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The Political Use of Religions Symbols: A Case Study of the 1972 Presidential Campaign

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Bernard F. Donahue
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Extract

The relationship between politics and religion in the United States has been studied by political scientists from many perspectives. Church-state relations, religious bloc voting, political issues with strong religious overtones—these and other politico-religious phenomena have long been subjects of scholarly activity within the discipline. However, the use of religious symbols in politics has been much neglected by political scientists (though not by sociologists, psychologists and scholars). Long ago Harold D. Lasswell said “It is of the utmost importance to political science to examine in detail … the processes of symbolization.” Religious symbolization in American politics urges itself upon the political analyst, moreover, because of “the unique relationship” which has existed between religion and politics throughout the history of the nation. And there are, perhaps, no richer and more concentrated examples of politico-religious symbolism than those found in the campaign oratory to which the American public is regularly subjected. Candidates for the American presidency have long resorted to the manipulation of such symbols. Hence, a presidential campaign is a good situation for the study of the political use of religious symbols. The 1972 contest between George McGovern and Richard Nixon is an excellent case study. Frequently characterized by the public press as an election to choose “a national minister” because of the manifest use of politico-religious symbols by the candidates, the campaign provides ample evidence of the uses to which religious symbolization can be applied in American politics.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , January 1975 , pp. 48 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1975

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References

1 An overview of the traditional issues in this area is provided by Stedam, Murray S. Jr, Religion and Politics in America (New York, 1964)Google Scholar.

2 Lasswell, Harold D., “The Politics of Prevention,” in A Source Book for the Study of Personality and Politics, eds. Greenstein, Fred I. and Lerner, Michael (Chicago, 1971), p. 545Google Scholar. This is a chapter from Lasswell's early work, Psychopathology and Politics (Chicago, 1930)Google Scholar.

3 Among many others, Peter F. Drucker has made this point: “The unique relationship between religion, the state and society is perhaps the most fundamental —certainly it is the most distincive—feaure of American religious as well as American political life. It is … central to any understanding of American institutions”; idem., “Organized Religion and the American Creed,” in Fitzsimons, M. A., McAvoy, Thomas T., and O'Malley, Frank (eds.), The Image of Man (Notre Dame, 1959), p. 353Google Scholar.

4 Cf. Alley, Robert S., So Help Me God: Religion and the Presidency, Wilson to Nixon (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1972)Google Scholar and Novak, Michael, Choosing Our King: Powerful Symbols in Presidential Politics (New York, 1974)Google Scholar.

5 “A person's identity, that which he feels he is and somehow must be, is a mixture of things sui generis (properties he feels to be special to himself) and things shared with some group—a family, a religious body, a community, a nation” (Lane, Robert E., Political Thinking and Consciousness: The Private Life of the Political Mind [Chicago, 1969], p. 132)Google Scholar.

6 “Come home, come home,/Ye who are weary, come home/Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling/Calling, oh, sinner, come home” (Softly and Tenderly by Will Lamartine Thompson).

7 Newsweek, November 6, 1972, p. 43.

8 A rare example does appear with a typically Nixonian touch in his proclamation of “the eleventh commandment: No one who is able to work shall find it more profitable to go on welfare than to go to work.”

9 Scammon, Richard and Wattenberg, Ben, The Real Majority (New York, 1970)Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., p. 20.

11 Ibid., p. 21.

12 Ibid.

13 U.S. News and World Report, November 20, 1972, p. 14.

14 Henderson, Charles P., “The (Social) Gospel According to 1. Richard Nixon 2. George McGovern,” Commonweal, 09 29, 1972, p. 518Google Scholar.

15 Some of the more prominent facets of this phenomenon are investigated in “The Sixties: Radical Change in American Religion,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (January, 1970).

16 These issues are studied by Glock, Charles Y., Ringer, Benjamin B. and Babbie, Earl R., To Comfort and To Challenge: A Dilemma of the Contemporary Church (Berkeley, 1967)Google Scholar, and also by Hadden, Jeffrey K., The Gathering Storm in the Churches: The Widening Gap between Clergy and Laymen (Garden City, New York, 1969)Google Scholar.

17 Gibson Winter early in the decade portrayed such a fusion of social and religious values in The Suburban Captivity of the Churches (New York, 1962)Google Scholar.

18 Lasswell, , “Politics of Prevention,” p. 546Google Scholar.

19 Campbell, Thomas C. and Fukuyama, Yoshio, The Fragmented Layman: An Empirical Study of Lay Attitudes (Philadelphia, 1970)Google Scholar.

