President Truman Advocated Reading The Bible — Not Profiting From It
(ANALYSIS) How’s this for a presidential prayer: “Make me truthful, honest, and honorable in all things. Make me intellectually honest for the sake of right and honor, and without thought of reward to me. Give me the ability to be charitable, forgiving, and patient with my fellowmen. … Amen, