Religion and the American Presidency by Mark J. Rozell & Gleaves Whitney

Author:Mark J. Rozell & Gleaves Whitney
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783319621753
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

But Eisenhower would not abandon hope that the “titanic force” of nuclear energy could be directed to the useful service of mankind.

When Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin died in March 1953, Eisenhower believed the USA stood at a turning point in history, a time of unique danger and opportunity. His father had predicted such moments of judgment. Eisenhower was neither a millenarian nor a manichean, but his religious worldview was informed by the dialectical struggle between divine and demonic forces in history, an understanding not dissimilar to that of his father or contemporary theologian Paul Tillich . Typically, Eisenhower had described his struggles against the dark forces of history in the rhetoric of crusades, which was his way of highlighting the epic nature of history. But Eisenhower was not unaware of the complexities of history. His universalist beliefs regarded the Russians as “children of the same God who is the Father of all peoples everywhere.” And, despite his transformation into a Cold War president, Eisenhower believed, as he had in 1945, that the Russian people genuinely longed for peace and friendship. In the spring of 1953, he saw a “chance for peace.” 47 It is mystifying how scholars can read Eisenhower’s “A Chance for Peace” speech presented to the American Society of Newspaper Editors , April 16, 1953, and still conclude that he was bland, vague, uninformed, and disinterested. The president’s estimate of “A Chance for Peace” presented a manifestly political agenda while latently revealing Eisenhower’s religious transformation.

David Eisenhower had believed in three ages, or dispensations, in history, the last of which would be preceded by a fiery holocaust that foretold the second return of Christ . Eisenhower’s vision of the “middle-way” in human affairs, in contrast, rejected belief in an apocalyptic end to history. Eisenhower preferred to seek salvation within nature and human history and entertained no capitulation to evil or death in this world. Theologian Paul Tillich offered a more pacific version of this historical Trinity in his Protestant interpretation of history in which ages of autonomy and heteronomy, dialectically interacting, were superceded by a theonomous age that is “directed toward” the divine principle in history revealed by the Kairos —the turning point in history that revealed the meaning and destiny of history. 48

For Dwight Eisenhower, the spring of 1953 was just such a time of Kairos when the world was summoned to choose between peril and hope. “A Chance for Peace” described the Kairos literally:This is one of those times in the affairs of nations when the gravest choices must be made, if there is to be a turning toward a just and lasting peace. It is a moment that calls upon the governments of the world to speak their intentions with simplicity and honesty. It calls upon them to answer the question that stirs the hearts of all sane men: is there no other way the world may live? 49

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