Sometimes Great Leaders…Bring About Unintended Consequences

Following up on yesterday’s post on President Dwight D. Eisenhower, where I noted how a New York Times op-ed stated, “his greatness was manifested in the crises he defused and the mistakes he did not make,” I now turn to a religious statement made by Eisenhower.

It is well documented that America experienced a religious revival after World War II, though some churchmen like Niebuhr questioned its depth. Over two-thirds of Americans attended weekly services, though only half could name any of the four gospels. It was during this time that America experienced what Yale historian Sydney Ahlstrom called an “enlivened civil religion,” epitomized in President Eisenhower’s life.

“There seemed to be a consensus that personal religious faith was an essential element in proper patriotic commitment. In all of these modes, religion and Americanism were brought together to an unusual degree. This was especially true of the 1950s, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower served for eight years as a prestigious symbol of generalized religiosity and America’s self-satisfied patriotic moralism. The present even provided a classic justification for the new religious outlook. ‘Out government,’ he said in 1954, ‘makes no sense unless it is founded on a deeply felt religious faith – and I don’t care what it is.’” (Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People, 954).

As a result of President Eisenhower’s public religious expressions, Notre Dame historian George Marsden notes that more Americans favored a generic religion where God was “manageable, comforting, and ultimately a good-natured ‘man upstairs’” (George M. Marsden, Religion and American Culture, 214).