God in the White House: A History by Randall Balmer

If you’ve read any of Randall Balmer’s other works you know he is a challenging author. He is very readable but he is often piercing in his observations. God in the White House is actually as disturbing as it is enlightening about the relationship of politics, Christian faith, and the men we have elected to the Presidency. Balmer only covers the presidency since JFK and so the work is not about all presidents, but certainly those of the television age and the ones of recent memory. It is an interesting characteristic of America that constitutionally we do not have a religious test for office nor are we uniformly Christian, but we have never yet elected a President who wasn’t a Christian even if their commitment was largely in name only. John F. Kennedy was a watershed president because he was the very first Catholic ever elected and because he asked Americans to set religious affiliation aside and make his platform and leadership the only criteria for their vote. Obviously this was taken to heart in 1960 and actually the religion of a president didn’t become an issue until 1976 when Jimmy Carter was elected and the phrase “Born-Again” became part of our national conversation. Although Carter’s term in high office has been widely considered a failure by many, Balmer considers him to be one of the few modern presidents whose faith really did guide his thinking and policies on a daily basis. Balmer is less generous with Reagan and Bush I who were quite adept at mobilizing the religious right for the purpose of winning elections but in reality did little to nothing to restore the declining morality in America that was the basis of their campaign. Our most recent president Balmer compared to Jimmy Carter as being quite outspoken about his commitment to Christ but felt many of his policies and viewpoints were very much out of step with the King of Kings. I tend to think Balmer is a bit harsh on Bush given that the examples he cites were related to the extraordinary decisions he was faced with in dealing with terrorism. We all look back with horror on the Japanese-American internment camps of WWII, but those too were extraordinary times and such periods are hardly the time to expect complete ethical consistency. This leaves Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford all three of which were church members but were extremely quiet about their faith. In each of their cases Balmer finds many instances where their decisions and policies were actually more reflective of Christ’s teaching than those who were vocal about their faith. Even Johnson’s escalation of the Vietnam war was based on the principle that the strong must stand up for the weak if they are being oppressed. In the end, Balmer notes the pattern that our Presidents who have been the most vocal about faith, are the most unbiblical in their policies and are frequently questioned the least by the public for them. This according to Balmer is more a reflection of us and not them. We are more willing to give our vote to those who talk a good game and harder on those who don’t. The answer he proposes is that we go back to Kennedy’s idea that we don’t blindly make our choice based on the religious affiliations of our candidates but on their records and proposed policies and whether we see them as in line with our Christian faith. Another issue Balmer raises is Christian ministers being involved in politics. Many pastors have done a good job of speaking truth to power precisely because they were on the periphery but when they were brought into the counsels of power, they tended to become more political and less Christian. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are prime examples of this phenomena. This should remind and warn us again that the wall of separation between Church and State is a healthy ideal if for no other reason than it keeps the corrosive effects of power politics from corrupting the Church at large.