Dwight D. Eisenhower: Civil Religion and the Cold War

Abstract

When I shared with my graduate students that I thought Dwight D. Eisenhower was the most religious president in the twentieth century, they hooted back in unison, “Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Carter.” Soon thereafter, I read Philip Yancey’s accounts of Billy Graham’s ministry to Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s and of Yancey’s own religious conversations in the White House with Bill Clinton.¹ I have been chastened by the reminder that American presidents have, in their own way, embodied a variety of religious experiences. I also have had to remind myself that we cannot reliably know the outward signs of inward grace even among American presidents.