One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (51 page)

INTRODUCTION

1
.
NYT,
5 June 1952;
WP
, 6 November 1952; Billy Graham,
Just as I Am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham
(San Francisco: Harper, 1997), 199.

2
. Mrs. Joseph W. Barker to Hugh Scott, 19 December 1952, Box 737, OF-DDE;
WP,
21 January 1949, 20 January 1953; Sherman Adams,
Firsthand Report: The Story of the Eisenhower Administration
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1961), 65.

3
. Norman Grubb,
Modern Viking: The Story of Abraham Vereide, Pioneer in Christian Leadership
(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1961), 111; Graham,
Just as I Am,
199;
NYT,
20 January 1953.

4
.
LAT,
21 January 1953; Dwight D. Eisenhower, inaugural address, 20 January 1953,
Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953
(Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1960), 1; Grubb,
Modern Viking,
131; “President Eisenhower's Inaugural Prayer,” pamphlet, Box 102, JFD.

5
. Dwight D. Eisenhower,
Mandate for Change, 1953–1956
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963), 100; Eisenhower, inaugural address, 20 January 1953, 2–3;
CT,
21 January 1953;
BG,
20–21 January 1953;
NYT,
19 January 1953.

6
. Program, International Council for Christian Leadership, Annual Christian Action Conference, 5–9 February 1953, Box 504, RFF; “The Breakfast Groups” newsletter, March 1953, RRF; Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Remarks at the Dedicatory Prayer Breakfast of the International Christian Leadership,” 5 February 1953,
Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953
(Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1960), 37–38; Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy,
The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House
(New York: Hachette, 2007), 43.

7
. Historians have chronicled at length the “moral establishment” of Protestant piety that informed and inflected the United States from its founding, of course, but this religious sensibility was never codified or made nearly as concrete in earlier eras as it would be in the modern one. See Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore,
The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1997); David Sehat,
The Myth of American Religious Freedom
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

8
. For recent examples of the growing literature on the religious nature of the Cold War, see Andrew Preston,
Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy
(New York: Knopf, 2012); Jonathan Herzog,
The Spiritual-Industrial Complex: America's Religious Battle Against Communism in the Early Cold War
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); T. Jeremy Gunn,
Spiritual Weapons: The Cold War and the Forging of an American National Religion
(Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008); William Inboden,
Religion and American Foreign Policy, 1945–1960: The Soul of Containment
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

9
. A. Roy Eckhardt,
The Surge of Piety in America: An Appraisal
(New York: Association Press, 1958), 22–23; Stephen J. Whitfield,
The Culture of the Cold War,
2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 83; Leo Calvin Rosten,
Religions in America
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963), 327.

10
. Steven B. Epstein, “Rethinking the Constitutionality of Ceremonial Deism,”
Columbia Law Review
(December 1996), 2091; 343 US 312–313.

CHAPTER 1: “FREEDOM UNDER GOD”

1
.
NYT,
8 December 1940;
NYHT,
14 December 1940.

2
. Wendy L. Wall,
Inventing the “American Way”: The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil Rights Movement
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2008),
53–54; Kim Phillips-Fein,
Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan
(New York: Norton, 2009), 13–14; Elizabeth A. Fones-Wolf,
Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945–1960
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 25–26.

3
. Frederick Rudolph, “The American Liberty League, 1934–1940,”
American Historical Review,
56:1 (October 1950): 20;
NYT,
25 August 1934; William E. Leuchtenburg,
The FDR Years: On Roosevelt and His Legacy
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 124; transcript, Press Conference #137, Executive Offices of the White House, 24 August 1934, in
Complete Presidential Press Conferences of Franklin D. Roosevelt
(New York: Da Capo Press, 1972), 4:17–18.

4
. For an excellent overview of Roosevelt's religious faith, see Andrew Preston,
Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy
(New York: Knopf, 2012), 315–326.

5
. James MacGregor Burns,
The Lion and the Fox
(New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1956), 476; Samuel I. Rosenman,
Working with Roosevelt
(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1952), 23; transcript, Franklin D. Roosevelt, address accepting presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, 2 July 1932, and transcript, Franklin D. Roosevelt, inaugural address, 4 March 1933, located in John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, American Presidency Project (
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws
); Alison Collis Greene, “No Depression in Heaven: Religion and Economic Crisis in Memphis and the Delta, 1929–1941,” Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 2010, 138.

