The Founding Myth
Page 32
Thank you.
The mayor was confused about more than punctuation and the Florida Sunshine Law, which applies only to government entities, not to nonprofits headquartered in another state. He invoked “under God” twice, even incorrectly claiming that America is “a nation founded under god.” This confusion is commonplace, particularly in the Christian nationalism movement, and originates in the 1950s, when ad men told America to buy religion.
AN OSTENSIBLE PARADOX OF STATE-CHURCH SEPARATION is that citizens living under secular governments tend to be more religious than citizens in countries with established churches. England, with the Anglican Church and a religiously apathetic populace, and the United States, with a rabidly devout (though shrinking) majority, typify this paradox. But it’s not actually a paradox. This is precisely what we would expect to see if religion is like any other product for sale. In a country with an established church, that church has a monopoly. With no competitors and taxes supporting the church, the priests grow fat and indolent, and feel entitled to a flock. They can be successful without effort. In countries with secular governments and protections for the freedom of worship, the religious marketplace is a jungle. If a church gets lazy or a preacher feels entitled, their flock can easily worship across the street. As a result, preachers in America are better salesmen. They have to be. The jungle-like market ensures that the religions that are the best at attracting and keeping members survive. Adam Smith, writing in 1776, actually predicted this, as did James Madison in 1819, who used the idea of a thriving religious marketplace to help sell state-church separation.3
In America’s wild marketplace, religion must be at least partly about marketing. It should come as no surprise that during the golden age of American marketing—the Mad Men era—religion was quite literally sold to the country. In his book One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America, Princeton historian Kevin Kruse convincingly shows that the wave of public piety in America, which peaked in the 1950s, was the result of a coordinated corporate strategy. The campaign was launched during the 1930s and 1940s as a response to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and the regulation it prompted.4
Businesses and industrialists, including DuPont, Firestone, US Steel, and many more, sought to undermine the New Deal regulations they viewed as overly burdensome and to erode the power of the newly influential labor unions.5 The corporations’ existing lobby groups, such as the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Liberty League, were too transparent. Most Americans understood that these groups were just extensions of the companies and dismissed them for what they were, “a collection of tycoons looking out for their own self interest.”6
Undeterred, the corporations and industrialists turned to religious individuals, groups, and messages that were more sophisticated and less transparent. They began financing preachers who proclaimed messages such as: “Every Christian should oppose the totalitarian trends of the New Deal.”7 One of the more prominent corporate evangelists, James Fifield, sought to enlist seventy thousand ministers “in the revolt against Roosevelt” by arguing that the New Deal undermined Christianity.8 The clergy who joined Spiritual Mobilization, as it was called, argued with a religious fervor. Their message could not be countered with logic because it was based on faith. They claimed that freedoms are given by their god, that “Christianity and capitalism [are] inextricably intertwined,” that the “New Dealers were the ones violating the Ten Commandments,” and, most familiarly, that this is a nation “under God.”9
The high-water mark for the religious messaging was the Religion in American Life campaign conducted by the Ad Council in partnership with America’s best admen and advertising agencies. RIAL professed two goals: “(1) to accent the importance of all religious institutions as the basis of American life” and “(2) to urge all Americans to attend the church or synagogue of their choice.”10 The Ad Council ran 2,200 RIAL ads in newspapers in 1949 and steadily increased that number each year, to nearly 10,000 ads in 1956.11 Magazine, radio, television, billboards, posters in transportation hubs, and ad cards all told Americans that “free civilization rests upon a basis of religious faith.”12 Truman even recorded a radio address for the campaign, and in it, botched history that the previous chapter of this book sought to straighten out: “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.”13 The RIAL message, though inaccurate, was “inescapable,” according to Kruse.14
It should be no surprise that an inescapable message, created by the biggest and best ad agencies and relentlessly promoted by the Ad Council, had an impact. Church attendance increased, and so did piety in politics.15 The ubiquity of that message, pushed on a frightened population, also brought on the unprecedented invasion of religion into American government. A. Roy Eckardt, an Oxford and Lehigh University religion professor and Methodist minister, wrote about this “new look in American piety” for Christian Century magazine in 1954, observing that “the new piety has successfully invaded the halls of government.”16
