Let Us Pray

PETER: This is BackStory. I’m Peter Onuf.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I believe in God. I am Christian.

HILLARY CLINTON: I am a person of faith. I am a Christian.

PETER: These days, American presidential candidates are practically required to proclaim their religious faith. But for much of American history, presidents were reluctant to speak openly about their faith. In fact, two of the country’s most admired presidents, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, had no formal religious affiliation at all. But in some elections, the faith of a presidential candidate takes center stage. In 1928, the country’s first Catholic presidential candidate lost in a landslide.

GRANT WACKER: He’s got a campaign stop in Oklahoma City, and they burn crosses where his train is coming through.

PETER: A history of faith and the presidency, coming up on BackStory.

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PETER: Major funding for BackStory is provided by the Shiocan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation, and The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.

ED: From the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, this is BackStory. With the American Backstory hosts.

BRIAN: Welcome to the show. I’m Brian Balogh, and I’m here with Ed Ayers.

ED: Hey, Brian.

BRIAN: And Peter Onuf’s with us.

PETER: Hey there, Brian.

ED: IN New York City, in 1832, a devastating cholera epidemic swept across the city.

ADAM JORTNER: When it first arrives in New York, there are 1,000 deaths in the first two weeks.

ED: This is Auburn University historian Adam Jortner.

ADAM JORTNER: Over 2,000 people die in New York City before the epidemic is finished. It sort of rips through New York City, and on to Philadelphia, and St. Louis, and so forth.

ED: Cholera is caused by poor sanitation, when food or water is contaminated by human waste. But in the 1830s, people didn’t know that. They just saw their fellow Americans collapsing around them, losing control of the bowels, their skin turning blue from dehydration. Many died within hours. So it’s not surprising that some Americans turned to a higher power.

ADAM JORTNER: There is a church in New York City, the Dutch Reformed Church, and they draft a resolution asking the president of the United States, Andrew Jackson, to declare a day of prayer and fasting to ask God to remove this terrible plague, this terrible pestilence he has sent on the nation.

ED: Now, both George Washington and James Madison had earlier proclaimed days of fasting and prayer, so requesting a national prayer day wouldn’t have seemed inappropriate. But to the church’s surprise–

ADAM JORTNER: Jackson says, no. Jackson writes, “I couldn’t do this without transcending those limits which are prescribed by the Constitution for the president. And without feeling that I might, in some degree, disturb the security which religion now enjoys in this country, in its complete separation from the political concerns of the general government.”

ED: That should have been the end of it, but it wasn’t. Jackson’s refusal to declare a national prayer day sparked a political brawl. Senator Henry Clay, a rival of Jackson’s who planned to run for president that year, quickly put forth his own Senate resolution for a day of fasting to combat cholera.

ADAM JORTNER: Henry Clay is well known as a card playing gambler. He’s a drinker. So he’s not exactly the kind of person these, sort of, religious types are going to vote for. So he stands up and says, I might be a drinker and a gambler, but I think the State should recognize God and ask God for His protection.

It’s a strange speech, because he actually says in the Senate, I am a member of no religious sect. I regret that I am not. I wish that I was. And then he asks for this resolution.

ED: As Clay’s resolution sailed through the Senate and headed to the House, President Jackson remained silent. But his allies in Congress and the press really went after Clay.

ADAM JORTNER: One of Jackson’s supporters accuses Clay of “prostituting our holy religion.” They said that, “this fast by authority was a mere stepping stone to more odious forms of political control.”

ED: That’s great, “fast by authority. ”

ADAM JORTNER: Yeah. I mean, there’s a real fear, and the newspapers really capture it, that, if you get a politician talking about when to pray, and what to pray for, that that’s tyranny.

ED: So why all this heated rhetoric for an issue that had been relatively uncontroversial? Jortner says, in Clay’s case, he simply was playing politics. He was courting religious voters for his presidential campaign. But what about Andrew Jackson? Jortner says Jackson’s motivations were more complicated.

ADAM JORTNER: He’s a religious guy, but you can’t say that, just because someone is religious, that they’ll think it’s OK for the state to invoke God. Or for the state to sponsor prayer days of prayer.

ED: Or to go even farther, just because somebody is religious, and happens to be president of the United States, does not mean that they believe that power, the political power, should be used to advanced the religious.

ADAM JORTNER: And I think it– they actually believed exactly the opposite. That by keeping the state out of religion completely, that was the best way to assure that true religion would flourish.

ED: So Jackson was acting on principle, not petty politics, right? Again, not exactly. Jortner points out that the very churches that were calling for a day of prayer were among Jackson’s most vocal enemies.

ADAM JORTNER: Jackson is, in 1832, trying to remove the Cherokee Indians from Georgia, from Alabama. And who wants to stop him? It’s evangelical Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, mostly from the north. And these guys had been telling Jackson, hey, you can’t do this. Don’t remove them.

ED: And Jackson, just like Clay, had his eye on the November election, which he won easily, by the way. Rejecting the prayer resolution played to his political base.

ADAM JORTNER: I think he knew perfectly well that his supporters were in the south. And he knows they want their Christianity without the hands of the government touching it. And I think he did this, in part at least, to shore up his support in the southern states.

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