6
. James A. Morone,
Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 350–377;
NYT,
13 July 1933; Jonathan Herzog,
The Spiritual-Industrial Complex: America's Religious Battle Against Communism in the Early Cold War
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 33.

7
.
CSM,
7 December 1940;
NYT,
8 December 1940;
WSJ,
9 and 10 December 1940; transcript, H. W. Prentis Jr., “Our American Heritage,” speech before the general session of the US Chamber of Commerce, 4 May 1939, reprinted in
Vital Speeches of the Day,
15 June 1939.

8
. Ann Fields, “Apostle to Millionaires,”
Coronet,
August 1944, 84–85.

9
. Ralph Lord Roy,
Apostles of Discord: A Study of Organized Bigotry and Disruption on the Fringes of Protestantism
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1953); Chadwick Hall, “America's Conservative Revolution,”
Antioch Review,
Summer 1955, 207; James W. Fifield Jr.,
The Single Path
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1957), 87.

10
. Darren Dochuk,
From Bible Belt to Sun Belt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism
(New York: Norton, 2010).

11
.
LAT,
14 December 1934, 17 September 1938; Fields, “Apostle to Millionaires,” 85–87; James W. Fifield Jr. with Bill Youngs,
The Tall Preacher
(Los Angeles: Pepperdine University Press, 1977), 94–109; program, Sunday Evening Club, n.d. [1946], Box 914, CBD.

12
. Fields, “Apostle to Millionaires,” 87;
LAT,
18 May 1934, 31 October 1934, 25 April 1941;
Time,
25 April 1927;
NYT
, 22 November 1942.

13
. Fifield,
The Tall Preacher,
95, 112–113;
Time,
3 August 1942.

14
. Brooks R. Walker,
The Christian Fright Peddlers
(New York: Doubleday, 1964), 137; Fifield,
The Tall Preacher,
141.

15
.
LAT
, 23 December 1939.

16
. Roy,
Apostles of Discord,
286; Tenth Fall Bulletin, Spiritual Mobilization, n.d. [1944], 2, copy in Box 20, BB.

17
. Fifield, “Religious Ideals and the Government's Program,” number 9, series III, 25 July 1937, copy in Box 59, HH; Fifield, “America's Future,” number 5, series IV [May 1938], Box 59, HH.

18
. Herbert Hoover to Fifield, 28 April 1938, Box 59, HH; Fifield to Hoover, 31 October 1938, Box 59, HH; Fifield, “Christian Ministers and America's Future,” n.d. [October 1938], Box 59, HH; Hoover to Fifield, 10 November 1938, Box 59, HH.

19
. Fifield to Hoover, 14 November 1938, Box 59, HH; Fifield to Hoover, 14 May 1941, Box 59, HH; Fifield, “A Nation Being Led to War,” number 5, series VII, May 1941, copy in Box 59, HH.

20
.
LAT
, 15, 17 June 1940; Tenth Fall Bulletin, Spiritual Mobilization, n.d. [1944], 6, 16, copy in Box 20, BB.

21
. Eckhard V. Toy Jr., “Spiritual Mobilization: The Failure of an Ultraconservative Ideal in the 1950's,”
Pacific Northwest Quarterly
61, no. 2 (April 1970): 78; Fifield to Bruce Barton, 8 September 1945, Box 20, BB.

22
. Fifield to J. Howard Pew, 14 September 1944, Box 6, JHP; Tenth Fall Bulletin, Spiritual Mobilization, n.d. [1944], 2, 3, 5, 11–12, 15, copy in Box 20, BB.

23
. Fifield to Pew, 17 March 1944, Box 6, JHP; Fifield to Pew, 16 January 1945, Box 8, JHP; Fifield to Pew, 15 December 1944, Box 8, JHP; Pew to H. W. Prentis Jr., 13 January 1945, Box 8, JHP; Prentis to Pew, 15 January 1945, Box 8, JHP; Prentis to John Ballantyne, 15 January 1945, Box 8, JHP.

24
.
Philadelphia Inquirer,
27 April 1992.