As president, Dwight Eisenhower nationalized a tepid Christianity, not only meeting with preachers regularly (Billy Graham in particular), but also becoming the first president to be baptized in office—two weeks after being sworn in. In another presidential first, at his 1953 inauguration, Eisenhower wrote and read his own prayer for his inaugural speech.17 The lead float in his inaugural parade was dubbed “God’s Float.” It featured churches and the slogans “In God We Trust” and “Freedom of Worship.”18 This inaugural piety set the tone for Eisenhower’s entire administration. He opened each cabinet meeting with a prayer. Halfway through one meeting, Ike apparently realized he’d forgotten the opening prayer. “Oh, God dammit, we forgot the silent prayer,” swore the pious politician.19 During a signing ceremony in the Oval Office, he and Vice President Richard Nixon even officially declared that the United States government was based on biblical principles.20
Some found Eisenhower’s showy religion, displayed so late in life and immediately after assuming political office, hypocritical. Professor and journalist William Lee Miller observed, “President Eisenhower, like many Americans, is a very fervent believer in a very vague religion.”21 Miller was right. The newfound piety of Eisenhower and many Americans was both shallow and ignorant. In 1951, 53 percent of Americans could not name even one of the gospels.22 America’s religious literacy has not improved; in 2010 about 49 percent could not name one gospel.23 This is precisely the result we’d expect to see from a group of citizens who were deliberately being marketed a vague religion. Despite this vast ignorance of Christianity’s basic tenets, religion invaded the halls of government.
Between 1952 and 1956, as RIAL and the anti–New Deal religion peaked, Congress saddled Americans with most of the political piety so familiar today. The timeline is telling:
1952 – National Day of Prayer. Billy Graham says it would be “thrilling” and “glorious” to “see the leaders of our country kneeling before almighty God in prayer” and to use those leaders to bring the nation to Jesus.24 On the Capitol steps, Graham calls for a National Day of Prayer.25 Congress quickly agrees.26
1953 – The National Prayer Breakfast is held for the first time, and President Eisenhower attends.27 This was integral to the anti–New Deal, corporate religion.28
1953 – Congressmen propose 18 separate resolutions to add “under God” to the pledge on April 20.29
1953–54 – Flanders Amendment proposed. This constitutional amendment, which was attempted during the Civil War by the then director of the Mint James Pollock, of “In God We Trust” infamy (see page 271), would have added the Christian god to the godless American Constitution: “This nation devoutly recognizes the authority and law of Jesus Christ, Saviour and Ruler of Nations, through whom are bestowed the blessings of Almighty God.” The Senate Judiciary Committee holds
hearings on the amendment.30 It fails, again.
1954 – “In God We Trust” is placed on a US postage stamp for the first time.31
1954 – Installing a prayer room in the US Capitol is proposed, and the resolution passes.32 The Congressional Prayer Room, built in 1955, features a stained-glass window depicting the lie that Washington prayed in the snow at Valley Forge.
1954 – Congress adds “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance.33
1955 – Eisenhower signs a bill placing “In God We Trust” on US paper currency.34 The first bills printed with the phrase appear in 1957.35
1956 – “In God We Trust” is officially adopted as the US national motto.36
1956 – Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments movie is released, and, as part of the publicity push, granite Ten Commandments monuments are gradually erected on government property around the country. This tactic was also integral to the anti–New Deal spiritual mobilization.37
If any constitutional test were actually applied to these government endorsements of religion, they’d be struck down under the First Amendment. Instead, courts have either dodged the constitutional question or argued that religion has faded from the transgressions. In the case of the National Day of Prayer, the only court to examine the merits of the constitutional question held that the day and the underlying federal statute were unconstitutional (a case the Freedom From Religion Foundation litigated).38 On appeal, the Seventh Circuit in 2011 said that proclaiming a day on which citizens should pray does not injure any citizen and that the law cannot be challenged unless it injures someone. With this catch-22, the court then concluded, “If this means that no one has standing [to bring the lawsuit], that does not change the outcome…even if the upshot is that no one can sue.”39 No one has standing to challenge the law, according to the court. We have a right to a secular government, but the court will not let citizens enforce it.
