Kevin M. Kruse > Quotes

“President Eisenhower, like many Americans, is a very fervent believer in a very vague religion.”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“THE ORIGINAL PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE, much like the Constitution itself, did not acknowledge the existence of God. Its author, Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister from Rome, New York, was a decidedly religious man, but when he wrote the pledge in the 1890s he described himself as something that would seem an oxymoron in Eisenhower’s America: a “Christian socialist.”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“Through all these various revisions, the pledge remained godless. But as the Christian libertarian movement of “under-God consciousness” swept the nation in the early 1950s, a campaign to add that phrase to the pledge began in earnest. The idea originated with the Knights of Columbus, a leading Catholic fraternal organization.”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“In the end, the Declaration was not a rejection of government power in general but rather a condemnation of the British crown for depriving the colonists of the government they needed. In order to reframe the Declaration as something rather different, the Committee to Proclaim Liberty had to edit out much of the document they claimed to champion.”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“mid-1950s, when Americans underwent an incredible transformation in how they understood the role of religion in public”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“Eisenhower, in contrast, turned spirituality into spectacle. At a transition meeting with his cabinet nominees, he announced that they and their families were invited to a special religious service at National Presbyterian Church the morning of the inauguration.”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“It must be ‘UNDER GOD’ to include the great Jewish Community, and the people of the Moslem faith and the myriad of denominations of Christians in the land,” he said. “What then of the honest atheist? Philosophically speaking, an atheistic American is a contradiction in terms.” The Presbyterian praised atheists for being “fine in character” and “good neighbors” but suggested they were “spiritual parasites.” “I mean no term of abuse in this,” the minister added. “A parasite is an organism that lives upon the life force of another organism without contributing to the life of the other. These excellent ethical seculars are living upon the accumulated Spiritual Capital of a Judaio-Christian civilization, and at the same time, deny the God who revealed the divine principles upon which the ethics of this Country grow.”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“By the mid-1970s, the transformation was so complete that novelist Walker Percy asserted that a southern conservative was just “Billy Graham on Sunday and Richard Nixon the rest of the week.”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“Hollywood got into the act, with director Cecil B. DeMille helping erect literally thousands of granite monuments to the Ten Commandments across the nation as part of a promotional campaign for his blockbuster film of the same name.”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“As central expressions of patriotism, these changes guaranteed that religious sentiment would be not just a theme pressed by a transitory administration but rather a lasting trait of the nation. The addition of “one nation under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance ensured that the new fusion of piety and patriotism that conservatives had crafted over the past two decades would be instilled in the next generation of children and beyond. From then on, their interpretation of America’s fundamental nature would have a seemingly permanent place in the national imagination. And with “In God We Trust” appearing on postage stamps and paper currency, the daily interactions citizens made through the state—sending mail, swapping money—were similarly sacralized. The addition of the religious motto to paper currency was particularly important, as it formally confirmed a role for capitalism in that larger love of God and country. Since then, every act of buying and selling in America has occurred through a currency that proudly praises God.”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“Fifield’s connection to his congregation extended to their views on religion and politics too. In the apt words of one observer, Fifield was “one of the most theologically liberal and at the same time politically conservative ministers” of his era. He had no patience for fundamentalists who insisted upon a literal reading of Scripture. “The men who chronicled and canonized the Bible were subject to human error and limitation,” he believed, and therefore the text needed to be sifted and interpreted. Reading the holy book should be “like eating fish—we take the bones out to enjoy the meat. All parts are not of equal value.” Accordingly, Fifield dismissed the many passages in the New Testament about wealth and poverty and instead worked tirelessly to reconcile Christianity and capitalism. In his view, both systems rested on a basic belief that individuals would succeed or fail on their own merit.”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“He insisted that the poor in other nations, like those in his own, needed no government assistance. “Their greatest need is not more money, food, or even medicine; it is Christ,” he said. “Give them the Gospel of love and grace first and they will clean themselves up, educate themselves, and better their economic conditions.”31”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“While Billy Graham welcomed the adoption of the National Day of Prayer, he saw it as merely the beginning of the political and moral transformation needed to save the nation. In late 1951, he insisted that “the Christian people of America will not sit idly by during the 1952 presidential campaign. [They] are going to vote as a bloc for the man with the strongest moral and spiritual platform, regardless of his views on other matters.”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“Though widely used in the 1892 Columbus Day ceremonies, Bellamy’s pledge did not officially become the pledge until after the Second World War. Indeed, at the turn of the century, a number of different pledges competed for the loyalty of American schoolchildren. In New York State, schools that held flag ceremonies had a choice of five pledges, none of which made any reference to a deity. In San Francisco, the sixty different public schools followed their own preferences, resulting in a considerable range of pledges. Only after the First World War was there any real effort to select a single pledge for the entire nation, a movement that peaked with a pair of National Flag Conferences in 1923 and 1924.”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“In a forceful rejection of the public service themes of the Social Gospel, they argued that the central tenet of Christianity remained the salvation of the individual. If any political and economic system fit with the religious teachings of Christ, it would have to be rooted in a similarly individualistic ethos. Nothing better exemplified such values, they insisted, than the capitalist system of free enterprise. Thus, throughout the 1940s and early 1950s, Fifield and like-minded religious leaders advanced a new blend of conservative religion, economics, and politics that one observer aptly anointed “Christian libertarianism.”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“Clergymen responded enthusiastically. Many ministers wrote the Los Angeles office to request copies of Friedrich Hayek’s libertarian treatise The Road to Serfdom and anti–New Deal tracts by Herbert Hoover and libertarian author Garet Garrett, all of which had been advertised in Spiritual Mobilization. Some sought reprints of the bulletin itself. “I found your last issue of Spiritual Mobilization excellent,” a Connecticut clergyman reported. “Could you send me 100 copies to distribute to key people in my parish? I am quite anxious to get my people thinking along this line.” Others took more indirect routes in spreading the organization’s message. “Occasionally I preach a sermon directly on your theme,” a midwestern minister wrote, “but equally important, it is in the background of my thought as I prepare all my sermons, meet various groups and individuals.”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“It has been said that there are two great Commandments—one is to love God, and the other to love your neighbor,” Franklin D. Roosevelt noted soon after its creation. “The two particular tenets of this new organization say you shall love God and then forget your neighbor.” Off the record, he joked that the name of the god they worshiped seemed to be “Property.”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“In 1954, Congress followed Eisenhower’s lead, adding the phrase “under God” to the previously secular Pledge of Allegiance. A similar phrase, “In God We Trust,” was added to a postage stamp for the first time in 1954 and then to paper money the next year; in 1956, it became the nation’s first official motto.”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“For many viewers, though, the most memorable part of the parade was the very first float. Anointed “God’s Float” by its creators, it consisted of a replica of a house of worship with large photos of churches and synagogues arrayed along the sides. Two phrases appeared in grand Gothic script at each end: “Freedom of Worship” and “In God We Trust.”5”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“What then of the honest atheist? Philosophically speaking, an atheistic American is a contradiction in terms.” The Presbyterian praised atheists for being “fine in character” and “good neighbors” but suggested they were “spiritual parasites.” “I mean no term of abuse in this,” the minister added. “A parasite is an organism that lives upon the life force of another organism without contributing to the life of the other.”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“In little more than two years’ time, “In God We Trust” had surged to public notice, first taking a place of prominence on stamps and currency, and then edging its way past “E Pluribus Unum” to become the nation’s first official motto. The concept of unity from diversity could not compete with that of unity from divinity. “In God We Trust,” along with its counterpart in the Pledge of Allegiance, “one nation under God,” quickly emerged as the twin pillars of the ceremonial deism sweeping through the Capitol.”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“On its final page, the noted painter Arnold Friberg depicted Moses, his arms outstretched, with the Liberty Bell ringing behind him. Across the top of the page ran the same passage from Leviticus used earlier by Spiritual Mobilization: “Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land, unto All the Inhabitants Thereof.”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“The percentage of Americans who claimed membership in a church had been fairly low across the nineteenth century, though it had slowly increased from just 16 percent in 1850 to 36 percent in 1900.”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“Thus, throughout the 1940s and early 1950s, Fifield and like-minded religious leaders advanced a new blend of conservative religion, economics, and politics that one observer aptly anointed “Christian libertarianism.”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“From the colonial era to the Trump era, the “They Keep Coming” immigration myth has been used by xenophobes to demonize immigrants and lobby for immigration restriction. It has created a climate of fear and fueled discrimination and exploitation. At the same time, it has promoted a false and incomplete narrative of how immigration works. No part of the myth is actually true. Immigrants are not outsiders. “They” are “us.” Immigrants have not “kept coming.” They have been driven, recruited, lured, and incentivized to come to the United States, often with the direct help and encouragement of the US government and businesses. Only by fully understanding the origins, endurance, and contemporary relevance of the “They Keep Coming” myth can we begin to dismantle it and the xenophobia and racism that it fuels.”
― Kevin M. Kruse, Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past

