Kennedy, wrote to Eisenhower to request a meeting. Kennedy was incredibly forthcoming and informed the president that the ACCC was concerned with Eisenhower’s associations with both Catholics and the ecumenical movement. It hoped to speak with him about its concerns.46 Not surprisingly, the White House sent a polite refusal, insisting that the president’s schedule was simply too busy to receive the group.47 Kennedy tried writing directly to one of Eisenhower’s aides, but the administration rebuffed him again. A few months l­ater, Ronn Spargur, the ACCC’s public relations representative again petitioned the White House for a meeting, this time for a del­e­ga­tion that had been working on behalf of “­free China.”48 Frederick Fox referred the request to the Department of State, in case it thought the ­matter could be of some use. On March 13, the State Department’s Bureau of Public Affairs prepared a background memorandum on the group, which suggested “extreme caution.” It warned that the ACCC did “not command the confidence of other religious councils and associations.” It then called McIntire a “deposed minister” and accused the group of grossly overestimating, if not downright lying about, the ACCC’s size.49 Subsequently, the State Department strongly suggested that the White House deny the request for a meeting.50 The White House complied, but Spargur would not take no for an answer. He wrote back to the White House seven more times over the next six months. Fox wrote a memorandum stating that McIntire was “a discredited Presbyterian minister with a big log in one eye and a beam on his shoulders” and that the White House should refuse the request.51 It did so. Spargur wrote again. When he included a thinly veiled threat of po­liti­cal action, Fox informed Tom

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Stephens, who was ­handling the ­matter, that “this group, like the USSR, [was] trying to threaten [them] into submission.”52 As the point man for religious groups, Fox offered to “hold the door” against Spargur if Stephens so desired, but Stephens de­cided simply to ignore Spargur ­until he went away.53 Spargur refused to be ignored, writing three more letters ­until Fox fi­nally responded on September 14 in hopes that a direct rebuttal of the ACCC’s concerns might satisfy the group. It did not, but by the time Spargur wrote back the next day, Fox and the rest of the staff had pledged to ignore the man forevermore. The White House’s trou­bles with the ACCC might have been a welcoming sign for the nation’s other conglomeration of conservative Protestants, the NAE. The group was far more moderate than the ACCC, commanded a larger membership, and had the backing of Graham, Charles W. Lowry, and Elson. However, the NAE never fully ingratiated itself to Eisenhower, for a variety of reasons. First, Eisenhower’s staff had trou­ble differentiating the NAE from the ACCC. For instance, when, in the spring of 1953, NAE officials invited the president to participate in their upcoming March for Freedom that Fourth of July, the president’s staff investigated the group.54 The Library of Congress reported that the organ­ization had “some of the finest preachers in the country included in its membership” and contained around ten million members. However, the NAE did not include “liberal” or “modern” Christians, only “fundamentalists.”55 One staffer thought the request was worth considering, since the event fit so well with Eisenhower’s plans. However, Abbott Washburn, the White House liaison to the USIA, thought the NAE was too exclusive for Eisenhower to commit to the group’s efforts. The agency had long advocated the use of religious organ­izations to propagate the government’s preferred view of Amer­i­ca at home and abroad, but it also understood the dangers of getting involved in the types of interreligious conflicts that had frustrated Truman’s and Roo­se­velt’s ­earlier efforts. Washburn ultimately suggested that nonreligious groups like the USIA w ­ ere better suited to promote the president’s policies and vision, including ­those involving religious ­matters.56 Ultimately, Eisenhower signed the NAE’s “declaration of freedom” but did not participate in the march.57 However, the lack of cooperation between Eisenhower and the NAE was not merely a misunderstanding about the NAE’s identity and purpose. Unlike the NCC, which was an autonomous organ­ization given authority by its member denominations, and the ACCC, which was a comparatively small group driven by highly ambitious individuals like McIntire, the NAE was a rather loose confederation of interests and had ­little standing on its own. Most of its member groups w ­ ere commissions or associations from larger denominations that w ­ ere hesitant to give too much authority to the NAE. Most of the larger



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affiliate members, such as the Southern Baptist Convention and Assemblies of God, had their own programs and plans. They w ­ ere fiercely in­de­pen­dent and suspicious of interdenominational networks. ­After all, its organizers formed the NAE in large mea­sure ­because of members’ fears of the FCC. Accordingly, the NAE was more of a loose confederation than an in­de­pen­dent entity and, compared to the ACCC and NCC, did l­ittle to petition the White House or ingratiate itself with Eisenhower. Consequently, neither the ACCC nor the NAE supplanted the NCC as Amer­ic­ a’s Protestant establishment, and Eisenhower was never beholden to a Protestant group the way Roo­se­velt or even Truman had been during their own forays into the religious field. T ­ hose religious groups came to Eisenhower and increasingly defined themselves in relation to his policies and the religious propaganda he promoted rather than old theological distinctions. Granted, he did not need such a group the way his pre­de­ces­sors did. He had the benefit of the religious propaganda created over the past two administrations and public relations experts e­ ager to disseminate and advance that propaganda. He had the Ad Council, the American Legion, the USIA, FRASCO, and the benefit of a national religious revival. He also had Billy Graham.

Graham’s Contribution Graham was certainly not a professional propagandist, nor can he be accurately described as an agent of the state. However, neither w ­ ere Elson or Lowry, and they explic­itly partnered with Eisenhower to advance his religious propaganda. Graham also had a sort of partnership with Eisenhower, as evidenced by his letter to Elson before Eisenhower’s inauguration. However, his endorsement of the president’s religious propaganda had far more to do with its synergy with his own religious and po­liti­cal views. Eisenhower never ordered Graham to promote Eisenhower’s preferred religious patriotism, but he did not have to do so. Graham already included such messages in his massive religious revivals, often adding his own evangelical twist to the construction that would prove instrumental in its adoption by white evangelicals in the coming de­cades. In fact, Eisenhower directly recruited Graham to work on his behalf only once. Yet it was the job Eisenhower assigned Graham that revealed the inherent weakness in the mid-­twentieth ­century’s religious propaganda and the facade of unity it helped create. Just as it had done the previous de­cade, the propaganda’s vague and self-­serving definition of unity ignored or outright suppressed discussion of national flaws or systemic injustices. Graham contributed an emphasis on individual rather than systemic sins to the construction, which

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both served to make the propaganda more appealing to evangelicals who shared similar views and allowed t­ hose who a­ dopted it in l­ater de­cades to bemoan the nation’s state while si­mul­ta­neously ignoring its inequalities. Although Graham was not the architect or even the chief proponent of the mid-­twentieth c­ entury’s religious patriotism, he was incredibly influential in institutionalizing the period’s propaganda even as its facade of national unity was crumbling. Graham first burst into the national spotlight with his Los Angeles crusade in the fall of 1949. A ­ fter the resounding success of his first crusade, he subsequently embarked on a revival tour in the United States and abroad over the next five years, preaching to over ten million Americans alone.58 Throughout the 1950s and for the overwhelming majority of his ­career, Graham’s message was, according to biographer William C. Martin, a collection of “pronouncements on the Satanic evils of communism, the God-­blessed superiority of the free-­enterprise system, and the need to return to the old-­fashioned values and virtues of individualist Amer­ic­ a.”59 It was Graham’s investment in ­these first two subjects that endeared him to men like Elson, Pew, and even Eisenhower, but it was his endorsement of a righ­teous nation based on individualism and beholden to foundational spiritual values that would prove to be the more influential contribution to the period’s religious propaganda. Graham’s anticommunism was easily recognizable. One of his earliest biographers noted that “scarcely one of his Sunday sermons . . . ​failed to touch on communism and in his regular revival sermons he constantly refer[ed] to it to illustrate his doctrinal points.”60 He preached some sermons aimed almost exclusively at the Soviet threat, with titles such as “Chris­tian­ity vs. Communism.” More often than not, Graham framed his warnings by echoing Eisenhower’s assertion that Chris­tian­ity and communism ­were antithetical, though he did so in ways Eisenhower would never have even considered.61 For instance, he once declared that “­either Communism must die, or Chris­tian­ity must die, ­because it is actually a b­ attle between Christ and anti-­Christ.”62 He warned his listeners that ­unless they repented and gave their lives to Jesus, then Amer­ i­ca, too, might fall to the communist hordes. Graham used this theme so prolifically that, in 1955, the Chicago Daily News pronounced him communism’s greatest ­enemy. Repeating Graham’s own message, the periodical asserted that his forceful attacks on communism itself ­were not as strong as the fact that his Gospel message strengthened the Christian cause, thus weakening communism’s influence in Amer­i­ca and the world.63 Graham would tone down his attacks on communism by the de­cade’s close, but he continued to warn of the communist threat and that, if Americans did not heed Jesus’s call, the communists could overtake them at any moment.64



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Graham also consistently warned of the disastrous effects of the socialist economic system for ­free ­people. Just as the Ad Council tried to accomplish through initiatives like the Freedom Train, United Amer­i­ca, and RIAL, Graham linked religious values and patriotism with the f­ ree market. He opposed ­labor ­unions and governmental regulation of business as machinations of satanic communism and barriers to a prosperous, God-­loving nation. For instance, he once envisioned the biblical Garden of Eden as an idyllic place with “no u ­ nion dues, no l­ abor leaders, no snakes, no disease.”65 He also linked the f­ ree market to a divine order. Drawing on a long-­standing strain of evangelicalism, which would reemerge de­cades ­later as the Prosperity Gospel, he contended that God wanted to reward t­ hose who followed him. Graham did put moral restraints on business practices but insisted that if a business owner or man­ag­er ­were to give his heart to God and live by God’s standards, he should, and surely would, profit financially. In an article for Nation’s Business in 1954, Graham most explic­itly detailed this idea when he counseled businesspeople to take on God as a “working partner.” If they did so, God would put “integrity into their organ­izations, sincerity into their sales, and spiritual and monetary profits into their hearts and pockets.” He closed by proposing a new Christian slogan that played on one of the Ad Council’s ­earlier RIAL catchphrases: “The plant that prays together profits together.” “It is difficult to imagine l­abor trou­ble in such an atmosphere,” he added.66 Like so many o ­ thers, Graham linked his f­ree market and anticommunist positions through an appeal to the same “American way of life” that propagandists had promoted and liberals like Herberg and Niebuhr had recently derided. Graham often retitled it “old-­fashioned Americanism.” “Through the ideals of early Americanism,” Graham once wrote, “we built the greatest nation ever to exist in all history. T ­ hese ideals w ­ ere gathered around the dignity of the individual, a faith in God, an adherence to the Bible, and a re­spect for ­human life.”67 ­These foundational ideals defined the nation for Graham and ­were the backbone of American freedom, which he defined in the same nebulous way religious propagandists had been promoting since the Second World War in support of freedom of religion, freedom from tyranny, and f­ree enterprise. The fact that Graham was a minister parroting the period’s religious propaganda was not unusual in and of itself; religious leaders of all stripes had cooperated with and publicly endorsed the construction since the Second World War. Graham’s close relationship to Eisenhower is certainly noteworthy, especially since he became so involved in Eisenhower’s po­liti­cal affairs. As historian Kevin Kruse rightly notes, Graham even worked with Eisenhower’s campaign in 1952, “offering scriptural references and spiritual observations”

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that Eisenhower and his staff could use to “sanctify” Eisenhower’s “secular positions.”68 However, the religious sanctification of secular policies was not new; such sanctification had been g­ oing on since the Second World War, when, as F. Ernest Johnson declared, “the government, rather than the Christian message and spirit, does our basic thinking for us, and gives the cue to the church in the war situation.”69 Just as the Ad Council and Office of War Information (OWI), often in consultation with the FCC, did during the war, Graham simply gave a “religious interpretation and justification” to Eisenhower’s policies.70 As Abbott Washburn had pointed out when the NAE asked Eisenhower to promote its March for Freedom program, secular propagandists like the USIA and Ad Council had been successfully promoting presidential policies and visions for over a de­cade as faithful expressions of American religion.71 Graham was neither the architect nor the prime advocate for Eisenhower’s American way of life or the religious propaganda so dominant in the mid-­twentieth ­century. Yet that does not mean Graham was not influential in the propaganda’s development. Graham had a decidedly evangelical tenor to his love of country and the religious princi­ples he so esteemed, and his brand of evangelical theology added a new ele­ment to the construction secular propagandists had already developed. Such modifications had been all too common since Roo­ se­velt and his propagandists first adapted liberal ecumenism for the sake of the war effort. They took the concept of religious unity and detached it from par­tic­u­lar religious commitments. ­Others then infused that patriotic religious unity with the need for martial strength and the benefits of ­free enterprise ­after the war. Thanks to Eisenhower, FRASCO, and the Ad Council, even the idea of religious unity, a central ele­ment of the ecumenical vision, was replaced with the promotion of a common, and incredibly ambiguous, religious heritage. By the time Graham took up the cause, religious ecumenism meant something very dif­fer­ent than its liberal Protestant architects had ever intended. Graham further infused it with his evangelical commitments, particularly the elevation of individuals over systems, a distinction that had divided conservative and liberal Protestants since the fundamentalist-­modernist controversies of the early twentieth c­ entury. In Graham’s hands, this individualism combined with Amer­ic­ a’s spiritual heritage to form a new American jeremiad. “Jeremiad” was not Graham’s term. Historian Perry Miller persuasively employed it in his May 16, 1952, speech at Brown University. The address, titled “Errand into the Wilderness,” was part of Miller’s search for “the innermost propulsion of the United States,” whose origins he discovered in Puritan New ­England.72 He had utilized it in his ­earlier works, but “Errand into the Wil-



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derness” was his most concise exposition. For Miller, the jeremiad was a rhetorical trope that Puritan preachers employed in the late seventeenth ­century to compensate for their inability to reconcile the new world with that of their mythic past. The jeremiad solved t­ hese issues, according to Miller, by telling a declension narrative, where the community was once ­g reat and prosperous ­because it held to God’s ideals and clung to God’s commands. Lately, however, the community had turned from God’s original plan and God had consequently punished the ­people with natu­ral, economic, and social maladies. If they turned back to their original ways, then God would bless them again and all would be well. If they did not, then greater disasters would soon come.73 Miller did not take this account at face value, though. He asserted that the Puritan jeremiad was a “ritualistic incantation” that served primarily as a “purgation of the soul.” Although the community, or at least its preachers, might very well have wanted to go back to a time of greater purity and devotion, the social prospects and increasing wealth of the developing colony also intrigued its members. Ultimately, t­ hese opportunities proved to be “irresistible.” The fact that they could publicly lament the changes served to prove their virtue and remove their culpability. In other words, merely bemoaning the changes and calling for “a reformation which never materialize[d]” was enough; ­after they had done so, they could wash their hands of the ­matter and do as they pleased. Hence, Miller asserted, “­under the guise of this mounting wail of sinfulness, this incessant and never successful cry for repentance, the Puritans launched themselves upon the pro­cess of Americanization.”74 Graham advocated a new brand of jeremiad. This is not to say that Graham did not truly desire a religious revival. He almost certainly did. However, as with the 1950s religious upsurge, Graham’s veracity or authenticity is beside the point. Regardless of his motivations, Graham’s message fit almost perfectly with the religious propaganda advanced by so many civic, military, and business leaders of the day. He advocated for ­free market capitalism, an expanded military presence, and a patriotic brand of religious devotion. However, his ministry also championed a form of religious devotion that allowed for the critique of individuals, while si­mul­ta­neously concealing or outright ignoring governmental and systemic sins. Like Miller’s Puritans, Graham also warned that if Americans did not do so, disasters would quickly befall them. The difference between Graham and his seventeenth-­century brethren is that the Puritans bemoaned both collective and personal sins and Graham recognized only the latter. Graham, along with most evangelicals and fundamentalists of his era, put almost total emphasis on individual sins like sexual be­hav­ior, the abuse of alcohol and drugs, gambling, greed, and juvenile delinquency. Liberal Protestants

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took the opposite route and, by 1960, spoke almost wholly about societal evils and systemic sins. When Graham warned his audiences that God was “no respecter of nations” and that God might very well destroy the nation that very night, he did not place the blame on income in­equality or the evils of racial discrimination.75 God was angry at the nation ­because ­there ­were individuals in the audience who ­were drinking, swearing, and fornicating. If his listeners wanted to reverse the decline of American greatness and avoid the coming apocalypse, then each one must repent and invite Jesus to be his or her personal Lord and Savior. When combined with the other aspects of the “American way of life,” especially patriotic anticommunism and an insistence on ­free market capitalism, his message celebrated Amer­i­ca’s dominance and glossed over its faults; to criticize the nation was to spread disunity and weaken Amer­i­ca. Graham’s brand of jeremiad declared that Amer­i­ca’s religious heritage made the nation exceptional and mighty, yet Americans had recently neglected that heritage. ­Unless loyal, moral Americans restored the nation to its original intent, the country would fall. The signs w ­ ere perpetually around them that this decline had already begun. The nation itself and the systems it supported ­were not at fault; the ­people had sinned. For Graham, the answer was a return to the arms of Jesus. For the religious propagandists of the era, it was a return to the founding f­ athers. Regardless of whose embrace they sought, all believed and told the American p­ eople that, above all, Americans must not show weakness to the nation’s enemies by criticizing Amer­i­ca itself. ­There was certainly blame to go around, but it lay in the h ­ uman heart and criticizing, or even pointing out, the nation’s faults would only lead to disaster. Americans must stay united in their common faith or the nation would surely fall. In the end, neither happened. The conformity and consensus of the 1950s could not hold. In truth, it had never existed, at least not to the extent its proponents insisted. It was a surface unity, and ­there ­were too many inconsistencies and exceptions boiling just u ­ nder that surface. Granted, by Eisenhower’s second term the surface did look good. Americans w ­ ere religious, or, at least, incredibly interested in religious products. In 1954, 99 ­percent of Americans claimed that they believed in God.76 A form of the ecumenical schema liberal Protestants had so assiduously endorsed had become commonplace. When, in 1955, Gallup asked Americans if they had heard any criticism or negative talk about Jews or Catholics, only 13 and 17 ­percent of respondents claimed to have heard malicious talk about the groups, respectively.77 Much to the dismay of liberal Protestant leaders, the military had also utilized ecumenism to firmly establish itself as a vital ele­ment in Amer­i­ca’s material and spiritual security and grown to a size unpre­ce­dented outside of major American wars.



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­There was a g­ reat deal stirring beneath the surface, however. Even in the 1950s age of conformity, t­ here w ­ ere a g­ reat many Americans who did not conform or ­were simply not included in the unity-­in-­diversity so many civic leaders had spent years promoting. Mormons and numerous charismatic Christians accepted and even promoted much of the period’s religious propaganda, yet many Americans still considered them outsiders and outliers by the American “mainstream.” Although many American Catholics and Jews participated in, or benefited from, the same construction, a ­g reat many resented the fact that too often Protestants w ­ ere the ones declaring what American religion was and how Catholics and Jews fit into it. Vari­ous new religious movements ­were also rapidly emerging during and immediately ­after the Second World War, not least of which was the fascination with UFO’s and extraterrestrial life during this period. The Beats ­were likewise creating a subculture of re­sis­tance, rebellion, and exploration, a subculture that overlapped and enhanced quests for what many ­were simply calling “spirituality.”78 ­There ­were also, of course, ­those Americans who did not particularly care for religion at all. Many of the more influential intellectuals of the postwar period ­were such men and ­women, most notably the New York intellectuals, a group of mostly ethnic Jews who criticized religion alongside consumerism, mass culture, and foreign policy.79 All of ­these groups expanded in the coming de­cades, even as liberal Protestants saw their claim as the religious mainstream grow more absurd with each passing year.80 However, the most glaring exception to the postwar consensus came from the real­ity that the chief purveyors of the period’s religious propaganda had been especially e­ ager to suppress: Amer­i­ca’s racial divide. To be clear, Amer­i­ ca’s faith in freedom did not require or explic­itly endorse racism or white dominance. However, its promotion of patriotic devotion as a means of national unity meant that any criticism of the nation automatically weakened the country. Consequently, any criticism of the nation’s systemic racism was tantamount to aiding the godless communists. Eisenhower explic­itly promoted such an understanding. Graham not only shared that belief but also aggressively advocated for it among the nation’s religious leaders and his faithful flock at Eisenhower’s personal behest. The fact that such a construct inherently supported the racist status quo was not lost on ­either Eisenhower or Graham, but both seemed to believe that the nation’s faith and security ­were more impor­ tant. Such a calculation, or perhaps justification, would become entwined with the legacy of the period’s religious propaganda as it continued to be adapted and employed in the coming de­cades. Eisenhower’s insistence on American strength through patriotic devotion made his position on Amer­ic­ a’s racial divisions complicated, to say the least.

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Though not in f­ avor of the South’s segregated society, he was far from an advocate for civil rights and generally agreed with the OWI, Ad Council, and USIA that it was far better to talk about religious diversity than race.81 Even when he called out the army and the National Guard to support Black schoolchildren in L ­ ittle Rock, Arkansas, he avoided the action for over a week and insisted that the governor, Orval Faubus, had forced his hand. When he addressed the nation on September 24, 1957, to explain his actions, Eisenhower made it perfectly clear why he had been so hesitant. Employing a theme he had used consistently throughout his presidency, Eisenhower insisted that such divisions only bolstered the communists and weakened Amer­i­ca. “At a time when we face grave situations abroad ­because of the hatred that Communism bears ­toward a system of government based on ­human rights,” Eisenhower insisted, “it would be difficult to exaggerate the harm that is being done to the prestige and influence, and indeed to the safety, of our nation and the world.”82 He did not believe that communists w ­ ere b­ ehind the civil rights movement, as many white, southern leaders so often professed, but he was afraid that they would use the movement to disparage Amer­i­ca’s reputation in the world.83 Eisenhower had been stewing over that possibility for years, but FBI director J. Edgar Hoover fueled his fears a ­little over a year before the crisis in L ­ ittle Rock when Hoover briefed the president and his cabinet on the potentially explosive racial situation in the South. Hoover presented a twenty-­ four-­page brief detailing the unrest and the many ways the Soviets might use the situation to their advantage. In a bout of seeming paranoia, Eisenhower also added that the Soviets might time their intrigue to weaken his leadership by “driv[ing] a wedge between the administration and its friends in the South in that election year of 1956.”84 Eisenhower was not the only one to harbor such fears. Graham shared both his reservations about the burgeoning civil rights movement and its pos­si­ble effect on Eisenhower’s reelection bid. That was the princi­ple reason Eisenhower wrote to Graham soon a­ fter Hoover’s briefing. Alabama congressman Frank Boykin first suggested enlisting Graham’s aid in a letter on March 19, 1956. He hoped Graham might have special insight on the “race issue.” “I believe our own Billy Graham could do more on this than any other ­human in this nation; I mean to quiet it down and to go easy and in a Godlike way, instead of trying to cram it down the throats of our ­people all in one day, which some of our enemies are trying to do,” Boykin wrote. “I thought maybe if you and Billy talked, you could talk about this real, real good.”85 Eisenhower agreed and wrote to Graham on March 22, emphasizing several points they had previously discussed in Graham’s last visit to the White House. Specifically, Eisenhower reiterated that he believed Christian ministers should be the



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chief proponents of moderation and, in regard to racial issues, of gradualism. “Ministers know that peacemakers are blessed,” Eisenhower wrote. “They should also know that the most effective peacemaker is one who prevents a quarrel from developing, not the one who has to pick up the pieces remaining ­after an unfortunate fight.” Eisenhower thought civil rights was just such an unfortunate fight and wanted Graham to speak with southern leaders, both Black and white, to convince them to stand down from any radical positions, lest the nation look weak before the communists. He suggested some more moderate actions, such as allowing African Americans to serve on school boards, making gradu­ate school entrance decisions purely on merit, and finding some form of flexible seating arrangements on public buses. Echoing FRASCO’s ­earlier construction, Eisenhower asserted that such opinions ­were not inherently po­liti­cal, but rather fit more closely with the kinds of social issues that ­were the purview of all Americans and, therefore, “could properly be mentioned in a pulpit.”86 Graham heartily agreed and responded that he would immediately set off, vowing to work with southern ministers to improve race relations in the manner Eisenhower described. He also advised the president to let men such as himself work b­ ehind the scenes on such issues, suggesting that any hard stand on race might hurt Eisenhower and the Republican Party in the upcoming elections.87 ­After a few months, Graham again wrote to Eisenhower with an update on his efforts. He insisted that ­after receiving Eisenhower’s request, he “went quietly to work among denominational leaders in the South.” He met privately with “outstanding religious leaders of both races, encouraging them to take a stronger stand in calling for desegregation and yet demonstrating charity and, above all, patience.” Graham then expressed hope that “if the Supreme Court ­will go slowly and the extremists on both sides ­will quiet down, we can have a peaceful social readjustment over the next ten-­year period.” He also repeated his recommendation that Eisenhower and other Republicans avoid “getting involved in this par­tic­u­lar prob­lem,” noting that Eisenhower would win reelection easily without taking a firm stand, and he would hate to lose any goodwill from any group.88 Graham was personally opposed to segregation and adamantly believed that Christ’s death meant that all ­people ­were equal before God. However, he also objected to civil rights leaders’ strategy of open defiance of the law and openly wondered ­whether their strategy benefited the communists more than African Americans.89 As his letters to Eisenhower demonstrate, Graham was perfectly aware of the intense controversy that a hard stance on race could engender. Consequently, he waffled for years between statements declaring the Bible’s insistence on the gross equality of humanity and bowing to the policies,

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and prejudices, of local groups during his crusades, most notably segregated seating in his tabernacles. He would not take a hard stand on the issue ­until his Chattanooga, Tennessee, revival in 1953, ­after which he never again allowed segregated seating in his crusades. Yet when Eisenhower asked him to convince Christian ministers to stop drawing attention to the issue three years ­later, Graham readily agreed. Graham feared, and often warned his adherents of, the ­g reat harm that drawing attention to racial antagonism and intolerance might do to the country. Disunity, Graham argued, could only help the communists. Americans should support their government, American troops, and, above all, freedom, while raising issues of equality and discrimination only weakened the country. He was especially disheartened when Black ministers and then white, liberal Protestants began openly protesting racial discrimination. In a twist that shows how very far religious ecumenism was stretched beyond its liberal Protestant moorings, Graham went on his southern tour in 1956 convinced that religious leaders, who knew better than most how their common faith joined them together, would clearly see the need to put national unity over divisive issues like race equality. Like the organizers of the Freedom Train a de­cade before, both Graham and Eisenhower thought that equality was all well and good, but freedom was better.

Before the Religious Right Graham and his ilk’s w ­ holehearted embrace and expansion of the mid-­ twentieth c­ entury’s religious propaganda, in many ways, came to define that propaganda in the succeeding years. Conservative, white Protestants became the most vocal defenders of the American way of life and its conflation of the freedom of religion and the ­free market, especially when they fully burst into the national po­liti­cal spotlight in the coming de­cades. Protestants certainly ­were not the only conservatives to embrace that propaganda; conservative Catholics like Francis Spellman promoted Amer­i­ca’s faith in freedom throughout the midcentury in much the same way as Graham. Though liberal Protestants and Jews came to oppose much of the period’s propaganda, they principally did so on the propaganda’s terms, publicly defining themselves and their beliefs in relation to its preferred policies and national mythos. However, none of t­ hese groups embraced the propaganda’s tenets as much as white, conservative Protestants, who became the principal apologists of Amer­i­ca’s faith in freedom in the coming de­cades.



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Consequently, many Americans now equate the propaganda’s principal themes with amalgamations of conservative Protestant organ­izations and the Republican Party such as the Moral Majority, the Religious Right, and Focus on the ­Family. Yet, as has been demonstrated, ­these larger po­liti­cal movements are all manifestations of a campaign of religious propaganda that began much ­earlier. Graham and his compatriots certainly embraced and, in re­spect to the elevation of individual over systemic sin, added to the construction. However, the brand of American religion for which they advocated originated not with them but rather with nonreligious po­liti­cal operatives like the professional propagandists at the OWI, Ad Council, Fort Knox Experimental Unit, USIA, and American Legion. Conservative Protestants did not suddenly sanctify po­liti­ cal policies for their own advantage or become hoodwinked by wily politicians in the late twentieth c­ entury; all w ­ ere merely adopting and adapting a national religion that po­liti­cal operatives had previously used to cast their preferred policies as sacrosanct expressions of true, patriotic faith. In other words, the Religious Right did not create its brand of American religion; it merely borrowed an existing construct crafted by po­liti­cal operatives for po­liti­cal purposes. What is rightly recognized as an amalgamation of religion and politics in the late twentieth c­ entury is actually the legacy of an intentional proj­ect of religious propaganda from e­ arlier de­cades, a legacy that Americans are still wrestling with ­today.

