One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (9 page)

Nearly fifty at the time, with trim white hair and a perpetually serious gaze, Vereide found the turmoil of his professional life mirrored in the nation. When the Methodist minister returned to the West Coast, he found businessmen and labor unions embroiled in an epic struggle that helped give him a new sense of purpose. First he spent three months in San Francisco, where the Industrial Association had recently retaliated against a dockworkers' strike by assembling a private army to open the port by force, killing two strikers in the process. In response, the longshoremen convinced the rest of the city's unions to join them in a general strike that effectively shut down San Francisco for days. Highways were blockaded, shipments of food and fuel turned away. As the city's elite holed up in the posh Pacific Union Club, debating how to handle the largest labor uprising they had ever seen, Vereide ministered to them in regular prayer meetings.
¹⁰

When the clergyman returned to Seattle soon after, he found it in a similar state of chaos. The city's stevedores went on strike, and the Waterfront Employers Association prepared for a massive struggle. They put three ships in port to serve as barracks for an army of strikebreakers recruited from wherever they could be found, including fraternities at the University of Washington. Strikers kept control of the port, leaving dozens of ships idling in the harbor. Local newspapers gave voice to the worries of the business community. “Strike Costing City a Million a Day!” screamed the
Seattle Times.
The
Post-Intelligencer
grumbled that “a mob
of striking longshoremen” had “paralyzed Seattle shipping.” As pressure mounted, the mayor personally led three hundred policemen, armed with tear gas and submachine guns, down to the docks to break the strike. In the ensuing struggle, both sides suffered serious injuries before calling an uneasy truce. The next spring, in April 1935, union leaders from all over the West Coast descended on Seattle to make plans for an even greater wave of strikes that summer.
¹¹

That same month, Vereide had an important meeting of his own. On a downtown street corner he ran into Walter Douglass, a former Army major and a prominent local developer. The two soon began commiserating about how the entire country was, in Douglass's words, “going to the bow-wows.” “The worst of it is you fellows aren't doing anything about it!” he snapped at the minister. “Here you have your churches and services and a merry-go-round of activities, but as far as any actual impact and strategy for turning the tide is concerned, you're not making a dent.” The wealthy developer said clergymen needed to “get after fellows like me” and motivate them to get involved. He offered Vereide a suite of offices in the downtown Douglass Building and “a check to grubstake you” if only he would take the job. Vereide readily accepted. The two men immediately made their way to the offices of William St. Clair, president of Frederick and Nelson, the largest department store in the Pacific Northwest, and one of the richest men in Seattle. “He made a list of nineteen executives of the city then and there,” Vereide later remembered, and invited them for breakfast at the Washington Athletic Club. The men at that first prayer meeting included the presidents of a gas company, a railroad, a lumber company, a hardware chain, and a candy manufacturer, as well as two future mayors of Seattle. Only one belonged to a church at the time, but even he had little use for religion, joking that the others knew him only as a gambler, a drinker, and a golfer—someone who swore so much “the grass burns when I spit.” But like the others, he rallied to Vereide's call and joined what became a regular prayer breakfast for businessmen called the City Chapel. Their services were nondenominational, but the message that came from their meetings was one that called for a return to what they saw as basic biblical principles.
¹²

That summer, the City Chapel held a retreat for Seattle's elite at the Canyon Creek Lodge in the Cascade Mountains. With labor unrest still
simmering on the city's docks, the business leaders were worried. “Subversive forces had taken over,” Vereide recalled. “What could we do?” After a great deal of prayer, city councilman Arthur Langlie rose from his knees and announced, “I am ready to let God use me.” Others were ready to use him as well. The president of a securities corporation immediately offered financial support for a Langlie mayoral campaign, and others soon followed. On his first run for the office in 1936, the Republican came up short. His opponent secured the backing of the city's powerful unions and ominously warned voters about Langlie's affiliation with “a secret society,” by which he meant not the City Chapel but a right-wing organization called the New Order of Cincinnatus. In 1938, however, labor split evenly between two competing candidates, allowing Langlie to win in what was understood nationally as a major coup for conservatism. “Seattle Deals Radicals Blow,” read the headline in the
Los Angeles Times;
“Left-Wing Nominees Decisively Beaten in Mayoralty Election.” The
New York Times
likewise called Langlie's election “a sweeping victory for conservatism,” while the
Wall Street Journal
argued that the victory of the candidate who “promised industrial peace” had helped boost the market value of Seattle's municipal bonds considerably. From the mayor's office, Langlie's star continued to rise. Only two years later, he won election as governor of Washington, ultimately serving three terms, first from 1941 to 1945 and then again from 1949 to 1957. Now a nationally prominent Republican, Langlie made the short list for Dwight Eisenhower's running mate in the 1952 presidential campaign and then delivered the keynote address at the 1956 Republican National Convention.
¹³

