Billy Graham Believed Only About 20% of Those Who Claim to Be Christians Are Actually Born-again.

Later on his death, the Reverend Billy Graham became simply the 4th individual citizen in American history to prevarication in honor in the Capitol Rotunda, a recognition usually reserved for elected officials and armed forces leaders. As spiritual counsel to a dozen presidents, Graham was emblematic of the mutually beneficial relationship betwixt politicians and religious groups.

The shut bond between Christianity—evangelical Protestantism, in particular—and the American presidency began to course in the 1950s. That decade was a time of extraordinary religious revival: Church membership rose from 49 percentage of Americans in 1940 to 69 percent in 1960. And President Dwight D. Eisenhower—along with Graham—played an of import function in encouraging this spiritual devotion. In fact, Eisenhower played a very personal role in popularizing religious organized religion in America.

On February 1, 1953, just 10 days after his inauguration, Eisenhower was baptized and welcomed into the National Presbyterian Church by the Rev. Edward Elson. Eisenhower remains the only president ever to have been baptized while in role, and his work to link organized religion and American identity has influenced political argue in the land for one-half a century since.

Eisenhower's life was undeniably shaped past his religious faith. His parents, David and Ida, were members of the River Brethren church in Abilene, Kansas, an off-shoot of the Mennonite religion. Ike'due south family life revolved effectually work and Bible study. "Everybody I knew went to church," Eisenhower remembered in At Ease, a collection of essays about his early life. In the evenings, the family gathered in the small living room to heed as David read out loud from the family Bible. Later on in life, Ida and David both became Jehovah's Witnesses—a sect devoted to Bible written report, evangelism, and pacifism.

Because the Mennonites did not do infant baptism, Eisenhower did not formally vest to any religious community. Upon taking function as the 34th president, Eisenhower felt this should modify. He quietly approached the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., the denomination to which his married woman, Mamie, belonged, and was baptized at that place at the age of 62.

Secretary of Country John Foster Dulles, President Eisenhower, Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield and Dr. Roy G. Ross of the National Council of Churches shown at a Post Office Department ceremony introducing the nation's first regular stamp bearing a religious significance with the inscription 'In God Nosotros Trust.' (Credit: Bettmann Archives/Getty Images)

Though the baptism ceremony itself was private, Eisenhower made every effort to place faith at the center of national life during his years in office. He began his inaugural accost with a short prayer that he had written himself. His Cabinet meetings began with a moment of silent prayer. He initiated the National Prayer Breakfast, and welcomed Rev. Billy Graham into the White House as a spiritual adviser. He heartily approved when, in 1954, Congress inserted "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance and later fabricated "In God We Trust" the official motto of the United states, fifty-fifty placing these words on the paper currency.

Why so much religiosity? Eisenhower believed religious faith was the unmarried most important distinction between American freedom and Communist oppression. The Soviet bloc was a tyrannical state that sneered at spirituality. Americans of the Judeo-Christian tradition, past contrast, held to the conventionalities that every person was God's creation. Individual human rights were therefore divine and not to be trampled underfoot by an anointed regime. To wage and win the Common cold War, Eisenhower believed, Americans must be dedicated to that principle.

On Lord's day, February seven, 1954, Eisenhower gave a radio accost that emphasized the importance of Godliness and spirituality in American history. "Out of religion in God, and through faith in themselves every bit His children, our forefathers designed and congenital the Democracy," Eisenhower said. The president gave a brief civics lesson that recalled the struggles of the Pilgrims, the testing of George Washington at Valley Forge, and the adamant boxing of Abraham Lincoln to save the Union: All of these men shared a steadfast belief in God.

The one unifying characteristic of the American experience, Eisenhower insisted, was faith—"by the millions, we speak prayers, we sing hymns, and no thing what their words may exist, their spirit is the aforementioned: In God is our Trust." At a time of surging popular piety, many Americans welcomed this kind of spiritual management from their president.

Eisenhower was not the only American making the case for religion in the public sphere. The 1950s saw the rise of popular preachers who argued that religious faith provided the solution to all manner of social and personal problems. Among Roman Catholics, the Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen of the Archdiocese of New York was a well-known figure every bit the longtime host of a radio show called The Catholic Hour, and, starting time in 1951, the impresario of an immensely popular weekly television program called Life is Worth Living.