 Conclusion Lasting Legacies of an American Faith

By the 1960s, professional propagandists had successfully established Amer­i­ca’s faith in freedom, both in its institutionalized expressions of “­under God” and “In God we trust” and in public debates that increasingly centered on w ­ hether one supported or opposed the vision of Amer­ic­ a that t­hose propagandists had spent so much time and effort developing. Over the coming de­cades ­those debates also focused on what, exactly, freedom meant and who was truly allowed to enjoy its privileges in American society, but the propaganda’s core definition of an American faith and policy was still the locus of ­those debates that Americans opposed, defended, or, increasingly ­today, yearned to return to. Consequently, economic and military polices became inextricably entangled with both racial attitudes and religious freedom in the public conversation. Individual Americans’ stances on such issues then placed them on ­either side of a po­liti­cal divide that had increasingly religious connotations. Ironically, this polarization was an unintended side effect of a larger proj­ect of strategic unity. For the sake of war, American elites crafted an American religion that fit their desires and helped them achieve their goals. When dealing with the established religious authorities, especially liberal Protestants, proved too cumbersome for the White House’s objectives, Truman and then Eisenhower looked outside of the religious establishment to sell their vision of Amer­i­ca. The fact that they de­cided on state-­sponsored professional propa18 0

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gandists meant that the religious propaganda they produced had as much, if not more, to do with m ­ atters of national security, economic policy, and superficial unity as it did with religious sentiment or theological imperatives. That Americans came to, and still do, identify and orient themselves in relation to that propaganda and its preferred policies demonstrates its enduring legacy. That legacy has presented itself in two primary modes in the intervening years. The first is best demonstrated by President George W. Bush’s address at the American Conservative Union’s fortieth anniversary gala in 2004  in the midst of his reelection bid against Demo­cratic nominee John Kerry. Unlike Eisenhower in his farewell address, Bush had no intention of critiquing the nation or even defining it in light of his experience over the previous four years. The gala served as an opportunity to shore up his conservative base, so he served up some rhetorical red meat to his audience, while distinguishing himself from his opponent. Consequently, he spent much of his time explaining why both Kerry’s policies would be disastrous for Amer­i­ca and his own policies would ensure its prosperity. Bush thought t­ hese distinctions ­were vitally impor­tant at such a precarious time in the nation’s history. “The man who sits in the Oval Office ­will set the course of the war on terror and the direction of our economy,” he noted. “The security and prosperity of Amer­i­ca are at stake.”1 Bush’s characterization of Amer­ic­ a’s identity and its precarious state ­were familiar. He lauded the work of the military when he said: “At bases across our country and the world, I’ve had the privilege of meeting with ­those who defend our country and sacrifice for our security. I’ve seen their g­ reat decency and unselfish courage, and I assure you, ladies and gentlemen, the cause of freedom is in r­ eally good hands.” He assured his audience that the “economy [was] strong, and it [was] getting stronger.” He also boldly declared that they ­were right. Specifically, he insisted history proved that American conservatives had been right all along. Conservatives ­were right that the cold war was a contest of good and evil. And ­behind the Iron Curtain, ­people did not want containment; they awaited [sic] for liberation. Conservatives ­were right that the ­free enterprise system is the path to prosperity and that ­free enterprise is the economic system consistent with ­human freedom and ­human dignity. Conservatives ­were right that a ­free society is sustained by the character of its p­ eople, which means we must honor the moral and religious heritage of our g­ reat Nation. He lamented the decline of American values and the devaluing of life and religion, but he closed by insisting that Amer­ic­ a was “strong and confident in the cause of freedom.” “We know that freedom is not Amer­i­ca’s gift to the

18 2 Co n c l u s i o n

world,” Bush concluded; “freedom is the Almighty’s gift to e­ very man and ­woman in this world.”2 Most of the presidents between Eisenhower and Bush have used similar language and made similar claims, even if they did not realize the origins of the American faith they peddled.3 For instance, eight years ­after Bush left the White House, Donald J. Trump won it by promising to “make Amer­i­ca ­great again” in part by “stopping cold the attacks on Judeo-­Christian values” and no longer allowing “Chris­tian­ity to be consistently attacked and weakened” like his pre­ de­ces­sor.4 Trump’s amalgamation of Christian nationalism, military might, and ­free market economics was far less sophisticated than that of his mid-­ twentieth-­century pre­de­ces­sors, but it was arguably more power­ful, especially for the white, evangelical Protestants who backed Trump in unpre­ce­dented numbers. The fact that Americans’ support of or opposition to Trump had a ­great deal to do with his stances on Amer­i­ca’s racial past and ­future is not coincidental, nor does it discount his promotion of Amer­i­ca’s faith in freedom; its original architects had long ago declared that correcting or even acknowledging Amer­i­ca’s racial injustices was unpatriotic. Trump and his supporters, like ­those of many of his pre­de­ces­sors, w ­ ere, often unbeknownst to them, parroting a propaganda established de­cades e­ arlier and putting it to use in their own time for their own benefit. ­These common tropes certainly do not mean that all late twentieth-­and early twenty-­first ­century presidents held the same goals as their pre­de­ces­sors in the mid-­twentieth c­ entury. Their domestic and international contexts changed drastically over the years, even during Amer­i­ca’s continuing Cold War with the Soviet Union. Nor did they so explic­itly employ religious propaganda as a means for influencing public opinion or enacting their preferred policies as their pre­de­ces­sors in the 1940s and 1950s had done so diligently. Yet the fact that ­these presidents and so many modern civic, business, and religious leaders still based their support of military might and ­free market economics on a story of Amer­i­ca’s religious foundations is significant. Their continuing use of its core precepts demonstrates that the mid-­twentieth ­century’s religious propaganda not only persists but is also still considered a useful means to other ends, even if it is constantly being adapted as new contexts arise. Apart from the per­sis­tent recycling of its themes and tactics, the second and greatest legacy of the mid-­twentieth ­century’s propaganda lies in the systemic changes it wrought during the period. Namely, politicians and other civic leaders used that propaganda to expand the size and influence of the American government in a way that also altered how religious organ­izations functioned and identified themselves thereafter. The foundation of this pro­cess has already been deftly examined by sociologist Robert Wuthnow, who demonstrated “the

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environmental impact on American religion of the changing role of government in the United States since World War II.”5 Wuthnow investigated the ways that the government’s expansion ­after the war shifted the symbolic bound­aries that Amer­i­ca’s religious bodies used to distinguish themselves from their religious rivals.6 However, Wuthnow neglects the many ways that government officials, along with military commanders and advertising executives, used religious propaganda to achieve this expansion. In this way, religious propaganda, though often disconnected from religious leaders, had as much impact on the government’s expansion as that expansion had on Amer­i­ca’s religious bodies. During the mid-­twentieth ­century, religious organ­izations worked with or against the period’s religious propaganda to define themselves in the public sphere, with most religious bodies aligned on opposite sides of a po­liti­cal dichotomy through their reactions to that movement and its resultant governmental policies. As that propaganda has become institutionalized and replicated over the subsequent de­cades, Americans have aligned themselves with one of two camps that explic­itly blur and outright combine religious and po­liti­cal issues and which seem to be “fundamentally at odds” with each other. Wuthnow bemoaned this dichotomy in his own day, writing, The conservative vision offers divine sanction to Amer­ic­ a, legitimates its form of government and economy, explains its privileged place in the world and justifies a uniquely American standard of luxury and morality. The liberal vision raises questions about the American way of life, scrutinizes its po­liti­cal and economic policies in light of transcendent concerns and challenges Americans to act on behalf of all humanity rather than their own interests alone. Each side inevitably sees itself as the champion of higher princi­ples and the critic of current conditions.7 Yet Wuthnow places this fracturing in the 1960s and 1970s, a­ fter Amer­i­ca’s veneer of national unity had also splintered. In truth, as has been shown, the fracturing was the result of a coordinated campaign of religious propaganda in the two previous de­cades. The same liberal Protestants who provided the framework for a national religious unity soon stood to oppose it ­after civic leaders imbued it with an intentional disregard for issues of race and intimately linked it to such polarizing issues as militarism and ­free market capitalism. The subsequent coupling of religious and po­liti­cal positions resulted in competing visions of an American state long before ­battle lines ­were drawn in the ensuing de­cades. In other words, the formation of two seemingly incompatible notions of Amer­i­ca that Wuthnow observed in the 1980s and which many Americans still bemoan ­today actually emerged from a po­liti­cal proj­ect of strategic unity in

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the 1940s and 1950s. Despite its religious content, religious leaders had l­ittle to do with the propaganda that has come to define the religious and po­liti­cal positions of so many Americans. From FDR to Eisenhower, it took many years and ­g reat effort before this propaganda became institutionalized in the Pledge of Allegiance, on American currency, and as the national motto. Amer­i­ca’s military establishment had become commonplace, and Americans on both sides of the aisle saw consumer economics as a vital part of the economy. More importantly, by the close of the 1950s, public disputes over what was good and right for Amer­i­ca became defined in ways that ­either embraced or rejected the definition of American freedom and the legacy of Amer­i­ca’s religious heritage that civic leaders had carefully constructed over the preceding de­cades. To embrace f­ ree market economics meant that one also supported the troops and loved God. To reject any of ­those three pillars meant one rejected them all. As civic leaders constructed and adapted their preferred national religion, a willful ignorance or public denial of Amer­i­ca’s racial divide became the fourth pillar of the construction. The addition was not premeditated, but neither was it coincidental. The goal of the entire endeavor was to produce a strategic unity that facilitated and reinforced the preferred polices of the propaganda’s architects. Yet the national religion created to achieve that unity drew stark distinctions between true Americans and threats to the nation’s existence. Ultimately, even the period’s illusory public unity proved tenuous, but its architects never designed that unity to hold, even rhetorically. The religious propaganda that created it was too tied to the war culture and vari­ous domestic and international conditions that necessitated its creation in the eyes of its proponents. Civic, business, and military leaders de­cided that the country needed to be united for the sake of war and to stay that way for as long as it took them to make the changes they deemed necessary. They believed that to defeat its enemies, Amer­i­ca needed to have a very par­tic­u­lar type of faith, and so they gave Americans a faith in freedom.

N ote s

Introduction

1. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Farewell Radio and Tele­vi­sion Address to the American ­ eople,” January 17, 1961, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​.­presidency​.­ucsb​ P .­edu​/­node​/­234856. The American Presidency Proj­ect, an online database, was developed by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley and is hosted by the University of California, Santa Barbara. 2. Eisenhower, “Farewell Radio and Tele­vi­sion Address.” 3. Some superlative examples of such early critiques are C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956); Vance Packard, The Hidden Persuaders (New York: Pocket Books, 1957); and John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1958). 4. James  L. Clayton, The Economic Impact of the Cold War: Sources and Readings (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1970), 29. 5. Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, Mono­poly Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966), 176. 6. The Ad Council subsequently initiated two separate “Confidence in a Growing Amer­i­ca” campaigns, in 1954 and 1958. Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar Amer­i­ca (New York: Vintage Books, 2003), 447n41; Robert Griffith, “Dwight  D. Eisenhower and the Corporate Commonwealth,” American Historical Review 87 (February 1982): 104. 7. Griffith, “Commonwealth,” 103–104. 8. Memorandum from Bryce Harlow to Murray Snyder, November  23, 1954, Folder 47: Committee on Religion in American Life, White House Central Files, President’s Personal File, Box 806, Dwight  D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, Abilene, KS (herein cited as DDE Library). 9. For a few select examples of presidential uses of “faith in freedom,” see Franklin D. Roo­se­velt, “Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union,” January 6, 1941, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​.­presidency​.­ucsb​.­edu​/­documents​/­annual​ -­message​-­congress​-­the​-­state​-­the​-­union; Roo­se­velt, “Proclamation 2629—­Thanksgiving Day, 1944,” November 1, 1944, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​.­presidency​ .­ucsb​.­edu​/­documents​/­proclamation​-­2629​-­thanksgiving​-­day​-­1944; Harry  S. Truman, “Address at the Unveiling of a Memorial Carillon in Arlington National Cemetery,” December  21, 1949, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​.­presidency​.­ucsb​.­edu​ /­documents​/­address​-­the​-­unveiling​-­memorial​-­carillon​-­arlington​-­national​-­cemetery; Truman, “Special Message to the Congress on the Mutual Security Program,” May 24, 185

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TO PAGES 4– 5

1951, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​.­presidency​.­ucsb​.­edu​/­documents​ /­special​-­message​-­the​-­congress​-­the​-­mutual​-­security​-­program​-­7; Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Radio Report to the American P ­ eople on the Achievements of the Administration and the 83d Congress,” August 6, 1953, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​.­presidency​ .­ucsb​ .­edu​ /­documents​ /­r adio​ -­report​ -­the​ -­american​ -­people​ -­the​ -­achievements​ -­the​ -­administration​-­and​-­the​-­83d​-­congress; and Eisenhower, “Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union,” January  6, 1955, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​.­presidency​.­ucsb​.­edu​/­documents​/­annual​-­message​-­the​-­congress​-­the​ -­state​-­the​-­union​-­12. For a look at the pos­si­ble origin of this term, see letter from Franklin Roo­se­velt to Roy Ross, July 14, 1943, Folder 8129: Religious Education Week, and cross-­reference sheet, “Davis, Elmer,” July 23, 1943, Folder 6680: Religion, President’s Personal File, Franklin D. Roo­se­velt Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, NY. 10. For a brief history of previous manifestations of Amer­i­ca’s patriotic and militant religious tradition, see Harry Stout, “Religion, War, and the Meaning of Amer­ i­ca,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 19, no. 2 (Summer 2009): 275–289. 11. See, for example, Mark Silk, Spiritual Politics: Religion and Amer­i­ca since World War II (New York: Touchstone, 1988); Martin E. Marty, Modern American Religion, vol. 3, ­Under God, Indivisible, 1941–1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Andrew  S. Finstuen, Original Sin and Everyday Protestants: The Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, Billy Graham, and Paul Tillich in an Age of Anxiety (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009); and James Hudnut-­Beumler, Looking for God in the Suburbs: The Religion of the American Dream and Its Critics, 1945–1965 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994). 12. Kevin Schultz, Tri-­Faith Amer­i­ca: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar Amer­i­ca to Its Protestant Promise (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 13. Mark Thomas Edwards, The Right of the Protestant Left: God’s Totalitarianism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 14. Kevin Kruse, One Nation ­under God: How Corporate Amer­i­ca In­ven­ted Christian Amer­i­ca (New York: Basic Books, 2015). See also Matthew Avery Sutton, “Was FDR the Antichrist? The Birth of Fundamentalist Antiliberalism in a Global Age,” Journal of American History 98, no. 4 (March 2012): 1052–1074; Darren Dochuk, From Bible B ­ elt to Sunbelt: Plain-­Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011); Daniel K. Williams, God’s Own Party: The Making of the Christian Right (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); Darren E. Grem, The Blessings of Business: How Corporations ­Shaped Conservative Chris­tian­ity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). 15. Gaines M. Foster has shown the many ways that religious activists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries advocated moral reform by lobbying for the ­legal regulation of numerous vices. He then notes the similarities between t­hese moral reforms and t­ hose of the religious and po­liti­cal conservatives since the 1980s. The fact that he cannot draw similar links between ­those moral reformers and the vast use of religious rhe­toric and activity in the mid-­twentieth ­century is significant. That is ­because the religious activity in the po­liti­cal and public sphere during this period was chiefly enacted by nonreligious actors. The presidents, advertising executives, and military leaders who employed religious propaganda in the period did so for po­liti­cal,

NOTES TO PA GES 5– 6

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martial, and economic aims and ­were not concerned with moral reform. Their intentional suppression of race may actually demonstrate their disregard for moral issues. See Gaines M. Foster, Moral Reconstruction: Christian Lobbyists and the Federal Regulation of Morality, 1865–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002). 16. Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012); William Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945–1960: The Soul of Containment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Jason W. Stevens, God-­Fearing and ­Free: A Spiritual History of Amer­i­ca’s Cold War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); T. Jeremy Gunn, Spiritual Weapons: The Cold War and the Forging of an American National Religion (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2009); Jonathan Herzog, The Spiritual-­Industrial Complex: Amer­i­ca’s Religious ­Battle against Communism in the Early Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 17. Wendy Wall, Inventing the “American Way”: The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). Daniel L. Lykins all but ignores the centrality of religion in his other­wise excellent examination of the Ad Council in Lykins, From Total War to Total Diplomacy: The Advertising Council and the Construction of the Cold War Consensus (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003). Similarly, K. Healan Gaston’s excellent examination of the strategic creation of Amer­i­ca’s “Judeo-­Christian tradition” fails to account for the profound influence the White House had in such developments. See K. Healan Gaston, Imagining Judeo-­Christian Amer­i­ca: Religion, Secularism, and the Redefinition of Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019). 18. Robert Bellah, “Civil Religion in Amer­ic­ a,” Daedalus 96, no. 1 (Winter 1967): 1–21. For the most comprehensive review of Bellah’s theory and its use in scholarly circles, see James  A. Mathisen, “Twenty Years ­after Bellah: What­ever Happened to American Civil Religion?,” So­cio­log­i­cal Analy­sis 50, no. 2 (Summer 1989): 129–146. 19. Robert Bellah, The Broken Covenant (New York: Seabury Press, 1975); Bellah, “Response to the Panel on Civil Religion,” So­cio­log­i­cal Analy­sis 37, no.  2 (Summer 1976): 153–159. Historian Raymond Haberski Jr. has resurrected Bellah’s concept of a civil religion and linked it to an increasing identification with American militarism, particularly during the Vietnam War. Haberski’s analy­sis addresses many of the prob­ lems with Bellah’s construction, yet still employs civil religion as an in­de­pen­dent concept of American thought. See Raymond Haberski Jr., God and War: American Civil Religion since 1945 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2012). 20. Marcela Cristi, From Civil to Po­liti­cal Religion: The Intersection of Culture, Religion, and Politics (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001). 21. Cristi, From Civil to Po­liti­cal Religion, 3. 22. William M. O’Barr, “Public Ser­vice Advertising and Propaganda,” Advertising and Society Review 13, no. 2 (2012), https://­muse​.­jhu​.­edu​/­article​/­484935. 23. Richard Alan Nelson, A Chronology and Glossary of Propaganda in the United States (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), 232–233. 24. Philip M. Taylor, Munitions of the Mind: A History of Propaganda from the Ancient World to the Pre­sent Day, 3rd ed. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), 4. 25. Stuart J. L ­ ittle, “The Freedom Train: Citizenship and Postwar Culture, 1946– 1949,” American Studies 34, no. 1 (1993): 35–67. 26. The organizers also purposefully left out the ­Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments for fear of putting race in too prominent a position. See Eric Foner, The Story of

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American Freedom (New York: W.  W. Norton, 1998), 249–252; and Wall, Inventing, 227–240. 27. “Address by Honorable Tom C. Clark, Attorney General of the United States, at Bill of Rights Luncheon,” Folder 746-­E7: “Tour of the Freedom Train (Pt. 1), from 5/1/46–1/29/47,” Materials Relating to the Freedom Train (1946–1953), Educational Program Division, Box 2, Rec­ords of the National Archives and Rec­ords Ser­vice, RG 64, National Archives, Washington, DC, as quoted in Wall, Inventing, 1. For a discussion of Clark’s connection to the Freedom Train, see Herzog, Spiritual-­Industrial Complex, 81–84. 28. “A Program to Re-­sell Americanism to Americans,” November 15, 1946, Folder 8, Thomas D’Arcy Brophy Papers, Box 35, Wisconsin State Historical Society Archives, Madison, WI, as quoted in Wall, Inventing, 2. 29. See, for example, letter from Chester LaRoche to Gardner Cowles (head of the Domestic Branch of the OWI), January 13, 1943, “Young & Rubicam” file, Entry 20, Box 15, National Rec­ords Center, Suitland, MD, as quoted in Maureen Honey, “The ‘Womanpower’ Campaign: Advertising and Recruitment Propaganda during World War II,” Frontiers: A Journal of ­Women Studies 6, no. 1–2 (Spring–­Summer 1981): 50; “Memorandum of Conversation,” November 21, 1952, Folder 080: American Legion, Psychological Strategy Board Files, Box 4, Staff Member and Office Files, Papers of Harry S. Truman, Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum, In­de­pen­dence, MO. See also Nancy E. Bernhard, U.S. Tele­vi­sion News and Cold War Propaganda, 1947– 1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Robert Jackall and Janice M. Hirota, Image Makers: Advertising, Public Relations, and the Ethos of Advocacy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000); and Kenneth Osgood, Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda B ­ attle at Home and Abroad (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006). 30. U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Armed Ser­vices, Full Committee Hearings on Universal Military Training, Fourth Intermediate Report, 80th Cong., 1st sess., June 11, 18, 19, 27; July 7, 9, 10, 11, 1947 (Washington, DC, Government Printing Office, 1947), 4276. See also James Gilbert, Redeeming Culture: American Religion in an Age of Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 110. 31. Osgood, Total Cold War, 5. 32. Shawn  J. Parry-­Giles, The Rhetorical Presidency, Propaganda, and the Cold War, 1945–1955 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002). For the history of the rhetorical presidency, see especially James W. Ceaser et al., “The Rise of the Rhetorical Presidency,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 11, no. 2 (1981): 158–171; Jeffrey K. Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1987); and Tulis, “Revising the Rhetorical Presidency,” in Beyond the Rhetorical Presidency, ed. Martin J. Medhurst (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1996), 3–14. I also speak of religious propaganda in the sense that Talal Asad speaks of constructed images in the maintenance of a nation-­state. In his examination of the modern construction of the “secular,” Asad contends that the nation-­state, by its very existence, necessitated the formation of a metanarrative and overarching identity. Advocates of the nation develop ways to “transcend the dif­fer­ent identities built on race, gender, and religion” with a primary identity as a citizen of the state. More succinctly, he writes that “the modern nation as an ­imagined community is always mediated through constructed images.” I argue that

NOTES TO PA GES 9– 10

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t­ hese constructed images, which w ­ ere spoken of almost exclusively in religious terms during the mid-­twentieth ­century, ­were a form of religious propaganda. See Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Chris­tian­ity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 4–5. Fi­nally, like Asad, I am indebted to anthropologist Mary Douglas, who argued that all social interaction takes place through a complex web of bound­aries that serve to distinguish one group from another and provide internal distinctions within groups. Although I do not necessarily believe that ­people or groups are as conscious of ­these bound­aries as Douglas contends, I am convinced of her assertion that much of our discourse and many of our actions are guided by creating, maintaining, and defending ­these bound­aries. See Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (Baltimore: Penguin, 1966). 33. Letter from Charles Lowry and John L. S­ ullivan to Charles Wilson, January 3, 1956, Folder 118: Church M ­ atters and Religion, 1956, General File, Box 680, White House Central Files, DDE Library. 34. See, for example, John F. Kennedy, “Speech of Senator John F. Kennedy, Salt Lake City, Utah, Mormon Tabernacle,” September 23, 1960, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​.­presidency​.­ucsb​.­edu​/­documents​/­speech​-­senator​-­john​-­f​-­kennedy​-­salt​-­lake​ -­city​-­utah​-­mormon​-­tabernacle; Richard Nixon, “Remarks at Tulsa, Oklahoma,” November 3, 1972, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​.­presidency​.­ucsb​.­edu​/­documents​ /­remarks​-­tulsa​-­oklahoma; Gerald R. Ford, “Remarks at the Combined Convention of the National Religious Broadcasters and the National Association of Evangelicals,” February 22, 1976, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​.­presidency​.­ucsb​.­edu​/­documents​ /­remarks​ -­the​ -­combined​ -­convention​ -­the​ -­national​ -­religious​ -­broadcasters​ -­and​ -­the​ -­national; Ronald Reagan, “Radio Address to the Nation on Prayer,” September 18, 1982, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​.­presidency​.­ucsb​.­edu​/­documents​/­radio​ -­address​-­the​-­nation​-­prayer; and George W. Bush, “Remarks at the American Conservative Union 40th Anniversary Gala,” May 13, 2004, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­ www​.­presidency​.­ucsb​.­edu​/­documents​/­remarks​-­the​-­american​-­conservative​-­union​-­40th​ -­anniversary​-­gala. 35. Donald  J. Trump, “Remarks at the F ­ amily Research Council’s Values Voter Summit,” October 13, 2017, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​.­presidency​ .­ucsb​.­edu​/­documents​/­remarks​-­the​-­family​-­research​-­councils​-­values​-­voter​-­summit. For Trump’s support among white evangelical Protestants, see Jessica Martinez and Gregory A. Smith, “How the Faithful Voted: A Preliminary 2016 Analy­sis,” Pew Research Center, November 9, 2016, https://­www​.­pewresearch​.­org​/­fact​-­tank​/­2016​/­11​ /­09​/­how​-­the​-­faithful​-­voted​-­a​-­preliminary​-­2016​-­analysis. 36. “Christian nationalism” is a loose term often expressed but rarely defined. In its most basic form, it refers to the belief that the United States is a Christian nation that, consequently, should be po­liti­cally or­ga­nized around specific Christian beliefs. Christian nationalism often overlaps with Bellah’s idea of civil religion, and the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably. For an example of Christian nationalism and its implications for public policy, see Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry, “A More Perfect Union? Christian Nationalism and Support for Same-­sex Unions,” So­cio­log­i­cal Perspectives 58, no. 3 (Fall 2015): 422–440.

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TO PAGES 13– 18

1. Removing Unnecessary and Artificial Divisions

Parts of this chapter w ­ ere previously published in Andrew R. Polk, “ ‘Unnecessary and Artificial Divisions’: Franklin Roo­se­velt’s Quest for Religious and National Unity Leading Up to the Second World War,” Church History: Studies in Chris­tian­ity and Culture 82, no. 3 (September 2013): 667–677. Used with permission. 1. See personal letter from Franklin Roo­se­velt to George Buttrick, March  14, 1940, and unsigned internal memorandum, December 28, 1939, Folder 1628: Federal Council of Churches of Christ in Amer­ic­ a (herein cited as Federal Council of Churches), President’s Personal File, Franklin D. Roo­se­velt Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, NY (herein cited as FDR Library). 2. Press release, December 23, 1939, Folder 1628: Federal Council of Churches, President’s Personal File, FDR Library. 3. Letter from Franklin Roo­se­velt to Edwin Hughes, April 9, 1939, Folder 5866, President’s Personal File, FDR Library. 4. As quoted in Michael R. Beschloss, The Conquerors: Roo­se­velt, Truman, and the Destruction of Hitler’s Germany, 1941–1945 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), 51. 5. See Matthew Avery Sutton, “Was FDR the Antichrist? The Birth of Fundamentalist Antiliberalism in a Global Age,” Journal of American History 98, no. 4 (March 2012): 1052–1074; and Kevin Kruse, One Nation ­under God: How Corporate Amer­ic­a In­ven­ted Christian Amer­i­ca (New York: Basic Books, 2015). 6. Mark Thomas Edwards, The Right of the Protestant Left: God’s Totalitarianism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 7. For a survey of the tumultuous origins of the NCCJ, see the first chapter of Kevin Schultz, Tri-­Faith Amer­i­ca: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar Amer­i­ca to Its Protestant Promise (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 8. For an excellent summary of the diverse, and often conflicting, theological and social motivations that helped bring about the FCC, see Martin E. Marty, Modern American Religion, vol. 2, The Noise of Conflict, 1919–1941 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 33–55. 9. Schultz, Tri-­Faith Amer­i­ca, 30–31. 10. The Republicans ­were also favored due to the Congress’s failure to reapportion both congressional districts and the Electoral College a­ fter the results of the 1920 census, which found that the nation’s Democratic-­leaning urban population had increased by over 15  ­percent. See William  E. Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Prosperity, 1914–32 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 225–240. 11. Historian and po­liti­cal scientist Brian Farmer claims that nearly “two-­thirds of the national Klan lecturers ­were Protestant ministers.” Brian Farmer, American Conservatism: History, Theory and Practice (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2005), 208. For a more detailed investigation of the religious aspects of the Ku Klux Klan, see David M. Chal­mers, Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan, 3rd ed. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1987), 34–36; and Kelly J. Baker, Gospel according to the Klan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant Amer­i­ca, 1915–1930 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011). 12. Leonard Dinnerstein, Anti-­Semitism in Amer­i­ca (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 58–59, 275–276n2.

