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President Dwight Eisenhower won landslide victories in 1952 and 1956, and with him so did the movement to promote America as a nation whose dependence on a gracious God was the key to it remaining free and prosperous.

As Kruse tells the story, it was Billy Graham who convinced Eisenhower that he was destined by God to be president in order to restore America to its spiritual roots lost during the New Deal years. Once again it was all about Faith, Freedom, Free Enterprise.

Eisenhower became a willing partner with Graham, believing as he did that our nation did have a spiritual heritage that should be honored. Not surprisingly the President threw his full support behind inserting “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and putting “In God We Trust” that had been on our minted coins onto our paper money.

Eisenhower also gave his blessing to a National Prayer Breakfast, the first of its kind, that morphed into what is now called the President’s Prayer breakfast. Today most cities have what is known as “mayoral prayer breakfasts” as an extension of what Kruse calls political religion, or what sociologists call “American civil religion,” that was given national profile under Eisenhower.

Signs did in fact point to a spiritual revival taking place across America in the 1950s. Church membership soared from 49% of the nation’s population to 69%. Americans strongly supported public displays of religion, almost always Christian in nature, as an appropriate reflection of the beliefs on which our nation was founded, despite evidence to the contrary.

Everything seemed to be going the way the National Association of Manufacturers, James FiField, Billy Graham, and most leading politicians had envisioned. The Christianization of America seemed in sight, something they were all sure would be good for democracy and for capitalism.

Then the Supreme Court stepped in and changed everything, kicking God out of schools, and threatening the nation’s religious foundations, at least that is how proponents of political religion saw it.

Two Court rulings got the conservatives fired up and the fight was on.

First there was the 1962 Engel v. Vitale case initiated by parents in New York who were challenging the state Board of Regents writing and approving a general prayer to be used in the public school system in an effort, the Regents said, to combat juvenile delinquency. The Supreme Court ruled that this decision amounted to government sponsored religion.

A year later in Abington School District v. Schempp case, the court said the same thing regarding school sponsored Bible reading and the reciting of the Lord’s Prayer.

Neither decision “kicked God” out of schools. What they did was to forbid schools and school systems from sponsoring prayer, Bible reading, or recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. But such details related to controversial decisions seldom matter to those upset by them. So critics of the Court used its decisions to claim that the nation’s religious heritage was being ignored and the right to the free exercise of religion was being infringed upon.

Within a very short period of time a bill for a constitutional amendment permitting prayer in public schools was introduced in Congress with great fanfare. The momentum for its passage quickly gained traction and it became an odds on favorite to succeed. With overwhelming public support, everything pointed to more than enough states ratifying it.

But unexpected events often change the tide of politics, and that is part of what happened with the school prayer amendment.

When President Kennedy went on television to inform the nation of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the threat of nuclear war suddenly became very real and had the undivided attention of every American. For six days the country was in a state of high anxiety of what might happen, wondering if we might wake up to discover Washington had been wiped out or if any of us would wake up at all.

Months after the crisis had been revolved the focus of the Congress and the President was on what to do about the nuclear threat the Soviet Union posed. Whatever urgency and momentum the school prayer amendment had was dissipated. Senators or Representatives on the fence had a reason to get off and focus on the threat to our national security.

The amendment never even came up for a vote.

The issue was hardly over, though. If anything criticism of the Court’s rulings only grew among political and religious conservatives whose efforts to fight back with a constitutional amendment had been thwarted. They still believed banning school prayer was simply the first sign of a country that was fast losing its moral bearings.

The turmoil of the 1960s revolving around civil rights and the Viet Nam War did nothing to change their mind. What is more, the confidence of many Americans about the direction and future of their country had also been shaken by the times. As a people we no longer seemed sure of who we were, what we stood for, or stood on.

For conservatives political religion continued to be the fail safe alternative to the kind of secularism they believe liberals were promoting in the public square that if successful would lead to God being abandoned altogether. In their churches they spoke long and often of the need to keep the faith, stand firm, and trust that with God’s help they would save the nation from judgment and destruction.

The story continues…