Curlicue to Go on

Bishop Fulton Sheen, 1953, and Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, 1955. (Credit: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images & Oscar White/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)

Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, pastor of the Marble Collegiate Church in New York Metropolis, also became an iconic effigy of the Age of Eisenhower. A pudgy, bespectacled Methodist with a flair for home-spun stories, Peale published a stream of popular self-help books giving tips on finding personal success through religious devotion and scriptural study. His volume The Power of Positive Thinking appeared in 1952 and stayed on the all-time-seller list for 186 weeks.

The well-nigh significant evangelist of the postwar years, all the same, was Rev. Billy Graham. A tall, rangy Baptist, Graham grew up on a dairy farm nigh Charlotte, North Carolina, went to College in Wheaton, Illinois, and started his preaching in a Chicago-based organization called Youth for Christ during World War Two. His talent, sincerity, zeal, and sheer charisma sped him on his way to distinction. In 1949, his Los Angeles revival meeting—which he chosen a "crusade"—attracted a third of a million worshipers and drew nationwide press coverage. Graham's life on the national stage was merely beginning.

Graham get-go met Eisenhower in Paris, at Ike'due south NATO headquarters, in March 1952. Eisenhower had non yet formally appear his candidacy for the presidency, merely the general was on the cusp of jumping into politics. They sabbatum together for more two hours, as Eisenhower shared with Graham the story of his early life and his upbringing among the River Brethren in Kansas. Graham reported on the "crusade" he had recently ended in Washington, D.C. Shortly after, when Eisenhower won the GOP nomination, he sought Graham'south advice for appropriate themes and scriptural passages to work into his entrada speeches.

Evangelist Billy Graham preaching at Madison Square Garden, 1957. (Credit: Gjon Mili/The LIFE Motion picture Collection/Getty Images)

Graham'due south influence hung conspicuously on some of Eisenhower's statements that followed. "Crusade" became the keynote of the 1952 campaign. The enemies of the faithful, it seemed, included Communism, New Bargain-ism, corruption, cant, unbelief, and the devil himself. America'south problems might exist easier to solve, Eisenhower opined, if every American "would dwell more than upon the simple virtues: integrity, courage, self-conviction, and an unshakeable belief in his Bible."

Subsequently the election, Billy Graham sent the new president a fairly steady stream of correspondence, updating him on the activities of his ministry. In June 1953, Graham reported that his calendar month-long revival in Dallas drew 25,000 people a night and was "the largest evangelistic crusade in the history of the United States." He found the American people "hungry for God," and he told Eisenhower that in Dallas, a great crowd of 75,000 people at the Cotton Basin rose up as one, bowed their heads and prayed that "God would give you wisdom, courage and strength."

To witness and then many people praying for their president, Graham wrote, "was one of the most beautiful and moving sights I accept ever seen." A few months after, Graham sent word to Eisenhower that the president's "abiding references to spiritual needs and faithful attendance at church have done much to help in the spiritual awakening that is taking place throughout the nation."

President Dwight D. Eisenhower visiting with religious leader Billy Graham at the White House, 1957. (Credit: Paul Schutzer/The LIFE Film Collection/Getty Images)

On March 6, 1955, Graham delivered a sermon directly to an American president for the kickoff fourth dimension. As the guest of Rev. Elson at the National Presbyterian Church building, Graham delivered the sermon "Faith in Our Times." Again he stressed the message that the Common cold War and the H-Flop, juvenile delinquency, racial strife, and moral weakness were all problems that sprang from a sinful human being nature—all of which could be cured instantly by conversion to Christ.

Eisenhower, though not an evangelical himself, shared Graham'south belief that God and gumption formed the truthful essence of the American feel. In his State of the Spousal relationship address in Jan 1954, Eisenhower stressed that government solitary could not make people industrious or enterprising. Information technology was up to the American people to work difficult for their future prosperity—and balance God against greed. "Though blessed with more material goods than any people in history," Ike said, Americans "have ever reserved their get-go fidelity to the kingdom of the spirit, which is the truthful source of that freedom we value above all fabric things."

As Eisenhower told the annual coming together of the U.S. Bedchamber of Commerce in May 1955, America's success came from mixing religious faith with the spirit of free enterprise. Yes, government occasionally had a role to play in softening the blows of modern life, but what made America great was its combination of deep religious faith and individualism. With God, prosperity, and individual freedom at work on America'southward side, he asserted, "we cannot lose; we simply cannot lose."

William I. Hitchcock is the author of The Age of Eisenhower: America and the Globe in the 1950s.

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Source: https://www.history.com/news/eisenhower-billy-graham-religion-in-god-we-trust

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