One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (14 page)

His new denominational affiliation seemed little more than a formality, however, and the president sought to downplay it at all costs. He had agreed to join National Presbyterian only after Reverend Edward L. R. Elson promised to be discreet. But, as Eisenhower wrote angrily in his diary, “we were scarcely home before the fact was being publicized, by the pastor, to the hilt.”
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The president screamed to his press secretary, Jim Hagerty, “You go and tell that goddam minister that if he gives out one more story about my religious faith I won't join his goddam church!” His rage stemmed not simply from the broken promise but also from his desire not to be constrained by any one denomination. As the press secretary later explained, even though the president “did actually
physically
join the Presbyterian Church,” he never wanted to be held back by its doctrine. In Hagerty's telling, Eisenhower remained committed to “a very basic spiritual strength” that transcended the teachings of any one church and thereby gave him “great rapport” with all faiths.
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In fact, on the very same day as his baptism, Eisenhower continued to publicize his embrace of nondenominational faith, taking part in a televised program for the American Legion's “Back to God” movement. The Legion had conceived the ecumenical campaign in the fall of 1951, just months after Spiritual Mobilization's “Freedom Under God” program. Expanding on the growing movement for public religion, the “Back to God” campaign sought to foster faith in individual homes, schools, churches, and synagogues. Though they emphasized private sites of worship, organizers believed their efforts served a public need. In October 1952, Father John E. Duffy, national chaplain for the Legion, insisted that its campaign for religious revival “should be based fundamentally upon Americanism” because faith was “the foundation for our government.” “After all,” he told the executive committee, “belief in God was the essential tenet of the Founding Fathers, and the bond that kept our people together, that enabled this nation to grow, to flourish and triumph.” As they encouraged Americans to pray in their own lives, the Legionnaires insisted that such prayers would benefit the country as a whole. Tabletop prayer cards for restaurants made the connection clear. “The American Legion, pledged for service ‘for God and country,' has continually emphasized the spiritual
foundations of our Freedom,” the card read. “It believes that a spiritual awakening of the people of the United States is needed in order to preserve that freedom.”
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The centerpiece of the “Back to God” movement was its nationally televised “patriotic presentation” on February 1, 1953. The National Council of Churches secured free airtime on NBC for the television broadcast, but the special aired simultaneously on the ABC, NBC, CBS, and MBS radio networks and was rebroadcast abroad through the Voice of America and the Armed Forces Radio Network. The program itself took place at the Center Theatre in New York City, with a crowd of fifteen hundred in attendance. A choir of 160 cadets from West Point, dressed in their formal gray uniforms, performed choral versions of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “America.” They also provided backup vocals for a somewhat unwieldy musical rendition of the preamble to the American Legion's constitution. The main lyrics were delivered by Morton Downey, a popular tenor whose son and namesake would later become an outspoken right-wing television host.
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Billed as “a half-hour inter-faith religious program,” the “Back to God” special commemorated the tenth anniversary of the sacrifice made by four army chaplains on the USS
Dorchester
who gave their life preservers to soldiers when the ship was sunk by the Germans. Importantly, the four chaplains who sacrificed their lives on the
Dorchester
—a pair of Protestant ministers, a Catholic priest, and a Jewish rabbi—personified the postwar emphasis on ecumenical religious sentiment. The Legion replicated that denominational diversity in its memorial program. Father Duffy served as master of ceremonies, while another past national chaplain, Rabbi David Lefkowitz Jr., gave the invocation. “May our program,” he asked, “be blessed with holy strength and purpose and promote a spiritual awakening in the hearts of our people, serving to symbolize for all nations and creeds, the individual responsibility of free men, one to the other, in God, Amen.” Meanwhile, two Protestant ministers—Reverend Norman Vincent Peale and Chaplain John B. Williams—offered contributions of their own, with the former reading a passage from Longfellow and the latter offering the benediction.
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The featured speakers, President Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon, repeated the program's call for a patriotic return to prayer. “If we study history,” Nixon observed, “we will find that more great civilizations,
more great nations, have been destroyed because of moral decay from within than have been destroyed because of armed attack from without.” The vice president assured the audience that the new administration would lead a new revival. Nixon noted the importance of military and economic strength in the nation's survival, but insisted—pumping his fist for emphasis—that “above all, the greatest advantage we have over the slave world is the spiritual strength which should be ours and which, I am sure, will be ours, and is ours under our leadership.” The president, meanwhile, offered a similar message in an Oval Office address. Americans enjoyed a number of material comforts, he observed. “But when we think about the matter very deeply, we know that the blessings that we are really thankful for are a different type,” he said. “They are what our forefathers called our rights—our human rights—the right to worship as we please, to speak and to think, and to earn, and to save. Those are the rights that we must strive so mightily to merit.”
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For Eisenhower, the “Back to God” program would offer an annual forum for his thoughts on the nation's need for religion. “In our fundamental faith, we are all one,” he noted in his 1954 address. “Together, we thank the Power that has made and preserved us as a nation. By the millions, we speak prayers, we sing hymns—and no matter what their words may be, their spirit is the same—‘In God is Our Trust.'” In 1955, the president ratcheted up his rhetoric, arguing that the founding fathers had recognized that all rights came from God and it was merely the state's duty to defend those rights rather than grant new ones of its own. “If the State gives rights, it can—and inevitably will—take away those rights,” he warned. “Without God, there could be no American form of Government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first—the most basic—expression of Americanism.”
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The “Back to God” programs that began on February 1, 1953, became an important touchstone in Eisenhower's drive to promote prayer in public life. But they paled in comparison to another annual tradition that began that same week.