“In the summer of 1953, Eisenhower, Vice President Richard Nixon, and members of their cabinet held a signing ceremony in the Oval Office declaring that the United States government was based on biblical principles”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“Together, these political and economic rights rested on a pedestal inscribed “Constitutional Government designed to Serve the People.” And that, in turn, stood on a more substantial foundation: “Fundamental Belief in God.”7”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“security,” he asserted. “We must give more attention to intellectual leadership and a strengthening of the spiritual concept that”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“The executive secretary of the Citizens Congressional Committee was Charles W. Winegarner. A former advertising executive from Fort Wayne, Indiana, he now worked full-time promoting the cause.”
― Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America

“If we truly seek to understand segregationists—not to excuse or absolve them, but to understand them—then we must first understand how they understood themselves. Until now, because of the tendency to focus on the reactionary leaders of massive resistance, segregationists have largely been understood simply as the opposition to the civil rights movement. They have been framed as a group focused solely on suppressing the rights of others, whether that be the larger cause of “civil rights” or any number of individual entitlements, such as the rights of blacks to vote, assemble, speak, protest, or own property. Segregationists, of course, did stand against those things, and often with bloody and brutal consequences. But, like all people, they did not think of themselves in terms of what they opposed but rather in terms of what they supported. The conventional wisdom has held that they were only fighting against the rights of others. But, in their own minds, segregationists were instead fighting for rights of their own—such as the “right” to select their neighbors, their employees, and their children’s classmates, the “right” to do as they pleased with their private property and personal businesses, and, perhaps most important, the “right” to remain free from what they saw as dangerous encroachments by the federal government. To be sure, all of these positive “rights” were grounded in a negative system of discrimination and racism. In the minds of segregationists, however, such rights existed all the same. Indeed, from their perspective, it was clearly they who defended individual freedom, while the “so-called civil rights activists” aligned themselves with a powerful central state, demanded increased governmental regulation of local affairs, and waged a sustained assault on the individual economic, social, and political prerogatives of others. The true goal of desegregation, these white southerners insisted, was not to end the system of racial oppression in the South, but to install a new system that oppressed them instead. As this study demonstrates, southern whites fundamentally understood their support of segregation as a defense of their own liberties, rather than a denial of others’.”
― Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism