One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (16 page)

Though he attracted a considerable deal of scrutiny, Wilson was by no means the only corporate titan in the Eisenhower cabinet. Treasury Secretary George Humphrey, for instance, had long served as president of the Mark A. Hanna Company of Cleveland, a sprawling conglomerate with interests in coal, oil, natural gas, iron, steel, copper, rayon, plastics, shipping, and banking. (A fellow cabinet member called him “the Ohio Tycoon” for the sake of brevity.) Commerce Secretary Sinclair Weeks, a
New England financier and banker, was such a zealous advocate for business that Eisenhower privately worried that he “seems so completely conservative in his views that at times he seems to be illogical.” Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield ran one of the nation's largest automobile agencies but also found success in real estate, oil, and insurance, while Hobby had made her fortune as a Texas newspaper publisher. Although not businessmen themselves, both Dulles and Brownell had close ties to the corporate world from their time at two of New York's oldest law firms; Dulles had reportedly earned more in billings than any other corporate attorney in America. The glaring exception in the cabinet's cast of business figures was Secretary of Labor Martin Durkin, who was not only the sole Catholic in the group but also an avowed Democrat and union man. At the group's first meeting, Benson observed that “Durkin seemed a little uncomfortable, as though he felt a Democratic labor leader was out of place in this conservative gathering from the world of American business and finance.” Others noticed as well. In a famous quip, Richard Strout of the
New Republic
joked that “Ike has picked a cabinet of eight millionaires and a plumber.” An awkward fit from the beginning, Durkin lasted just eight months before he resigned.
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The presence of the corporate elite in the Eisenhower cabinet was so pronounced that some observers wondered if the Republicans had changed direction from the New Deal a bit
too
abruptly. “There is bigness all around the White House: General Motors, the Chase bank, Dillon Reed, Continental Can,” noted
The Nation.
“We wish President Eisenhower well, but fear that in surrounding himself with Big Dealers he has cut himself off from the millions of little people who elected him.” Such complaints might have been expected from a liberal magazine, but corporate leaders were equally worried. Accordingly, several enlisted the Opinion Research Corporation of Princeton, New Jersey, to determine whether the American people thought the new administration was too attuned to the needs of big business. Not surprisingly, Republicans were wholly supportive of the presence of corporate leaders in the cabinet, with 90 percent approving; independents and Democrats, however, were not far behind, with 79 and 68 percent satisfied, respectively. Americans did worry about the abilities of these officials to root out corruption in their departments and to understand the plight of ordinary people, but in general they were
willing to give the business leaders in charge of their government a chance to prove themselves. In a personal letter to his friend Sinclair Weeks, Opinion Research's president, Claude Robinson, suggested that there was a “strong feeling that business leadership is a package which can be merchandised successfully if we would but use our imaginations on it.”
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Business leaders, of course, had long been working to “merchandise” themselves through the appropriation of religion. In organizations such as Spiritual Mobilization, the prayer breakfast groups, and the Freedoms Foundation, they had linked capitalism and Christianity and, at the same time, likened the welfare state to godless paganism. After decades of work, these businessmen believed their efforts had finally paid off with the election of Dwight Eisenhower. Watching him enthusiastically embrace public faith, these supporters assumed that the national religious revival was largely a means to a more important end: the rollback of the New Deal state. But they soon realized that, for all his sympathies for and associations with business leaders, Eisenhower saw the religious revival itself as his essential domestic duty. To their amazement, once in office he gave relatively little thought to the political and economic causes that his backers had always seen as the real reason for that revival.

Eisenhower did agree with his supporters about the need to reduce the regulatory role of the federal government, especially its oversight of the business world. “I believe this country is following a dangerous trend when it permits too great a degree of centralization of government functions,” he wrote his brother in 1954. “When we came into office there were Federal controls exercised over prices, wages, rents, as well as over the allocation and use of raw materials. The first thing this Administration did was to set about the elimination of those controls.” But he refused to go further, especially when it came to the welfare state that his supporters had long worked to destroy. Despite his personal sympathies with their position, the president believed “the mass of the people” disagreed. “Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history,” he warned. “There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are H. L. Hunt . . . , a few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”
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Even though Eisenhower's rise to power had depended on support from “Texas oil millionaires” such as Sid Richardson, he refused to roll back the welfare state they despised. In fundamental ways, he ensured the longevity of the New Deal, giving a bipartisan stamp of approval to its continuation and significantly expanding its reach. Notably, Eisenhower pushed Congress to extend Social Security coverage to another ten million Americans and increase benefits as well. In his first term, the president repeatedly resisted calls from conservatives to cut education spending; in his second, he secured an additional $1 billion for the cause. On a much larger scale, Eisenhower established the single largest public works project in American history with the interstate highway system, a massive undertaking whose costs soon exceeded the original estimate of $101 billion. As government spending increased, meanwhile, the president did little to bring down tax rates for the wealthy; the top bracket barely dipped, declining from 94 percent to 92 percent over the course of his two terms in office. By then, more of Eisenhower's former admirers from the business world agreed with Senator Barry Goldwater's assessment that his presidency had offered Americans little more than a cheap imitation of the Democratic agenda. The Eisenhower administration seemed, in the conservative champion's memorable phrase, just a “dime-store New Deal.”
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Eisenhower had, however, accomplished one of the goals he ostensibly shared with his supporters from the business world. His administration succeeded in sacralizing the state, swiftly implementing a host of religious ceremonies and symbols and thereby inscribing—quite literally, in many ways—an apparently permanent public religion on the institutions of American government. Unlike Christian libertarians, who had long presented God and government as rivals, Eisenhower had managed to merge the two into a wholesome “government under God.” In doing so, he ironically undercut the key argument of many of his earlier backers, making their old claims about the “pagan” origins of statism seem suddenly obsolete. The state was now suffused with religion, and so it would remain.

