In Religion in the Oval Office, Professor Smith extends his prior work to address and bridge what he accurately perceives to be a significant gap in presidential studies: the role and status of religious identity and faith in presidential behavior. Previously, in his well-received Faith and the Presidency, Smith delved into the lives of 11 presidents, thoroughly documenting the religious influences in their backgrounds and on their conduct. Here, he deals with an additional 11 presidents.
Smith's initial volume cherry-picked many of the obvious, and most interesting, choices of subjects: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush. The subsequent array of presidents considered herein is also surely worth Smith's and our consideration. Indeed, he claims that these 22, fully one-half of the presidents to date, are those for whom concerns regarding faith and religious issues are the most significant.
The founding era is well-represented, with four of the first seven presidents herein examined: John Adams, James Madison, John Quincy Adams, and Andrew Jackson. His last five subjects served during and after World War II: Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. The remaining two, William McKinley and Herbert Hoover, held office in the extended interim, but relatively closely spaced from the end of the 19th Century through the onset of the Great Depression. Chronologically, the major gap here is found in the decades immediately before and after the Civil War. With regard to partisan labels, he includes by my count a Federalist, two Democratic Republicans, four Democrats, and four Republicans. Only a Whig is missing. Denominationally, there is some understandable imprecision in identification, but we find Unitarians, Episcopalians, Quakers, Baptists, a Presbyterian, a Methodist, a Congregationalist, and a United Church of Christ. For these presidents, he frames and assembles a persuasive argument that we can advance our understanding of their presidency through an examination of their faith.
The book proceeds from a brief introduction through 11 biographical chapters to a short conclusion. Each biographical chapter features a similar structure. They begin with introductory remarks, followed by a thorough and thoughtful presentation of the president's faith, in its foundation and more mature manifestation. Then, Smith typically reflects on each subject's philosophy of government, views of the church-state relationship, and public policies. These chapters conclude with final assessments. This structure is flexible enough to enable Smith to focus within specific chapters on relevant emphases and events for particular presidents. Some have parallels and facilitate comparison; others are idiosyncratic.
No doubt mindful of the Biblical counsel, “seek and ye shall find,” Smith exhaustively mines primary and secondary sources in pursuing his thesis. He is thorough and even-handed in his presentation of previous and contrasting assessments of his subjects, with regard to their religious lives. His prodigious research features meticulous documentation; over one-fourth of the lengthy text is devoted to footnotes.
Readers broadly interested in religion and politics will find this book informative and insightful, as will aficionados of presidential biography. Smith's biographical portraits also merit the attention of presidency scholars whose focus is more on the presidential office and its institutional development. They will readily locate nuggets in the biographical details that clearly pertain to an alternative focus on such institutional features as changes in presidential nomination and election campaigns that entail outreach to religious leaders and grassroots voters, the emergence of a presidential staffing capacity to facilitate White House liaison with religious communities, and, most recently, a White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. The perceptive consideration of the private and public dimensions of presidential faith is highly relevant for students of presidential leadership, with regard to the president's role as Comforter-in-Chief in the midst of national tragedies and crises. Smith's account is also useful for students of interest group mobilization, political partisanship, and realignment of electoral coalitions, with particular attention to the significance of religion to these topics.
Similarly, the chronological arrangement of the biographical chapters enables readers to track the emergence and evolution of issues and controversies in the political arena, where religious beliefs can help explain stances taken. Examples include abolition, prohibition, and civil rights. Critical events — domestic, international, military, diplomatic, and economic — provide the developing environmental context for the presidential decisions where Smith seeks indications of personal faith effects. Alternative interpretations of the First Amendment guarantee of religious liberty, which give meaning to the principle of separation of church and state, thread their way through the biographical portraits. Several chapters address the relationship between public and private morality.
Smith forthrightly anticipates and addresses challenges to his thesis that the faith of presidents demands systematic scholarly attention because of its influence on their policies and performance. He recognizes, in a culture awash with religious symbolism and an electorate dominated by religious believers, astute, ambitious presidents will be disposed to cloak their actions in religious rhetoric. This reality challenges him to seek out indications of sincerity in private correspondence and testimonies of associates, as well as to evaluate their presidential behavior in the context of their pre- and post-presidencies.
Smith appreciates that presidential behavior can be at odds with expressions of faith without necessarily negating the latter, but he recognizes that political adversaries and secular scholars of these presidents may well question the authenticity of their faith claims. Skeptical readers may not share Smith's strong disposition toward credulity in accepting these claims. However, they should neither ignore, nor cavalierly disregard them. Smith succeeds in making his case that students of the presidency should pay more attention to the role that religious belief plays in the lives of the occupants of the White House.