M
ORE THAN ANY OTHER INDIVIDUAL
, Senator Frank Carlson deserved credit for creating the National Prayer Breakfast. With a deeply tanned face, pointed ears, and white wings of hair, the Kansan looked, in
the words of an unkind observer, “like a sunburned Bela Lugosi.” Carlson had long been active in Republican politics, serving six terms in the House and one as governor before winning a seat in the Senate in 1950. An outspoken opponent of the New Deal, he denounced Franklin Roosevelt as the “destroyer of human rights and freedom” for his administration's interventions in the economy. He held Harry Truman in similar contempt. “Little Caesars walk the highways of our nation, trying to tell us what to wear, eat, plant, sow and reap,” Carlson complained in 1947. “It was such a time, two thousand years ago, when Rome's vaunted legions were setting up their despicable Herods over the civilized world. Let us shake this dream of conquest by lustful men from our eyes before another Pontius Pilate nails civilization to another Roman cross.” When his fellow Kansan Dwight Eisenhower mulled a run for the presidency, Carlson became an early backer, helping convince the general to run and coining a campaign slogan for him: “No Deal.”
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Senator Carlson also enthusiastically supported the growing campaign to bring religion to Washington. A devout Baptist with an ecumenical streak, he quickly became a faithful participant in the Senate prayer breakfast meetings and emerged as one of Abraham Vereide's closest confidants in that chamber. In December 1952, he met with Eisenhower at the president-elect's transition offices and invited him to attend one of their breakfast meetings after his inauguration. Eisenhower accepted, but Carlson soon discovered that a presidential visit would be more complicated than he had assumed. Their usual meeting spot, the Vandenberg Room in the Senate, only held a few dozen people, and as word spread, more and more clamored for invitations. Searching for a solution, Carlson remembered a chance encounter with hotel magnate Conrad Hilton at the Republican campaign headquarters. Although a devout Catholic, Hilton had long wanted to meet Billy Graham, who happened to be there visiting Eisenhower that day. Carlson made introductions, and a grateful Hilton promised to repay the favor. “Senator,” he said, “if there ever comes a time I can be of help in a Christian or religious cause, you call me.” Months later, Carlson did just that in a blunt phone call. “Mr. Hilton,” the senator said, “you own the Mayflower Hotel and I'd like to have the use of your ballroom there for a breakfast, a prayer breakfast that the President of the United States will attend, and I'd like to have you pick up the check.”
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Conrad Hilton was thrilled to host the first National Prayer Breakfast—which would be more commonly, if inaccurately, known as the Presidential Prayer Breakfast—on Thursday, February 5, 1953. Above the speaker's dais in the Mayflower ballroom, Hilton hung a large painting of a kneeling Uncle Sam, an image he had designed himself. “I visualized the portrait of Uncle Sam,” he later reflected, “not weak, not knocked to his knees, but freely and confidently kneeling, knowing how to do battle for peace.” While some were surprised by the gesture, it had been years in the making. The hotel magnate had worked as a member of the Committee to Proclaim Liberty to encourage religious celebrations for Independence Day in 1951; in the same spirit, he had commissioned the painting, titled “America on Its Knees,” and then arranged for its publication in full-page, full-color pictorials in national magazines on Independence Day in 1952. “I felt the need of re-expressing the belief of America's founders in prayer as a vital force in national life,” he remembered. To his delight, the painting proved a hit. Eisenhower soon hung a copy in the Oval Office, and Hilton distributed more than four hundred thousand others upon request. Later that year, the hotel chain president was honored with an award from the Freedoms Foundation for spreading the image across the nation.
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The hotel magnate Conrad Hilton commissioned this image, “America on Its Knees,” for publication in newspapers and magazines on July 4, 1952. When he hosted the first National Prayer Breakfast the following February, a copy was displayed above the speaker's table. Soon after, Dwight Eisenhower hung a copy of his own in the Oval Office.

Fittingly, the official theme for the inaugural National Prayer Breakfast was “Government Under God.” The crowd of more than five hundred included senators, representatives, cabinet members, ambassadors, and Supreme Court justices. So many Washington dignitaries were present that the usual rules of protocol were thrown out in the confusion. “Chief Justice Fred Vinson had to look around for a seat like everyone else,” Vereide later recalled. Senator Carlson presided, with leaders of the congressional prayer breakfast groups—Representative Katharine St. George of New York and Senator Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin, both Republicans—offering the opening prayer and the scripture lesson. Vereide then led the “prayer of consecration” for the new president before Eisenhower offered brief remarks of his own. “The very basis of our government is: ‘We hold that all men are endowed by their Creator' with certain rights,” the president said. “In one sentence, we established that every free government is embedded soundly in a deeply-felt religious faith or it makes no sense. Today if we recall those things and if, in that sense, we can back off from our problems and depend upon a power greater than ourselves, I believe that we begin to draw these problems into focus.”
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For the participants, the National Prayer Breakfast was both revelatory and revolutionary. Chief Justice Vinson, who had spent three decades in the capital, in all three branches of government, marveled that he had “never felt or seen anything like this in all my years here in Washington.” Dr. Frederick Brown Harris, chaplain of the Senate, was equally enthusiastic in his account of the day's proceedings for the
Washington Star.
“The Return-to-God movement is more than a slogan,” he insisted. “There are signs that once again, as in the former days of the Nation's true glory, America is once again bending its knees. There are increasing numbers of those in high places of governance and industry whose solemn and serious attitude is: ‘I want to be a Christian, in my heart.'” The event, Reverend Harris noted excitedly, was further evidence of a “new under-God consciousness” sweeping the nation. Billy Graham certainly agreed. “This conference,” he raved, “could very well be the turning point in the history of western civilization.”
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