God Wills It: Presidents and the Political Use of Religion by David O'Connell (review)

David O'Connell finds that American presidents in the postwar era, from Dwight Eisenhower through George W. Bush, used religious rhetoric in two ways. This first is communitarian, roughly the language and tropes of civil religion, which is intended to "help bring the American people closer together" (p. xiii). The second use of religious rhetoric is what the author calls coalitional, when a president aspires "to persuade just enough people with his words in order to achieve his political objective" (p. xiii). The first use unites; the second divides.

O'Connell is more interested in the second use of presidential rhetoric: coalitional. He devises criteria to determine when a president employs coalitional rhetoric and even more elaborate criteria to ascertain the success of those efforts, including polling data and the editorial comments of four newspapers: New York Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times. At the outset, O'Connell telegraphs his conclusions: For all postwar presidents, from Eisenhower to the second Bush, coalitional religious rhetoric was ineffective as a political tool.

Having dispatched with suspense, the author proceeds to analyze the policy aims and rhetorical strategies of postwar presidents, although he does so with some creative couplings. He opens by pairing Eisenhower's appeals for appropriations for foreign aid and Ronald Reagan's demands for increased defense spending. O'Con-nell characterizes Eisenhower's appeal as a jeremiad, and of Reagan he notes the paradox "that a man so concerned about the onset of Armageddon would at the same time be so committed to providing the supplies that might make it happen" (p. 54). Still, the author argues, all the talk about atheistic communism and the "evil empire" yielded no discernible results. As Marlin Fitzwater remarked, "Reagan would go out on the stump, draw huge throngs, and convert no one at all" (p. 78).

The Bushes, father and son, fared no better in their respective efforts to rally support for wars in the Persian Gulf. George H. W. Bush shamelessly used Billy Graham as a prop (albeit a willing prop), and he did attempt to justify the invasion using the arguments of a just war, although the Society of Christian Ethics voted overwhelmingly that the invasion was not justified. O'Connell fails to point out that, although George W. Bush frequently used the phrase "war on evil," he made no attempt to invoke just-war arguments.

Jimmy Carter, the most pious of postwar presidents, receives his own chapter, one that focuses on his "Crisis of Confidence" speech—often called the "malaise" speech, although the word appears nowhere in the text. "There is no other speech quite like this in the history of American politics," O'Connell writes (p. 148). Although initial response to the speech was positive, it did not wear well, especially when Carter soon thereafter demanded the resignations of cabinet officials, creating a sense of upheaval and chaos in his administration.

Both John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson invoked religious language in their support for civil rights and racial equality, but that rhetoric, O'Connell argues, had no discernible effect. Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton employed the language of sin, confession, and redemption, but the author claims that "there is strong reason to believe their choice of words actually made matters worse for each man" (p. 205). Absent in this survey is Richard Nixon. That is a defensible omission, perhaps, but Nixon used Graham as a prop far more than any other president, and H. Larry Ingle's book on Nixon's faith is conspicuously absent from the bibliography.

O'Connell concludes that although presidents resort to religious rhetoric in times of political crisis, it provides precious little political benefit. Part of the reason, he suggests, is that "the force of religious rhetoric has become weaker over time as the religious foundations of American society have begun to crumble" (p...