F
OR CONSERVATIVES WHO HAD ASSUMED
that the success of “under-God consciousness” during the Eisenhower administration would naturally lead to tangible reductions in the welfare state, his time in office was a disappointment. But for those who welcomed the religious revival
on its own terms, the Eisenhower administration was a turning point. In April 1953, for instance, an official with the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) praised the president for the pious example he had set. “With you, the churches and Christian leaders in these United States have a profound belief in Almighty God and the freedom of all men under Him,” noted Clyde Taylor. “Religious congregations all over America have been greatly strengthened by the simple, unabashed, public stand which you have taken, demonstrating your belief in God, especially in your inaugural prayer to Him for strength and guidance.” As the NAE's representative in Washington, Taylor informed the president about its plan to hold a “Capital Crusade Day” on Independence Day that year and requested his participation in ceremonies held at the base of the Washington Monument. The event would feature prominent Christian leaders drawn from the ranks of government, education, industry, and entertainment. Gathered together, they would launch a yearlong “March of Freedom,” which would be heavily promoted across the nation. The goal, Taylor noted, was “rekindling the fires of enthusiasm of the American people for freedom under God.”
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The National Association of Evangelicals was a relatively new organization, little more than a decade old, and White House staffers who were unfamiliar with it were initially inclined to reject the request. A check with the Library of Congress, however, revealed that the association represented more than ten million Americans from thirty-five different Protestant denominations and was, in fact, “thoroughly reputable,” with “some of the finest preachers in the country included in its membership.” Accordingly, Eisenhower's staff brought the matter to his attention. (As they passed along the NAE proposal, they clipped to it a note about a separate request from Fifield, seeking a presidential proclamation for the third annual “Freedom Under God” ceremony scheduled for the same day. “While it is an entirely separate undertaking from that of the National Association of Evangelicals,” an official noted, “it seems to me that it is a similar movement.”) The president's staff recommended avoiding making any commitment, but Eisenhower decided it was a cause that deserved his time.
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In a dramatic show of support, Eisenhower took part in a signing ceremony for a religious manifesto that organizers called the “Statement of Seven Divine Freedoms.” Derived from Psalm 23, the seven freedoms
formed what an NAE official called “a simple basic scriptural statement of the Spiritual source of Freedom” in the United States of America. Promotional posters detailed the list of freedoms and the specific verses of the psalm that supported them:

       
1.
 
FREEDOM FROM WANT:

           
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want” (v. 1)

       
2.
 
FREEDOM FROM HUNGER:

           
“He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:” (v. 2a)

       
3.
 
FREEDOM FROM THIRST:

           
“He leadeth me beside the still waters” (v. 2b)

       
4.
 
FREEDOM FROM SIN:

           
“He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.” (v. 3)

       
5.
 
FREEDOM FROM FEAR:

           
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” (v. 4)

       
6.
 
FREEDOM FROM ENEMIES:

           
“Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.” (v. 5)

       
7.
 
FREEDOM TO LIVE ABUNDANTLY:

           
“Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” (vv. 5–6)

In all, the Seven Divine Freedoms were intended both to reflect and to reject the famous Four Freedoms advanced by Franklin Roosevelt more than a decade before. They were clearly patterned on that precedent, closely echoing Roosevelt's quartet of freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear, with the last two repeated verbatim. But the Seven Divine Freedoms, with their invocation of biblical authority, were meant to trump the “human freedoms” that Roosevelt had enumerated.
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As with earlier drives to supplant the secular authority of the welfare state with the higher power of the Almighty, the Seven Divine Freedoms ultimately served an earthly purpose. Organizers made the political aims of the project explicit in their plans. “There is a growing realization that the enemies of freedom are not foreign powers,” observed R. L. Decker, the NAE's executive director, “but that there are forces at work within the nation which are just as dangerous and more sinister than any foreign foe. These forces take advantage of the natural desires of the people for unity and security and material prosperity to propose panaceas for our social, economic, and political problems which, if accepted, would rob us of our freedom as effectively as defeat in warfare,” he continued. “Our only protection against such forces is a real revival of the spiritual life from which freedom flowed through our founding fathers into the very essence of American life.” A promotional pamphlet noted that the March of Freedom was designed “to change the pattern of thinking about our nation from the present prevailing socialistic, collectivist, secularist, agnostic pattern to the original God-centered freedom ideal as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the United States Constitution.”
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