Published on Tuesday, October 26, 2004 by the Los Angeles Times
The White House Wasn't Always God's House
by Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
George W. Bush's presidency is the first faith-based administration in U.S. history.
The founding fathers did not mention God in the Constitution, and the faithful often regarded our early presidents as insufficiently pious.
George Washington was a nominal Anglican who rarely stayed for Communion. John Adams was a Unitarian, which Trinitarians abhorred as heresy. Thomas Jefferson, denounced as an atheist, was actually a deist who detested organized religion and who produced an expurgated version of the New Testament with the miracles eliminated. Jefferson and James Madison, a nominal Episcopalian, were the architects of the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom. James Monroe was another Virginia Episcopalian. John Quincy Adams was another Massachusetts Unitarian. Andrew Jackson, pressed by clergy members to proclaim a national day of fasting to seek God's help in combating a cholera epidemic, replied that he could not do as they wished "without feeling that I might in some degree disturb the security which religion now enjoys in this country in its complete separation from the political concerns of the general government."
In the 19th century, all presidents routinely invoked God and solicited his blessing. But religion did not have a major presence in their lives. Abraham Lincoln was the great exception. Nor did our early presidents use religion as an agency for mobilizing voters. "I would rather be defeated," said James A. Garfield, "than make capital out of my religion."
Nor was there any great popular demand that politicians be men of faith. In 1876, James G. Blaine, an aspirant for the Republican presidential nomination, selected Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, a famed orator but a notorious scoffer at religion, to deliver the nominating speech: The pious knew and feared Ingersoll as "The Great Agnostic"; a 21st century equivalent of Ingersoll would have been booed off the platform at the Republican convention of 2004.
There were presidents of ardent faith in the 20th century. Woodrow Wilson had no doubt that the Almighty designated the United States — and himself — for the redemption and salvation of humankind. Jimmy Carter, like Bush, was "born again." Ronald Reagan, though not a regular churchgoer, had a rapt evangelical following. But neither Wilson nor Carter nor Reagan applied religious tests to secular issues, nor did they exploit their religion for their political benefit. These are the standards that Bush has systematically violated.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1026-22.htm