NOTES TO PA GES 18– 21

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13. For an analy­sis of the ways that issues of class, race, and civic paranoia combined with theological commitments to produce an often self-­contradictory anti-­ Semitism in mid-­twentieth-­century Amer­i­ca, see Charles Y. Glock and Rodney Stark, Christian Beliefs and Anti-­Semitism: A Scientific Study of the Ways in Which the Teachings of Christian Churches Shape American Attitudes ­toward the Jews (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), 60–81. 14. Memorandum from Franklin Roo­se­velt to Myron Taylor, February 13, 1940, Folder 3865: Taylor, Myron C., 1933–1945, Official File, FDR Library. 15. Historian Michael Alexander contends that many American Jews of the period also considered themselves to be “outsiders,” a psychological identity that caused them to “identify down” in society while si­mul­ta­neously making a place for themselves in a burgeoning ­middle class. See Michael Alexander, Jazz Age Jews (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2001), 1–9. 16. Edward J. Larson, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and Amer­ic­ a’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 197–224. 17. “The federal legislation of morality” comes from Gaines M. Foster, Moral Reconstruction: Christian Lobbyists and the Federal Legislation of Morality, 1865–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002). 18. A foundational work on the “Black Church” in Amer­i­ca and its social and po­ liti­cal influences among African Americans is C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence  H. Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990). Some historians and social scientists have begun to question the existence of a “Black Church” as a homogenous institution of African American social, po­liti­cal, or religious thought and practice. See especially Barbara Dianne Savage, Your Spirits Walk beside Us: The Politics of Black Religion (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008). 19. R. Laurence Moore, Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). 20. Letter from Cyrus Adler to Franklin Roo­se­velt, December 24, 1939, Folder 1628: Federal Council of Churches, President’s Personal File, FDR Library. 21. Tele­g ram from Edward Harrigan to Franklin Roo­se­velt, December 23, 1939, Folder: Catholic: Relating to the Pope, 1939–1941, Official File 76b, Box 3, FDR Library. 22. Letter from George Buttrick to Franklin Roo­se­velt, December 23, 1939, Folder 1628: Federal Council of Churches, President’s Personal File, FDR Library. 23. Letter from George Buttrick to Franklin Roo­se­velt, February 27, 1940, Folder 1628: Federal Council of Churches, President’s Personal File, FDR Library. Neither Roo­se­velt nor his advisers seemed to have anticipated Protestant reactions to Taylor’s appointment or given careful thought to the implications of an official envoy to the Vatican. For instance, ­there was ­little, if any, discussion over w ­ hether the Vatican was a nation-­state or a religious organ­ization. Roo­se­velt often conflated the two roles, a fact that seemed to further vex American Protestants. See Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (New York: Alfred  A. Knopf, 2012), 322–323. 24. Martin E. Marty, Modern American Religion, vol. 3, ­Under God, Indivisible, 1941– 1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 19–20; Charles Clayton Morrison,

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TO PAGES 22– 27

“The Wasted Power of Protestantism,” Christian ­Century 63, no. 11 ( June 12, 1946): 746. 25. “Back Temporary Vatican Mission,” Christian ­Century 62, no. 6 (February 7, 1940): 189. 26. Letter from Rufus Weaver et al. to Franklin Roo­se­velt, December 28, 1939, Folder: Catholic: Relating to the Pope, 1939–1941, Official File 76b, Box 3, FDR Library. 27. Tele­gram from Randolph Gregory to Franklin Roo­se­velt, December 24, 1939, Folder: Catholic: Relating to the Pope, 1939–1941, Official File 76b, Box 3, FDR Library. 28. Tele­g ram from Eddie Clayton to Franklin Roo­se­velt, December 23, 1939, Folder: Catholic: Relating to the Pope, 1939–1941, Official File 76b, Box 3, FDR Library. 29. “Ambassadorial Rank for Social Purposes,” Baptist and Reflector 106, no. 2 ( January 11, 1940): 2. 30. Noel Smith, “At Last the Showdown Has Come,” Baptist and Reflector 106, no. 2 ( January 11, 1940): 3. 31. Unsigned internal memorandum, December 28, 1939, Folder 1628: Federal Council of Churches, President’s Personal File, FDR Library. The FCC likely represented less than it actually claimed; however, the fact that the organ­ization represented roughly 15 ­percent of the population was significant. Furthermore, Buttrick’s influence, though certainly not absolute, was profound. He, and the FCC’s guiding council, funded numerous educational programs within the member institutions, helped train the seminarians who directed local congregations, and served as the public face of liberal Protestantism in Amer­i­ca. 32. “Diplomatic Rank for Taylor Seen,” New York Times, February 14, 1940. 33. Letter from George Buttrick to Franklin Roo­se­velt, February 27, 1940, Folder 1628: Federal Council of Churches, President’s Personal File, FDR Library. 34. Memorandum from Franklin Roo­se­velt to Cordell Hull, March 4, 1940, Folder 1628: Federal Council of Churches, President’s Personal File, FDR Library. 35. Letter from Franklin Roo­se­velt to George Buttrick, March 14, 1940, Folder 1628: Federal Council of Churches, President’s Personal File, FDR Library. 36. Personal letter from Franklin Roo­se­velt to George Buttrick, March 14, 1940, Folder 1628: Federal Council of Churches, President’s Personal File, FDR Library. 37. Letter from George Buttrick to Franklin Roo­se­velt, March 22, 1940, Folder 1628: Federal Council of Churches, President’s Personal File, FDR Library. 38. Letter from Stephen Early to George Buttrick, March 25, 1940, Folder 1628: Federal Council of Churches, President’s Personal File, FDR Library. 39. Charles Clayton Morrison, “An Illegal Ambassador,” Christian ­Century 57, no. 11 (March 13, 1940): 343–345. 40. See Lynne Olson, ­Those Angry Days: Roo­se­velt, Lindbergh, and Amer­ic­a’s Fight over World War II, 1939–1941 (New York: Random House, 2013). 41. The Roo­se­velt administration tried very hard both to curtail dissent of the draft and to diffuse responsibility for any failures in the implementation of the draft, not least of which was the creation of draft boards throughout the country. General Lewis B. Hershey, second director of the draft, once explained that the boards served to “absorb the [public’s] shock” over being forced to send their young men into

NOTES TO PA GES 27– 33

193

the military. David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American ­People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 632–634. 42. James Rowe Jr., “The Negro Prob­lem,” October 23, 1940, Folder: War—­Draft, 1940, President’s Secretary’s File, Box 81, FDR Library. 43. Campbell  C. Johnson, “Negro Youth and the Educational Program of the Y.M.C.A.,” Journal of Negro Education 9, no. 3 ( July 1940): 354–362. 44. Rowe, “Negro Prob­lem.” 45. Rowe, “Negro Prob­lem.” 46. Justice Felix Frank­furter, majority decision, Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586 (1940). 47. See, for example, “Witnesses in Trou­ble,” Time, June 24, 1940, 54; Washington Post, June 3, 1940; and New York Times, June 4, 1940; New York Herald Tribune, June 13, 1940. 48. Beulah Amidon, “Can We Afford Martyrs?,” Survey Graphic, September 1940, 457–460. For a superlative account of the Gobitis case and the ensuing vio­lence, see Shawn Francis Peters, Judging Jehovah’s Witnesses: Religious Persecution and the Dawn of the Rights Revolution (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000), 19–95. 49. Peters, Judging Jehovah’s Witnesses, 85. 50. Peters, Judging Jehovah’s Witnesses, 53–54. 51. Press release, October  29, 1940, Folder 1628: Federal Council of Churches, President’s Personal File, FDR Library. 52. Sam Stavisky, “Hershey Got Job as Draft Chief by Accident,” Washington Post, July 16, 1950, in Folder IV.A.4.—­Hershey, Lewis B., Franklin D. Roo­se­velt Memorial Foundation Rec­ords, FDR Library. 53. As quoted in Marty, Modern American Religion, 3:21–22. 54. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 633. 55. Letter from Samuel McCrea Cavert to Franklin Roo­se­velt, April 18, 1941, Official File 25d, Office of the Chief of Chaplains, Box 25, FDR Library. 56. Letter from Franklin Roo­se­velt to Samuel McCrea Cavert, May 5, 1941, Official File 25d, Office of the Chief of Chaplains, Box 25, FDR Library. 57. Thomas E. L ­ ittle, “Message of the Director General,” Bulletin of the American Protestant Defense League 7, no. 10 (May 15, 1941): 1–3, Folder: Protestant 1933–1942, Official File 76a, Box 2, FDR Library. For activities of the Amer­i­ca First Committee, see Ruth Sarles, A Story of Amer­i­ca First: The Men and W ­ omen Who Opposed U.S. Intervention in World War II, ed. Bill Kauffman (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002). 58. It is, of course, difficult to ascertain accurately the internal motivations of historical actors or the authenticity of their actions. However, evidence can point in one direction or another. In the case of Roo­se­velt’s belief that Hitler was a far greater threat to religion than the Soviet Union, he expressed the belief in private as well as in public statements, including in a personal and confidential memorandum to Myron Taylor. See memorandum from Franklin Roo­se­velt to Myron Taylor, September 1, 1941, Folder: State Department, Myron C. Taylor . . . ​Miscellaneous [1 of 4], Confidential File, Box 48, Harry  S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum, In­de­pen­ dence, MO. 59. Letter between Franklin Roo­se­velt and Pope Pius XII, September 3, 1945, in War­time Correspondence between President Roo­se­velt and Pope Pius XII, ed. Myron Taylor (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 61–62.

19 4 NOTES

TO PAGES 33– 39

60. For a detailed discussion of the correspondence and the context ­behind Roo­se­ velt’s “threefold” strategy to secure aid to the Soviets, see Steven Merritt Miner, Stalin’s Holy War: Religion, Nationalism, and Alliance Politics, 1941–1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 221–227. 61. Presidential press conference, October 1, 1941, cited in “The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in the Soviet Union,” in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1941, by U.S. Department of State (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1959), 1:1000–1001. 62. Preston, Sword of the Spirit, 360. 63. “Religion: God and Lend-­Lease,” Time, October 13, 1941. 64. Franklin D. Roo­se­velt, “Address for Navy and Total Defense Day,” October 27, 1941, American Presidency Proj­ ect, https://­www​.­presidency​.­ucsb​.­edu​/­documents​ /­address​-­for​-­navy​-­and​-­total​-­defense​-­day. 65. See, for instance, Frank  L. Kluckhohn, “Answer to ­Enemy” and “President Roo­se­velt’s Navy Day Address on World Affairs,” New York Times, October 28, 1941. 66. Kluckhohn, “Navy Day Address.” The editors of the Christian ­Century had already publicly questioned the effectiveness of Roo­se­velt’s leadership and came exceedingly close to opposing his reelection less than two weeks before the Navy Day address. See editorial, Christian ­Century, October 16, 1940, 1270. 67. Raymond T. Feely, Nazism versus Religion (New York: Paulist Press, 1940). 68. Sutton, “Was FDR the Antichrist?” 69. ­Little, “Message of the Director General,” 1. 70. Charles Clayton Morrison, editorial, Christian ­Century 62, no. 12 (March 20, 1940). 71. See exchange of letters between Franklin Roo­se­velt and John H. Cowles from January 12, 1940, to February 8, 1940, in Folder 6454: Cowles, John H., President’s Personal File, FDR Library. 72. Perhaps the most prominent of ­these reforms was the prohibition of alcohol, as enacted by the Eigh­teenth Amendment. Yet the repeal of the ban through the Twenty-­First Amendment created a rift between religious and po­liti­cal reformers and exposed a difference in both perspective and impetus between the two types of progressives. Daniel Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition (New York: Scribner, 2010), 357–361. 73. Letter from Franklin Roo­se­velt to Edwin Hughes, April 9, 1939, Folder 5866, President’s Personal File, FDR Library. 74. See especially Schultz, Tri-­Faith Amer­i­ca. 2. Uniting against a Common Foe

1. F. Ernest Johnson, “The Impact of the War on Religion in Amer­i­ca,” American Journal of Sociology 48 (November 1942): 353–355. 2. This co­ali­tion of Catholics, Protestants, and Jews was most often referred to as the Judeo-­Christian foundation of Amer­ic­a. Although the term “Judeo-­Christian” first appeared in 1899, it did not receive wide usage ­until the late 1930s, when it became popu­lar in liberal Protestant circles as a designation of the shared beliefs and heritage of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. The term would come to be criticized and employed in numerous ways over the following de­cades, but most studies have only looked at the ways that religious leaders used the term. See Mark Silk, “Notes on

NOTES TO PA GES 39– 42

195

the Judeo-­Christian Tradition in Amer­i­ca,” American Quarterly 36, no. 1 (Spring 1984): 65–85; Silk, Spiritual Politics: Religion and Amer­i­ca since World War II (New York: Touchstone, 1988), 40–53; Deborah Dash Moore, “Jewish GIs and the Creation of the Judeo-­Christian Tradition,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 8, no. 1 (Winter 1998): 31–53; Kevin Schultz, Tri-­Faith Amer­i­ca: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar Amer­i­ca to Its Protestant Promise (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 57–63, 73–80; and especially K. Healan Gaston, “The Cold War Romance of Religious Authenticity: ­Will Herberg, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Rise of the New Right,” Journal of American History 99, no. 4 (March 2013): 1133–1158. 3. For a more complete examination of the military’s expanding use of religion, see Ronit Y. Stahl, Enlisting Faith: How the Military Chaplaincy S­ haped Religion and State in Modern Amer­i­ca (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017). Stahl does an excellent job detailing the ways the military both encouraged and regulated religious pluralism during the twentieth ­century. However, she misses the extent to which many of ­these developments ­were occurring both parallel to and in coordination with the development of the government’s religious propaganda. 4. Johnson, “Impact of the War,” 353. 5. Charles Clayton Morrison, editorial, Christian ­Century 62, no.  12 (March  20, 1940). 6. This list is, of course, not inclusive, as t­here w ­ ere numerous, though relatively small, groups who protested the war, served as conscientious objectors, or supported ­those who refused military ser­vice. For instance, Rachel Waltner Goossen offers a superlative analy­sis of the way gender constructions and expectations, along with theological commitments, s­haped the opposition to the war. See Rachel Waltner Goossen, ­Women against the Good War: Conscientious Objection and Gender on the American Home Front, 1941–1947 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). 7. The exact numbers are 42,973 objectors to 10,022,367 men called up in the draft. Another 6,086 men w ­ ere imprisoned for refusing to participate in the war effort. See Vernon Holloway, “A Review of American Religious Pacifism,” Religion in Life 19 (Summer 1950): 369; and Martin E. Marty, Modern American Religion, vol. 3, ­Under God, Indivisible, 1941–1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 22. 8. Kevin Kruse, One Nation ­under God: How Corporate Amer­ic­a In­ven­ted Christian Amer­i­ca (New York: Basic Books, 2015). Kruse tends to exaggerate the extent to which fundamentalists in this period held public or especially po­liti­cal influence. He is right that their influence greatly increased during the Eisenhower administration, but he fails to see all of the reasons ­behind that momentous shift. 9. John Fea, “Carl McIntire: From Fundamentalist Presbyterian to Presbyterian Fundamentalist,” American Presbyterian 72, no. 4 (Winter 1994): 253–268. See also George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 245. 10. Heather Hendershot, “God’s Angriest Man: Carl McIntire, Cold War Fundamentalism, and Right-­Wing Broadcasting,” American Quarterly 59 (June 2007): 373–396. 11. See James DeForest Murch, Cooperation without Compromise: A History of the National Association of Evangelicals (­Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1956), 59n9. 12. George M. Marsden, Reforming Fundamentalism: Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism (­Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1987), 48–50.

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TO PAGES 42– 46

13. Marsden, Reforming Fundamentalism, 66. 14. Francis Spellman, untitled speech, dated December 21, 1941, Folder: Catholic 1939–1941, Official File 76b, Box 3, Franklin D. Roo­se­velt Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, NY (herein cited as FDR Library). 15. Spellman, untitled speech. 16. David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: Amer­i­ca and the Holocaust, 1941– 1945 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 10. 17. Leonard Dinnerstein, Anti-­Semitism in Amer­i­ca (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 128–149. 18. In total, around 550,000 Jewish men and w ­ omen served in the U.S. military at some point in the war, which was 11–12 ­percent of the national population. Jonathan Sarna, American Judaism: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 264–265. 19. Charles Clayton Morrison, editorial, Christian ­Century 58, no. 51 (December 17, 1941): 1567. 20. See Gerald Sittser, A Cautious Patriotism: The American Churches and the Second World War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 238–240. Sittser’s account is the most complete examination of Protestant reactions to, and participation in, the war, particularly from the perspective of liberal Protestantism. 21. The FCC ­later commissioned another committee of imminent scholars and theologians to consider the church’s proper stance to the war. The committee’s final report, with the exhausting name of The Relation of the Church to the War in the Light of the Christian Faith, was essentially a synthesis of the thoughts of theologian H. Richard Niebuhr, concluding that God was above the war, judging it, yet still in control of all historical affairs and able at any time to change their course. The report was a ­middle ground between the positions represented by Charles Clayton Morrison and Reinhold Niebuhr. However, within a year of signing the report, Reinhold Niebuhr wrote that he thought the entire affair was naive and served l­ittle purpose. Morrison offered a positive report on the commission in the Christian ­Century in terms of its movement t­oward Christian unity, but it did not stop his continual criticism of Niebuhr’s pragmatic philosophy. For a copy of the report, see Richard B. Miller, ed., War in the Twentieth C ­ entury: Sources in Theological Ethics (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992), 71–124. 22. Archibald MacLeish, “We Cannot Escape History,” as quoted in Allan M. Winkler, The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War Information, 1942–1945 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1978), 12. 23. Franklin  D. Roo­se­velt, as quoted in Wendy Wall, Inventing the “American Way”: The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 135. 24. Wall, Inventing, 136. 25. As quoted in Clayton Koppes and Gregory Black, Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits, and Propaganda ­Shaped World War II Movies (New York: F ­ ree Press, 1987), 179. 26. As quoted in Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes to War, 204. Koppes and Black’s study is especially helpful for understanding the cooperation between the Roo­se­velt administration, the OWI, and Hollywood executives during this period and their concerted efforts to craft a par­tic­u­lar vision of Amer­i­ca. See also Clayton

NOTES TO PA GES 46– 50

197

Koppes and Gregory Black, “What to Show the World: The Office of War Information and Hollywood, 1942–1945,” Journal of American History 64 ( June 1977): 87–105; and Lawrence Suid, Guts and Glory: The Making of the American Military Image in Film (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002), 64–115. 27. Robert Griffith, “The Selling of Amer­i­ca: The Advertising Council and American Politics, 1942–1960,” Business History Review 57, no. 3 (Autumn 1983): 389–391. See also Wall, Inventing, 107–108. 28. Daniel L. Lykins, From Total War to Total Diplomacy: The Advertising Council and the Construction of the Cold War Consensus (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 11–24. Lykins is yet another example of a historian who concedes that American advertisers used religion as a principal means of propaganda in the period but fails to account for that religious propaganda in his investigation. 29. Schultz, Tri-­Faith Amer­i­ca, 68. 30. Wall, Inventing, 134–137. See also Mark H. Leff, “The Politics of Sacrifice on the American Home Front in World War II,” Journal of American History 77 (March 1991): 1306–1313. 31. Wyman, Abandonment, 77–78. 32. That is not to say that t­here ­were no Jews, Catholics, or conservative Protestants opposed to the camps or sympathetic with the plight of Japa­nese Americans in the West. Many groups helped provide aid and entertainment to ­those forced into the camps, most notably the Southern Baptist Convention and the Catholic Workers. However, very few publicly spoke out against the camps in any way. See W. Maxfield Garrott, “Southern Baptists and Japa­nese Americans,” Western Recorder 118 ( January 13, 1944): 4–5; and Sittser, Cautious Patriotism, 169–176. 33. Marty, Modern American Religion, 3:81–87. 34. See Mel Piehl, Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker and the Origin of Catholic Radicalism in Amer­i­ca (Philadelphia: ­Temple University Press, 1982), 194–197; Dorothy Day, Catholic Worker 7 ( July–­August 1940): 1; John Cooney, The American Pope: The Life and Times of Francis Cardinal Spellman (New York: Times Books, 1984), 90; and Marty, Modern American Religion, 3:26–28. 35. Marty, Modern American Religion, 3:27. 36. See George H. Roeder Jr., The Censored War: American Visual Experience during World War Two (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 57. For an examination of the effect the riots had both during the war and in conversations about unity and racial tensions a­ fter the war, see Dominic J. Capeci Jr. and Martha Wilkerson, “The Detroit Rioters of 1943: A Reinterpretation,” Michigan Historical Review 16, no.  1 (Spring 1990): 49–72. 37. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Prob­lem and Modern Democracy, vol. 1 (New York: Harper and ­Brothers, 1944), xix 38. See letter from Henry St.  George to Franklin Roo­se­velt, January 17, 1944, and letter from Franklin Roo­se­velt to Henry St.  George, January  29, 1994, Folder 1628: Federal Council of Churches of Christ in Amer­i­ca (herein cited as Federal Council of Churches), President’s Personal File, FDR Library. 39. As quoted in Myrdal, American Dilemma, vol. 1, 1014–1015. 40. Letter from Charles  E. Byrd to Franklin Roo­se­velt, May  5, 1943; internal memorandum from W. H. Jernagin to Marvin McIntyre, June 29, 1943; and letter from

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TO PAGES 51– 55

Jonathan Daniels to W. H. Jernagin, July 5, 1943, Folder: War—­Draft, 1940, President’s Secretary’s File, Box 81, FDR Library. 41. As quoted in Ira Berkow, “Joe Louis Was ­There ­Earlier,” New York Times, April 22, 1997. Louis’s fame reached new heights at the beginning of the war when he announced, “­We’ll win b­ ecause ­we’re on God’s side.” The quotation was summarily printed on numerous posters throughout the country. It was one of the few advertisements that explic­itly equated the American war effort with the w ­ ill of God. For a more comprehensive study of Black American GIs during the Second World War, see Neil A. Wynn, The African American Experience during World War II (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2010). 42. Wall, Inventing, 136–137. 43. As quoted in Marty, Modern American Religion, 3:65. 44. Lykins, Total War, 23–24. 45. Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), 229. 46. “Bud­get Cut ‘Simplifies’ Grandiose Plans for OWI,” Editor and Publisher, August 21, 1943, 42. 47. Inger  L. Stole, Advertising at War: Business, Consumers, and Government in the 1940s (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012), 112–115. 48. Charles G. Mortimer Jr., “A Careful and Courageous ‘Good and Bad’ War­time Advertising Study,” in War­time Adjustments in the Sales Structure: With a Symposium on War­time Advertising (New York: American Management Association, 1943), 11. 49. Elmer Davis to Chester J. LaRoche, June 29, 1943, as quoted in Stole, Advertising at War, 115. 50. Letter from Franklin Roo­se­velt to Elon Borton, June 15, 1943, Folder: Advertising Federation of Amer­i­ca, 1939–1943, President’s Personal Files, FDR Library. 51. Elmer Davis to Irwin Robinson, April 7, 1944, as quoted in Stole, Advertising at War, 118. 52. “Memorandum for General Watson and Grace Tully,” February 16, 1944, and “Memorandum for the President,” March 6, 1944, Folder: Advertising, 1944, Official File, FDR Library. 53. Wall, Inventing, 284. Unfortunately, Wall too often fails to recognize religion’s centrality to the WAC’s campaigns, despite her seeming acknowl­edgment of that centrality in the quotation. 54. As quoted in Marty, Modern American Religion, 3:48. 55. 1943 Loyalty Days pamphlet, Folder: Religion, Vertical File, FDR Library. 56. Letter from Franklin Roo­se­velt to L. O. Hartman, April 14, 1942, Folder 4527: Editorial Council of the Religious Press, President’s Personal File, FDR Library. 57. Letter from Walter W. Van Kirk to Marvin McIntyre, April 7, 1942, and letter from Edwin Watson to Walter W. Van Kirk, April 8, 1942, Folder 1628: Federal Council of Churches, President’s Personal File, FDR Library. 58. Letter from Daniel C. Roper to Edwin Watson, January 19, 1943; letter from G. Bromley Oxnam to Edwin Watson, January  27, 1943; and letter from G. Bromley Oxnam to Edwin Watson, February  6, 1943, Folder: Protestant 1943–1945, Official File 76a, Box 2, FDR Library. 59. Letter from G. Bromley Oxnam to Franklin Roo­se­velt, March  1, 1943, and “Memorandum Relative to the Visit of the Council of Bishops of the Methodist Church,” Folder: Protestant 1943–1945, Official File 76a, Box 2, FDR Library.

NOTES TO PA GES 56– 59

199

60. Letter from Ralph A. Bard to Franklin Roo­se­velt, March 31, 1942, and letter from Franklin Roo­se­velt to Ralph A. Bard, April 9, 1942, Folder 8006, President’s Personal File, FDR Library. 61. Letter from Joseph M. Proskauer to Samuel Rosenman, April 23, 1942, Folder 6680: Religion, President’s Personal File, FDR Library. 62. Davis was appointed the OWI’s director despite Roo­se­velt’s reservations. Davis had no government experience and thought the best way to motivate members of the public for the war effort was to convince them of the fastest ways to end the war, rather than supply mere patriotic appeals. This nuanced approach proved to be a highly effective form of propaganda. See Roeder, Censored War, 97–98. 63. Letter from Elmer Davis to Marvin McIntyre, July 25, 1942, Folder: Protestant 1933–1942, Official File 76a, Box 2, FDR Library. 64. Letter from Marvin McIntyre to Harry Bowlby, August 20, 1942, and confidential memorandum to Franklin Roo­se­velt, August  20, 1942, Folder: Protestant 1933– 1942, Official File 76a, Box 2, FDR Library. 65. Letter from Elmer Davis to Marvin McIntyre, September 11, 1942, Folder: Protestant 1933–1942, Official File 76a, Box 2, FDR Library. 66. Confidential memorandum from Franklin Roo­se­velt to S.T.E., August 22, 1942, Folder: Protestant 1933–1942, Official File 76a, Box 2, FDR Library. 67. Letter from Henry St.  George Tucker to Franklin Roo­se­velt, September  2, 1942, and letter from Franklin Roo­se­velt to Henry St. George Tucker, September 15, 1942, Folder 21, President’s Personal File, FDR Library. 68. Letter from Henry St. George Tucker to Franklin Roo­se­velt, March 26, 1943, and letter from Franklin Roo­se­velt to Henry St. George Tucker, April 8, 1943, Folder 21, President’s Personal File, FDR Library. 69. “This One ­People,” in National Conference of Christians and Jews, 1943 Annual Report, Folder: National Conference of Christians and Jews, Eleanor Roo­se­velt Pamphlet Collection, FDR Library. 70. John W. Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986). See especially part 2 of War without Mercy for the way themes of revenge combined with racial attitudes that ­were created and deepened against the Japa­nese, specifically, and “Asians” in general. 71. Peter R. D’Agostino, Rome in Amer­i­ca: Transnational Catholic Ideology from the Risorgimento to Fascism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004); see especially chaps. 6–8. 72. This transition was quickened by William ­Temple, ­England’s archbishop of Canterbury. His 1942 work The Hope of a New World became increasingly popu­lar throughout the war, especially among liberal Protestants who had heretofore resisted the idea that Hitler posed a real threat to religious freedom. The work was reprinted a half dozen times in 1942 alone. William T ­ emple, The Hope of a New World (New York: Macmillan, 1942). 73. 1943 Loyalty Days pamphlet, Folder: Religion, Vertical File; letter from Mary Hughes to Franklin Roo­se­velt, July 16, 1943; and letter from Franklin Roo­se­velt to Hill Montague, July 22, 1943, Folder 1685, President’s Personal File, FDR Library. 74. For broader uses of the “Judeo-­Christian tradition” during this period, see especially Silk, “Notes on the Judeo-­Christian Tradition”; and Gaston, “Religious Authenticity.”