20 Ibid., p. 180.

21 Winter, , Suburban Captivity, p. 87Google Scholar.

22 Quoted in Henderson, , “The (Social) Gospel,” p. 519Google Scholar.

23 Ibid., p. 522. At the same time Henderson, saw that “though Nixon and McGovern may never explicitly mention religion, they will both seek to call forth deep sentiments and symbols that are in large part a product of religion” (p. 519)Google Scholar.

24 Ibid., p. 524.

25 See Hibbs, Ben, ed., White House Sermons (New York, 1972)Google Scholar.

28 Bellah, Robert, “Civil Religion in America,” in The Religious Situation, 1968 (Boston, 1968), pp. 331–55Google Scholar.Streiker, Lowell D. and Strober, Gerald S. put this in a broader perspective: “The sociopolitical attitudes of Americans are influenced by what they believe to be ultimately true, real and desirable. One source of such convictions is the religion of their churches. A second source is civil religion, the implicit faith in the American way of life” (Religion and the New Majority [New York, 1972] p. 171)Google Scholar.

27 See Wilson, John F., “The Status of Civil Religion in America,” in The Religion of the Republic, ed. Smith, Elwyn A. (Philadelphia, 1971), pp. 1–21Google Scholar.

28 Henderson, Charles P., The Nixon Theology (New York, 1972), p. 27Google Scholar. See also Bonnell, John Sutherland, Presidential Profiles: Religion in the Life of American Presidents (Philadelphia, 1971)Google Scholar and Alley, , So Help Me God, pp. 20–31Google Scholar.

29 Henderson, , Nixon Theology, p. xiGoogle Scholar.

30 The price which a President may have to pay for assuming the role of high priest may be better understood now in the wake of the historically unprecedented resignation in disgrace of Richard Nixon. Any religious-mythic aura which may have surrounded him (his successors also?) sustained a severe blow when the American people were admitted to the Oval Office via “the tapes” and there encountered not only political chicanery of the rankest sort but also a most “ungodly” torrent of profanities and vulgarities. On top of that came the self-destructing revelation of Nixon's participation in the obstruction of justice called the “cover-up” and the attendant realization by the people that they had been lied to by their President for over two years. Apart from the loss of legal, political and ethical supports for his presidency, Richard Nixon must also have lost any religious-mythic basis for support by the people. In fact, he may have invited an added measure of fury from a betrayed people; the storm of protest aroused by Ford's pardon of Nixon provides some indication of the people's sense of moral outrage in the whole affair.

It is worthy of note that when President Ford used a most blatantly religious symbolism in the announcement of the pardon, a sense of popular revulsion at such a usage was quite marked. Whether this new antagonism toward the use of religious symbols in political rhetoric is directed specifically toward this case or is the beginning of a greater awareness by the public of the manipulative, and therefore unacceptable, use of religion in politics remains to be seen.

31 See Hibbs, , White House Sermons, pp. 1–9Google Scholar.

32 Henderson, , Nixon Theology, p. 13Google Scholar.

33 Streiker, and Strober, , Religion and the New Majority, p. 192Google Scholar.

34 Ray Price as quoted in McGinniss, Joe, The Selling of the President 1968 (New York, 1969), pp. 193–194Google Scholar.

35 Lane, , Political Thinking and Consciousness, p. 191Google Scholar.

36 Ibid.

37 Berger, Peter, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (Garden City, New York, 1967), p.51Google Scholar.

38 The pragmatic political reason for doing so on the superficial level still remains a compelling force. “A president is also free to take his oath of office sans Bible and not to mention God if he so desires, but none has yet had the nerve, the inclination, or both. More significant, perhaps, concerning the place of religious persuasion in the United States today, is the fact that few politicians, no matter how cynical or skeptical of religion they personally are, will end a major political address without a prayer or mention of a divinity, a higher power, a supernatural force or a direct plea to God” (Gordon, George N., Persuasion: The Theory and Practice of Manipulative Communication [New York, 1971], p. 198)Google Scholar.

38 “A prince … should be careful that there does not issue from his mouth anything that is not full of … five qualities. To those who see and hear him he should seem all compassion, all faith, all honesty, all humanity, all religion. There is nothing more necessary to make a show of possessing than this last quality” (Machiavelli, The Prince, chap. 18).

40 Allen, J. W., A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (New York, 1960), p. 459Google Scholar.

41 The Prince, chap. 21.

42 Machiavelli, , The Discourses, I: 11Google Scholar.

43 The quotes in this paragraph are taken from Rousseau's, Social Contract, IV: 8Google Scholar.