In God We Trust, Sort Of

1001 Books To Read Before Your Kindle Battery Dies, Part 109
Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

The words “under God” weren’t added to the Pledge of Allegiance until 1954; “In God We Trust” didn’t become America’s national motto until 1956. This seems hard to believe. Literally so, as, speaking to a colleague who’s my own age recently, he admitted he thought these had simply always been part of America’s heritage. God has been part of America’s rhetoric so long, it’s tough to imagine a time He wasn’t so prominent.

According to Princeton historian Kevin M. Kruse, this difficulty isn’t accidental. An elaborate campaign was waged to create the impression, not only that America is a uniquely Christian nation, but that it’s always been so. And while many Americans realize public Christianity has roots in the Cold War, Kruse suggests the campaign began much earlier than that. He definitely agrees, though, that public Christianity is a battle for America’s soul.

Early proponents of American Christianity definitely had an agenda to push. They specifically saw Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal platform as un-American, and undermining morals of libertarian independence and free enterprise. They saw steering America toward more conservative politics as a moral enterprise. But, as captains of industry themselves, they couldn’t openly push such ethics. So they enlisted Christianity as their patriotic moral platform.

Kruse identifies three public evangelists who participated in this public-spirited revival: James Fifield, Abraham Vereide, and Billy Graham. These three very different theologians had their particular approaches to pushing public religiosity (as distinct from religion) in America. They shared several important goals, however, and just as important, they shared contacts inside American industry. Thus they saw American capitalism and Christianity traveling hand-in-glove through history.

Beyond a handful of public preachers, however, the Christian ascendency of the 1940s and 1950s wasn’t pushed by clergy. It mostly came from a consortium of industrialists, PR agencies, and A-list Hollywood entertainers. Much of America’s postwar religious revival was coordinated by, or with the aid of, two Hollywood executives not always associated with religion: Walt Disney and Cecil B. DeMille. No wonder mid-century churches sometimes looked like the movies.

Kevin M. Kruse

This tightly organized revivalism didn’t always go how its capitalist supporters intended, Kruse writes. They pushed Christianity as an antidote to small-S socialism and FDR’s regulatory state. But they recruited a figurehead they couldn’t necessarily control, in Dwight Eisenhower. Once Ike got elected President, he really believed the Christian message he’d carried into Washington, and governed by it. He had little interest in his backers’ economic agenda, to their horror.

But while pushing Christianity proved a successful political strategy nationwide, cracks quickly began appearing locally. Schoolhouse prayers, written by school boards to appear as nonsectarian as possible, managed to offend unbelievers by being too religious, and angered True Believers by being too secular. While monied interests pushed bland, homogenized religion from above, grassroots opposition began resisting public Christianity from below. Conflict was both inevitable, and heartbreaking.

As a Christian myself, I was most struck by how many "religious" reforms happened, not because of, but in spite of seminarians and clergy. As Kruse acknowledges relatively late, Christian clergy are often more progressive than their lay parishioners. This led to friction through the 1960s, as laypeople and ministers took opposing sides in the developing culture wars. Many of these wide divisions remain in place today.

Reading Kruse’s account, it’s difficult to avoid recognizing how many threads he describes, remain active in American life today. The political strain of public Christianity, which Kruse calls “Christian libertarianism,” looms large in today’s Religious Right, with its emphasis on wedge issues and individual salvation. Public Christianity also faces persistent identity problems: many Americans like the idea of shared Christianity, but turn squishy when you pin them down theologically.

Kruse doesn’t attempt an overarching religious history of America. He focuses on one specific aspect of public religiosity, within a narrow timeframe, mostly from 1940 to 1970. His principal question isn’t whether American Christianity is true, or whether it means anything to individual believers. Rather, he cares deeply about how Americans came to believe we have a rare religious national calling. That calling proves to be spiritual snake oil.

Religious salesmen pushed a specific kind of Christianity, a soft Calvinist self-help spirituality. (Kruse uses the word “Presbyterian” frequently.) But as Kevin Kruse unpacks the paper trail those salesmen have left throughout history, he reveals an underlying message which many Christians may be reluctant to buy. Public Christians often talk a good game, but as Kruse reveals in their own words, your soul frequently isn’t their number one priority.