25
. Pew would spend much of his energy in the postwar era working within the Presbyterian Church and the National Council of Churches to reverse their trend toward liberalism. See E. V. Toy Jr., “The National Lay Committee and the National Council of Churches: A Case Study of Protestants in Conflict,”
American Quarterly
21 (Summer 1969): 190–209.

26
. Pew to Alfred P. Haake, 6 April 1948, Box 235, JHP; Niels Bjerre-Poulsen,
Right Face: Organizing the American Conservative Movement, 1945–1965
(Copenhagen: Narayana Press, 2002), 105; Fifield to Pew, 28 September 1944, Box 6, JHP.

27
. Pew to Fifield, 10 November 1944, Box 6, JHP; flyer, “Spiritual Mobilization,” n.d. [1944], Box 6, JHP; Pew to Haake, 13 July 1945, Box 235, JHP.

28
.
NYHT,
22 September 1934, 14 September 1938;
BG,
18 March 1950;
NYT
, 3 November 1961.

29
. Haake to Pew, 5 February 1945, and Pew to Haake, 8 February 1945, Box 235, JHP; Alfred P. Haake, “Outline for Spiritual Mobilization,” 13 January 1945, Box 235, JHP.

30
. Haake to Fifield, 13 August 1945, Box 235, JHP;
Spiritual Mobilization in Action: A Crusade for Freedom,
booklet, n.d. [September 1945], copy in Box 59, HH; Wall,
Inventing the “American Way,”
77–87.

31
. Albert W. Hawkes to Pew, 18 March 1946, Box 10, JHP; Dochuk,
From Bible Belt to Sun Belt,
116–117; Philips-Fein,
Invisible Hands,
53–56; Fifield, “Looking Towards a Better World,” 7 May 1946, 5, copy in Box 10, JHP; Fifield to Pew, 7 January 1947, Box 15, JHP.

32
. Fifield to Pew, 27 February 1947, Box 15, JHP; Fifield, “Director to Representatives,”
Spiritual Mobilization,
n.d. [1946], 1, in Box 10, JHP.

33
. Letter from Rev. E. Ray Burchell, Chester, Connecticut,
Spiritual Mobilization,
n.d. [1946], 4, in Box 10, JHP; “What Can I Do About It?,”
Spiritual Mobilization,
15 April 1947, 3, in Box 15, JHP.

34
.
LAT
, 15 July 1947; CT, 16 August 1947;
Norfolk Journal and Guide,
11 October 1947;
BG,
11 October 1947; Table 1,
U.S. Census of Population, 1950,
part IV, volume I (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1951); “About National Preaching Program,”
Spiritual Mobilization,
28 November 1947, 3, in Box 15, JHP.

35
. Fifield to Pew, 4 September 1947, Box 15, JHP; Pew, Form Letter Draft, n.d. [September 1947], Box 15, JHP; Fifield to Pew, 24 September 1947, Box 15, JHP; Spiritual Mobilization Contributors List, n.d. [September 1947], Box 15, JHP; Fifield to Alfred P. Sloan Jr., 16 March 1949, Box 54, JCI; Pew to William M. Rand, 22 October 1947, Box 15, JHP; Pew to Otto D. Donnell, 22 October 1947, Box 15, JHP.

36
. Carey McWilliams, “Battle for the Clergy: The Story of ‘Spiritual Mobilization,' a Growing Protestant Movement,”
The Nation,
7 February 1948, 150–152.

37
. Charles M. White to “Dear Friend,” 31 March 1948, Box 19, JHP; Patsy Peppers to Pew, 24 May 1948, Box 19, JHP; Fifield to Pew, 2 August 1948, Box 19, JHP.

38
. Fifield to Pew, 21 March 1949, Box 24, JHP; Fifield to Martin H. Hannum, 20 January 1950, Box 54, JCI; Pew to Fifield, 22 November 1950, Box 27, JHP.

39
.
The Freedom Story,
pamphlet, n.d. [1949], Box 27, JHP; Ingebretsen to Fifield, 31 January 1950, Box 54, JCI.

40
. See episode list and specific summaries for “The South Comes Back” (episode #39B) and “Boy Scouts of America” (episode #40B), available at Radio Gold Index (
http://radiogoldindex.com/cgi-local/p2.cgi?ProgramName=The+Freedom+Story
; accessed 7 March 2011).