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TO PAGES 59– 63

75. Letter from Norman Vincent Peale to Mr. Butler, October 18, 1944, Folder: Protestant 1943–1945, Official File 76a, Box 2, FDR Library. 76. Letter from Franklin Roo­se­velt to Roy Ross, July 14, 1943, Folder 8129: Religious Education Week, and cross-­reference sheet, “Davis, Elmer,” July  23, 1943, Folder 6680: Religion, President’s Personal File, FDR Library. 77. Draft of letter from Franklin Roo­se­velt to Roy Ross, July 6, 1944, Folder 8129: Religious Education Week, President’s Personal File, FDR Library. 78. Draft of letter from Roo­se­velt to Ross, July 6, 1944. 79. The most explicit example of this vision is the best seller by Francis Spellman, No Greater Love: The Story of Our Soldiers (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1945). 80. Ellwood C. Nance, Faith of Our Fighters (St. Louis: Bethany Press, 1944). Protestants ­were not the only ones to advance this idea. For example, Dorothy Fremont Grant published a Catholic version of Faith of Our Fighters titled War Is My Parish in 1944. Like Nance’s work, War Is My Parish collected vari­ous essays and anecdotal stories to show both the religious faith of the ser­vicemen and, though not nearly as committed to the tri-­faith paradigm, the religious cooperation among them. Dorothy Fremont Grant, War Is My Parish (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 1944). 81. Nance, Faith of Our Fighters, 302. 82. Schultz, Tri-­Faith Amer­i­ca, 28. 83. Letter from Frank Weil to Marvin McIntyre, September 1, 1943, Folder: War Dept., Office of the Chief of Chaplains, Official File 25d, Box 25, FDR Library. 84. The FCC did not enjoy oversight of Protestant chaplains, including many chaplains belonging to its member denominations; most denominations had their own oversight committees. However, the FCC did serve as the primary intermediary and, consequently, had influence over issues of logistics, planning, and authentication. 85. Letter from Carl McIntire to Franklin Roo­se­velt, April 1, 1943, Folder: Protestant ­Matters, Official File 76, FDR Library. 86. Letter from McIntire to Roo­se­velt, April 1, 1943. 87. The British had a similar system of Protestant indifferentism and a tendency to encourage chaplains to serve all ser­vicemen regardless of their religious affiliation. However, they neither endorsed the tri-­faith model nor explic­itly encouraged religious unity and cooperation as an essential patriotic ele­ment the way the American military did. See John Smyth, In This Sign Conquer: The Story of the Army Chaplains (London: A. R. Mowbray, 1968), 218–306; see especially 241–242. 88. Both the army and the navy required all chaplains to attend their respective chaplains’ schools before entering ser­vice. The schools taught the men basic military indoctrination, refocused theological questions t­oward the needs and concerns of a military life, and attempted to prepare the chaplains for the realities of battlefield ser­ vice. The navy’s school was located in Norfolk, ­Virginia, and the army’s first resided at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana, and then on the grounds of Harvard University. For a deeper analy­sis of the schools and their curriculum, see Roy J. Honeywell, Chaplains of the United States Army (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Chaplains, Department of the Army, 1958), 243–252. 89. Joshua L. Goldberg, “Chaplain Gave Meaning to Life,” Folder: Newspaper Clippings, 1944–1980, Margaret M. Long Collection, Institute on World War II and the ­Human Experience, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL (herein cited as Institute on WWII). Goldberg wrote that the chaplains’ school forced his “first intimate

NOTES TO PA GES 63– 67

201

association with a Protestant minister and a Catholic priest.” Despite their differences, “ecumenicity took roots at once and [they] became fast friends.” For Goldberg, at least, the military’s program of forced interaction worked quickly. 90. John E. Huss, “Can a Chaplain Be Over-­zealous in Evangelism?,” Western Recorder 118 (August 24, 1944): 5–6. For the reactions of Southern Baptists to the incident, see Sittser, Cautious Patriotism, 165–166. 91. Harry Stout, Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War (New York: Viking, 2006), 288–292. 92. Diane Winston, Red-­Hot and Righ­teous: The Urban Religion of the Salvation Army (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 177–190. 93. Fulton Sheen, The Armor of God (New York: P. J. Kennedy and Sons, 1943). An abridgement of the original text was published as Fulton Sheen’s War­time Prayer Book (Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press, 2003). 94. Memorandum from William Arnold to Franklin Roo­se­velt, April 26, 1942, Folder: War Dept., Office of the Chief of Chaplains, Official File 25d, Box 25, FDR Library. 95. Ivan L. Bennett, Song and Ser­vice Book for Ship and Field, Army and Navy (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1942), 77, Margaret  M. Long Collection, Box 2, Institute on WWII. 96. Bennett, Song and Ser­vice Book, 142–143. 97. Kevin Schultz notes that military officials also ­adopted the term “Judeo-­ Christian tradition” from the NCCJ. Although the term did not originate within the organ­ization, the NCCJ was its chief promoter immediately before and during the war. See Schultz, Tri-­Faith Amer­i­ca, 58. 98. National Conference of Christians and Jews, 1943 Annual Report, 13. 99. National Conference of Christians and Jews, 1943 Annual Report, 10. 100. Ward Fellows, interview by David Gregory, May 2000, Transcript 19, Collection No. 979, Reichelt Program for Oral History, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL. The Institute on World War II and the H ­ uman Experience, Florida State University, provided a copy. 101. Russell Cartwright Stroup, Letters from the Pacific: A Combat Chaplain in World War II, ed. Richard Cartwright Austin (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 134. 102. The Priest Goes to War (New York: Society for the Propagation of the Faith, 1945), Margaret M. Long Collection, Box 1, Institute on WWII, 2. 103. Harry A. Rosenfeld, interview by Alice Frederick, June 7, 2011, transcript, Experiencing War: Stories from the Veterans History Proj­ect, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, http://­lcweb2​.­loc​.­gov​/­diglib​/­vhp​/­story​/­loc​.­natlib​.­afc2001001​ .­76201​/­transcript​?­ID​=­mv0001. 104. Daniel Fredrick, “The Life History of a Minister’s Son, Who Also Became a Minister, Chaplain, and Teacher,” 40, unpublished memoir, undated, Daniel Fredrick Collection, Institute on WWII. 105. Fredrick, “Life History,” 52. 106. Journal of Jacob Wendell Beck, September 23, 1945, 8, Experiencing War: Stories from the Veterans History Proj­ect, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, http://­lcweb2​.­loc​.­gov​/­diglib​/­vhp​/­story​/­loc​.­natlib​.­afc2001001​.­29210​/­pageturner​ ?­ID​=p­ m0004001&page​=­8.

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TO PAGES 67– 75

107. Undated memorandum titled “General Ser­vice,” Folder: Official Memoranda, 1940–1944, Margaret  M. Long Collection, Box 1, Institute on WWII. Interestingly, the same, seemingly, Catholic chaplain who wrote the memorandum, Captain C. A. Neyman, presided over a general ser­vice in honor of the rededication of a chapel at the Naval Operating Base on the island of Tubabao in the Philippines in March 1945. Captain Neyman felt the need to include a note at the bottom of the worship brochure that read: “The ‘General Ser­vice’ is conducted only by a Chaplain of the Roman Catholic Faith.” Folder: Religious Documents, Margaret M. Long Collection, Box 1, Institute on WWII. 108. Circular Letter No. 42, Military Ordinariate, March 15, 1945, Folder: Religious Documents, Margaret M. Long Collection, Box 1, Institute on WWII. 109. Circular Letter No. 41, Military Ordinariate, February 10, 1945, Folder: Religious Documents, Margaret M. Long Collection, Box 1, Institute on WWII. 110. Both Kevin Schultz and Ronit Y. Stahl note this same dynamic at the home front and in the military, respectively. However, both miss the part that state-­ sponsored propagandists played in t­ hese developments. See especially Stahl, Enlisting Faith, chap. 3; and Schultz, Tri-­Faith Amer­i­ca, chap. 2. 111. In a 1954 Gallup survey, participants ­were asked how they accounted for the recent increase in church involvement and the general interest in religion. The results ­were scattered. The largest number, 23  ­percent, replied that they simply did not know; another 17 ­percent suggested it was out of fear of war or uncertainty of the ­future; and 11  ­percent responded that it was a general interest in religion and spirituality or a realization of God’s presence. The only other response over 10 ­percent was simply that one was in the military or had a relative in the military, with no other discernible explanation. Gallup Poll (American Institute of Public Opinion [AIPO]), November 1954, retrieved May 15, 2013, from the iPOLL Databank, Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut, http://­www​.­ropercenter​ .­uconn​.­edu​.­proxy​.­lib​.­fsu​.­edu​/­data​_­access​/­ipoll​/­ipoll​.­html. 3. Building a Better World

1. In an incredibly telling exchange, Truman asked Eleanor Roo­se­velt if ­there was anything he could do for her right ­after she informed him that her husband was dead. She replied: “Is ­there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trou­ble now.” See J. Robert Moskin, Mr. Truman’s War: The Final Victories of World War II and the Birth of the Postwar World (New York: Random House, 1996), 7–8. 2. The few detailed discussions of Truman’s religious faith are David McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 54–55, 83; Elizabeth Edwards Spalding, The First Cold Warrior: Harry Truman, Containment, and the Remaking of Liberal Internationalism (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006), 199–222; Michael Benson, Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997), 30– 37; and David L. Holmes, The Faiths of the Postwar Presidents: From Truman to Obama (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012), 1–23. 3. Letter from Harry Truman to Elizabeth Wallace, February 7, 1911, in Dear Bess: The Letters from Harry to Bess Truman, 1910–1959, ed. Robert  H. Ferrell (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998), 22.

NOTES TO PA GES 76– 79

203

4. As quoted in William E. Pemberton, Harry S. Truman: Fair Dealer and Cold Warrior (Boston: Twayne, 1989), 11–12. 5. Historian William Inboden uses Truman’s concept of a “second chance” as a guiding princi­ple of his excellent examination of Truman’s foreign policy initiatives. See William Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945–1960: The Soul of Containment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 106–107. See also Robert A. Divine, Second Chance: The Triumph of Internationalism in Amer­ic­ a during World War II (New York: Atheneum, 1967). 6. Letter from Harry Truman to William Lampe, April 29, 1946, Folder 260: Religion, President’s Personal File, Box 449, Harry  S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum, In­de­pen­dence, MO (herein cited as HST Library). 7. Letter from Truman to Lampe, April 29, 1946. 8. Letter from Truman to Lampe, April 29, 1946. 9. Heather A. Warren, Theologians of a New World Order: Reinhold Niebuhr and the Christian Realists, 1920–1948 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 103–108. 10. John Mott, “The Leadership Demanded in This Momentous Time,” December 13, 1946, Folder 2194, John Mott Papers, Box 136, Yale Divinity School Archives, Yale University, New Haven, CT. 11. The White House’s Public Affairs Division was also keenly interested in Truman’s meeting with the FCC and hoped the event might offer the president a chance to outline his own relief efforts. Truman chose not to highlight ­these efforts in his speech. See Memorandum from Francis  H. Russell to William Hassett, March  1, 1946, Folder 33: Federal Council of Churches of Christ in Amer­i­ca (herein cited as Federal Council of Churches), President’s Personal File, Box 130, HST Library. 12. Harry  S. Truman, “Address in Columbus at a Conference of the Federal Council of Churches,” March 6, 1946, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​ .­presidency​.­ucsb​.­edu​/­documents​/­address​-­columbus​-­conference​-­the​-­federal​-­council​ -­churches. 13. Letter from Harry Truman to John Foster Dulles, November 6, 1945, Folder 33: Federal Council of Churches, President’s Personal File, Box 130, HST Library. 14. Letter from Truman to Dulles, November 6, 1945. 15. “Statement on the Atomic Bomb,” August 9, 1945, as quoted in Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 32. 16. Samuel McCrea Cavert to Harry Truman, August 9, 1945, and Harry Truman to Samuel McCrea Cavert, August 11, 1945, Folder 213: Churches in Christ, Federal Councils of, Official File, Box 943, HST Library. Inboden notes the fact that Truman’s response to Cavert was in direct contradiction to his ­earlier response to Senator Richard Russell, in which he soundly refuted the idea that Amer­ic­ a should react in kind to Japan’s e­ arlier attacks. See Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 32n8. 17. ­There ­were other critics of Truman’s use of the bombs, of course. William F. Buckley Jr., the public intellectual and founder of the flagship conservative magazine the National Review, wrote extensively against the events, and Amer­i­ca’s Catholic leadership and press w ­ ere soundly against it, with highly critical editorials appearing in the three most widely read Catholic periodicals, Commonweal, Amer­i­ca, and Catholic World. Yet the American public was overwhelmingly supportive, with a Gallup poll showing that 85 ­percent of t­ hose polled w ­ ere in f­ avor of their use, 10 ­percent against,

20 4 NOTES

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and 5 ­percent with no opinion. Truman seemed content with this support. See Paul Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 202–203; and George Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935–1971 (New York: Random House, 1972), 1:521. For a discussion of the controversy surrounding the use of the atomic bomb, see J.  Samuel Walker, Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs against Japan (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). 18. Robert Calhoun et al., Atomic Warfare and the Christian Faith (New York: Federal Council of Churches of Christ in Amer­i­ca, Commission on the Relation of the Church to the War in the Light of the Christian Faith, 1946), 12, 19. 19. Reinhold Niebuhr to James Conant, March 12, 1946, as quoted in Richard Fox, Reinhold Niebuhr: A Biography (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 224–225. 20. “Report on World Order” March 15, 1946, and letter from G. Bromley Oxnam to Harry Truman, March  15, 1946, Folder 213: Churches in Christ, Federal Councils of, Official File, Box 943, HST Library. 21. Copy of section 3 of War Department Circular 347 can be found in A Program for National Security: Report of the President’s Advisory Commission on Universal Training, May 29, 1947 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1947), 397–399, HST Library. 22. See New York Times, August 4, 1944, and August 19, 1944. See also Commercial and Financial Chronicle, August 31, 1944. 23. New York Times, November 18, 1944. 24. A Program for National Security, 401–403. 25. Harry Truman, speech before joint session of Congress, October 23, 1945, Folder: Universal Military Training, Historical Files, President’s Secretary’s Files, Box 197, HST Library. 26. Truman, speech before joint session of Congress, October 23, 1945. 27. A Program for National Security, 227–228. 28. Samuel  P. Huntington, The Common Defense: Strategic Programs in National Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), 240. Historian Michael Sherry convincingly argues that such popu­lar support for UMT was “soft.” Although the public favored the idea of UMT, p­ eople prioritized nearly e­ very other economic, military, and social program over its enactment. This weak support allowed FCC leaders and fiscal conservatives like Ohio senator Robert A. Taft to forestall its enactment u ­ ntil the conflict in ­Korea made the plan obsolete. See Michael Sherry, Preparing for the Next War: American Plans for Postwar Defense, 1941–1945 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977), 75. 29. “Petition Opposes Military Training,” New York Times, June 5, 1947. 30. During World War I, 13 ­percent of draftees w ­ ere infected with e­ ither syphilis or gonorrhea, with other, less serious, venereal diseases bringing the overall infection rate much higher. Rates during the Second World War w ­ ere far less, though ­there was an upsurge in the closing year of the war. See Louis  I. Dublin and Mary Augusta Clark, “A Program for the Statistics of the Venereal Diseases,” Public Health Reports (1896–1970) 36, no. 50 (December 16, 1921): 3071–3088; and Allan J. McLaughlin, “A State-­Wide Plan for the Prevention of Venereal Disease,” Public Health Reports (1896– 1970) 33, no. 8 (February 22, 1918): 223–237. For instances of concern over venereal

NOTES TO PA GES 83– 85

205

diseases during and a­ fter World War II, see Theodore Rosenthal, “Venereal Disease in War­time,” American Journal of Nursing 44, no. 2 (February 1944): 104–106. 31. Anne C. Loveland, American Evangelicals and the U.S. Military, 1942–1993 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996), 2–3. 32. For a more complete analy­sis of the National Security Act of 1947, see Douglas T. Stuart, Creating the National Security State: A History of the Law That Transformed Amer­i­ca (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2008). 33. See James M. Gerhardt, The Draft and Public Policy: Issues in Military Manpower Procurement, 1945–1970 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1971). 34. Michael J. Hogan, A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945–1954 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 119. Hogan is one of the few historians or po­liti­cal scientists to offer a careful study of UMT. See Hogan, Cross of Iron, 119–158; George Q. Flynn, The Draft, 1940–1973 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993), 88–109; and Robert Ward, “The Movement for Universal Military Training in the United States, 1942–1952” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina, 1957). The FCC was not the only group to oppose the UMT program. The National Education Association, American Association of School Administrators, and American Council on Education w ­ ere all concerned about the implications of allowing the military primary responsibility for the education of Amer­ic­ a’s boys a­ fter high school. The American Federation of L ­ abor and the Congress of Industrial Organ­izations felt that the program would undermine apprenticeship programs, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored P ­ eople (NAACP) argued that the inclusion of all American boys into a segregated military would only entrench racial prejudices and inequalities in American culture. Yet Truman seemed far more concerned with the opposition of the FCC. This may be due to e­ ither the FCC’s vehemence or the po­liti­cal and social power it held for this short period of time. For an extended examination of UMT’s vari­ous opponents, see John M. Swomley Jr., “A Study of the Universal Military Training Campaign, 1944–1952” (PhD diss, University of Colorado, 1959), chap. 10. 35. Transcript of first meeting of the President’s Advisory Commission on Universal Training, December 20, 1946, Folder 109-­B: President’s Advisory Commission on Universal Training (1946–1947), Official File, Box 641, HST Library. 36. For a more complete discussion of the Four Chaplains, see Kevin Schultz, Tri-­ Faith Amer­ic­a: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar Amer­ic­a to Its Protestant Promise (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 3–5; and William R. Hutchison, Religious Pluralism in Amer­i­ca: The Contentious History of a Founding Ideal (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 198–199. 37. Edmund  A. Walsh, a Catholic priest, was, of course, decidedly concerned with religious affairs. However, he was also a professor of geopolitics and a stalwart anticommunist who was convinced that Amer­ic­ a faced a serious and perhaps existential threat from the Soviet Union. See Patrick J. McNamara, A Catholic Cold War: Edmund A. Walsh, S.J., and the Politics of American Anticommunism (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005). 38. Transcript of first meeting of the President’s Advisory Commission on Universal Training, 11. 39. “Recommendations to the President on Moral Safeguards for Trainees to Be Inducted u ­ nder the Selective Ser­vice Act,” August  3, 1948, Folder 109-­B: President’s

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TO PAGES 85– 87

Advisory Commission on Universal Training (1946–1947), Official File, Box 641, HST Library. 40. Davies also suggested changing the program’s name to “security training” rather than “military training,” if at all feasible. Transcript of first meeting of the President’s Advisory Commission on Universal Training, 21–23. The committee did conclude that UMT should not be constructed as merely a military training program. A strictly military regimen was against Truman’s proposed plan and could not be sold to the public. One of Truman’s chief military advisers, Harry Vaughan, confirmed this last notion in 1948. In a letter to Omar Ketchum, the director of the Veterans of Foreign Wars’ National Legislative Ser­vice, Vaughan admitted that even ­after a public relations campaign and numerous petitions to Congress, it was “very doubtful if Congress [would] okay purely military training” but that it was “entirely pos­si­ble that Congress [would] authorize a training which [had], as well as the military features, educational, social, and economic features as well.” Letter from Harry Vaughan to Omar B. Ketchum, January 3, 1947, Folder 109-­B: President’s Advisory Commission on Universal Training (1946–1947), Official File, Box 641, HST Library. 41. Memorandum from Kenneth Royall to James Forrestal, September 15, 1948, Folder 109-­B: President’s Advisory Commission on Universal Training (1946–1947), Official File, Box 641, HST Library. 42. This cooperation has often caused scholars to overstate the consensus narrative as a unifying theme in mid-­twentieth-­century Amer­i­ca. The goals for which that consensus was applied mattered deeply, both in fragmenting the civic and religious leaders who endorsed it and in determining the type of American religion that developed out of it. See, for example, Schultz, Tri-­Faith Amer­i­ca, 75–76; and Martin  E. Marty, Modern American Religion, vol. 3, ­Under God, Indivisible, 1941–1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 115–129. 43. Letter from Samuel McCrea Cavert to Matthew Connelly, May 20, 1946, and tele­gram from Matthew Connelly to Samuel McCrea Cavert, May 22, 1946, Folder 76-­ B: Misc. Taylor Folder (Myron C. Taylor, Personal Representative of the President to His Holiness, the Pope [herein cited as Representative to the Pope]), Official File, Box 454, HST Library. 44. Letter from Arthur Jackson to Harry Truman, June  11, 1946, Folder 76-­B: Misc. Taylor Folder (Representative to the Pope), Official File, Box 454, HST Library. Although the del­e­ga­tion included the more prominent evangelical Protestants in the country, all of whom ­were members of the NAE, it is impor­tant to note that the group did not purport to represent the NAE itself. Each denomination had a long-­ standing antipathy t­ oward the types of power­ful ecumenical associations typified by the FCC. This preference for cooperative confederations over institutional associations weakened the po­liti­cal clout of the NAE in its early years, but it put NAE members in an ideal position to capitalize on the parachurch and subpo­liti­cal movements and organ­izations that emerged during Truman’s second term and proliferated during Eisenhower’s presidency. 45. Letter from Samuel McCrea Cavert to Matthew Connelly, May 23, 1946, and letter from Samuel McCrea Cavert to Matthew Connelly, June 3, 1946, Folder 76-­B: Misc. Taylor Folder (Representative to the Pope), Official File, Box 454, HST Library. 46. See letter from Robert Ketchum to Harry Truman, June 8, 1946; memorandum from Matthew Connelly to William Hassett, June  12, 1946; memorandum

NOTES TO PA GES 87– 89

207

from William Hassett to Matthew Connelly, June 13, 1946; and letter from Matthew Connelly to Robert Ketchum, June 15, 1946, Folder 76-­B: Misc. Taylor Folder “A,” Official File, Box 454, HST Library. 47. Memorandum from Hassett to Connelly, June 13, 1946. 48. Memorandum from Hassett to Connelly, June 13, 1946. 49. Letter from G. Bromley Oxnam to Harry Truman, December 11, 1946, Folder 76-­B: Misc. Taylor Folder “F,” Official File, Box 455, HST Library. 50. AP article cited in “Baptists Touring Eu­rope Rap Truman’s Note to Pope Pius,” Paducah Sun-­Democrat (Paducah, KY), August 31, 1947; tele­gram from Myron Taylor to William Hassett, August 29, 1947; tele­gram from William Hassett to Myron Taylor, August 30, 1947; and undated note from William Hassett to “Mr. Ross,” Folder 76-­B: Misc. Taylor Folder (Representative to the Pope), Official File, Box 454, HST Library. 51. Letter from F. A. Fink to Harry Truman, January 29, 1948, Folder 76-­B: Misc. Taylor Folder (Representative to the Pope), Official File, Box 454, HST Library. 52. Letter from Myron Taylor to Lord Halifax, October  8, 1947, Folder: State Department, Myron C. Taylor, Box 45, Confidential File, HST Library. 53. Ironically, Taylor published the correspondence with the belief that it would help secure religious unity. General Lucius Clay, the commander of Allied forces in Germany, supported the letters’ publication, believing them to be a boon to public relations in the region. Clay thought that German Catholics would be encouraged by Amer­i­ca’s re­spect for, and cooperation with, the Vatican. American Protestants w ­ ere far more resentful ­toward the letters than German Catholics ­were appreciative. 54. For an extended analy­sis of Taylor’s activities, see Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 122–126. Inboden’s concentration on foreign policy unfortunately ­causes him to gloss over the domestic repercussions of Taylor’s and Truman’s attempts to manipulate and control the theological declarations of religious institutions, but his study does shed in­ter­est­ing light on Truman’s overall foreign policy initiatives. Taylor’s mission, throughout both Roo­se­velt’s and Truman’s administrations, receives very ­little attention outside of Inboden. Owen Chadwick gives some mention of Taylor in Britain and the Vatican during the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 100–103. Robert Moats Miller mentions Taylor in his examination of Oxnam’s opposition to Truman’s relationship with the Vatican in Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam: Paladin of Liberal Protestantism (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990), 411–429. Surprisingly, Jonathan Herzog only mentions Taylor in one paragraph in his excellent examination of the “sacralization” of the U.S. military during the early years of the Cold War. See Jonathan Herzog, The Spiritual-­Industrial Complex: Amer­i­ca’s Religious ­Battle against Communism in the Early Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 77. 55. Letter from Samuel McCrea Cavert to Matthew Connelly, September 2, 1947, Folder 76-­B: Misc. Taylor Folder (Representative to the Pope), Official File, Box 454, HST Library. 56. Tele­gram from Samuel McCrea Cavert to Matthew Connelly, September  30, 1947, Folder 76-­B: Misc. Taylor Folder (Representative to the Pope), Official File, Box 454, HST Library. 57. Memorandum from William Hassett to Matthew Connelly, September  24, 1947, Folder 76-­B: Misc. Taylor Folder (Representative to the Pope), Official File, Box 454, HST Library. Although he was relatively ­adept at the internal politics of religious groups, Hassett was even more incredulous than Truman was when it came to the

20 8 NOTES

TO PAGES 89– 92

hy­poc­risy of religious groups or individuals. He was also prone to ­these types of mocking memoranda in regard to religion. For instance, twice, in 1945 and 1946, a Freemason from New Jersey, Frank Kramer, wrote to Truman about combining the Knights of Columbus and the Shriners to garner better Catholic and Protestant relations. Hassett wrote him a polite reply, but in a personal note to Connelly, referred the ­matter “to the Archangels Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel for consideration and acknowl­edgment direct to Kramer.” See memorandum from William Hassett to Matthew Connelly, December 10, 1945, Folder 76: Church ­Matters (1945–1946) [1 of 2], Official File, Box 424, HST Library. 58. Letter from Matthew Connelly to Samuel McCrea Cavert, October 2, 1947, Folder 76-­B: Misc. Taylor Folder (Representative to the Pope), Official File, Box 454, HST Library. 59. Transcript of meeting of Protestant clergymen with Myron  C. Taylor at Union Club, New York, October 20, 1947, Folder: State Department, Myron C. Taylor . . . ​Misc. [3 of 4], Confidential File, Box 48, HST Library. 60. Transcript of meeting of Protestant clergymen with Taylor, October 20, 1947. 61. Letter from G. Bromley Oxnam to Myron Taylor, May 12, 1945; letter from G. Bromley Oxnam to Myron Taylor, July 9, 1945; letter from Myron Taylor to Harry Truman, July 24, 1945; and letter from G. Bromley Oxnam to Myron Taylor, October 2, 1945, Folder 213: Churches in Christ, Federal Councils of, Official File, Box 943, HST Library. 62. Letter from Myron Taylor to Matthew Connelly, October  8, 1945, and tele­ gram from Matthew Connelly to Myron Taylor, October  12, 1945, Folder 213: Churches in Christ, Federal Councils of, Official File, Box 943, HST Library. 63. Letter from Myron C. Taylor to G. Bromley Oxnam, October 17, 1945, Folder 213: Churches in Christ, Federal Councils of, Official File, Box 943, HST Library. 64. Transcript of meeting of Protestant clergymen with Taylor, October 20, 1947. 65. Transcript of meeting of Protestant clergymen with Taylor, October 20, 1947. 66. Letter from G. Bromley Oxnam to Harry Truman, November 15, 1947, Folder 76-­B: Misc. Taylor Folder (Representative to the Pope), Official File, Box 454, HST Library. See also Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 128–129. 67. Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 129–137. Inboden also notes that Taylor made a simultaneous attempt to influence the election of Bishop Athenagoras as patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox Church. This was in line with Truman’s attempt to isolate the Rus­sian Orthodox Church. However, a public manipulation of the election would only serve as vital propaganda for the Soviets, who would no doubt accuse the United States of interfering in religious m ­ atters. Despite Taylor’s delicate ­handling of the Greek situation, that is exactly what American Protestants publicly accused him of in regard to the WCC’s Amsterdam assembly. See especially Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 132–133. 68. When Pope Pius XII eventually publicly forbade any Catholics from any official participation in the assembly, American Protestants condemned the decree as yet another sign of papal totalitarianism. See “Preacher Scores Ban on Church Assembly,” New York Times, August 23, 1948. 69. Letter from Myron Taylor to Harry Truman, May 4, 1949, Folder: State Department, Myron C. Taylor, Confidential File, Box 46, HST Library.

NOTES TO PA GES 92– 99

209

70. “Taylor to End Tour on Christian Unity,” New York Times, May 11, 1948. 71. Letter from Henry Smith Leiper to Harry Truman, June 11, 1948, Folder 76-­B: Misc. Taylor Folder (Representative to the Pope), Official File, Box 454, HST Library. 72. “A Positive Program for Peace: Statement Approved by the Executive Committee of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in Amer­i­ca,” April 26, 1948, Folder 213: Churches in Christ, Federal Councils of, Official File, Box 943, HST Library. 73. Letter from Kirtley  F. Mather to Harry Truman, June  4, 1948, Folder 213: Churches in Christ, Federal Councils of, Official File, Box 943, HST Library. 74. “A Positive Program for Peace.” 75. Letter from G. Bromley Oxnam to Harry Truman, May  6, 1948, and letter from Harry Truman to G. Bromley Oxnam, May 13, 1948, Folder 213: Churches in Christ, Federal Councils of, Official File, Box 943, HST Library. Oxnam was not able to come to the meeting, but both men recounted the details of, and their gratitude over, the event ­after the fact. Oxnam notes Truman’s kind words and heartfelt thanks during the event, but Truman then reiterates t­hose feelings in a reply to Oxnam, a letter almost certainly written ­after Truman called the report asinine. 76. Handwritten note from Harry Truman on “A Positive Program for Peace,” Folder 213: Churches in Christ, Federal Councils of, Official File, Box 943, HST Library. 77. Letter from Carl McIntire to Harry Truman, October 27, 1947, and letter from Harry Truman to Carl McIntyre, October 31, 1947, Folder 109: Misc. Pro “A,” Official File, Box 612, HST Library. 78. “Church Group Hits Another on ‘Peace,’ ” New York Times, May 14, 1948. See also letter from Clarence Avey to Harry Truman, May  15, 1948, and letter from Charles Taft to Harry Truman, May 15, 1948, Folder 213: Churches in Christ, Federal Councils of, Official File, Box 943, HST Library. 4. Filling the Void

1. Robert H. Ferrell, Harry Truman: A Life (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996), 3–4. 2. David McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 31–32. 3. Michael R. Gardner, Harry Truman and Civil Rights: Moral Courage and Po­liti­cal Risks (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002), 4. 4. Gardner, Truman and Civil Rights, 19. One of the more grisly cases involved the shooting deaths of two Black ser­vicemen who, along with their wives, ­were dragged out of their cars near Monroe, Georgia, and riddled with around sixty bullets. Truman sent his attorney general to investigate the case. See McCullough, Truman, 589. 5. Walter White, A Man Called White (New York: Viking Press, 1948), 331. 6. “Police Chief Freed in Negro Beating,” New York Times, November 6, 1946. 7. President’s Committee on Civil Rights, To Secure T ­ hese Rights (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1947), 162–163. 8. For the full impact of Truman’s civil rights program on the election of 1948, see Harvard Sitkoff, “Harry Truman and the Election of 1948: The Coming of Age of Civil Rights in American Politics,” Journal of Southern History 37, no.  4 (November 1971): 597–616.

