In 2011, an ABC-Washington Post poll found that, by a 66% to 29% margin, Americans think “political leaders should not rely on their religious beliefs in making policy decisions.” I sympathize with the 5% who didn’t answer. To speak of a politician “relying” on religious beliefs assumes that those beliefs are external to the one who holds them, a body of doctrines to which he mindlessly defers. Refusing to “rely” on his religious beliefs, conversely, would require the believer to cease being himself; it can’t be done.
If it’s not a matter of simple reliance, then, what is it? The only way to get near the link between belief and political practice is to examine officeholders in the context of their times; that is what Gary Scott Smith does in “Religion in the Oval Office,” a follow-up to his “Faith and the Presidency From George Washington to George W. Bush” (2006). The present volume considers John Adams,James Madison, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, William McKinley,Herbert Hoover,Harry Truman,Richard Nixon,George H.W. Bush,Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. In each chapter, Mr. Smith discusses the president’s religious upbringing, his mature views on religion, his character, his philosophy of government, and two or three of his policies as manifestations of his religious principles. “Religion in the Oval Office” is meticulously researched, drawing on primary sources as well as previous scholarship. Mr. Smith is a capable (though not always lively) writer, and he has a nice way of upending readers’ assumptions about various presidents’ religious views.
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