After the successful challenge to “under God” in the Pledge quoted at the beginning of this chapter, the Supreme Court overturned that decision by the Ninth Circuit because the father suing did not have custody over his daughter and therefore, as in the National Day of Prayer case, he had no ability to bring the case—no standing.40 Still, three justices took the time to say that they would have upheld “under God” and signaled that another challenge would be a bad idea. For support, the three justices pointed to “George Washington’s first inauguration on April 30, 1789,” because he “repeated the oath, adding, ‘So help me God.’”41 They also pointed to Lincoln’s second inaugural address and “In God We Trust.”42
The courts have upheld “under God” and even the motto because those patently religious phrases are no longer religious: “any religious freight the words may have been meant to carry originally has long since been lost.” Put another way, these have “lost through rote repetition any significant religious content.”43 In a government where state and church are walled off from one another, federal courts have basically declared that entrusting this world to god is not religious. Imagine for a moment if the courts had declared that John 3:16 or praying the rosary had “no theological or ritualistic” importance because it had been so often repeated. What American Christian would let a court declare that his or her god is not religious or that trusting in this god is not a religious declaration?
Christianity benefits when the federal courts declare that “In God We Trust” is not religious, and Christian nationalists are willing to turn a blind eye when the government desecrates their religion so long as it also allows them to promote their religion with the government. The words “In God We Trust” cut into coins or engraved on a government building are not only relics from our fearful past, but also monuments to religious hypocrisy.
INJECTING A DEITY INTO THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE has proved central to the Christian nationalist narrative and identity. As with “In God We Trust,” the phrase’s history tells us more about Christian nationalism than about America’s founding, especially given the timing. As with “In God We Trust,” a unifying national maxim was made divisive. In this instance, rather than seeking to replace the unifying motto, the religious proponents drove a sectarian wedge into it. Prior to the change, the pledge glorified “one nation, indivisible,”44 an important theme for a nation that was still recovering from the Civil War when Francis Bellamy wrote the pledge in 1892. In a fitting precursor to American companies actively selling religion to undermine governmental regulation, Bellamy was hired to write the pledge by a children’s magazine, the Youth’s Companion, for their campaign to sell flags to schools to help boost subscriptions.45 Bellamy would go on to become a New York ad man, even penning a book called Effective Magazine Advertising. But when he wrote the pledge, Bellamy was a Baptist minister and thought the pledge complete without references to his personal god.46 Some six decades later, the Catholic fraternal order, the Knights of Columbus, disagreed. It conceived of a pious pledge and pushed Congress to include the nod to their god in the early 1950s. The Knights found a champion for their crusade in Michigan representative Louis C. Rabaut, himself a devout Catholic—three of his daughters were nuns and one of his sons was a Jesuit priest.47 More than sixty years later, “One nation, indivisible” became “one nation, under God, indivisible.” This change places religion, history’s most belligerent, contentious force, smack in the middle of the unifying sentiment. It literally divides the indivisible with religion.
Dividing the indivisible might be ironic if not for the method used: the politics of fear.48 Since Jesus became the original ad man for hell, Christianity has been comfortable using fear to intimidate and to force conformity. Historian J. Ronald Oakley has referred to the first half of the 1950s as “The Age of Fear and Suspicion.”49 Nuclear war and communism were the main fears. The atomic bomb was designed to be an American monopoly that would guarantee the nation’s safety for the foreseeable future. When President Truman announced in September 1949 that the Russians had unexpectedly developed the bomb too, fear spread. Then Mao and the Communists seized power in China, also in 1949. In 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea, dragging the United States into another conflict halfway around the globe; Congress overrode Truman’s veto to pass the McCarran Internal Security Act, which forced communists and communist groups to declare themselves; the Rosenbergs were arrested for spying; Truman was nearly assassinated; and Senator Joseph McCarthy made a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, claiming to have a list naming either 57 or 205—it’s unclear— communists in the State Department.50 By 1953, McCarthy’s rhetoric and stature and increased, Stalin’s death had destabilized a nuclear superpower, and the Russians had successfully detonated their first hydrogen bomb, the largest weapon ever detonated. By 1954, the McCarthy hearings were in full swing.
