What is the role of the American president in the faith of the nation, or of the faith of Americans? Or is that a bad question—does the president's faith mean anything at all, or should the nation be leery of any movement that might drift afoul of the sixth article of the Constitution, that no religious test should be allowed for elected officials? While agnostics, atheists, and some Constitutional purists might wish that this were the case—that the president's faith has no bearing on any issue—this has not been the path that the American electorate has historically trod. Americans care about the faith of the chief executive. Perhaps this is simply a holdover from bygone days. Or perhaps Americans instinctively recognize that some kind of religious faith sustains any president at certain moments. One can hardly imagine some of the presidential moments when the president is called upon to act as “mourner-in-chief” without some kind of faith component. From the presidential addresses after the Challenger disaster to the response to the attempted assassination of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, presidents sometimes find themselves doing work that seems religious. Martin Marty's introduction notes that “Willy-nilly, the president serves a kind of priestly role” (xi). So this book offers a significant contribution to an ill-defined yet important factor in the American presidency.

David L. Holmes's The Faiths of the Postwar Presidents: From Truman to Obama offers significant insights into the religious beliefs and practices of the men who have held the office of the presidency of the United States since the end of World War II. The book is a treasure trove for the scholar of American religious history as well as the political analyst, offering significant insights into each of the figures who have held the office. As Marty notes, this volume supplies a fine resource for providing perspective to voters through its presentation of fair historical backgrounds. The book does an extraordinary job of delivering in a single volume a set of short considerations of faith in the lives of the presidents from Truman to Obama.

Holmes is known for his work on the impact of faith in the political realm, especially for his Faiths of the Founding Fathers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). The strengths of Holmes's work in the present work are immediately apparent. He has sifted through the variety of schools of thought on the meaning and function of religious faith in the biography of each president, and combined that with his own primary research to furnish his readers with excellent considerations of how the Christian faith that each president reported informed the thought of the presidents. All of the presidents at issue were at least nominally Christian, and all except for Kennedy were Protestants of various types.

His short portraits never fail to delight the reader with some previously unknown fact. While Dwight D. Eisenhower became a member in a Presbyterian church after his inauguration, his parents were dispensationalists who raised him in the predecessor religion to the Jehovah's Witnesses. Further, that fact seems to have been embarrassing to Eisenhower, as he sought on several occasions to smooth over that close relationship with vague recollections of a deep Bible-centered faith (31). While Kennedy's promiscuity has been widely reported, far fewer readers will know that there are multiple sources that claim that he never went to bed without praying on his knees (72). Richard Nixon was raised a Quaker, but while studying at a college founded by the Quakers, adopted a Unitarian view of Jesus and considered the possibility of being a good Christian without believing in the resurrection likely (105).

While it will be tempting for readers and scholars to treat this book as an encyclopedia of presidential faith, and only mine its entries for nuggets to enhance their own articles, that approach will leave significant value behind. One such insight that unfolds over the pages of several of the articles on different presidents is the astonishing access that Billy Graham has had to the White House. Though Graham's own Southern Baptism has been shared only by one member of this elite fraternity, he has been a guide to presidents from Eisenhower to George W. Bush, and an advisor of some influence to at least two of them. Another such factor that develops throughout the book is the variety of patterns of presidential attendance at worship, and what the public makes of this. While some presidents adopted a Washington, D.C. church home, others adopted Camp David, while Nixon set up regular Sunday worship at the White House itself, and still others like Reagan and Obama became infrequent worship attenders for a variety of reasons.

Though Holmes's book holds substantial value for both the scholar and the leisure reader, the book is not without faults. One such weakness is a choice. The book proceeds as a series of presidential religious biographies or articles. The author did not set this off with an opening essay that might speak to issues of method, or of the value of this material. This leaves some of the foundational questions unanswered, even unasked. The first question is the most obvious—what should the president's religious role be? Are there lines that should not be crossed? Are there expressions of faith that conflict with the president's oath to protect the Constitution that includes the First Amendment? What is or should be the president's function in civil religion? Famously, Americans have believed that there can be a Christian president—but do the allegiances required of the believer and the chief executive in some ways present insoluble contradictions?

Another such problem comes from the unevenness in judging when a position does not match the religious posture that the president in question has stated. For instance, Jimmy Carter's choice to leave the Southern Baptist Convention is noted. Holmes continues with a contextualizing attack on Carter's choice from Charles Colson, wherein Colson characterized Carter's choice as “imprudent and presumptuous . . . pure hubris” (168). A much gentler treatment is given to George W. Bush. Analyzing the religious dimension of the justification for the war in Iraq, Holmes notes that Deal Hudson, the White House's director of Catholic outreach from 2000–2004 and a practicing Roman Catholic, had a group of Roman Catholic advisors who after thorough examination of the Catholic theory of a just war, concluded that “the invasion [of Iraq] qualified as a just war, especially on the basis of the ‘imminent threat’ posed by the WMDs repeatedly cited by intelligence” (265–266). Holmes then remarks that Pope John Paul II delivered more than fifty public addresses condemning possible military action. The religious warrant of just war theory was denied by the highest possible Catholic authority—and the Catholic advisors and the evangelical president they advised paid no discernible attention. To go further, Holmes supplies an incredibly generous treatment of Reagan's Christianity while noting the mixed history concerning Ronald and Nancy Reagan's reliance on astrology. As Reagan's Christian supporters do, Holmes recognizes Reagan's Christianity and downplays any reliance on astrology.

Both of these problems may come from Holmes's decision to approach the question of presidential faith from a stance that reports, rather than judges, the president's faith commitments. Throughout the work, the author is clearly accepting each president's self-characterization of his faith commitment and his religious practice. When that faith commitment became an issue, Holmes takes up the subject. But this is not a book that critically examines each president's faith, and judges whether any of the twelve men actually deserve the title of Christian. While such a book is possible, such efforts always attract criticism for partisanship. The author has instead chosen to write an excellent book that gives information, but demands the reader supply the conclusions.