21 0 NOTES

TO PAGES 100– 103

9. Letter from J. Oscar Lee to Harry Truman, November  23, 1948, Folder 213: Churches in Christ, Federal Councils of, Official File, Box 943, Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum, In­de­pen­dence, MO (herein cited as HST Library). 10. See James F. Findlay Jr., Church ­People in the Strug­gle: The National Council of Churches and the Black Freedom Movement, 1950–1970 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 11–22. 11. “Bias Action Put Off by Church Council,” New York Times, March 22, 1952; “Council Explains Church Bias Vote,” New York Times, March 25, 1952. 12. Letter from Lee to Truman, November 23, 1948. 13. Memorandum from William Hassett to David Niles, December 3, 1948, Folder 213: Churches in Christ, Federal Councils of, Official File, Box 943, HST Library. 14. Memorandum from Hassett to Niles, December 3, 1948. 15. Memorandum from David Niles to William Hassett, December 6, 1948, Folder 213: Churches in Christ, Federal Councils of, Official File, Box 943, HST Library. 16. Memorandum from Hassett to Niles, December 3, 1948, and memorandum from Niles to Hassett, December 6, 1948. 17. Daniel L. Lykins, From Total War to Total Diplomacy: The Advertising Council and the Construction of the Cold War Consensus (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 41. 18. John Morton Blum, V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture during World War II (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1976), 100. 19. American media outlets came u ­ nder pressure a­ fter the war to prove their worth to the American p­ eople. The Federal Communications Commission warned radio stations that, during its 1946 license renewal evaluations, the agency would take a far closer look at the way they allocated their public ser­vice activities. Supporting Ad Council campaigns both relieved this pressure and helped fill the hours of unsold airtime at many stations. Print media was better protected from governmental regulations, but it was highly criticized in the mid-1940s by both politicians and public intellectuals for what they deemed to be prejudiced reporting before the war and less than patriotic support during the war. The Ad Council again offered a way to discount ­these criticisms. See James L. Baughman, The Republic of Mass Culture: Journalism, Filmmaking, and Broadcasting in Amer­i­ca since 1941 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 31–32. 20. For a detailed example of the way public opinion, advertising, and propaganda ­were conceived of during this period, see Leonard W. Doob, Public Opinion and Propaganda (New York: Henry Holt, 1948). 21. Lykins, Total War, 39–49. 22. Anthony Hyde to Mr. [John] Steelman, November 15, 1946, as quoted in Inger L. Stole, Advertising at War: Business, Consumers, and Government in the 1940s (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012), 246n26. 23. Theodore S. Repplier, “Advertising Dons Long Pants,” Public Opinion Quarterly 9, no. 3 (Autumn 1945): 269–278; “Truman Acts to Aid Ad Council,” New York Times, October 18, 1945. 24. Kevin Schultz, Tri-­Faith Amer­ic­ a: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar Amer­i­ca to Its Protestant Promise (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 69; see also Schultz’s examination of the movement on 68–73. 25. Letter from Nelson A. Rocke­fel­ler to Harry Truman, February 16, 1949, Folder 1460: Christians and Jews, National Conference of (1945–1949) [1 of 2], Official File,

NOTES TO PA GES 103– 107

211

HST Library. Rocke­fel­ler was the chairman of Brotherhood Week in 1949, with Truman agreeing to serve as honorary chairman yet again. 26. “1949 Brotherhood Week Pro­g ress Report to Harry Truman,” February 16, 1949, Folder 1460: Christians and Jews, National Conference of (1945–1949) [1 of 2], Official File, HST Library. 27. Schultz, Tri-­Faith Amer­i­ca, 70. 28. Schultz, Tri-­Faith Amer­i­ca, 72–73. 29. Undated letter from N. R. Howard to newspaper editors in promotion of 1949 Brotherhood Week, Folder 1460: Christians and Jews, National Conference of (1945– 1949) [2 of 2], Official File, HST Library. 30. “Group Prejudice—­ a National Menace,” Advertising Council Radio Fact Sheet, February 14, 1949, Folder 1460: Christians and Jews, National Conference of (1945–1949) [2 of 2], Official File, HST Library. 31. Lykins, Total War, 69. 32. Stuart J. L ­ ittle, “The Freedom Train: Citizenship and Postwar Culture, 1946– 1949,” American Studies 34, no. 1 (1993): 35–67. 33. “Address by Honorable Tom C. Clark, Attorney General of the United States, at Bill of Rights Luncheon,” Folder 746-­E7: “Tour of the Freedom Train (Pt. 1), from 5/1/46–1/29/47,” Materials Relating to the Freedom Train (1946–1953), Educational Program Division, Box 2, Rec­ords of the National Archives and Rec­ords Ser­vice, RG 64, National Archives, Washington, DC, as quoted in Wendy Wall, Inventing the “American Way”: The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 1. For a discussion of Clark’s connection to the Freedom Train, see Jonathan Herzog, The Spiritual-­Industrial Complex: Amer­i­ca’s Religious ­Battle against Communism in the Early Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 81–84. 34. “A Program to Re-­sell Americanism to Americans,” November 15, 1946, Folder 8, Thomas D’Arcy Brophy Papers, Box 35, Wisconsin State Historical Society Archives, Madison, WI, as quoted in Wall, Inventing, 2. 35. I owe much of this argument to Wendy Wall. See Wall, Inventing, 163–240. 36. Robert Griffith, “The Selling of Amer­i­ca: The Advertising Council and American Politics, 1942–1960,” Business History Review 57, no. 3 (Autumn 1983): 399. 37. “American Heritage Program,” undated, Folder: American Heritage Foundation, Tom C. Clark Papers, Box 18, HST Library. 38. Lykins, Total War, 70. 39. See Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), 249–252; and Wall, Inventing, 227–240. 40. “American Heritage Program.” 41. What Any W ­ oman or Group of W ­ omen Can Do for the Observance of National Bible Week, 1947 pamphlet of the Good House­keeping Club Ser­vice, Folder 260: Religion, President’s Personal File, Box 449, HST Library. 42. Faith in Our Time, 1947 pamphlet of the Good House­keeping Club Ser­vice, Folder 260: Religion, President’s Personal File, Box 449, HST Library. 43. See Herzog, Spiritual-­Industrial Complex, 150–151. 44. Tele­g ram from Charles Wilson to Harry Truman, October 18, 1949, Folder 260: Religion, President’s Personal File, Box 449, HST Library.

21 2 NOTES

TO PAGES 108– 112

45. Press release copy of national broadcast by Harry Truman, October 30, 1949, Folder 260: Religion, President’s Personal File, Box 449, HST Library. 46. See Harry Stout, Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War (New York: Viking, 2006), especially 373–374. 47. Lykins, Total War, 85. See also “Go-­to-­Church Ads Win Wide Support, New York Times, December 5, 1949. 48. “Background Memorandum for Religion in American Life,” October 24, 1949, Folder 5573: National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., President’s Personal File, HST Library. 49. Tele­g ram from Wilson to Truman, October 18, 1949. 50. Foner, Story of American Freedom, 249–252; Wall, Inventing, 227–240. 51. Herzog, Spiritual-­Industrial Complex. 52. For a more complete overview of the Fahy Committee and the integration of the armed forces, see Morris J. MacGregor, Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940–1965 (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1985); Richard J. Stillman II, Integration of the Negro in the U.S. Armed Forces (New York: Praeger, 1968); Richard Dalfiume, Desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1969); and Sherie Mershon and Steven Schlossman, Foxholes and Color Lines: Desegregating the U.S. Armed Forces (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). 53. “Army to Keep Segregation, Bradley Says,” Washington Post, July 28, 1948. 54. Minutes, President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Ser­vices, March 28, 1949, in Morris J. MacGregor and Bernard C. Nalty, eds., Blacks in the United States Armed Forces: Basic Documents (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1977), 9:504–512. See also undated Committee Notes, Folder: Royall, Kenneth—[Secretary of the Army], Rec­ords of the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Ser­vices (RG 220), Box 5, HST Library; and Richard Dalfiume, “The Fahy Committee and Desegregation of the Armed Forces,” Historian 31, no. 1 (November 1968): 1–20. 55. “The AGF [Army Ground Forces] UMT Experimental Unit, Fort Knox, Kentucky,” undated, Folder: Staff Studies—­Fort Knox, KY, Rec­ords of the President’s Advisory Commission on Universal Training, Box 8, Rec­ords of Temporary Committees, Commissions, and Boards, RG 220, HST Library. 56. “The Fort Knox Experiment,” undated, Public Information Office, UMT Experimental Unit, Fort Knox, KY, Folder: Ft. Knox, Kentucky studies, Rec­ords of the President’s Advisory Commission on Universal Training, Box 8, Rec­ords of Temporary Committees, Commissions, and Boards, RG 220, HST Library. 57. Herzog notes that this emphasis on abstinence caused some military officers and members of the public to worry that the recruits w ­ ere being emasculated. The unit’s information office responded with reports, stories, and pictures of the recruits playing sports and being hardened into masculine, virile Americans. The difference, Devine insisted, was on the spiritual disposition of that masculine spirit. See Herzog, Spiritual-­Industrial Complex, 115. 58. “Report on the Activities and Program of the Protestant Chaplain, UMT Experimental Unit,” March 18, 1947, Folder: Staff Studies—­Fort Knox, KY, Rec­ords of the President’s Advisory Commission on Universal Training, Box 8, Rec­ords of Temporary Committees, Commissions, and Boards, RG 220, HST Library.

NOTES TO PA GES 112– 115

213

59. “The Fort Knox Experiment,” 10. 60. “Resolution of the Religious Subcommittee of the Louisville (KY) UMT Advisory Committee, 1947,” 2, Folder 109-­B: President’s Advisory Commission on Universal Training (1946–1947), Official File, Box 641, HST Library. The number who continued to attend ser­vices, though high, can be accounted for by the pressure recruits felt to conform to the unit’s expectations. 61. “The Fort Knox Experiment,” 2–3. 62. U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Armed Ser­vices, Full Committee Hearings on Universal Military Training, Fourth Intermediate Report, 80th Cong., 1st sess., June 11, 18, 19, 27; July 7, 9, 10, 11, 1947 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1947), 4276. 63. James Gilbert, Redeeming Culture: American Religion in an Age of Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 110. 64. See speech before joint session of Congress, March 17, 1948, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, 1945–1953, 8 vols. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1961–1966), 4:182–186. 65. Executive Order 10013, “Establishing the President’s Committee on Religious and Moral Welfare and Character Guidance in the Armed Forces,” October 27, 1948, Folder 1285-­P: Armed Forces, President’s Committee on Religious and Moral Welfare and Character Guidance in the (1948), Official File, Box 1652, HST Library. 66. White House press release, October 27, 1948, Folder 1285-­P: Armed Forces, President’s Committee on Religious and Moral Welfare and Character Guidance in the (1948), Official File, Box 1652, HST Library. 67. White House press release, October 27, 1948. 68. Handwritten note in memorandum from Kenneth  C. Royall to James Forrestal, October  1, 1948, Folder 1285-­P: Armed Forces, President’s Committee on Religious and Moral Welfare and Character Guidance in the (1948), Official File, Box 1652, HST Library. 69. Letter from Washington Thompson to Donald Dawson, December 2, 1948, and Harry S. Truman’s letter to the President’s Committee on Religious and Moral Welfare and Character Guidance in the Armed Forces, December  3, 1948, Folder 1285-­P: Armed Forces, President’s Committee on Religious and Moral Welfare and Character Guidance in the (1948), Official File, Box 1652, HST Library. 70. “Community Responsibility to Our Peacetime Ser­vicemen and W ­ omen,” report of the President’s Committee on Religious and Moral Welfare and Character Guidance in the Armed Forces, Classified, March  24, 1949, Folder 1285-­P: Armed Forces, President’s Committee on Religious and Moral Welfare and Character Guidance in the ( January–­April 1949), Official File, Box 1652, HST Library. 71. White House press release, April 29, 1949, Folder 1285-­P: Armed Forces, President’s Committee on Religious and Moral Welfare and Character Guidance in the ( January–­April 1949), Official File, Box 1652, HST Library. 72. Memorandum from David Stowe to Charlie Ross, December 7, 1949, Folder 1285-­ P: Armed Forces, President’s Committee on Religious and Moral Welfare and Character Guidance in the (May–­December 1949), Official File, Box 1652, HST Library. 73. “Truman Expands His Committee on Welfare in the Armed Forces,” New York Times, February 8, 1949.

21 4 NOTES

TO PAGES 115– 118

74. Quarterly report of the President’s Committee on Religious and Moral Welfare and Character Guidance in the Armed Forces, October 1, 1949, Folder 1285-­P: Armed Forces, President’s Committee on Religious and Moral Welfare and Character Guidance in the ( January–­September 1950), Official File, Box 1652, HST Library. 75. Quarterly report of the President’s Committee on Religious and Moral Welfare and Character Guidance in the Armed Forces, January 1–­March 31, 1950, Folder 1285-­P: Armed Forces, President’s Committee on Religious and Moral Welfare and Character Guidance in the ( January–­September 1950), Official File, Box 1652, HST Library. See also Herzog, Spiritual-­Industrial Complex, 117–119. Herzog places a g­ reat deal of emphasis on the committee’s work and suggests that it exerted significant influence on the public imagination, despite the committee’s own reports that it had garnered ­little national exposure. This may be due to his erroneous conflation of the work of the Weil Committee and that of the army’s and air force’s Character Guidance programs, despite their explicit in­de­pen­dence and tendency to work at cross-­ purposes. See especially Herzog, Spiritual-­Industrial Complex, 121. 76. Memorandum from Kenneth Royall to James Forrestal, September 15, 1948, Folder 109-­B: President’s Advisory Commission on Universal Training (1946–1947), Official File, Box 641, HST Library. 77. Memorandum from Royall to Forrestal, September 15, 1948. 78. “Army to Extend UMT Experiment with First Camp Called a Success,” New York Times, May 17, 1947. 79. Department of Defense, The Army Character Guidance Program, 10–11, as quoted in Anne  C. Loveland, American Evangelicals and the U.S. Military, 1942–1993 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996), 11. 80. Loveland, Evangelicals and the U.S. Military, 10. 81. See “Religion Taught to Troops,” New York Times, July 26, 1947; and “Search for Real­ity Cited,” New York Times, July 28, 1947. 82. Anne C. Loveland, “Character Education in the U.S. Army, 1947–1977,” Journal of Military History 64, no. 3 ( July 2000): 795–796. The army did highly publicize its Character Guidance program as a way to train better citizens rather than merely better soldiers, but its aims w ­ ere not nearly as ambitious as ­those of the program’s director. See “­Today’s Army Aims to Train Citizens,” New York Times, November 26, 1948. 83. Gilbert, Redeeming Culture, 119. 84. Gilbert, Redeeming Culture, 121–146; Herzog, Spiritual-­Industrial Complex, 122– 123. See also “Air Force to Show Religious Movies,” New York Times, December 18, 1949. 85. The army’s and the air force’s public relations campaigns did meet with some criticism, especially from the New York Times’ Benjamin Fine in 1951. Departing from his organ­ization’s consistently positive treatment of the Character Guidance program, Fine published a few editorials criticizing the military’s attempts to influence public opinion. See, for instance, “Unanswered Whys Hurt Army Morale,” New York Times, May 16, 1951. 86. David Halberstam, The Coldest Winter: Amer­i­ca and the Korean War (New York: Hyperion, 2007), 2. 87. Robert E. Herzstein, Henry R. Luce: A Po­liti­cal Portrait of the Man Who Created the American C ­ entury (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994), 114. 88. “Church Group Heads Laud U.N. on ­Korea,” New York Times, July 7, 1950. See also Martin E. Marty, Modern American Religion, vol. 3, ­Under God, Indivisible, 1941–

NOTES TO PA GES 119– 126

215

1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 120. The FCC had merged with more denominational and ecumenical groups in 1950 and renamed itself the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. 89. Kimberley L. Phillips, War! What Is It Good For? Black Freedom Strug­gles and the U.S. Military from World War II to Iraq (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 152–187. See also Mershon and Schlossman, Foxholes and Color Lines, 218–251. 90. Harry S. Truman, “Special Message to the Congress on the Mutual Security Program,” May  24, 1951, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​.­presidency​ .­ucsb​.­edu​/­documents​/­special​-­message​-­the​-­congress​-­the​-­mutual​-­security​-­program​-­7. 91. Herzog, Spiritual-­Industrial Complex, 123. 92. Memorandum from William Hassett to Marshall S. Car­ter, December 1, 1951, and letter from Harry Truman to Stewart M. Robinson, December 3, 1951, Folder 5573: National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., President’s Personal File, HST Library. 93. For Graham’s account of his activities in ­Korea, see Billy Graham, I Saw Your Sons at War: The Korean Diary of Billy Graham (Minneapolis: Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, 1953). For a discussion of Spellman’s trips, see John Cooney, The American Pope: The Life and Times of Francis Cardinal Spellman (New York: Times Books, 1984), 212. 94. For a more detailed analy­sis of the many po­liti­cal, ideological, and religious ­factors that precipitated and directed Amer­i­ca’s involvement in the Korean peninsula, see Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), 465–500. 5. Creating the Space between Church and State

1. Time, April 19, 1954, 62. 2. Circular Letter No. 41, Military Ordinariate, February 10, 1945, Folder: Religious Documents, Margaret M. Long Collection, Box 1, Institute on World War II and the ­Human Experience, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL. 3. Dwight Eisenhower, address at the Freedoms Foundation, Waldorf-­Astoria, New York City, December  22, 1952, as quoted in “President-­Elect Says Soviet Demoted Zhukov B ­ ecause of Their Friendship,” New York Times, December 23, 1952. Eisenhower’s own critics often use the quotation as proof of the vapidity of Eisenhower’s personal religious faith. However, taken in context, Eisenhower does at least make it clear that he is speaking of the “Judeo-­Christian” tradition, which, to him, included only Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. Although he never seemed to give much credence to specific theological or doctrinal distinctions, it is inaccurate to assume that the quotation demonstrates that he cared nothing for religious labels or content. For a discussion of the quotation and its interpretations, see Patrick Henry, “ ‘And I ­Don’t Care What It Is’: The Tradition-­History of a Civil Religion Proof-­Text,” Journal of the American Acad­emy of Religion 49, no. 1 (March 1981): 35–49. 4. Dwight  D. Eisenhower, “The President’s News Conference,” November  23, 1954, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​.­presidency​.­ucsb​.­edu​/­documents​ /­the​-­presidents​-­news​-­conference​-­356. 5. Letter from Charles Lowry to Bernard Shanley, January 8, 1954, Folder 118: Church ­Matters and Religion, 1954, General File, Box 679, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, Abilene, KS (herein cited as DDE Library).

21 6 NOTES

TO PAGES 126– 131

6. “­Battle stations” is also a phrase favored by Lowry. The war meta­phors give the reader a good indication of the tenor of Lowry’s attitude ­toward social constructions. 7. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union,” January 6, 1955, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​.­presidency​.­ucsb​ .­edu​/­documents​/­annual​-­message​-­the​-­congress​-­the​-­state​-­the​-­union​-­12. 8. James Hudnut-­Beumler, Looking for God in the Suburbs: The Religion of the American Dream and Its Critics, 1945–1965 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 31–32. 9. G. F. Ketchum and B. Y. Landis, eds., Yearbook of American Churches (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1951–1961). 10. Robert S. Ellwood, The Fifties Spiritual Marketplace: American Religion in a De­ cade of Conflict (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 5. 11. Time, April 2, 1951, 81. See also Hudnut-­Beumler, Looking for God, 33–34. Membership rec­ords are, of course, notoriously problematic. Dif­fer­ent traditions, denominations, and even individual congregations recorded membership through dif­fer­ent means and by dif­fer­ent standards. Some, like the most Orthodox and Conservative Jewish groups, refused to count adherents by any means. However, the consistent increases reported over the de­cade, especially combined with opinion polls of religious self-­identification, clearly indicate an upsurge in both attendance of religious ser­vices and a general identification with religious institutions or traditions. 12. Douglas T. Miller and Marion Nowak, The Fifties: The Way We R ­ eally ­Were (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977), 87. See also Brink Lindsey, The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed Amer­i­ca’s Politics and Culture (New York: Collins, 2007), 84–85. 13. Hudnut-­Beumler, Looking for God, 37. 14. Time, September 19, 1955, 76–81. 15. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports, Series P-20, No.  79 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1958), as reported in Hudnut-­Beumler, Looking for God, 34. 16. For more on the contentious relationship between Truman and Eisenhower, see Steve Neal, Harry and Ike: The Partnership That Remade the Postwar World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001). 17. One brief example of the public’s perception of the men’s religious beliefs and rhe­toric is Mrs. Claude Burgess’s letter to her congressional representative, Alvin Bentley. The Michigan ­mother of seven wanted Bentley to tell Eisenhower how proud she was of the president for his obvious devotion to God and his public displays of such devotion. She had not been as impressed with Truman or Roo­se­velt, whom she referred to as “cocky ­little Harry,” and “arrogant and conceited Roo­se­velt.” She had been particularly upset with Truman’s almost total lack of religious language, calling him a “dirty l­ittle man.” See letter from Mrs. Claude Burgess to Alvin Bentley, January 30, 1955, Folder 118: Church M ­ atters and Religion, 1955, General File, Box 679, DDE Library. 18. As quoted in Miller and Nowak, Fifties, 90. 19. Piers Brendon, Ike: His Life and Times (New York: Harper and Row, 1986), 27–28. 20. In 1954, the Christian Science Monitor ran a lengthy article on Eisenhower’s faith. The president had his staff find him a copy of the article, which he thoroughly enjoyed. Although he did not generally appreciate the way the press ­either lauded or

NOTES TO PA GES 131– 136

217

criticized his religious faith, he thought the author, William Stringer, had done an excellent job capturing his re­spect for religion and religious values and his conviction that they ­were essential to maintaining American freedom. See William Stringer, “The President and the Still Small Voice,” Christian Science Monitor, February 26, 1954; memorandum from James Hagerty to Ann Whitman, April 5, 1954; and letter from Dwight Eisenhower to William Stringer, April 8, 1954, Folder 53: Religion (1), President’s Personal File, Box 903, DDE Library. 21. As quoted in Brendon, Ike, 9. 22. Billy Graham, Just as I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 191–192. Incident with Clare Boothe Luce recounted in William Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945–1960: The Soul of Containment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 265; and Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower, vol. 1, Soldier, General of the Army, President-­elect, 1890–1952 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 20. For Eisenhower’s recollection of the events, see Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years, vol. 1, Mandate for Change, 1953–1956 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963), 100. 23. Letter from Billy Graham to Edward Elson, January 19, 1953, Folder RG2531-8: Correspondence—­Billy Graham, Edward L. R. Elson Papers, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia (herein cited as PHS). 24. Letter from Edward Elson to Dwight Eisenhower, January  24, 1953; letter from Edward Elson to Dwight Eisenhower, January 28, 1953; personal notes for “A Footnote to History,” reference for February  1, 1953, Folder: Correspondence—­ Dwight D. Eisenhower 1952–1957 (RG253-1-3), PHS. 25. As quoted in Richard  V. Pierard and Robert  D. Linder, Civil Religion and the Presidency (­Grand Rapids, MI: Academie Books, 1988), 198. 26. Eisenhower, address at the Freedoms Foundation, December 22, 1952. 27. This construction was one vital difference between the ways that Truman and Eisenhower conceived of the Cold War. Although Truman did see the conflict in religious terms, he did not share Eisenhower’s assumption that religious faith was an essential, and foundational, ingredient to any successful society or nation. 28. Eisenhower, White House Years, 1:100–101. 29. Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Inaugural Address,” January 20, 1953, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​.­presidency​.­ucsb​.­edu​/­documents​/­inaugural​-­address​-­3. 30. Eisenhower, “Inaugural Address.” 31. See Time, February 2, 1953; and Chicago Tribune, January 21, 1953. 32. Brendon, Ike, 238–239. 33. Eisenhower, “Inaugural Address.” 34. “Faith in God Vital ­Today Says General,” Advertising Council News, January  1953, Folder 47: Committee on Religion in American Life, President’s Personal File, Box 806, DDE Library. 35. White House press release, Saturday, October 31, 1953, Folder 47: Committee on Religion in American Life, President’s Personal File, Box 806, DDE Library. 36. Memorandum from Bryce Harlow to Murray Snyder, November 23, 1954, Folder 47: Committee on Religion in American Life, President’s Personal File, Box 806, DDE Library. 37. Memorandum from Mary Rawlins to Mabel Williams, December  6, 1954, and memorandum from Mabel Williams to Mary Rawlins, December 7, 1954, Folder

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TO PAGES 136– 139

47: Committee on Religion in American Life, President’s Personal File, Box 806, DDE Library. 38. Letter from Edward Thomas to L. Richard Guyley, July 14, 1955, Folder 47: Committee on Religion in American Life, President’s Personal File, Box 806, DDE Library. 39. Letter from L. Richard Guyley to Edward Thomas, July 21, 1955, Folder 47: Committee on Religion in American Life, President’s Personal File, Box 806, DDE Library. 40. Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar Amer­i­ca (New York: Vintage Books, 2003), 447n41; and Robert Griffith, “Dwight  D. Eisenhower and the Corporate Commonwealth,” American Historical Review 87 (February 1982): 104. 41. Letter from Henry C. L. Johnson to Dwight Eisenhower, October 23, 1957, and tele­gram from Frederick Fox to Henry C. L. Johnson, October 24, 1957, Folder 101-­Z: Broadcasting by the President: Radio and Tele­vi­sion (3), Official File, Box 415, DDE Library. For the expanded media campaign, see Religion in American Life leaflet, Folder 118: Church ­Matters and Religion, 1955, General File, Box 679, DDE Library. 42. Eisenhower was an early, strong proponent of UMT, although his support wavered in the years immediately preceding his inauguration. The shift was more in regard to his assessment of the military’s changing structure and needs than to a change in ideology, as he advocated for civic ser­vice long ­after he dropped his support for UMT. 43. “Memorandum of Conversation,” April 24, 1952, Folder 080: American Legion, Psychological Strategy Board Files, Box 4, Staff Member and Office Files, Papers of Harry S. Truman, Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum, In­de­pen­ dence, MO (herein cited as HST Library). 44. “Memorandum of Conversation,” November  21, 1952, Folder 080: American Legion, Psychological Strategy Board Files, Box 4, Staff Member and Office Files, Papers of Harry S. Truman, HST Library. 45. As quoted in Pierard and Linder, Civil Religion and the Presidency, 198. 46. American Legion “Back to God” program, undated, Folder 47: American Legion 1952–1953 (1), President’s Personal File, Box 786, DDE Library. 47. Letter from James F. O’Neil to Sherman Adams, February 5, 1953, Folder 47: American Legion 1952–1953 (1), President’s Personal File, Box 786, DDE Library. 48. Letter from Edward McGinnis to James Hagerty, January 26, 1953, Folder 47: American Legion 1952–1953 (1), President’s Personal File, Box 786, DDE Library. 49. Letter from McGinnis to Hagerty, January 26, 1953. 50. White House press release, February  1, 1953, Folder 47, American Legion 1952–1953 (1), President’s Personal File, Box 786, DDE Library. 51. White House press release, February 1, 1953. Ironically, in 1958, Daniel Poling contacted Eisenhower about making a statement commemorating the fifteenth anniversary of the sinking of the Dorchester and the deaths of the four chaplains. When Eisenhower’s personal secretary, Sherman Adams, asked his adviser Frederick Fox his opinion on the ­matter, Fox replied that “Dr. Poling’s son was one of the ‘Four Chaplains’ but he has a tendency to exploit this and other ­matters to the high heavens.” See memorandum from Frederick Fox to Sherman Adams, January 10, 1958, Folder 42-­B-1: Four Chaplains Memorial, President’s Personal File, Box 759, DDE Library.

