A Worshiper in the White House

When Lyndon Johnson attended Mass at St. Matthew's Cathedral recently, Washington's Patrick Cardinal O'Boyle referred to the President in his sermon as "the chief ecumenist in this ecumenical age." Although a member of the Disciples of Christ, Johnson has worshiped at Roman Catholic, Episcopal, Christian and Lutheran churches as the spirit moves him. Religiously speaking, things will not change much in January. Richard Nixon belongs to the Society of Friends, but he has spent his Sunday mornings at a wide variety of Protestant churches.

Nixon was brought up in a strict and remarkably devout Quaker home. Each morning at breakfast, he and his four brothers took turns reading Scripture aloud to the family. As a youth, he played the organ and taught Sunday school at the Friends' meeting house in East Whittier, Calif. On Wednesday nights there were prayer meetings, on Thursday choir practice. "Our little community church was the center of our lives," Nixon has recalled. For a time, his mother Hannah hoped that Dick might enter the Friends' ministry.

The Brownie Troop. After his marriage to Pat, a Methodist, Nixon began to vary his habits of worship. In Washington, the Nixons generally attended whichever Protestant church was nearest their home. When they lived in the Spring Valley area, they went to Westmoreland Congregational Church. After they moved to Wesley Heights, their congregation became the Metropolitan Memorial Methodist Church. Not only was the church just a few blocks away, Pat once explained, but it also sponsored the local Brownie troop to which the Nixon daughters belonged.

Over the years, Nixon has formed close friendships with two of the nation's best-known preachers: Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peale. Nixon occasionally attends Baptist church services with Graham, and one of the President-elect's few public statements on religion was written for Graham's monthly magazine Decision in 1965. "Some of our voices in the pulpit today," Nixon wrote, "speak too much about religion in the abstract, rather than in personal, simple terms. More preaching from the Bible rather than just about the Bible is what America needs." Nixon also described religion as "the true fountainhead of America's strength. I have a profound conviction that the whole national experience of our people, the extent to which the American idea has worked, is evidence of the interdependence of a widely shared religious faith and the vigorous health of a free American society."

God on His Side. Since he moved to Manhattan, Nixon has occasionally worshiped at Calvary Baptist Church and St. Thomas Episcopal. But more often than not he attends Sunday services at Peale's Marble Collegiate Church. Although Nixon has never formally joined the congregation, he is an attentive listener who sometimes takes notes during sermons and joins in the hymn singing. Daughter Julie will be married to David Eisenhower at Marble Collegiate, and last week the Nixon family worshiped there again, with David as their guest. They heard a typical Peale sermon called "Never Doubt--God Is on Your Side," which reflected the indomitable optimism of his book The Power of Positive Thinking. "That God loves you is the greatest truth ever enunciated," said Peale. "God doesn't want anyone to be hungry and oppressed. He just puts his big arms around everybody and hugs them up against himself."

At his vacation retreat in Florida, Nixon worships at Key Biscayne's Presbyterian church. Nevertheless, he still lists himself as a Quaker. His mother described him once as "an intensely religious man, but he shuns even the restrained rituals of the faith. I am sure other Quakers understand my son. They know why he has been the center of so many controversies. Quakers are gentle and tolerant people, but they are also stubborn in defending their opinions and high-minded in pursuing their ideals."

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