Ike's Faith

Dwight Eisenhower keeps a red leather Bible at his bedside, and, judging by the religious content of his speeches, he reads it. His expression of religious faith is more than politician's lip service. Writing in the April Reader's Digest, Roving Editor Stanley High, one of Ike's campaign advisers and once a Congregationalist lay preacher, explains that, in Ike's lexicon, the "spiritual" needs of the U.S. rank ahead of political or economic ones.

Says High: "What President Eisenhower wants for America is a revival of religious faith that will produce a rededication to religious values and conduct . . . He believes that the 'godly virtues' account for America's beginning, its growth in strength, material well-being and social progress. He believes that, except in a renewal of that faith and those virtues, there is no answer for the future.

"At one point in the campaign, some of [Ike's] associates were a little concerned by what they regarded as too much religion in his politics. Lest he be accused of overdoing it, they urged him for a few speeches to skip the spiritual note. At that proposal, the general was first puzzled, and then irritated. 'Gentlemen,' he told them sharply, 'you misjudge the American people.' "

Said Dwight Eisenhower, as High quotes him:

"You can't explain free government in any other terms than religious. The Founding Fathers had to refer to the Creator in order to make their revolutionary experiment make sense; it was because 'all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights' that men could dare to be free. They wrote their religious faith into our founding documents, stamped their trust in God on the faces of their coins and currency and put it boldly at the base of our institutions . . .

"Our forefathers proved that only a people strong in godliness is a people strong enough to overcome tyranny . . . Today, it is ours to prove that our own faith, perpetually renewed, is equal to the challenge of today's tyrants."

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