Christian nationalism as an idea has been around for a long time, but it became a major subject of popular and scholarly interest only in the last few years. Jonathan D. Redding’s contribution to the discussion, One Nation Under Graham: Apocalyptic Rhetoric and American Exceptionalism, is an analysis of evangelist Billy Graham’s role in the addition of the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954.
Redding begins with a quick look at the apocalyptic narratives in the biblical books of Daniel and Revelation and at how religious writers over the centuries have read them. For Graham, this meant that “Americans’ pledge of divine allegiance [was] a crucial first step toward ensuring stability: economic, military, social, political, and cultural” (61). Redding uses Graham’s sermons and writings to show that this was the major theme in Graham’s work. For example, in a 1963 sermon, Graham said: “We have begun to realize that the collapse of our civilization, the disasters of our times, the moral disease with which we are afflicted, that all this is somehow the result of our departure from almighty God” (72). The occasion here was President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, but Graham could (and did) say the same thing over the years in the context of many events. A number of other evangelical ministers preached much the same message. Graham’s importance was not that he was distinctive; it was that he was the most influential. According to Redding, Graham used that influence to persuade President Dwight D. Eisenhower to support adding “under God” to the Pledge in 1954. The book concludes with a discussion of how post-Eisenhower presidents understood and used the idea of America “under God.”
At 142 pages, One Nation Under Graham is not as thorough in some of these areas as one might hope. Redding is most successful in the early chapters. His brief discussion of religious leaders’ use of apocalyptic rhetoric, from Justin Martyr in the 2nd century to Graham and his cohort in the mid-20th century, is a good reminder that Christian nationalism has been around for a long time.
The second part of the book is less convincing. Eisenhower’s nationalistic religious views were shaped by more than just Graham, and in any case, while Redding refers several times to “Eisenhower’s decision to mandate the inclusion of ‘under God’ in the pledge” (138), “Eisenhower’s 1954 legislation” (10), and so forth, the “under God” mandate was a Congressional act, not an executive order. Eisenhower supported it, but Congress would likely have passed it without him. A year earlier, in the Spring of 1953, a Gallup poll showed that nearly 70 percent of Americans supported adding “under God” to the pledge. The 1950s was a religious decade, after all, at least in a performative sense. It was the decade of “In God We Trust,” of fighting godless Communism, of Norman Rockwell and Norman Vincent Peale. Redding’s assertion that “every time people recite the pledge, they speak Graham’s words” (8) is a considerable overstatement.
“Christian nationalism” and “American exceptionalism” are not always the same thing, and Redding could have been more discriminating in his use of the terms. More importantly, both terms were influenced by sources besides biblical apocalypticism. The Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization often mentioned for its role in promoting the addition of “under God” to the Pledge, does not appear in the book. Nor does Kevin M. Kruse’s thesis that the 20th century’s Christian nationalism really began in the 1930s with business opposition to the corporate regulation of the New Deal (One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America, Basic Books, 2015). Any sense of this larger context is missing with this volume’s laser focus on Graham. Graham’s role in shaping the Pledge of Allegiance might remain unproven, but Redding is certainly correct in his general assessment of Graham as an important promoter of America’s nationalistic religion.
David B. Parker is a professor of history at Kennesaw State University (Georgia).
David Parker
Date Of Review:
May 31, 2024