The fear-ridden climate in the United States was similar to that in Nazi Germany during Hitler’s rise to power, according to at least one journalist who lived through both. William Shirer, a war correspondent stationed in Germany during Hitler’s ascension and author of the definitive book on the subject, the 1960 bestseller The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany, returned home to America to find “an atmosphere…of suspicion, intolerance, and fear…I had seen these poisons grow into ugly witch hunting and worse in totalitarian lands abroad, but I was not prepared to find them taking root in our own splendid democracy.”51
Another reporter, John Hunter from the Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin, attempted an interesting social experiment to measure the fear. On July 4, 1951, Hunter asked passersby to sign a petition comprising the first six amendments to the Constitution; the Fifteenth Amendment, which guarantees the right to vote regardless of race; and the preamble to the Declaration of Independence (“We hold these truths…”). People were so scared and suspicious that of the 112 people Hunter asked, only one agreed to sign.52 Most declined because they thought the ideas contained in those excerpts were too communist, un-American, or subversive. Twenty actually accused Hunter of being a communist.
Responses included: “That might be from the Russian Declaration of Independence, but you can’t tell me that it is ours,” and “You can’t get me to sign that—I’m trying to get a loyalty clearance for a government job.”53 Other newspapers around the country repeated the experiment, with similar results.54 Reactions like these, remarked Chief Justice Earl Warren in 1955, “cause[d] some thoughtful people to ask the question whether ratification of the Bill of Rights could be obtained today if we were faced squarely with the issue.”55
Religion preys on fear. With the ground prepared by Madison Avenue advertising, it was easy for religious leaders to capitalize on the national fear of communism and nuclear death. If mutually assured destruction was truly assured, Christians would be happy in the afterlife with Jesus, while the godless communists would burn twice. As one author put it, “Americans, being Christians, believed in life after death and [were] self-confident that if even the world itself were destroyed in a righteous cause, they would go to their heavenly reward. Communists, by contrast, were atheists, held out no hope of life after death, and would be correspondingly less willing to escalate a confrontation all the way to nuclear exchange.”56 Senator McCarthy warned people “that this is the era of the Armageddon—that final all-out battle between light and darkness foretold in the Bible.”57 In the best of times, clergymen love to preach about the world ending. With nuclear Armageddon a real possibility and so many advertisements telling them to go to church, preachers were winning terrified converts.
Soon, the words “American” and “Christian” became synonymous, realizing one of the goals of the Religion in American Life campaign and laying the groundwork for the Christian nationalist identity. Many religious leaders complimented this deliberate strategy. Fred Schwarz, a doctor and evangelical preacher, with encouragement from Billy Graham and the other corporate preachers, united evangelism and anti-communism in the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade.58 Schwarz’s “opposition to Communism was not based upon economics or politics, but upon its false doctrines about God and man.”59 Graham echoed the propaganda, warning that “a great sinister and anti-Christian movement masterminded by Satan has declared war upon the Christian God.”60 Another clergyman, John Courtney Murray, wrote that it is “almost impossible to set limits to the danger of Communism as a spiritual menace.”61 Religious stars such as Fulton Sheen, Oral Roberts, Billy James Hargis, and Norman Vincent Peale all achieved new prominence in the early and mid-1950s. They bombarded radio, bookshelves, and particularly television, making people sick with fear and at the same time selling them the cure—the promise of an eternal, fearless future. RIAL added to the barrage. Collectively, they “appealed to millions of Americans who equated Christianity and Americanism and saw the world locked in a life-and-death struggle between godless communism and Christian democracy,” as The Atlantic observed.62