After establishing the breakfast group in Seattle, Vereide looked to expand his efforts to the rest of the nation. “Business and social leaders throughout the country are recognizing that economic reconstruction must begin with an individual recovery from within,” he noted in 1935. “They are beginning to realize that we cannot solve all the problems of our present-day civilization by our wits, but must rely on a higher power to help. They hope to revive the spiritual life in commerce, to aid the churches and to get back to a real American home life.” Accordingly, when they filed articles of incorporation, the founders of City Chapel announced their intention “to foster and promote the advancement of Christianity and develop a Christian nation.” As the Seattle group
flourished, businessmen in other communities reached out to Vereide in hopes of starting ones of their own. The minister informed them that the organization followed “a non-political and non-denominational” program, but quickly added a line that suggested a political leaning akin to that of Spiritual Mobilization. “We believe with William Penn: ‘Men must either be governed by God or ruled by tyrants,'” he said. Through personal visits and correspondence, Vereide created a network of prayer groups across the nation. In San Francisco, a former secretary of the navy established one at the Olympic Club. The head of a wool trading business started another at the Boston City Club. A set of businessmen convened at the Lake Shore Club in Chicago to begin their own group, while an oilman did likewise with associates in Los Angeles. In New York City, Republican mayor Fiorello LaGuardia was so taken with the idea he sought Vereide's assistance in getting a group started there too. The minister traveled tirelessly around the country to organize and mobilize new meetings. In a letter home that seemed routine for these years, Vereide noted in passing that he had “just returned from a visit with some of these groups in St. Paul, Minneapolis, Chicago, St. Louis, Miami, Palm Beach and Daytona Beach, and before that at Philadelphia and Baltimore.”
¹⁴

Of all the cities enamored by the prayer breakfasts, none was more important than Washington, D.C. Vereide had not only national ambitions from the beginning but political ones as well. Even though businessmen had taken the lead in forming the City Chapel in Seattle, their meetings quickly became an important political rite of passage. A typical session in January 1942, for instance, attracted more than sixty business and civic leaders, including a national director of J. C. Penney, the president of the Seattle Gas Company, a railroad executive, a municipal court judge, and two naval officers. Notably, representatives of both political parties were on hand and, despite their different partisan affiliations, showed unanimity when it came to the rites of public prayer. A Democratic contender for the governor's office gave the opening prayer, with the brother of the incumbent Republican offering comments; the closing prayer, meanwhile, came from the Republican candidate for the US Senate. The same month as that gathering in Washington State, Vereide held an organizational meeting for new breakfast groups in Washington, D.C. In the midst of a massive blizzard, he brought together seventy-four prominent
men—mostly congressmen, but with a few business and civic leaders as well—for a luncheon at the Willard Hotel. They heard testimonials to his work from Howard B. Coonley, the far-right leader of the National Association of Manufacturers, and Francis Sayre, former high commissioner to the Philippines and Woodrow Wilson's son-in-law. “I told the story of the Breakfast Groups,” Vereide remembered, “and suggested to members of Congress that they begin to meet in a similar fashion and set the pace for our national life, in order that we might be a God-directed and God-controlled nation.” The next week, the House of Representatives breakfast group began with Thursday morning meetings held in the Speaker's dining room; a regular Senate group soon met as well, on Wednesday mornings in a private room in that chamber's restaurant.
¹⁵

