Mark Tooley: Eisenhower's Religion
[Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C. and author of Taking Back the United Methodist Church.]
Often, America's religious life in the 1950s is dismissed as sterile and conventional. Supposedly President Dwight Eisenhower typified generic, superficial religion with his oft quoted quip: "Our government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don't care what it is."
The quote actually came from Eisenhower in 1952 after meeting his WWII fellow commander, Soviet Marshal Grigori Zhukov. Ike was explaining to reporters how America's creed of equality was based on the "Judeo-Christian concept," contrasting with the Soviet understanding of religion as the "opiate of the people." Eisenhower was not describing his own personal theology.
Grandson David Eisenhower's Going Home to Glory, a new memoir of his grandfather's retirement years, helps to clarify the record. (For a review, go here.) In religion, as in so much else, Ike was far more sophisticated than commonly realized. When still a young man in the 1970s, as part of research for the book published 35 years later, David Eisenhower interviewed the clergy who knew his grandfather well, including Billy Graham. David's remembrance is not chiefly about religion, of course. But the book's title captures its underlying theme of an aging solider and statesman who is preparing to go "home to glory."...
Read entire article at American Spectator
Often, America's religious life in the 1950s is dismissed as sterile and conventional. Supposedly President Dwight Eisenhower typified generic, superficial religion with his oft quoted quip: "Our government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don't care what it is."
The quote actually came from Eisenhower in 1952 after meeting his WWII fellow commander, Soviet Marshal Grigori Zhukov. Ike was explaining to reporters how America's creed of equality was based on the "Judeo-Christian concept," contrasting with the Soviet understanding of religion as the "opiate of the people." Eisenhower was not describing his own personal theology.
Grandson David Eisenhower's Going Home to Glory, a new memoir of his grandfather's retirement years, helps to clarify the record. (For a review, go here.) In religion, as in so much else, Ike was far more sophisticated than commonly realized. When still a young man in the 1970s, as part of research for the book published 35 years later, David Eisenhower interviewed the clergy who knew his grandfather well, including Billy Graham. David's remembrance is not chiefly about religion, of course. But the book's title captures its underlying theme of an aging solider and statesman who is preparing to go "home to glory."...