Why God Liked Ike: Religion Belongs in American Foreign Policy

[TomSea]

June 2, 2019 Topic: Book Review Region: United States Tags: Dwight Eisenhower Religion Presidency History Foreign Policy
Why God Liked Ike: Religion Belongs in American Foreign Policy

Ike didn’t think he could govern without faith. The challenges facing the nation were too great, he felt, to be overcome using his judgment alone.

Alan Sears and Craig Osten with Ryan Cole, The Soul of an American President: The Untold Story of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Faith, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2019), 235 pp., $22.99.

“In God We Trust.” It’s something President Dwight Eisenhower wanted every American to remember, and so the saying has been stamped on our currency ever since. Ike’s initiative was the most overt and enduring expression of his determination to keep religion squarely in the public square. He believed that faith was a crucial instrument of national power—as important as pin-striped diplomats, the Pentagon and the New York Stock Exchange.

How Ike blended religion and politics is the focus of a new book, The Soul of an American President, by Alan Sears and Craig Osten. The authors head the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian nonprofit organization which advocates for religious freedom. That said, they approach Ike’s faith journey as objective scholars, with seriousness and thoroughness. And that approach has produced a book that is truly revelatory.

Read more at: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/why-god-liked-ike-religion-belongs-american-foreign-policy-60307