NOTES TO PA GES 139– 144

219

52. Kevin Schultz, Tri-­Faith Amer­i­ca: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar Amer­i­ca to Its Protestant Promise (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 3–8; Jonathan Herzog, The Spiritual-­Industrial Complex: Amer­i­ca’s Religious ­Battle against Communism in the Early Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 79–81. 53. See letter from Lewis Gough to Dwight Eisenhower, February 20, 1953; memorandum from Wilton Persons to Tom Stephens, March  26, 1953; and letter from Dwight Eisenhower to Arthur  J. Connell, September  8, 1954, Folder 47: American Legion 1952–1953 (1), President’s Personal File, Box 786, DDE Library. 54. Sheen’s preaching had become decidedly anticommunist at this point. He had accepted, and perhaps enhanced, the idea that religious faith was the antithesis of communism and vice versa. See Timothy H. Sherwood, The Preaching of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen: The Gospel Meets the Cold War (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010). 55. American Legion “Back to God” campaign pamphlet, 1954, Folder 47: American Legion 1954–1955 (1), President’s Personal File, Box 787, DDE Library. 56. American Legion “Back to God” campaign pamphlet. 57. White House press release, February 20, 1955, and unsigned tele­g ram to Maxwell Rabb, December 8, 1954, Folder 47: American Legion 1954–1955 (2), President’s Personal File, Box 787, DDE Library. 58. Memorandum from Earle Chesney to Ann Whitman, May 16, 1955, Folder 47: American Legion 1954–1955 (2), President’s Personal File, Box 787, DDE Library. 59. Letter from George Kelly to Howard Pyle, January 27, 1956, Folder 47: American Legion 1956–1957 (1), President’s Personal File, Box 787, DDE Library. 60. Memorandum from Earl Chesney to Ann Whitman, April 18, 1956, Folder 47: American Legion 1956–1957 (1), President’s Personal File, Box 787, DDE Library. 61. American Legion “Back to God” Handbook, 1957, Folder 47: American Legion 1956–1957 (2), President’s Personal File, Box 787, DDE Library. 62. Edward L. R. Elson, Wide Was His Parish (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1986); letter from Edward Elson to Dwight Eisenhower, November 23, 1952, Folder: Correspondence—­Dwight D. Eisenhower 1952–1957 (RG253-1-3), PHS. 63. Letter from Edward Elson to Dwight Eisenhower, July 7, 1953, Folder 144-­G1: Moral Rearmament, Conference on Moral and Spiritual Recovery, Official File, Box 618, DDE Library. 64. Letter from Dwight Eisenhower to Arthur Langlie, August 11, 1952, Folder 1052: Graham, Billy, President’s Personal File, Box 966, DDE Library. 65. Letter from DDE to Elson, April 17, 1954, Folder: Correspondence—­Dwight D. Eisenhower 1952–1957 (RG253-1-3), PHS. 66. Letter from Sherman Adams to Edward Elson, December 23, 1953, Folder 144-­G-1: Moral Rearmament, Conference on Moral and Spiritual Recovery, Official File, Box 618, DDE Library. 67. As quoted in Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 279. Charles  W. Lowry, Communism and Christ (New York: Morehouse-­Gorham, 1952). 68. Mark Silk, Spiritual Politics: Religion and Amer­i­ca since World War II (New York: Touchstone, 1988), 92. 69. Daniel L. Lykins, From Total War to Total Diplomacy: The Advertising Council and the Construction of the Cold War Consensus (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 11–24. 70. Letter from Charles Lowry to Philip Hannan, January 5, 1954, Folder 118: Church ­Matters and Religion, 1954, General File, Box 679, DDE Library.

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TO PAGES 144– 146

71. “Proposal for a Program for Religious Action,” undated, Folder 118: Church ­Matters and Religion, 1954, General File, Box 679, DDE Library. 72. “Pro­gress Report,” Foundation for Religious Action, April 9, 1954, Folder 118: Church ­Matters and Religion, 1954, General File, Box 679, DDE Library. 73. Wilson P. Dizard Jr., Inventing Public Diplomacy: The Story of the U.S. Information Agency (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004), xiv. 74. Kenneth Osgood, Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda ­Battle at Home and Abroad (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006), 89–90; Nancy E. Bernhard, U.S. Tele­vi­sion News and Cold War Propaganda, 1947–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 91–92. 75. Osgood, Total Cold War, 320; see also 88–89, 312–319. 76. “Pro­gress Report,” Foundation for Religious Action, April 9, 1954. 77. Memorandum from Charles Lowry to Dwight Eisenhower, February 28, 1955, Folder 118: Church ­Matters and Religion, 1955, General File, Box 679, DDE Library. 78. Letter from Lowry to Shanley, January 8, 1954. 79. Letter from Daniel C. Roper to Edwin Watson, January 19, 1943; letter from G. Bromley Oxnam to Edwin Watson, January 27, 1943; and letter from G. Bromley Oxnam to Edwin Watson, February 6, 1943, Folder: Protestant 1943–1945, Official File 76a, Box 2, Franklin D. Roo­se­velt Presidential Library and Museum, Hyde Park, NY. 80. Letter from Edward Elson to Dwight Eisenhower, October 3, 1954, Folder 144-­G-1: Moral Rearmament, Conference on Moral and Spiritual Recovery, Official File, Box 618, DDE Library. 81. William Inboden asserts that FRASCO was, in essence, Eisenhower’s creation. ­There is l­ ittle doubt that Eisenhower was friendly with Elson and that FRASCO’s mission and vision w ­ ere very closely aligned with t­hose of the president. However, Inboden goes too far in his assessment of Eisenhower’s influence. ­There is no evidence that Eisenhower directly controlled, managed, or even ­shaped FRASCO’s development or direction. It is more likely that, much like the growing religious nationalism of the period, Eisenhower both inspired and was inspired by FRASCO’s ideas and actions. See Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 278–289. 82. Eisenhower, with the help of Sherman Adams, made sure that the conference was not perceived as an official White House event. When it became clear that Lowry and Elson would not try to unduly associate the conference with Eisenhower, he lent his full support to FRASCO. See letter from Charles Lowry and Edward Elson to Sherman Adams, March  5, 1944, and memorandum from Sherman Adams to Dwight Eisenhower, April 15, 1954, Folder 144-­G-1: Moral Rearmament, Conference on Moral and Spiritual Recovery, Official File, Box 618, , DDE Library. 83. “Highlights of the First National Conference on the Spiritual Foundations of American Democracy,” November 8–10, 1954, Folder 144-­G-1: Moral Rearmament, Conference on Moral and Spiritual Recovery, Official File, Box 618, DDE Library. 84. Paul  T. Carroll, Memorandum for the Rec­ord, July  15, 1954, Folder 144-­G-1: Moral Rearmament, Conference on Moral and Spiritual Recovery, Official File, Box 618, DDE Library; letter from Elson to Eisenhower, October 3, 1954. Interestingly, the USIA also created a traveling exhibit that year called Religion in American Life that was sent overseas to demonstrate the United States’ foundational religious princi­ples. See unsigned memorandum for Tom Stephens, October  16, 1954, Folder 144-­G-1:

NOTES TO PA GES 146– 149

221

Moral Rearmament, Conference on Moral and Spiritual Recovery, Official File, Box 618, DDE Library. 85. Letter from Dwight Eisenhower to Edward Elson, April 17, 1954, Folder 144-­ G-1: Moral Rearmament, Conference on Moral and Spiritual Recovery, Official File, Box 618, DDE Library. With the president’s permission, Elson and Lowry made ­g reat use of Eisenhower’s remarks as they or­ga­nized both the conference and FRASCO’s national advisory board. 86. “Remarks by the President of the United States,” November 9, 1954, Folder 144-­G-1: Moral Rearmament, Conference on Moral and Spiritual Recovery, Official File, Box 618, DDE Library. 87. Letter from Peter Chumbris to Dwight Eisenhower, November 27, 1954, Folder 144-­G-1: Moral Rearmament, Conference on Moral and Spiritual Recovery, Official File, Box 618, DDE Library. 88. “Highlights of the First National Conference.” 89. “Highlights of the First National Conference.” 90. “Highlights of the First National Conference.” 91. See George Dugan, “Religion Called Key to Security,” New York Times, October 26, 1955. 92. Undated address, “Comments with Reference to Richard M. Nixon,” and letter from Richard Nixon to Edward Elson, December 19, 1960, Folder: Correspondence—­ Richard M. Nixon 1948–1980 (RG253-1-5), PHS. 93. “­Things you may want to remember from the Second Annual Conference on Spiritual Foundations,” October 24–26, 1955, Folder: Foundation for Religious Action in the Social and Civil Order (3), Alphabetical File, Box 1082, DDE Library. 94. Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 284–286. 95. Harry Truman, Armed Forces Day Proclamation, February 28, 1950, Folder 1285-­X: Armed Forces Day, Official File, Box 1655, HST Library. 96. Memorandum from Dallas Halverstadt to John Steelman, February 24, 1950, Folder 1285-­X: Armed Forces Day, Official File, Box 1655, HST Library. 97. Letter from George Marshall to John Steelman, January 31, 1951, Folder 1285-­ X: Armed Forces Day, Official File, Box 1655, HST Library. 98. Charles E. “Engine” Wilson had previously served as the CEO of General Motors, therefore earning him the nickname “Engine Charlie” to differentiate him from Charles E. “Electric” Wilson. 99. Letter from Charles Lowry and John L. S­ ullivan to Charles Wilson, January 3, 1956, Folder 118: Church ­Matters and Religion, 1956, General File, Box 680, DDE Library. 100. “Spiritual F ­ actors of ‘Power for Peace’ to be Emphasized on Armed Forces Day,” Department of Defense, April 28, 1956, Folder 118: Church M ­ atters and Religion, 1956, General File, Box 680, DDE Library. 101. Letter from Charles Lowry to Bernard Shanley, June 29, 1956, Folder 118: Church ­Matters and Religion, 1956, General File, Box 680, DDE Library. 102. Dwight Eisenhower, Armed Forces Day Proclamation, March 6, 1956, Folder 118: Church ­Matters and Religion, 1956, General File, Box 680, DDE Library. 103. “Armed Forces Day Manual for Proj­ect Officers,” 1956, Folder 118: Church ­Matters and Religion, 1956, General File, Box 680, DDE Library.

22 2 NOTES

TO PAGES 149– 153

104. Code of Conduct for Members of the United States Armed Forces, August  17, 1955, Folder 3-­R-9: Code of Conduct for Members of the Armed Forces [1955–1956, correspondence, press release, Executive Order 10631, and Code of Conduct], Official File, Box 90, DDE Library. 105. For examples of media coverage, see “Mass Sunday ­Will Mark Ser­vice Day,” Catholic Standard, May 11, 1956; “U.S. Power Goes beyond Military, Army Chief Says,” Washington Times Herald, May 14, 1956; and “Spirit Linked to Power,” New York Times, May 14, 1956. 106. Letter from Frederick Fox to Richard Fowler, December 13, 1957, Folder 118: Church ­Matters and Religion, 1957, General File, Box 680, DDE Library. 107. Letter from Lowry and ­Sullivan to Wilson, January 3, 1956. 108. For example, when John C. H. Lee, a retired lieutenant general of the army, suggested that Eisenhower begin ­every public speech by leading the audience in prayer, Eisenhower replied that he wanted to avoid being seen as a “preacher” and, since ­there ­were many religious groups in the nation, he would likely offend someone no m ­ atter how he phrased the prayer. Letter from John C. H. Lee to Dwight Eisenhower, May  2, 1956, and letter from Dwight Eisenhower to John C. H. Lee, May 7, 1956, Folder 101-­Z: Broadcasting by the President: Radio and Tele­vi­sion (3), Official File, Box 415, DDE Library. 109. Letter from Joseph Lamb to Dwight Eisenhower, October 23, 1953, Folder 1-­D: American Flag 1953, General File, Box 10, DDE Library. 110. As quoted in Matt Schudel, “Rev. George Docherty; Urged ‘­Under God’ in Pledge,” Washington Post, November 30, 2008. 111. Kenneth Dale, “Put God in Pledge, Pastor Urges,” Washington Post, February 8, 1954. 112. James Haswell, “Public Wants ‘­Under God’ Put in Pledge,” Washington Post, May  18, 1954. The poll also showed that 20  ­percent of the populace was squarely against the mea­sure. For public criticisms of the inclusion, see “Letters to the Times,” New York Times, June 18, 1954. 113. Letter from Louis C. Rabaut to Dwight Eisenhower, June 9, 1954, Folder 102-­ C-2: American Flag, Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States, Official File, Box 371, DDE Library. For a complete history of the addition of “­under God” to the pledge, see Richard J. Ellis, To the Flag: The Unlikely History of the Pledge of Allegiance (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005); and Herzog, Spiritual-­Industrial Complex, 102–106. 114. “ ‘In God We Trust’ Label Slated for All U.S. Money,” New York Times, June 8, 1955. 115. “ ‘In God We Trust’ Voted as Official Motto of U.S.,” New York Times, July 24, 1956. 116. For a complete history of the motto’s use and its adoption, see Louis Fisher and Nada Mourtada-­Sabbah, “Adopting ‘In God We Trust’ as the U.S. National Motto,” Journal of Church and State 44, no. 4 (Autumn 2002): 671–692. 117. The only floor debate on any of the resolutions came when the House and Senate bills had dif­fer­ent wording to the pledge addition. The Senate version would have added “one nation, indivisible ­under God.” Rabaut insisted on his version, “one nation ­under God, indivisible.” See Herzog, Spiritual-­Industrial Complex, 240n113; and Silk, Spiritual Politics, 96–100.

NOTES TO PA GES 156– 160

223

6. Being Religious in Amer­i­ca

1. James  L. Clayton, The Economic Impact of the Cold War: Sources and Readings (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1970), 29. Additionally, economists Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy have argued that “the difference between the deep stagnation of the 1930’s and the relative prosperity of the 1950’s is fully accounted for by the vast military outlays of the ’50s.” See Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, Mono­poly Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966), 176. 2. Although he does provide a nuanced narrative of cooperation between business and religious leaders, Kevin Kruse shares this tendency to inflate Graham’s influence, in part ­because he misses the extent to which Graham’s, and Eisenhower’s, promotion of religious patriotism mirrored the religious propaganda developed over the previous two presidential administrations. For a clear example, see Kevin Kruse, One Nation ­under God: How Corporate Amer­i­ca In­ven­ted Christian Amer­i­ca (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 57–64. 3. See, for example, Matthew Avery Sutton, “Was FDR the Antichrist? The Birth of Fundamentalist Antiliberalism in a Global Age,” Journal of American History 98, no. 4 (March 2012): 1052–1074. 4. Kenneth Osgood, Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda ­Battle at Home and Abroad (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006), chaps. 2 and 3. 5. “Church Group Heads Laud  U.N. on ­Korea,” New York Times, July  7, 1950; Martin  E. Marty, Modern American Religion, vol. 3, ­Under God, Indivisible, 1941–1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 120. 6. The United Nations and Our Religious Heritage (New York: Church Peace Union, 1953), Folder 118: Church ­ Matters and Religion, 1954, General File, Box 679, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, Abilene, KS (herein cited as DDE Library). 7. The NCC’s relationship to the WCC is difficult to define clearly. The WCC was officially in­de­pen­dent, but, much as the NCC advocated the tri-­faith schema from a position of Protestant dominance, the NCC and its leaders held an enormous degree of influence over the WCC’s positions and activities. 8. Quoted in Dwight  D. Eisenhower, “The President’s News Conference,” November  23, 1954, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​.­presidency​.­ucsb​.­edu​ /­documents​/­the​-­presidents​-­news​-­conference​-­356. 9. Eisenhower, “President’s News Conference,” November 23, 1954. O. Frederick Nolde, director of the WCC’s Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, wrote to Eisenhower ­after his comments ­were printed. Nolde took umbrage with Eisenhower’s assertion that the WCC was in ­favor of immediate and universal disarmament, a statement that Eisenhower never actually made. However, Nolde’s correction was to simply say that the UN would be in charge of the disarmament and ensure the security and compliance of all sides. Letter from O. Frederick Nolde to Dwight Eisenhower, November 24, 1954, Folder 137: Peace (1), Official File, Box 579, DDE Library. 10. Letter from Earl Frederick Adams to Gabriel Hauge, April 1, 1955, Folder 118: Church ­Matters and Religion, 1955, General File, Box 679, DDE Library. 11. Billy Graham, Just as I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 202–203. The name was l­ater changed to the National Prayer Breakfast,

22 4 NOTES

TO PAGES 160– 161

an annual event that the sitting president, along with numerous politicians, foreign officials, and business elite, still attends. 12. Jeff Sharlet, The ­Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008), 196–198. See also D. Michael Lindsay, Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 35. 13. Unsigned memorandum and memorandum from “H.C.” to Bernard Shanley, April 9, 1955, Folder 118: Church ­Matters and Religion, 1955, General File, Box 679, DDE Library. 14. Letter from Gabriel Hauge to Earl Frederick Adams, April 19, 1955, Folder 118: Church ­Matters and Religion, 1955, General File, Box 679, DDE Library. 15. Reinhold Niebuhr’s picture was used for the cover story “Faith for a Lenten Age,” in Time, March 8, 1948, and Tillich appeared on the cover for “To Be or Not to Be,” Time, March 16, 1959. H. Richard Niebuhr garnered both acclaim and criticism with his 1951 book Christ and Culture, which became a definitive analy­sis of the myriad of ways Christians can conceive of and engage the world. H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper and Row, 1951). 16. Andrew S. Finstuen, Original Sin and Everyday Protestants: The Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr, Billy Graham, and Paul Tillich in an Age of Anxiety (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 108–112, 158–160. For instance, in Life magazine’s 1956 Christmas issue, John Knox Jessup wrote an article that used the three men as exemplars of the vari­ous ways American Christians had, and could, respond to the current state of American society and international issues. See John Knox Jessup, “The World, the Flesh and the Devil,” Life, December 26, 1955, 140–143. 17. Mark Silk, Spiritual Politics: Religion and Amer­i­ca since World War II (New York: Touchstone, 1988), 104. 18. ­Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (New York: Doubleday, 1955). Although nearly e­ very subsequent scholar has noted the methodological prob­lems in Herberg’s work—­namely, he uses aspects of other sociologists’ works without contextualizing their findings or ever mentioning any contradictory data or interpretations—­virtually ­every American religious survey book available cites Protestant, Catholic, Jew as a definitive interpretation of the period. Some, mostly older, works accept Herberg’s interpretive scheme at face value and talk about the 1950s as an era of beneficial religious adherence yet uninspiring theological commitments. However, the vast majority use Herberg as a primary source to prove the shallowness of the religion of the day and, therefore, dismiss such religious practices outright. See, for example, George M. Marsden, Religion and American Culture, 2nd  ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2001), 224–225, 235–238; and Edwin Gaustad and Leigh Schmidt, The Religious History of Amer­i­ca (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2002), 347–348. Other authors use Herberg’s schema, accepting the tripartite system as fact without challenging its veracity; see John Corrigan and Winthrop S. Hudson, Religion in Amer­i­ca, 7th ed. (Upper S­ addle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2004), 388–389, 395. Interestingly, Edwin Gaustad and Leigh Schmidt deny Herberg’s tripartite schema when speaking of Eastern Orthodox Chris­tian­ity and “Eastern” religions in the United States but use the very same schema when speaking about religion in the 1950s. Gaustad and Schmidt, Religious History of Amer­i­ca, 288–290, 332–342.

NOTES TO PA GES 162– 163

225

19. Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew. 20. Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew, 260. 21. Peter Berger, A. Roy Eckardt, and Martin E. Marty also wrote books at the close of the 1950s or beginning of the 1960s that analyzed American religion from the theological standpoint of liberal Protestantism. The works, which are so alike as to be essentially interchangeable, all celebrate Americans’ return to institutional religion, bemoan the nature of this religion as too superficial, and promote a return to the heart of (liberal Protestant) Chris­tian­ity. Peter Berger, The Noise of Solemn Assemblies: Christian Commitment and the Religious Establishment in Amer­ic­ a (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961); A. Roy Eckardt, The Surge of American Piety: An Appraisal (New York: Association Press, 1958); Martin E. Marty, The New Shape of American Religion (New York: Harper and ­Brothers, 1958). K. Healan Gaston has shown that Herberg’s critique was not nearly as scathing as it might seem on the surface, as evidenced by his gradual move away from Niebuhr’s neo-­orthodoxy and ­toward William F. Buckley Jr.’s neoconservatism. See K. Healan Gaston, “The Cold War Romance of Religious Authenticity: ­Will Herberg, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Rise of the New Right,” Journal of American History 99, no. 4 (March 2013): 1133–1158. 22. Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew, 254–255. Niebuhr’s own views on the religion of the period ­were somewhat paradoxical. He si­mul­ta­neously criticized the spiritual heritage and ambivalent religiosity of Eisenhower and Graham and joined with them in support of the military and the government’s containment policies. In other words, Niebuhr agreed with much of what Eisenhower did but disagreed with his reasons and the faith that propelled him to act in the manner he did. See Reinhold Niebuhr, “Is ­There a Revival of Religion?,” New York Times Magazine, November  19, 1950; and Niebuhr, “Is Our Religious Revival Real?,” McCall’s, June 1955. Niebuhr actually had ­g reat re­spect for Eisenhower’s personal faith and considered him a genuine believer. However, he bemoaned the president’s public displays of this genuine faith and its implications for the patriotic, vapid “American way of life.” Reinhold Niebuhr, “Va­ri­ e­ties of Religious Revival,” New Republic, June 6, 1955. 23. Letter from Charles Lowry and John L. S­ ullivan to Charles Wilson, January 3, 1956, Folder 118: Church ­Matters and Religion, 1956, General File, Box 680, DDE Library. 24. White House press release, Saturday, October 31, 1953, Folder 47: Committee on Religion in American Life, President’s Personal File, Box 806, DDE Library. 25. The Ad Council called the 1954 campaign “Confidence in a Growing Amer­i­ca” and recycled much of its material in 1958, when Eisenhower again charged the council with increasing consumer consumption. See Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar Amer­i­ca (New York: Vintage Books, 2003), 447n41; and Robert Griffith, “Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Corporate Commonwealth,” American Historical Review 87 (February 1982): 104. 26. Letter from Edwin T. Dahlberg to Dwight Eisenhower, June 4, 1959, Folder 118: Church ­Matters and Religion, 1955, General File, Box 679, DDE Library. 27. Memorandum from Frederick Fox to Tom Stephens, June 9, 1959, Folder 118: Church ­Matters and Religion, 1955, General File, Box 679, DDE Library. 28. Letter from John  A. Calhoun to Tom Stephens, July  24, 1959, Folder 118: Church ­Matters and Religion, 1955, General File, Box 679, DDE Library. It is unclear ­whether Dulles ever saw the request.

22 6 NOTES

TO PAGES 163– 166

29. Memorandum from Wilton Persons to Tom Stephens, August 27, 1959, Folder 118: Church ­Matters and Religion, 1955, General File, Box 679, DDE Library. 30. Two memoranda from Frederick Fox to Tom Stephens, September  9, 1959, Folder 118: Church ­Matters and Religion, 1955, General File, Box 679, DDE Library. 31. “Statement Addressed to the President of the United States by the Rev. Dr. Edwin  T. Dahlberg, President of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of Amer­i­ca,” September  9, 1959, Folder: 1959 Sept. 16, PPF 47: National Council of Churches of Christ (1), President’s Personal File, ­Legal Size Case Series, Box 103, DDE Library. 32. “Extemporaneous Remarks of the President to a Del­e­ga­tion from the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of Amer­i­ca, in the Conference Room of the White House, September 9, 1959,” Folder 118: Church ­Matters and Religion, 1955, General File, Box 679, DDE Library. 33. Edward L. R. Elson, “American Protestantism: Does It Speak to the Nation?,” Chris­tian­ity ­Today, October 26, 1959. 34. As quoted in Allan J. Lichtman, White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008), 215. 35. Lichtman, White Protestant Nation, 215–217. See also William C. Martin, A Prophet with Honor: The Billy Graham Story (New York: William Morrow, 1991), 211–217. 36. Elson, “American Protestantism.” ­There are numerous examples of the NCC actually ­doing this very t­hing. The group had long thought of itself as representing the majority of American Protestants and often alluded to the idea that it represented all of the Protestants who r­eally mattered. In the 1950s, many NCC officials began proclaiming what all Protestants, and often all Christians, believed. For instance, in February 1953, Walter W. Van Kirk, executive director of the NCC’s Department of International Justice and Goodwill, spoke to a collection of ministers and laypersons at the University of Southern California’s School of Religion. In his address, he declared that “what­ever their differences as to theology or doctrine, the Christian community in the United States is unan­i­mous in its judgment that nation states must surrender to the or­ga­nized international community what­ever mea­sure of their national sovereignty is required to establish peace and justice on a global scale.” See letter from J. Lynn Pace to William C. Martin, March 10, 1953, Folder 118: Church ­Matters and Religion, 1952–1953, General File, Box 679, DDE Library. 37. Martin, Prophet with Honor, 204–224. Historian George M. Marsden, one of the foremost scholars of evangelicalism, once defined the difference between the two by saying that “a fundamentalist is an evangelical who is angry about something.” George M. Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (­Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1991), 1. 38. Elson, “American Protestantism.” 39. Elson, “American Protestantism.” 40. Eisenhower, “President’s News Conference,” November 23, 1954. 41. See William Stringer, “The President and the Still Small Voice,” Christian Science Monitor, February 26, 1954; letter from Dwight Eisenhower to William Stringer, April 8, 1954, Folder 53: Religion (1), President’s Personal File, Box 903, DDE Library; and letter from Billy Graham to Edward Elson, January 19, 1953, Folder RG253-1-8: Correspondence—­Billy Graham, Edward L. R. Elson Papers, Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia (herein cited as PHS).

NOTES TO PA GES 166– 170

227

42. See, for example, letter from Dwight Eisenhower to Billy Graham, March 22, 1956, Folder: Graham, Billy [1956 correspondence], Ann Whitman Name Series, Box 16, DDE Library; “Remarks by the President of the United States,” November  9, 1954, Folder 144-­G-1: Moral Rearmament, Conference on Moral and Spiritual Recovery, Official File, Box 618, DDE Library; and letter from DDE to Elson, April 17, 1954, Folder: Correspondence—­Dwight D. Eisenhower 1952–1957 (RG253-1-3), PHS. 43. Letter from Carl McIntire to Dwight Eisenhower, May  8, 1953, Folder 118: Church ­Matters and Religion, 1952–1953, General File, Box 679, DDE Library. 44. McIntire to Dwight Eisenhower, May 8, 1953. 45. McIntire to Dwight Eisenhower, May 8, 1953. 46. Letter from Clyde Kennedy to Dwight Eisenhower, November 25, 1958, Folder 144B: Church ­Matters, Official File, Box 618, DDE Library. 47. Letter from Tom Stephens to Clyde Kennedy, December 3, 1958, Folder 144B: Church ­Matters, Official File, Box 618, DDE Library. 48. Letter from Ronn Spargur to Frederick Fox, March  2, 1959, Folder 144B: Church ­Matters, Official File, Box 618, DDE Library. 49. Internal memorandum from Department of State Bureau of Public Affairs, March 13, 1959, Folder 144B: Church ­Matters, Official File, Box 618, DDE Library. 50. Memorandum from John Calhoun to Frederick Fox, March 17, 1959, Folder 144B: Church ­Matters, Official File, Box 618, DDE Library. 51. Memorandum from Frederick Fox to Ferne Hudson, April 9, 1959, Folder 144B: Church ­Matters, Official File, Box 618, DDE Library. 52. Memorandum from Frederick Fox to Tom Stephens, June 11, 1959, Folder 144B: Church ­Matters, Official File, Box 618, DDE Library. 53. Unsigned memorandum, undated, Folder 144B: Church M ­ atters, Official File, Box 618, DDE Library. 54. Letter from Clyde W. Taylor to Dwight Eisenhower, April 10, 1953, Folder 47: National Association of Evangelicals, President’s Personal File, Box 830, DDE Library. 55. Memorandum from Arthur Minnich to Tom Stephens, May 19, 1953, Folder 47: National Association of Evangelicals, President’s Personal File, Box 830, DDE Library. 56. Memorandum from Charles D. Jackson to Abbott Washburn, June 2, 1953, Folder 47: National Association of Evangelicals, President’s Personal File, Box 830, DDE Library; see also notation on memorandum. 57. Unsigned memorandum for Tom Stephens, June 10, 1953, Folder 47: National Association of Evangelicals, President’s Personal File, Box 830, DDE Library. See also William Inboden, Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945–1960: The Soul of Containment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 273–274. 58. Finstuen, Everyday Protestants, 129. 59. Martin, Prophet with Honor, 139. 60. William G. McLoughlin Jr., Billy Graham, Revivalist in a Secular Age (New York: Ronald Press, 1960), 123. 61. See, for example, “Chris­tian­ity F ­ rees Men, Evangelist Tells Group,” Los Angeles Times, November 9, 1949. 62. As quoted in Marshall Frady, Billy Graham: A Parable of American Righ­teousness (Boston: L ­ ittle, Brown, 1979), 237.

