The President's Friends and Foes: The Effect of the Nixon Presidency on the Divisions of American Quakerism

It was an unlikely place to find a Quaker leader talking about God. In front of a crowd bedecked in campaign buttons and holding brightly colored balloons, David Elton Trueblood strode out onto the stage to give a speech at the opening of the 1972 Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida. Trueblood, a prolific author and editorialist, was perhaps the most public face of Quakerism in the United States and he was speaking for a cause in which he dearly believed, the presidential campaign of co-religionist Richard Nixon.

Trueblood reflected on how presidents needed to answer to a higher power, using the example of Abraham Lincoln's assertion that the presidency was an instrument of God. What followed became what Trueblood's biographer James Newby describes as "one of the most damaging incidents" for Elton's image. Author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., in the audience reporting for Harper's Magazine, satirized Trueblood's speech in a scathing article entitled "In a Manner that Must Shame God Himself."¹ The writer declared that on "August 20, 1972, the Republican National Convention was opened with a sermon on The Divine Right of Presidents." Vonnegut accused Trueblood of helping to oppress the poor and Vietnamese and trying to reinvent Christianity. In his most damaging assertion, Vonnegut concluded by linking Trueblood to the President's faith. He concluded that "It seems entirely possible to me, now that I have learned [Nixon's] spiritual advisors are so appallingly commonplace, that he honestly believes he is serving God, no matter what he does."²

Vonnegut confronted Trueblood during an interview following the speech, and, suggesting that Quakers were traditionally pacifists, told Trueblood that he was "startled by the energy with which Richard M. Nixon, who had a Quaker background, could prosecute a war." Vonnegut described the Quaker leader's response:

He said I had a simplistic notion about what Quakerism was, a lot of Americans did. "Why," he said, "when I go around on speaking engagements they all expect me to look like the man on the box of Quaker Oats."

"So at this stage of American history, Quakers are an awful lot like everyone else?" I suggested.

Dr. Trueblood agreed heartily. "And we are just as mixed up as everybody else," he assured me. "And anyone that believes in a single pattern of Quaker is just plain stupid."³

Vonnegut failed to realize that he had just gotten a rare glimpse of an issue that had plagued American Quakers since Nixon first entered executive office, and one which would serve to deepen rifts in the practice of Quakerism. A key element in that fracture would be the question of Richard Nixon's place within the Quaker faith. For many Friends, Nixon was not just any President; defense or criticism of his policies began to serve as a focus for the arguments about divisions between Quaker factions.

Road to Power

While Quaker scholar H. Larry Ingle has insisted that Nixon "shed whatever ties he had with the Religious Society of Friends" when he became a Congressman, this ignores both Nixon's active relationship with prominent Quakers as well as his personal faith.⁴ Although Nixon rarely attended Meeting during his adult life, he was a lifelong member of the East Whittier Friends Church in California.⁵ Historian Paul F. Boller notes in his book Presidential Wives that Nixon even made sure to have his wife officially convert to Quakerism before their marriage.⁶ As Nixon once explained to his biographer Jonathan Aitken, "the impact of my Quaker heritage on my personality has been underestimated."⁷

Part of the reason that Nixon's Quaker faith was so misjudged was because few understood the branch of Quakerism which had shaped his childhood. East Whittier Friends Church was part of California Yearly Meeting, which in turn belonged to the Five Year Meeting, an overarching organization that changed its name to become Friends United Meeting (FUM) in 1965. As the single largest organization of Quakers, FUM allowed for pastors, much like other Protestant denominations. But...