One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

Kevin M. Kruse, “One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America” Basic Books, 2015, 294 pp.

This book explains how and when “In God We Trust” came to be quoted on every American coin and dollar bill,  why the Pledge of includes an explicit declaration of confidence in the Almighty, and why the president and members of Congress host a National Prayer Breakfast the first Thursday of each February.  These now commonplace markers of public piety were almost all created in the 1950s, not at the nation’s founding.  Although the founders were mostly all Christians, they mostly believed in separation of church and state.  Hence the Establishment clause in the Constitution.

The above mentioned public piety items were part of an effort beginning in the 1930s by conservative Protestant ministers and businessmen who believed the nation badly needed a religious awakening to reverse the ‘totalitarian’ evils of the New Deal.  “Every Christian should oppose the totalitarian trends of the New Deal,” asserted James W. Fifield Jr., an eloquent Congregationalist pastor from Los Angeles who, during the 1930s, created Spiritual Mobilization, a publicity offensive that joined megachurches like his with vocal, anti-liberals like the Hollywood producer Cecil B. De Mille and J. Howard Pew Jr., the president of Sun Oil. They all believed religiosity, if widely and officially deployed, would be a mighty weapon in the battle against collectivist liberals at home and Communists abroad. As their ally, Billy Graham, preached in 1951 at one of his ever popular crusades, Americans urgently needed to rededicate themselves to “the rugged individualism that Christ brought” to the world.

Faith-based conflict in American politics has continued to the present.  During the 1960s and early 1970s, battles over religion in public life were fought with no less vigor and nastiness than those waged over civil rights, feminism and war. Kruse traces the movement to overturn the Supreme Court’s ban on prayer and Bible readings in public schools, President Richard Nixon’s attempt to make approval of his Vietnam policy seem a sacred duty and the Republican Party’s wooing of white evangelicals. Only the last of those endeavors was successful.  In recent years, those who claim to have inside knowledge of what the Creator wants us to think and do have been more common on the right than on the left, yet, In the United States, spiritual mobilization has long been anyone’s game.

My Notes:

Pg. xiii:  For decades now, liberals and conservatives have been locked in a struggle over an ostensibly simple question: Is the United States a Christian nation?  This debate, largely focused on endless parsing of the intent of the founding fathers, has generated more heat than light.  The author believes the historical record is fairly clear about the founding generation’s preference for what Thomas Jefferson memorably described as a wall of separation between church and state.  In any event, this book sets aside the question of whether the founders intended America to be a Christian nation and instead asks why so many contemporary Americans came to believe that this country has been and always should be a Christian nation.

Pg. xv:  The percentage of Americans who claim membership in a church had been fairly low across the nineteenth century, though it had slowly increased from just 16 percent in 1850 to 36 percent in 1900.  In the early decades of the twentieth century the percentages plateaued, remaining at 43 percent in both 1910 and 1920, then moving up slightly to 47 percent in 1930 and 49 percent in 1940.  In the decade and a half after WWII, however, the percentage of Americans who belonged to a church or synagogue suddenly soared, reaching 57 percent in 1950 and then peaking at 69 percent at the end of the decade, an all-time high. (However, it was light on substance: a Gallup Poll in 1950, for instance, found that while 80 percent of Americans believed the Bible was ‘the revealed word of God,’ only 47 percent could name even a single author of the gospels). Pg. 68

Pg. 37:  Billy Graham told a rally in 1952 that The Garden of Eden was a paradise with ‘no union dues, no labor leaders, no snakes, no disease.’  The minister insisted that a truly Christian worker ‘would not stoop to take unfair advantage’ of his employer of ganging up against them in a union.  Strikes, in his mind, were inherently selfish and sinful.  His hostility to organized labor was matched by his dislike of government involvement in the economy, which he condemned as ‘socialism.’ 

Pg. 72:  The efforts of Christian libertarians to tear down FDR’s new deal and the central state were transformed in Eisenhower’s reign to instead prop up the state.  Piety and patriotism became one and the same, love of God and love of country conflated to the core.  Billy Graham encouraged Eisenhower to choose a denomination, if only for appearances.  Eisenhower agreed but stated he would wait until after the election, to avoid seeming ‘to use the church politically.’  (Nixon would not share this concern.)

Pg. 86:  Business leaders had long been working to ‘merchandise’ themselves through the appropriation of religion.  In organizations such as Spiritual Mobilization, the prayer breakfast groups, and the Freedoms Foundation, they had linked capitalism and Christianity and, at the same time, likened the welfare state to godless paganism.  They believed after decades of work that their work had finally paid off with the election of Eisenhower.  Much to their surprise, other than reducing regulations and controls and sympathy for their position he declined to tamper with the welfare state.  “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history,” he warned. 

Pg. 95:  On May 17, 1954 Eisenhower barred all Pentagon officials from testifying at the McCarthy and US Army congressional hearings.  Only hours later, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion for its long-awaited ruling in the school desegregation case of Brown v. Board of Education.  With all this going on, little attention was paid to a subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee which was considering a proposed amendment to the Constitution.  If passed, it would have declared, “This Nation devoutly recognizes the authority and law of Jesus Christ, Savior and Ruler of nations through whom are bestowed the blessings of Almighty God.”  The campaign for this amendment had been under way in fits and starts, for nearly a century.  The idea had originated during the Civil War when northern ministers came to believe that the conflict was the result of the godlessness of the Constitution. 

Pg. 100:  The original pledge of allegiance did not acknowledge the existence of God.  Its author, Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister wrote the pledge in the 1890s.  However, the pledge did not officially become the pledge until December 1945.   It stated: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands—one Nation indivisible—with Liberty and Justice for all.”  (This is the pledge I was taught.)  The idea to add “under God” to the pledge originated with the Knights of Columbus and was instituted in 1954.

Pg. 112:  The phrase “In God we trust” on coins was first introduced in 1864 on 2 cent pieces.  In 1953 in more ceremonial deism bills were introduced calling for “In God We Trust” to be added to all future stamps.

Pg. 183:  On June 25, 1962 the Supreme Court announced its 6-1 decision in Engel v. Vitale  that ruled it is unconstitutional for state officials to compose an official school prayer and encourage its recitation in public schools.  The practice was held to be inconsistent with the Establishment clause i.e., the separation of church and state.

Pg. 192:  Abington School District v. Schempp (1963) stemmed from a 1949 statute requiring teachers in Pennsylvania’s public schools to read ‘at least ten verses from the Holy Bible’ to their classes each morning without comment.  Instructors who failed to do so would be fired.  In an 8-1 decision the Court declared school-sponsored Bible reading in public schools in the US to be unconstitutional.  In 1964, 113 representatives and 27 senators introduced 146 different amendments to restore prayer and Bible reading to public schools.  However, after long drawn out hearings, the country slowly turned and resumed supporting separation of church and state--all the amendment proposals to change this faded away.