22 8 NOTES

TO PAGES 170– 175

63. William H. Stoneman, “Billy Emerging as No. 1 E ­ nemy of Reds,” Chicago Daily News, June 11, 1955. 64. Ironically, the same year the Chicago Daily News labeled Graham communism’s chief ­enemy, Graham counseled Vice President Richard M. Nixon against leaning too heavi­ly on anticommunist rhe­toric in his speeches. Graham insisted that anticommunism was not as “po­liti­cally potent” as it had once been, since the American ­people had grown weary of the subject ­after Joseph McCarthy’s fall. See Martin, Prophet with Honor, 208. 65. As quoted in Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 80–81. 66. As quoted in Frady, Billy Graham, 236. 67. Billy Graham, “Satan’s Religion,” American Mercury, August 1954, 45. 68. Kruse, One Nation, 60. 69. F. Ernest Johnson, “The Impact of the War on Religion in Amer­i­ca,” American Journal of Sociology 48 (November 1942): 353–355. 70. Johnson, “Impact of the War.” 71. Memorandum from Jackson to Washburn, June 2, 1953; see also notation on memorandum. 72. Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (1956; repr., Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1984), viii. “Innermost propulsion” is Miller’s own term for his work’s driving force. 73. Perry Miller, “Errand into the Wilderness,” ibid., 1–15. 74. Miller, “Errand into the Wilderness,” 11, 14. 75. As quoted in Finstuen, Everyday Protestants, 129. In another example, during a crusade in San Francisco in 1958, Graham warned his audience that “God ­will let the communists destroy Amer­i­ca as a judgment if [Americans] do not repent of their sins.” See “Graham Warns Imperiled U.S.,” Indianapolis Star, May 11, 1958. 76. Gallup Poll (American Institute of Public Opinion [AIPO]), November 1954, retrieved May 15, 2013, from the iPOLL Databank, Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut, http://­www​.­ropercenter​.­uconn​.­edu​.­proxy​.­lib​ .­fsu​.­edu​/­data​_­access​/­ipoll​/­ipoll​.­html. 77. Foreign Affairs Survey, November 1955, retrieved May 15, 2013, from the iPOLL Databank, Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of Connecticut, http://­www​.­ropercenter​.­uconn​.­edu​.­proxy​.­lib​.­fsu​.­edu​/­data​_­access​/­ipoll​/­ipoll​.­html. 78. Robert S. Ellwood offers a fascinating examination of t­ hese groups in The Fifties Spiritual Marketplace: American Religion in a De­cade of Conflict (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997); see especially chaps. 2 and 4. 79. See Neil Jumonville, Critical Crossings: The New York Intellectuals in Postwar Amer­i­ca (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). 80. From 1965 to 1975, United Methodists lost 10 ­percent of their membership. The United Church of Christ saw a 12 ­percent drop, and the Episcopal Church lost nearly 17 ­percent of its members in that span alone. Jackson W. Carroll, Douglas W. Johnson, and Martin E. Marty, Religion in Amer­i­ca: 1950 to the Pre­sent (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979), 15. Roger Finke and Rodney Stark have demonstrated that this decline was not sudden but rather part of a gradual trend that liberal Protestants only began paying attention to in the 1960s. See Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The

NOTES TO PA GES 176– 182

229

Churching of Amer­i­ca, 1776–­1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 245. 81. See Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower, vol. 2, The President (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), 142–143, 189–192; and Osgood, Total Cold War, 226–228, 254–255, 275–287. 82. Dwight  D. Eisenhower: “Radio and Tele­vi­sion Address to the American ­People on the Situation in ­Little Rock,” September  24, 1957, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​.­presidency​.­ucsb​.­edu​/­documents​/­radio​-­and​-­television​-­address​-­the​ -­american​-­people​-­the​-­situation​-­little​-­rock. 83. Eisenhower was at least partly right, as scholarship would ­later note. For examples, see John David Skrentny, “The Effect of the Cold War on African-­American Civil Rights: Amer­i­ca and the World Audience, 1945–1968,” Theory and Society 27, no. 2 (April 1998): 237–285; Renee Romano, “Moving beyond ‘The Movement That Changed the World’: Bringing the History of the Cold War into Civil Rights Museums,” Public Historian 31, no. 2 (2009): 32–51; and especially Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2000). 84. Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years, vol. 2, Waging Peace, 1956–­1961 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), 152. 85. Letter from Frank Boykin to Dwight Eisenhower, March 19, 1956, Folder 1052: Graham, Billy, President’s Personal File, Box 966, DDE Library. 86. Letter from Eisenhower to Graham, March 22, 1956. 87. Letter from Billy Graham to Dwight Eisenhower, March 29, 1956, Folder: Graham, Billy [1956 correspondence], Ann Whitman Name Series, Box 16, DDE Library. 88. Letter from Billy Graham to Dwight Eisenhower, June 4, 1956, Folder 1052: Graham, Billy, President’s Personal File, Box 966, DDE Library. For a more complete discussion of this episode, see also David A. Nichols, A ­Matter of Justice: Eisenhower and the Beginning of the Civil Rights Revolution (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007), 129; Ambrose, Eisenhower, 2:308–309; and Martin, Prophet with Honor, 201–202. 89. See, for instance, editorial, Los Angeles Times, September 15, 1951. Conclusion

1. George W. Bush, “Remarks at the American Conservative Union 40th Anniversary Gala,” May 13, 2004, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​.­presidency​.­ucsb​ .­edu​/­documents​/­remarks​-­the​-­american​-­conservative​-­union​-­40th​-­anniversary​-­gala. 2. Bush, “Remarks at the American Conservative Union.” 3. See, for example, John F. Kennedy, “Speech of Senator John F. Kennedy, Salt Lake City, Utah, Mormon Tabernacle,” September 23, 1960, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​.­presidency​.­ucsb​.­edu​/­documents​/­speech​-­senator​-­john​-­f​-­kennedy​-­salt​ -­lake​-­city​-­utah​-­mormon​-­tabernacle; Richard Nixon, “Remarks at Tulsa, Oklahoma,” November  3, 1972, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​.­presidency​.­ucsb​.­edu​ /­documents​/­remarks​-­tulsa​-­oklahoma; Gerald  R. Ford, “Remarks at the Combined Convention of the National Religious Broadcasters and the National Association of Evangelicals,” February 22, 1976, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​.presi​ dency​.­ucsb​.­edu​/­documents​/­remarks​-­the​-­combined​-­convention​-­the​-­national​-­religious​

23 0 NOTES

TO PAGES 182– 183

-­broadcasters​-­and​-­the​-­national; and Ronald Reagan, “Radio Address to the Nation on Prayer,” September 18, 1982, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​.­presidency​ .­ucsb​.­edu​/­documents​/­radio​-­address​-­the​-­nation​-­prayer. 4. Donald J. Trump, “Remarks at the F ­ amily Research Council’s Values Voter Summit,” October 13, 2017, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​.­presidency​.­ucsb​.­edu​ /­documents​/­remarks​-­the​-­family​-­research​-­councils​-­values​-­voter​-­summit and Trump, “Statement by Donald J. Trump in Response to the Pope,” February 18, 2016, American Presidency Proj­ect, https://­www​.­presidency​.­ucsb​.­edu​/­documents​/­statement​-­donald​-­j​ -­trump​-­response​-­the​-­pope. 5. Robert Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion: Society and Faith since World War II (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1988), 8. See also Wuthnow, “Divided We Fall: Amer­ic­a’s Two Civil Religions,” Christian ­Century 115 (April  20, 1988): 395–399. 6. Like the pre­sent study, Wuthnow’s also leans heavi­ly on Mary Douglas for the theoretical framework of symbolic bound­aries as foundational ele­ments of social order. See Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (Baltimore: Penguin, 1966). 7. Wuthnow, “Divided,” 398.

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Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum Alphabetical File Ann Whitman Name Series General File Official File President’s Personal File White House Office, Rec­ords Officer Report to President on Pending Legislation, 1953–1961

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Franklin D. Roo­se­velt Presidential Library and Museum Eleanor Roo­se­velt Pamphlet Collection Memorial Foundation Rec­ords Official File President’s Personal File President’s Secretary’s File Vertical File Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum Confidential File General File Official File President’s Personal File President’s Secretary’s Files Psychological Strategy Board Files Rec­ords of Temporary Committees, Commissions, and Boards: Rec­ord Group 220 Tom C. Clark Papers Institute on World War II and the ­Human Experience Daniel Fredrick Collection Irvin Baker Collection Margaret M. Long Collection Presbyterian Historical Society Edward L. R. Elson Papers Yale Divinity School Archives John Mott Papers Periodicals of the Era

Amer­i­ca American Mercury Atlantic Monthly Baptist and Reflector Catholic Standard Catholic Worker Catholic World Chicago Daily News Chicago Tribune Christian ­Century Christian Science Monitor Chris­tian­ity ­Today Commercial and Financial Chronicle Commonweal Editor and Publisher Indianapolis Star Journal of Negro Education Life

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Los Angeles Times McCall’s New Republic New York Herald Tribune New York Times New York Times Magazine Newsweek Religion in Life Saturday Review of Lit­er­a­ture Survey Graphic Time Washington Post Western Recorder

Index

Abbell, Maxwell, 144 Abyssinian Baptist Church, 100 ACCC. See American Council of Christian Churches Ad Council: Armed Forces Day and, 149; campaigns coordinated by, 101–9, 119, 120; ecumenical religion ­adopted by, 125–26; Eisenhower working with, 3, 127, 134, 135–37, 139, 157, 165, 167, 225n25; evangelicals and, 156; FRASCO compared, 142, 148; media outlets, public ser­vice responsibilities of, 102, 108, 210n19; military propaganda compared, 109, 110, 115, 117, 118; patriotic brand of religion espoused by, 96–97, 101–9, 179; race/ racism, suppression of, 104, 109, 120, 176; religious propaganda used by, 6–8; Truman working with, 8, 96–97, 101–9, 119, 140, 172; USIA compared, 145. See also specific campaigns Adams, Earl Frederick, 159–61 Adams, Sherman, 143, 218n51, 220n82 Adler, Cyrus, 14, 15, 20, 21 Advertising Federation of Amer­i­ca, 52 African American Episcopal Church, 100 African Americans. See race/racism African Methodist Episcopal Church, 19, 149 Alexander, Michael, 191n15 Ali, Noble Drew, 20 Amer­i­ca, 203n17 Amer­i­ca First Committee, 32 American Association of School Administrators, 205n34 American Broadcasting Channel/Company, 108, 135, 162 American Civil Liberties Union, 29 American Conservative Union, 181 American Council of Catholic Bishops, 83 American Council of Christian Churches (ACCC): Eisenhower and, 166–69;

Roo­se­velt and, 41, 42, 62; Truman and, 83, 86–87, 94 American Council on Education, 205n34 American Council on Race Relations, 104 American Federation of ­Labor, 47, 205n34 American Heritage Foundation, 6, 105, 106, 126 American Jewish Committee, 45 American Jewish Congress, 48 American Legion, 7, 9, 127, 137–43, 149, 157, 158, 160, 165, 179 American Protestant Defense League (APDL), 32–33, 35 American religion, creation of, 1–10; Ad Council campaigns for religious unity, 102–9; civic leaders’ use of, 9; “civil religion” tradition and, 5–6; consensus narrative on, 5, 86, 155, 175, 206n42; con­temporary association with evangelical Protestantism and conservative Republicanism, 9–10, 181–84; critics of, 128, 156, 161–62, 163, 165, 178; deliberate vagueness of, 4; expansion of American government and, 182–83; as “faith in freedom,” 3–4, 180 (See also “faith in freedom”); farewell address of Eisenhower and, 1–3; foundational American documents, Freedom Train’s inclusion of religious documents with, 105; legacy and consequences of, 180–84; national unity, in ser­vice of, 4 (See also national unity); presidential promotion of, 3–4, 5, 7–9 (See also Eisenhower; Roo­se­velt; Truman); previous studies of, 5; propagandistic nature of, 6–7; providential destiny of Amer­i­ca, leveraging trope of, 4; religious leaders and organ­izations, involvement of, 4–5, 8–9 (See also religious leaders and organ­izations); theological and ritual content, lack of, 9, 126, 129–30

243

24 4 I n d e x

American values, concept of, 74, 97, 117, 137, 181 “the American Way,” concept of, 5 “the American way of life,” 3, 151, 153, 162–63, 171, 172, 174, 178, 183, 225n22 anti-­Catholic feeling, 15, 18, 21, 23, 35, 42, 76, 90, 92, 156, 167, 174, 208n68 anticommunism. See communism/ anticommunism anti-­Semitism, 18, 23, 42, 43, 48, 68, 76, 156, 174, 191n13, 191n15 APDL (American Protestant Defense League), 32–33, 35 Armed Forces Day, 148–49 armed forces/Army. See military The Armor of God (Sheen), 63–64 Asad, Talal, 188–89n32 Assemblies of God, 42, 129, 149 Associated Church Press, 54, 55 Associated Gospel Churches, 42 Athenagoras (patriarch of Greek Orthodox Church), 208n67 atomic energy, ­under Truman, 101–2 atomic/nuclear weapons, 73, 79–80, 203–4n17

Bradley, Omar, 110, 111, 119 Brendon, Piers, 130 Brethren congregations, 41, 130–31 British military chaplains and troops in WWII, 200n87 Brophy, Thomas D’Arcy, 6, 105 Brotherhood Week (NCCJ), 101, 103, 104, 136, 210–11n25 Buckley, William F., Jr., 203n17, 225n21 Buddhists and Buddhism, 48, 148 Burgess, Mrs. Claude, 216n17 Bush, George W., 181–82 business interests: Cold War, economic impact of, 223n1; Eisenhower, importance of corporations to American life ­under, 134; evangelicals and, 156–57, 171; New Deal policies, working against, 4, 56, 156; religious leaders working with, 4; world trade, ­under Truman, 101–2. See also Ad Council; American Heritage Foundation; ­free market capitalism; War Advertising Council Buttrick, George A., 14, 20–21, 24–25, 30, 192n31 Byrd, Charles, 50

“Back to God” campaign, 138–42, 149 Bainton, Roland, 79 Baptists: Abyssinian Baptist Church, 100; FCC and, 22–23, 24, 100; National Baptist Convention, 22; Northern Baptist Convention, 22, 89; personal Representative to Vatican, presidential appointment of, 22, 86; Roo­se­velt’s Christmas letter and, 22–23, 25; Southern Baptist Convention, 19, 42, 56, 86, 87, 91, 129, 149, 169, 197n32; Truman and, 75, 98 Baran, Paul A., 2, 223n1 Bard, Ralph A., 56 ­Battle Hymn (film), 46 Bay Psalm Book, 105 Beat culture, 175 Bellah, Robert, 5, 187nn18–19, 189n36 Bennett Charles, 153 Benny, Jack, 103 Berger, Peter, 225n21 Berlin blockade (1948), 113 Bible Presbyterian Church, 41 Billy Graham Association, 160 Black Americans. See race/racism “Black Church” in Amer­i­ca, 19–20, 57, 62, 100, 149, 191n18 Boykin, Frank, 176

Calhoun, Robert, and Calhoun Commission, FCC, 79 Canterbury, Archbishop of (during Truman presidency), 88, 90, 92 capitalism. See business interests; ­free market capitalism Carpenter, Charles, 117 Catholic Worker movement, 49, 197n32 Catholic World, 203n17 Catholics and Catholicism: Ad Council’s support for religious unity and, 103; anticommunism of, 33, 89; on atomic weapons, 203n17; Character Guidance program and, 117; communism, Truman’s plan for unification of religions against, 88–90; consensus narrative, cracks in, 175; draft, Roo­se­velt’s demand for support of, 30; Eisenhower, rising numbers ­under, 129; Fort Knox Experimental Unit and, 112; FRASCO and, 147; Japa­nese internment and, 48–49, 197n32; Knights of Columbus, 152, 207–8n57; military chaplains and troops, 61, 63–68; Military Ordinariate, 61, 67–68, 125; Nazism, on religious threat of, 34–35; Protestant opposition to, 15, 18, 21, 23, 35, 42, 76, 90, 92, 156, 167, 174, 208n68; Roo­se­velt’s

I n d e x Christmas letter and, 13–15, 20, 22; Al Smith, presidential campaign of, 18; support for WWII ­after Pearl Harbor, 42–43; Truman and, 74, 76, 78, 83, 84, 86–90; UMT and, 83, 84. See also Vatican Cavert, Samuel McCrea, 31, 79, 83, 86, 89, 90–91, 203n16 Central Intelligence Agency, 137 Chadwick, Owen, 207n54 Character Guidance program, 97, 116–17, 119–20, 214n75, 214n82, 214n85 charismatic Christians, 20, 129, 175. See also evangelical Protestantism Chicago Daily News, 170, 228n64 China, 163, 164, 167 Christ and Culture (H. Richard Niebuhr), 224n15 Christian and Missionary Alliance, 42 Christian ­Century, 21, 35, 40, 43–44, 159, 164, 194n66, 196n21 Christian Herald, 84 Christian nationalism, concept of, 10, 59, 182, 189n36 Christian Science Monitor, 216–17n20 Christian Scientists, 20 Chris­tian­ity and religion, conflation of, 76–77, 125 Chris­tian­ity ­Today, 164, 165 Christmas letters (1939), 13–15, 17, 20–26, 30, 32, 36, 38 church building boom, ­under Eisenhower, 129 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), 20, 149, 175 Church Peace Union, 158 Churchill, Winston, 73, 77 church-­state separation: ­under Eisenhower, 9, 126, 132, 141, 145–46, 149–50, 157, 222n108; ­under Roo­se­velt, 16, 21–22; ­under Truman, 85–86, 91, 92–94 “civil religion” tradition, 5–6, 59, 189n32 Civil Rights Act (1964), 100 civil rights movement: communism and, 176, 229n83; Eisenhower and, 176–79; FCC support for, 100; gradualism, Eisenhower arguing for, 177; use of American religious heritage by, 155. See also race/racism Civil War, U.S., 14, 45, 46, 63, 108, 153 Clark, Tom, 6, 99, 105, 106 Clay, Lucius, 207n53 Clayton, Eddie, 22

245

Cold War: Ad Council and, 96–97, 107; Berlin blockade (1948), 113; creation of American religion to combat, 4; economic impact of, 223n1; Eisenhower’s and FRASCO’s religious interpretation of, 1, 127, 130, 132–33, 138–39, 143, 144, 147, 217n27; Freedom Train and, 105; “godless communism” rhe­toric, 1, 5, 6, 8, 132–33, 138–39, 164; Graham on, 170–71; Korean War and, 118–21; NCC and, 163, 164; postwar emergence of, 73; Truman’s plan for unification of religions against communism, 88–94; Truman’s public condemnation of Soviet Union, 113; Truman’s religious interpretation of, 119, 217n27; Weil Committee on, 115. See also communism/anticommunism; ­free market capitalism Columbia Broadcasting System, 42, 57, 108 Commission on the Relation of the Church to the War in the Light of the Christian Faith (Calhoun Commission, FCC), 79 Committee for a Just and Durable Peace, FCC, 55, 77, 78, 80 common good. See national unity Commonweal, 203n17 Communism and Christ (Lowry), 144 communism/anticommunism: Catholic anticommunism, 33, 89; China and, 163, 164, 167; Eisenhower, religion, and fight against communism, 132–33, 138, 143, 144, 147; “godless communism” rhe­toric, 1, 5, 6, 8, 132–33, 138–39, 164; Graham, anticommunism of, 170–71, 228n64, 228n75; McIntire and ACCC on, 166–67; NCC and, 163, 166–67; racial division/ civil rights movement and, 176, 229n83; religion, understood as, 144; Soviet Union in WWII and, 33–34; Truman’s plan for unification of religions against communism, 88–94. See also Cold War Compton, Carl, 84 “Confidence in a Growing Amer­i­ca” campaigns, 136, 185n6, 225n25 Congress of Industrial Organ­izations, 47, 205n34 Connell, Arthur, 140 Connelly, Matthew, 88–89, 207–8n57 conscientious objectors, 30–31, 41, 195nn6–7 consensus narrative, 5, 86, 155, 175, 206n42 Constitution, Confederate, 108 Constitution, Soviet, 34

24 6 I n d e x

Constitution, U.S.: Eigh­teenth and Twenty-­First Amendments (Prohibition and repeal), 194n72; Freedom Train’s omission of ­Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments (slavery and voting rights), 109, 187–88n26; God, amendments designed to acknowledge, 108; Washington’s copy of, 105 consumerism, Eisenhower on, 2–3, 136, 163–64 Coughlin, Charles, 18 Council for Democracy, 104 Cowles, Gardner, Jr., 57 Cowles, John H., 36 Cristi, Marcella, 5 Cronin, John, 147 Crosby, Bing, 103 Crowley, Leo, 15 Dahlberg, Edwin T., 89, 90, 163 Darwin, Charles, 117 Davies, Joseph, 46, 85, 206n40 Davis, Elmer, 52, 56–57, 59, 199n62 Day, Dorothy, 49 Declaration of In­de­pen­dence, Jefferson’s draft of, 105 declension narratives, 142, 173, 174, 181, 182 Demo­crats, southern, 99 Department of Defense, creation of, 83, 109 Detroit race riots (1943), 49–50 Devine, John, 111, 212n57 Dewey, Thomas, 44 Dibelius, Otto, 88 ­Father Divine, 20 Dixiecrats (States’ Rights Demo­cratic Party), 99 Dizard, Wilson P., Jr., 145 Docherty, George M., 152 Dodds, Harold, 84 USS Dorchester and Four Chaplains, 84, 139–41, 218n51 Douglas, Mary, 188–89n32, 230n6 draft: Roo­se­velt’s promotion of, 26–32, 192–93n41; Selective Ser­vice Act, 27, 29–30, 113–14; ­under Truman, 113–14 Dulles, John Foster, 44, 55, 57, 77–80, 163 E pluribus unum, as American motto, 153 Eastern/Greek Orthodox Church, 147, 149, 208n67, 224n18 Eckardt, A. Roy, 225n21 ecumenical movement, 77, 91, 96, 97, 100, 117, 159, 167

ecumenical religion, 20, 39, 63–68, 81, 117, 125–26 Eisenhower, David and Ida (parents), 130–31, 150 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 8–9, 125–79, 180; allies of, 127–28, 134–35 (See also Ad Council; American Legion; Foundation for Religious Action in the Social and Civil Order; Graham, Billy; United States Information Agency); American interest in religion ­under, 125–30, 134, 174; American Legion and, 9, 127, 137–43, 149, 157, 158, 160, 165; “the American way of life” for, 151, 153, 162–63, 171, 172, 174, 178, 225n22; church-­state separation ­under, 9, 126, 132, 141, 145–46, 149–50, 157, 222n108; on Cold War, 1, 127, 130, 132–33, 138–39, 143, 144; consumerism encouraged by, 3; cracks in consensus narrative during second term, 155–57, 174–75; criticism of patriotic religion espoused by, 128, 156, 161–62, 163, 165, 178; “faith in freedom” ­adopted by, 3–4, 126–28, 135, 139, 151, 153–54, 156, 158, 165, 175, 178; farewell address of, 1–3, 181; first inauguration of, 133–34; military establishment and, 1–3, 155–56, 159; national security versus national unity, interest in, 8, 127, 138, 139–40, 143, 144, 147–54; Reinhold Niebuhr on, 225n22; propaganda techniques used by, 3, 7, 135, 140, 169; public perception of religious beliefs of, 130, 216n17; racial divide, concealment of, 4, 155, 175–78; religious leaders/organizations and, 8–9, 127, 134, 157–61, 163–69; religious upbringing and beliefs, 130–33, 150, 215n3, 216–17n20; Roo­se­velt compared, 127, 134–35, 139, 150–51, 169; shallowness and pragmatism of patriotic religion ­under, 126, 130, 150–54, 215n3; Truman compared, 75, 125, 130, 134–35, 139, 143, 150–51, 169, 217n27; on UMT, 218n42; “­under God” in Pledge of Allegiance and “In God We Trust” as national motto, 130, 151–53 Eisenhower, Mamie (wife), 132 Elsey, George, 98 Elson, Edward L. R., 131–32, 142–49, 164–66, 168–70, 220n82, 221n85 Episcopalians: African American Episcopal Church, 100; African Methodist Episcopal Church, 19, 149; communism, Truman’s

I n d e x plan for unification of religions against, 88; dropping number (1969–1975), 228n80; Eisenhower, rising numbers ­under, 129; FCC and, 24; Protestant Episcopal Church of Amer­i­ca, 57; Roo­se­velt’s membership in, 15, 29, 75 “equality,” promotion of “freedom” over, 106 evangelical Protestantism: adoption of patriotic religion by, 156; business interests, tied to, 156–57; charismatic Christians, 20, 129, 175; con­temporary association of American religion with, 9–10, 181–84; distinguishing evangelicals from fundamentalists, 165, 226n37; Eisenhower, rising numbers ­under, 129, 156, 166; evolution, opposition to, 19, 32, 41, 117; Pentecostals, 20; as religious outsider, 20, 175; Roo­se­velt’s interventionist policies and, 32–33, 35; support for WWII ­after Pearl Harbor, 41; Trump and, 182. See also American Council of Christian Churches; fundamentalists; Graham, Billy; National Association of Evangelicals evolution, evangelical opposition to, 19, 32, 41, 117 Executive Order 9066 ( Japa­nese internment), 48–49 Executive Order 9981 (integration of armed forces), 99, 110, 118–19 Fahy, Charles, and Fahy Committee, 110, 118–19 “faith in freedom”: as American religion, 3–4, 180; Eisenhower’s use of, 3–4, 126–28, 135, 139, 151, 153–54, 156, 158, 165, 175, 178; legacy of, 182, 184; Roo­se­velt’s coining of, 3–4, 59; Truman’s adoption of, 3–4, 75, 86, 95, 119. See also American religion, creation of Faith of Our Fighters, 60, 200n80 Falwell, Jerry, 157 Farmer, Brian, 190n11 Faubus, Orval, 176 FCC. See Federal Council of Churches of Christ in Amer­i­ca Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 49 Federal Communications Commission, 219n19 Federal Council of Churches of Christ in Amer­i­ca (FCC): ACCC and NAE founded as direct challenge to, 41, 166; Catholic

247

suppression of Eu­ro­pean Protestants, concerns about, 90; change of name to NCC, 120, 158, 214–15n88; Christmas letter from Roo­se­velt to, 14, 17–18, 20–24; cooperation with Roo­se­velt’s war­time agenda, 55–58, 60; Eisenhower’s awareness of pre­de­ces­sors’ strug­gles with, 134; Korean War and, 120; military chaplains and troops, 62, 200n84; postwar reversal of military support, 78–80; power vacuum left by, 157; on race/racism, 98, 100–101, 104; representative status of, 23–24, 41, 62, 87, 192n31; Truman and, 8, 74–75, 77–81, 83, 85–87, 90–91, 93–95, 96–98, 100–101, 103–4, 120, 172, 203n11; UMT, opposition to, 80–81, 83, 86, 93, 95, 204n28, 205n34; UN, support for, 77, 78, 80, 85, 93; unification of religions against communism, Truman’s plan for, 90–91, 93–94; Vatican, presidential appointment of private representative to, 20–24, 86–88; WWII and, 8, 31–36, 40, 41, 43–44, 196n21 Fellowship Foundation, 160 Fellowship of Reconciliation, 90 Fine, Benjamin, 214n85 Fink, F. A., 87–88 Finke, Roger, 228–29n80 First World War. See World War I Focus on the ­Family, 179 For Americans Only (Fosdick), 59 Ford, Gerald R., 229n3 Ford, Henry, II, 144 Forrestal, James, 81–82, 115–16, 144 Fort Knox Experimental Unit, 7, 97, 111–13, 116, 141, 179, 212n57 Fosdick, Harry Emerson, 51, 53–54, 59, 114 Foster, Gaines M., 186–87n15 Foundation for Religious Action in the Social and Civil Order (FRASCO), 142–51; Ad Council compared, 142, 148; Eisenhower’s patriotic religion and, 9, 127, 142–51, 169, 172, 177, 220nn81–82, 221n85; national security versus national/ religious unity, interest in, 8, 127, 138, 139–40, 143, 144, 147–54; NCC, NAE, and ACCC, 157, 158, 160, 162, 165, 167; OWI compared, 143 founding ­fathers, assertion of religious princi­ples of, 107–8, 120, 132, 141–42, 152–53, 154, 167, 174 Four Chaplains, 84, 139–41, 218n51 Four Men of God (film), 84

24 8 I n d e x

Fox, Frederick, 150, 163, 167–68, 218n51 Frank­f urter, Felix, 29 FRASCO. See Foundation for Religious Action in the Social and Civil Order Frederick, Daniel, 66–67 ­free market capitalism: “Confidence in a Growing Amer­ic­ a” campaigns promoting, 136; Graham on, 171; legacy of American patriotic religion for, 182, 184; military strength, conflated with, 9; Prosperity Gospel and, 171; religious derivative, promoted as, 6, 97, 104–5, 109, 162–63; world trade, ­under Truman, 101–2 freedom of religion, 28–29, 33–34 “freedom” promoted over “equality,” 106 Freedom Train, 6, 105–7, 120, 126, 171, 178, 187–88n26 fundamentalists, 32–33, 35, 41, 156, 165, 168, 172, 195n8, 226n37. See also evangelical Protestantism The Fundamentals, 32 Gallup polls, 82, 129, 152, 153, 174, 202n111, 203–4n17 Gardner, Michael R., 98 Gaston, K. Healan, 187n17, 225n21 Gaustad, Edwin, 224n18 Gettysburg Address, 105, 152 Gibson, Truman, 84, 114 Gilbert, James, 117 Gobitis, Lillian and Billy, 28 Goldberg, Joshua L., 200–201n89 Golden Rule Foundation, 58 Good House­keeping Club, 106–7 Goossen, Rachel Waltner, 195n6 Gough, Lewis, 137–38 Graham, Billy, 169–74; anticommunism of, 170–71, 228n64, 228n75; Chris­tian­ity ­Today and, 164; compared to Reinhold Niehbuhr and Paul Tillich, 224n16; distinguishing evangelicals from fundamentalists, 165; Eisenhower and, 4, 9, 131–32, 156, 160, 169–79, 223n2; FRASCO and, 144; individual sins versus social evils stressed by, 173–74; in K ­ orea, 120; NAE and, 168; on new American jeremiad, 172–74; Reinhold Niebuhr on, 225n22; Prayer Breakfasts and, 160; on race/racism, 175–79; religious patriotism promoted by, 156–57, 169–74 Grant, Dorothy Fremont, 200n80 ­Great War. See World War I