These congressional breakfast meetings quickly became a fixture on Capitol Hill. Each month, Vereide printed a program to guide the groups in their morning meditations, offering specific readings from Scripture and providing questions for discussion. The groups were officially nonpartisan, welcoming Republicans and Democrats alike, but that was not to say they were apolitical. Most of the Democratic members of the House breakfast group, for instance, were conservative southerners who held federal power and the activism of the New Deal state in as much contempt as the average Republican did.
¹⁶
Political overtones were lightly drawn but present nonetheless. “The domestic and the world conflict is the physical expression of a perverted mental, moral and spiritual condition,” noted a program for a House session. “We need to repent from our unworkable way and pray.” The congressional prayer meetings gave Vereide immediate access to the nation's political elite. In January 1943, just a year after his introductory meeting at the Willard Hotel, the minister marveled to his wife how he was not simply mingling with important political figures but actively enlisting them in his crusade. “My what a full and busy day!” he began. “The Vice President brought me to the Capitol and counseled with me regarding the program and plans, and then introduced me to Senator Brewster, who in turn [introduced me] to Senator Burton—then planned further the program and enlisted their cooperation,” he continued. “Then to the Supreme Court for visits with some of them, and secured their presence and participation—then back to the Senate, House—and lunch with Chaplain Montgomery.” The rest of the
day, and the ones that followed, were packed with meetings, but Vereide pressed ahead. “The hand of the Lord is upon me,” he noted in closing. “He is leading.”
¹⁷

Having won over political leaders in Washington, D.C., Vereide used their influence to establish even more breakfast groups across the nation. Businessmen in Cleveland had been interested in forming a regular prayer meeting, for instance, but they told Vereide that there was “a class of men we have not been reaching” and asked for help. “I am told that our own Senator Harold Burton is a member of one of your groups in Washington,” wrote an organizer. “He is very favorably known in Cleveland as a church man and we are just wondering whether an invitation or other promotion material might carry considerable more weight if it could go out over his name as an honorary chairman or some such title.” Vereide arranged for an immediate meeting with the Republican senator and secured his support. The very next day, Burton sent the organizers a list of prominent Clevelanders whom they should recruit. “You perhaps might also wish to quote some portion of this letter as indicating my interest in the movement,” the senator volunteered. “It is important that there be deep-seated, moral convictions which shall form the basis for our daily decisions in business and in government.”
¹⁸

The contacts Vereide made in congressional prayer groups also gave him access to corporate leaders across the country. NAM president Howard Coonley had helped launch the breakfast meetings, and by 1943, both the past president and the current president of the US Chamber of Commerce were regular participants at the Senate sessions. Corporate titans followed their lead, inviting Vereide to join them for private meetings in their offices or small dinners with fellow executives. “The big men and real leaders in New York and Chicago,” he wrote his wife, “look up to me in an embarrassing way.” In Manhattan, Thomas Watson of IBM gathered together “a few of New York's top men” for a luncheon at the Bankers Club to meet Vereide and hear about his work. J. C. Penney took the minister to lunch at New York's Union League Club, arranged for a meeting with Norman Vincent Peale, and then promised to set up “a retreat for key business executives” soon after. In Chicago, Vereide lunched at its Union League Club with “fifteen top leaders,” including Hughston McBain, president of the Marshall Field department store chain. Other
corporate titans sought more intimate audiences. The head of Quaker Oats spent an hour with Vereide in his Chicago office, while the president of Chevrolet spent more than three with him in Detroit. Given his travels, Vereide inevitably won support from the Pew family as well. While James Fifield had found a patron in J. Howard Pew, Vereide won support from his brother Joseph Newton Pew Jr., head of the massive Sun Shipbuilding Company and a powerful force in the Republican Party in Pennsylvania. As the minister shuttled back and forth between the private and public sectors of power in America, his success quickly became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more politically connected he became, the more leading businessmen sought time with him. And the more backing he secured from corporate titans, the more eager politicians were to count themselves as his friend. Vereide believed he was bringing these influential people closer to God—but he was also bringing them closer to one another, and in a forum that seemed as pure and patriotic as possible.
¹⁹