Greek/Eastern Orthodox Church, 147, 149, 208n67, 224n18 Gregory, Randolph, 22 Guyley, L. Richard, 136 Haberski, Raymond, Jr., 187n19 Halberstam, David, 118 Hartman, L. O, 54 Hassett, William “Bill,” 87, 89, 94, 101, 207–8n57 Hauge, Gabriel, 159, 160–61 Herberg, ­Will, 147, 161–62, 163, 171, 224n18 Hershey, Lewis B., 30–31, 40, 192–93n41 Herzog, Jonathan, 109, 207n54, 212n57, 214n75 Hinduism, 148 Hiroshima (1945), 73, 79–80, 203–4n17 Hitler, Adolf, 13, 45, 47, 51, 56, 58, 59, 193n58, 199n72 Hollywood in WWII, 45–46, 196–97n26 Holocaust, 48, 58 Hoover, Herbert, 18, 144 Hoover, J. Edgar, 49, 176 The Hope of a New World (­Temple), 199n72 Hull, Cordell, 24 I Am An American Day, 148 Imboden, William, 203n5, 203n16, 207n54, 208n67, 220n81 “In God We Trust,” as national motto/on paper money, 108, 130, 151–53, 155, 157, 180, 184 Inheritance (radio series), 140 institutional affiliation with religious organ­ization, American move away from, 129–31, 134, 216n11 integration: of armed forces ­under Truman, 97, 99, 110, 118–19; of schools in ­Little Rock, Arkansas, 176 interfaith ser­vices, 66–67, 131, 202n107 International Christian Leadership group, 145 Iron Curtain speech (Churchill, 1946), 77 Islam and Muslims, 25, 148 Israel, Edward L., 29–30 Japa­nese internment, 48–49, 197n32 Jefferson, Thomas, 16, 105 Jehovah’s Witnesses, 28–29, 131, 137, 152 jeremiad, 172–74 Jessup, John Knox, 224n16 Jewish Publication Society, 43

I n d e x Jewish Welfare Board, 43 Jews and Judaism: Ad Council’s support for religious unity and, 103; anti-­Semitism, 18, 23, 42, 43, 48, 68, 76, 156, 174, 191n13, 191n15; Character Guidance program and, 117; consensus narrative, cracks in, 175; draft, Roo­se­velt’s demand for support of, 29–30; Eisenhower, rising numbers ­under, 129; FRASCO and, 147; Holocaust and, 48, 58; Japa­nese internment and, 48–49, 197n32; military chaplains and troops, 61–66; religious group, classification as, 48, 51; Roo­se­velt’s Christmas letter and, 13, 14, 20; support for WWII ­after Pearl Harbor, 42, 43, 196n18; Truman and, 76, 78, 83, 84; UMT and, 83, 84. See also specific organ­izations Johnson, Campbell C., 27 Johnson, F. Ernest, 38, 39, 53, 58, 172 Judeo-­Christian tradition, concept of, 4, 10, 59, 103, 106, 132, 147, 151, 162, 182, 194–95n2, 201n97 Kennedy, Clyde, 167 Kennedy, David M., 31 Kennedy, John F., 1, 229n3 Kerry, John, 181 Ketchum, Omar, 206n40 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 100 Kirby, Edward, 115 Kirk, Alan, 137–38 Knights of Columbus, 152, 207–8n57 Korean War, 2, 115, 118–21, 156, 158, 204n28 Kramer, Frank, 207–8n57 Kruse, Kevin, 171–72, 195n8, 223n2 Ku Klux Klan, 18, 98, 190n11 Lang, Ruth, 57 Langlie, Arthur, 143 Lee, John C. H., 222n108 Leo XIII (pope), 43 Life magazine, 224n16 Lincoln, Abraham, 45, 59, 98, 105, 108, 140, 152 ­Little Rock, Arkansas, integration of schools in, 176 Louis, Joe, 50–51, 198n41 Lowry, Charles W., 126, 142–46, 148–49, 168, 169, 216n6, 220n82, 221n85 Loyalty Days program, 54, 58 Luce, Clare Booth, 131, 143 Luce, Henry, 143, 144

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Lutherans, 24, 88 Lykins, Daniel K, 47, 187n17, 197n28 MacArthur, Douglas, 131 Machen, J. Gresham, 41 MacLeish, Archibald, 45, 102 “mainstream” liberal Protestantism, 20, 25, 32, 68, 156, 159, 175, 228n80 March for Freedom program, 168, 172 Marsden, George M., 226n37 Marshall, George C., 27, 81, 117 Marshall Plan, 113, 119 Martin, William C., 170 Marty, Martin E., 225n21 Mayflower Compact, 105 McCarthy, Joe, 228n64 McIntire, Carl, 41, 94, 166–67, 168 media outlets, 102, 108, 140, 210n19. See also specific organ­izations Mennonites, 41, 130 Messersmith, George S., 21 Methodists: African Methodist Episcopal Church, 19, 149; cooperation with Roo­se­velt’s war­time agenda, 55, 145; declining numbers of United Methodists (1969–1975), 228n80; Eisenhower, rising numbers ­under, 129; merger of Northern and Southern congregations (1939), 14–15 MGM, 46 Militant Liberty (International Christian Leadership group), 145 military: American values, viewed as protector of, 97; Armed Forces Day, 148–49; Character Guidance program, 97, 116–17, 119–20, 214n75, 214n82, 214n85; chief of chaplains, rank of, 31; Eisenhower and, 1–3, 155–56, 159; FCC’s postwar views on, 79; Fort Knox Experimental Unit, 7, 97, 111–13, 116, 141, 179, 212n57; FRASCO and, 147–49; integration of armed forces ­under Truman, 97, 99, 110, 118–19; legacy of American patriotic religion for, 181, 182, 184; moral dangers associated with, combating, 83, 112, 204–5n30, 212n57; National Military Establishment, 83, 113, 114; National Security Act (1947) and, 83; national unity, expectations regarding veterans’ ability to promote, 60–61, 69, 79; religious diversity of troops in WWII, management of, 39, 61–68, 195n3, 200–201nn87–89; segregation of armed forces ­under Roo­se­velt, 27–28; Truman,

25 0 I n d e x

military (continued) public relations programs ­under, 8, 97, 109–18, 214n85; USO, 115; Weil Committee, 114–16. See also American Legion; draft; Universal Military Training; veterans; specific wars Military Ordinariate, 61, 67–68, 125 “military-­industrial complex,” 2 Miller, Perry, 172–73 Miller, Robert Moats, 207n54 Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940), 28–29 Mission to Moscow (book and film), 46 Moody Institute of Science, 117 Moore, R. Laurence, 20 Moral Majority, 157, 179 Morgenthau, Henry, Jr., 15 Mormons (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), 20, 149, 175 Morrison, Charles Clayton, 21, 25, 35, 40, 43–44, 55, 196 Mortimer, Charles G., Jr., 52 Motion Picture Association of Amer­i­ca, 148 Mott, John, 77, 92 Muhammad, Elijah, 20 Muslims and Islam, 25, 148 Mussolini, Benito, 58 Mutual Broadcasting System, 108 Mutual Security Program, 119 NAACP. See National Association for the Advancement of Colored ­People NAE. See National Association of Evangelicals Nagsaki (1945), 73, 79–80, 203–4n17 Nance, Ellwood C., 200n80 National Association for the Advancement of Colored ­People (NAACP), 98, 104, 205n34 National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), 41–42, 62, 83, 164, 166, 168–69, 172, 206n44 National Baptist Convention, 22 National Bible Week, 106 National Broadcasting Channel, 108 National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ): Brotherhood Week, 101, 103, 104, 136, 210–11n25; Eisenhower and, 136, 142; FRASCO compared, 142; Roo­se­velt and, 17–18, 43, 58, 60, 64–65, 201n97; Truman and, 100, 103, 104, 117 National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. (NCC): Armed Forces Day

and, 149; communism and, 163, 166–67; Eisenhower and, 158–61, 163–66, 169; FCC’s change of name to, 120, 158, 214–15n88; FRASCO compared, 142, 143; Korean War and, 120; representative status of, 159–61, 163, 164, 165, 226n36; Revised Standard Version of Bible issued by, 166; UN, support for, 158–59, 163; WCC and, 223n7 National Council of the Citizens Committee for a National War Ser­vice Act, 111 National Education Association, 205n34 National Jewish Welfare Board, 61–62, 149 National Military Establishment, 83, 113, 114 National Screen Ser­vice, 103 national security: Eisenhower’s/FRASCO’s interest in, versus national unity, 8, 127, 138, 139–40, 143, 144, 147–54; Frank­f urter on national unity as basis of, 29; Mutual Security Program, 119; UMT and, 80–85, 111, 127 National Security Act (1947), 83 national unity: common good, Roo­se­velt’s appeal to put aside religious differences for sake of, 13–16, 24–25; constructed images in maintenance of, 188–89n32; Eisenhower’s/FRASCO’s interest in national security versus, 8, 127, 138, 139–40, 143, 144, 147–54; expectations regarding WWII veterans’ ability to promote, 60–61, 69, 79; Frank­furter on national unity as national security, 29; Jehovah’s Witnesses’ refusal to salute American flag and, 28–29; racial injustice and appeals to, 4; Roo­se­velt’s religious framework for, 8, 26–35, 38–39, 45, 47–48, 53, 58–61; as tenet of American religion, 4; in Truman presidency, 74, 97; WWII and promotion of, 8, 13–14, 26–28, 31–32, 97 National Vespers (radio program), 54 Nation’s Business, 171 Native Americans, 108 Navy. See military Navy Day speech (Roo­se­velt, 1941), 34–35, 38 Nazis and Nazism, 13, 29, 33–34, 42, 45, 47–48, 51, 56, 58–60, 73, 105 Nazism versus Religion (Paulist Press), 34 NCC. See National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. NCCJ. See National Conference of Christians and Jews Nelson, Richard Alan, 6

I n d e x New Deal, 4, 14, 16, 27, 46, 51, 83, 156 New York Herald Tribune, 25, 29 New York Intellectuals, 175 New York Post, 84 New York Times, 24, 25, 29, 92, 94, 117, 214n85 Newton, Louie, 86, 91 Neyman, C. A., 202n107 Niebuhr, H. Richard, 79, 161, 196n21, 224n15 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 79–80, 161, 162, 163, 171, 196n21, 224nn15–16, 225nn21–22 Niles, David, 101 Nixon, Richard M., 138, 148, 228n64, 229n3 No Greater Love (Spellman), 200n79 Nolde, O. Frederick, 223n7 Northern Baptist Convention, 22, 89 nuclear/atomic weapons, 73, 79–80, 203–4n17 O’Barr, William M., 6 Ockenga, Harold, 164 Office of the Chief of Chaplains, 64, 67 Office of War Information (OWI): cooperation with Roo­se­velt’s war­time agenda, 7, 8, 39, 53–58, 60, 61, 172; FCC and, 79; founding of, 45–46; FRASCO compared, 143; Hollywood and, 45–46, 196–97n26; military chaplains and troops, 63; promoting national unity through religion, 45–48, 51, 68, 179; race/racism and, 49–50, 51–53, 98, 176; Truman and, 76; WAC, folded into, 51–53, 59 Orthodox Churches: Eastern/Greek Orthodox Church, 147, 149, 208n67, 224n18; Rus­sian Orthodox Church, 91–92, 208n67 Osgood, Kenneth, 7 Our Sunday Visitor, 87 OWI. See Office of War Information Oxnam, G. Bromley, 79, 83, 86, 89, 90, 91, 209n76 pacifism, 16, 28, 30, 32, 40, 43, 49, 54, 78, 90, 94, 195n6 Parry-­Giles, Shawn J., 7 patriotic religion. See American religion, creation of Paulist Press, 34 Peale, Norman Vincent, 59, 140, 144 Pearl Harbor, 40, 79 Pentecostal Christians, 20. See also evangelical Protestantism

251

Pew, J. Howard, Jr., 164 Pilgrims, 105, 107, 140–41 PIO (Pubic Information Office), Fort Knox Experimental Unit, 112–13, 141 Pius XII (pope), 14, 20, 21, 33, 88, 89, 208n68 Pledge of Allegiance, addition of “­under God” to, 130, 151–52, 155, 157, 180, 184, 222n117 pluralism, religion, 16, 49, 51, 53, 150, 195n3 Poling, Clark, 84. See also Four Chaplains Poling, Daniel, 84–85, 114, 139, 218n51 Powell, Adam Clayton, 100 Prayer Breakfasts, 160, 223–24n11 Presbyterians: Bible Presbyterian Church, 41; Eisenhower, rising numbers ­under, 129; Eisenhower’s membership in, 131–32, 143, 152; FCC and, 24; Truman and, 75, 76, 78 presidential coordination of religious propaganda. See American religion, creation of President’s Advisory Commission on Universal Training, 83–85, 110–11, 206n40 President’s Committee on Civil Rights, 99 President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Ser­vices (Fahy Committee), 110, 118–19 President’s Committee on Religious and Moral Welfare and Character Guidance in the Armed Forces (Weil Committee), 114–16, 214n75 Preston, Andrew, 34 Prohibition and repeal, 194n72 propagandistic nature of American religion, 6–7 Proskauer, Joseph M., 56 Prosperity Gospel, 171 Protestant, Catholic, Jew (Herberg), 161–62, 224n18 Protestant bias: Catholic and Jewish resentment of, 175; of Roo­se­velt, 15, 16, 30, 39; of Truman, 76–77, 95, 120 Protestant Episcopal Church of Amer­i­ca, 57 Protestant nation, Amer­i­ca viewed as, 15, 76–77 Protestants and Protestantism: Ad Council’s support for religious unity and, 103; Catholicism, opposition to, 15, 18, 21, 23, 35, 42, 76, 90, 92, 156, 167, 174, 208n68; Character Guidance program and, 117; communism, Truman’s plan for unification of religions against, 88–94;

25 2 I n d e x

Protestants and Protestantism (continued) conflation with religion/Christianity, 76–77; divisions within, 15–16, 18–20, 35, 41, 62, 165, 172; draft, Roo­se­velt’s demand for support of, 30–32; Eisenhower, rising numbers ­under, 129; Fort Knox Experimental Unit and, 112; FRASCO and, 147; Japa­nese internment and, 48–49, 197n32; liberal Protestant criticism of patriotic religion, 128, 156, 161–62, 163, 165, 178; “mainstream” liberal Protestantism, 20, 25, 32, 68, 156, 159, 175, 228n80; military chaplains and troops, 62–65, 67; Religious Right, emergence of, 142, 157, 179; Roo­se­velt’s Christmas letter and, 13, 20–25, 32; UMT and, 84, 88–86, 93–95; Vatican, presidential appointment of private representative to, 21–26, 31, 35, 86–88, 191n23. See also specific denominations and groups, e.g. Methodists Psychological Strategy Board (PSB), 137–38 Pubic Information Office (PIO), Fort Knox Experimental Unit, 112–13, 141 Puritans, 172–73 Rabaut, Louis C., 152, 222n117 Race Relations Sundays (FCC), 98, 100–101 race/racism: Ad Council and, 104, 109, 120; “Black Church” in Amer­i­ca, 19–20, 57, 62, 100, 149, 191n18; civil rights movement, use of American religious heritage by, 155; concealment/suppression of, 4, 46, 48–52, 68–69, 76, 97, 104, 109, 120, 155, 157, 175–78, 182, 187–88n26; efforts to reclassify “Negro” as religious status, 51; Eisenhower and, 4, 155, 175–78; FCC and, 98, 100–101, 104; Fort Knox Experimental Unit and, 111; Graham and, 175–79; integration of armed forces ­under Truman, 97, 99, 110, 118–19; Japa­nese internment, 48–49; Jews, racial beliefs about, 18; military chaplains and troops, 62; NAACP, 98, 104, 205n34; NCCJ and, 101; northern migration of African Americans, 49–50; OWI and WAC on, 51–52, 98; segregation of armed forces ­under Roo­se­velt, 27–28; slavery, suppression of acknowl­edgment of, 46, 108; subsuming of race with religion, ­under Truman, 51, 97–98, 104; ­under Truman, 4, 76, 97–101, 104, 108–9; Trump and, 182; UMT and, 84, 205n34;

WWII, Black ser­vicemen in, 50–51; WWII, racial attitudes in, 199n70; WWII Black veterans, racial vio­lence against, 98–99, 209n4. See also civil rights movement Reagan, Ronald, 203n3 reconciliation dinners, 51, 53–54 religion and Chris­tian­ity, conflation of, 76–77, 125 Religion in American Life (RIAL) campaign: Eisenhower and, 135–37, 138, 140, 141, 149, 162, 171; Truman and, 107–9, 112 Religious Education Week, 59 religious freedom, 28–29, 33–34 religious leaders and organ­izations: “Black Church” in Amer­i­ca, 19–20, 51, 191n18; Christmas letters of Roo­se­velt to (1939), 13–15, 17, 20–26, 32, 36, 38; contention between, in Roo­se­velt era, 16–20, 26, 36; cooperation with Roo­se­velt’s war­time propaganda, 53–61, 69; draft, Roo­se­velt’s demand for support of, 29–32; Eisenhower and, 8–9, 127, 134, 157; Korean War, support for, 118; legacy of American patriotic religion for, 183–84; low level of involvement in creation of American religion, 4–5, 8–9, 186–87n15; po­liti­cal cooperation, Roo­se­velt’s failure to obtain, 35–36; race/racism and, 19–20; Roo­se­velt bypassing, 26, 30, 33–35, 36–37, 38–40, 42, 44–53; self-­definition in relation to American religion, 9; support for WWII ­after Pearl Harbor, 40–44, 54; Truman and FCC, 8, 74–75, 77–81, 83, 85–87, 90–91, 93–95, 96–98, 100–101, 103–4, 120, 203n11; Vatican, reaction to presidential appointment of personal representative to, 21–26, 31, 35, 86–88, 191n23. See also specific denominations, organ­izations, and individuals religious propaganda, presidential coordination of. See American religion, creation of Religious Right, emergence of, 142, 157, 179 Republicans: conservative Protestantism and, 179; con­temporary association of American religion with, 9–10, 181–84; Eisenhower and, 130, 136, 177 Revised Standard Version of Bible issued by NCC, 166 River Brethren, 130–31 Rocke­fel­ler, John D., 54 Rocke­fel­ler, Nelson A., 210–11n25

I n d e x Roman Catholics. See Catholics and Catholicism Roo­se­velt, Eleanor, 29, 81, 202n1 Roo­se­velt, Elliott, 29 Roo­se­velt, Franklin Delano, 8, 13–69; bypassing religious leaders/organizations, 26, 30, 33–35, 36–37, 38–40, 42, 44–53; Christmas letters of, 1939, and responses to, 13–15, 17, 20–26, 30, 32, 36, 38; church-­state separation u ­ nder, 16, 21–22; common good, appeal to put aside religious differences for sake of, 13–16, 24–25; contention between religions in era of, 16–20, 26, 36; cooperation of religious leaders with war­time propaganda of, 53–61, 69; death of (1945), 73; defining WWII as religious threat, 32–35, 38–40, 45, 56, 58, 193n58; draft, promotion of, 26–32, 192–93n41; Eisenhower compared, 127, 134–35, 139, 150–51, 169; as Episcopalian, 15, 29, 75; “faith in freedom,” coining of, 3–4, 59; lack of religious/theological knowledge, 23–26, 30–31, 32, 35, 42; liberal Protestant bias of, 15, 16, 30, 39; Navy Day speech (1941), 34–35, 38; personal representative to Vatican, appointment of, 21–26, 31, 35, 191n23; po­liti­cal cooperation of religious leaders, failure to obtain, 35–36; promotion of national unity before American entry into WWII, 8, 13–14, 26–28, 31–32; public perception of religious beliefs of, 216n17; racial divide, concealment of, 4, 27–28; reframing national unity as religious ­matter, 8, 26–35, 38–39, 45, 47–48, 53, 58–61; support for WWII from religious bodies a­ fter Pearl Harbor, 40–44, 54; troops in WWII, military management of religious diversity of, 39, 61–68; Truman compared, 75, 86; on UMT, 81–82. See also Office of War Information; War Advertising Council Rosenberg, Anna, 84 Rosenman, Samuel, 84 Rousseau, Jean-­Jacques, 5 Rowe, James, Jr., 26, 27–28, 30, 36, 38, 45, 49 Royall, Kenneth, 110, 111, 116, 119 Russell, Richard, 203n16 Rus­sian Orthodox Church, 91–92, 208n67 Rutherford, Joseph, 28 Schmidt, Leigh, 224n18 Schultz, Kevin, 201n97, 202n110

253

Scopes, John T., and Scopes Monkey Trial, 19, 32, 41 Second World War. See World War II segregation: of armed forces ­under Roo­se­velt, 27–28; Billy Graham and, 177–78 Selective Ser­vice Act, 27, 29–30, 113–14 separation of church and state. See church-­ state separation Sheen, Fulton, 54, 59, 63–64, 140, 219n54 Sherry, Michael, 204n28 Shriners, 207–8n57 Shull, Lynwood Lanier, 99 Silk, Mark, 161 Sittser, Gerald, 44, 196n20 Skelton, Red, 103 slavery, suppression of acknowl­edgment of, 46, 108 Smith, Albert “Al,” 18 Smith, Noel, 23 social unity. See national unity Society of Friends, 41 Song and Ser­vice Book for Ship and Field, 64 Southern Baptist Convention, 19, 42, 56, 86, 87, 91, 129, 149, 169, 197n32 Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 100 southern Demo­crats, 99 Soviet threat. See Cold War; communism/ anticommunism Soviet Union, in WWII, 33–34, 46 Spargur, Ronn, 167–68 Spellman, Francis: in Korean War, 120; Roo­se­velt and WWII, 20, 30, 34, 42–43, 49, 58, 61, 200n79; Truman citing, 76 “spiritual-­industrial complex,” 109–10 Stahl, Ronit Y., 195n3, 202n110 Stalin, Joseph, 73 Stark, Rodney, 228–29n80 States’ Rights Demo­cratic Party (Dixiecrats), 99 Stephens, Tom, 163, 167–68 Stringer, William, 216–17n20 Stroup, Russell Cartwright, 66 Supreme Court, U.S., 28–29, 177 Sutton, Matthew Avery, 35 Sweezy, Paul M., 2, 223n1 Symington, Stuart, 147 Synagogue Council of Amer­ic­ a, 29–30 Taft, Robert A., 204n28 Taylor, Myron: ­under Roo­se­velt, 21–26, 31, 33, 35, 193n58; ­under Truman, 86–92, 145, 159, 207nn53–54, 208n67

25 4 I n d e x

Taylor, Philip M., 6 ­Temple, William, 199n72 Thomas, Edward, 136 Thurmond, Strom, 99, 104 Tillich, Paul, 161, 224nn15–16 Time magazine, 29, 34, 125, 224n15 To Secure T ­ hese Rights (President’s Committee on Civil Rights), 99 Trueblood, Elton, 145 Truman, Bess (née Wallace; wife), 75 Truman, Harry, 8, 73–121, 180; Ad Council and, 8, 96–97, 101–9, 119, 140, 172; American values, military seen as protector of, 97; church-­state separation ­under, 85–86, 91, 92–94; Eisenhower compared, 75, 125, 130, 134–35, 139, 143, 150–51, 169, 217n27; end of WWII and new international order, 73–74, 76; “faith in freedom” ­adopted by, 3–4, 75, 86, 95, 119; FCC and, 8, 74–75, 77–81, 83, 85–87, 90–91, 93–95, 96–98, 100–101, 103–4, 120, 172, 203n11; ­free market capitalism promoted as religious derivative by, 97; interreligious unity, belief in, 74; Korean War and, 118–21, 158; military public relations and, 8, 97, 109–18, 214n85; national unity u ­ nder, 74, 97; propaganda techniques used by, 7, 96–97, 101, 109–10; public perception of religious beliefs of, 75, 130, 216n17; on race and civil rights, 4, 76, 97–101, 104, 108–9; religious upbringing and beliefs of, 75–77, 85, 95, 98; RIAL campaign address (1949), 107–8; Roo­se­velt compared, 75, 86; unification of religions against communism, plan for, 88–94; Vatican, appointment of personal representative to, 86–88, 91, 207n53; as vice president, 73. See also Ad Council; Universal Military Training Truman, Martha Young (­mother), 98 Trump, Donald J., 9–10, 182 Tucker, Henry St. George, 57 UMT. See universal military training UN. See United Nations “­under God” added to Pledge of Allegiance, 130, 151–52, 155, 157, 180, 184, 222n117 “United Amer­i­ca” campaign, 103–4, 105, 106, 107, 171 United Church of Christ, 228n80 United Methodists, 14–15, 228n80 United Nations (UN): congressional approval of charter (1945), 77; divisions over role of, 157; FCC support for, 77, 78,

80, 85, 93; Korean War characterized as UN police action by Truman, 158; NCC and, 158–59, 163; UMT and, 82 The United Nations and Our Religious Heritage (Church Peace Union), 158 United Ser­vice Organ­izations (USO), 115 United States Information Agency (USIA), 7, 9, 145, 146, 148, 158, 168, 172, 179 United Synagogue of Amer­ic­ a, 144 unity. See national unity universal military training (UMT): American Legion’s support for, 137; demise of, 113, 118, 204n28; Eisenhower and, 218n42; military support for, 110–11, 113; Mutual Security Program compared, 119; national security as basis for, 80–85, 111, 127; religious organ­izations and opposition to, 8, 75, 80–86, 93–95, 204n28, 205n34, 206n40 USIA. See United States Information Agency USO (United Ser­vice Organ­izations), 115 Van Dusen, Henry, 79 Van Kirk, Walter W., 55, 57, 226n36 Vatican: po­liti­cal versus religious status of, 191n23; Roo­se­velt’s appointment of personal representative to, 21–26, 31, 35, 191n23; Truman’s appointment of personal representative to, 86–88, 91, 207n53 Vaughan, Harry, 206n40 Vereide, Abraham, 160 veterans: American Legion, 7, 9, 127, 137–43, 149, 157, 158, 160, 165, 179; Black veterans, racial vio­lence against, 98–99, 209n4; national unity, expectations regarding ability to promote, 60–61, 69 Veterans of Foreign Wars, 206n40 Vietnam War, 156, 187n19 WAC. See War Advertising Council Wagner, J. Addington, 141 Wall, Wendy, 53 Wallace, Elizabeth “Bess” (­later Truman), 75 Wallace, Henry, 60, 73 Walsh, Edmund A., 84, 85, 114, 205n37 War Advertising Council (WAC): Ad Council, postwar transformation into, 101, 102; cooperation with Roo­se­velt’s war­time agenda, 39, 53–61; FCC and, 79; founding of, 46–47; military chaplains and troops, 63; OWI folded into, 51–53;

I n d e x promoting national unity through religion, 46–48, 51–53, 68; race/racism and, 53, 98; Truman and, 76 War Department Circular 347, 81 War Production Board, 57 Washburn, Abbott, 168, 172 Washington, George, 1, 105, 140 Washington Post, 29, 110 WCC (World Council of Churches), 90–92, 159, 161, 208nn67–68, 223n7 Weil, Frank, and Weil Committee, 114–16, 214n75 White, Walter, 98 Why We Fight (film), 65 Williston, Arthur L., 111 Wilson, Charles “Electric,” 57, 84, 107, 109, 136, 144, 221n98 Wilson, Charles “Engine,” 149, 221n98 Woodard, Isaac, 98–99 World Council of Churches (WCC), 90–92, 159, 161, 208nn67–68, 223n7 world trade, ­under Truman, 101–2 World War I, 41, 45, 61, 63, 69, 76, 83, 137, 204n30 World War II: Black ser­vicemen in, 50–51; conscientious objectors in, 30–31, 41, 195nn6–7; defined as religious threat, 32–35, 38–40, 45, 56, 58, 193n58; in Eisenhower’s farewell address, 2; end of, new international order following, 73–74, 76; FCC and, 8, 31–36, 40, 41, 43–44,

255

196n21; fundamentalist support for, 32–33; Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings (1945), 73, 79–80, 203–4n17; interest in religion during, 65–66, 202n111; interfaith ser­vices during, 66–67, 202n107; Japa­nese internment in, 48–49, 197n32; national unity, promotion of, 8, 13–14, 26–28, 31–32, 97; Nazis and Nazism, 13, 29, 33–34, 42, 45, 47–48, 51, 56, 58–60, 73, 105; pacifism and, 16, 28, 30, 32, 40, 43, 49, 54, 195n6; Pearl Harbor and U.S. entry into, 40, 79; Poland, German invasion of, 14; promotion of national unity before American entry into, 8, 13–14, 26–28, 31–32; racial attitudes in, 199n70; religious diversity of troops in, military management of, 39, 61–68, 195n3, 200–201nn87–89; Soviet Union, German invasion of, 33; support for war from religious bodies ­after Pearl Harbor, 40–44, 54. See also veterans The World We Want to Live In (film), 65 Wuthnow, Robert, 182–83, 230n6 Wyman, David S., 43 Wyman, Jane, 103 Yalta Conference, 73 Yearbook of American Churches, 128 Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), 93 Zhukov, Georgy, 132–33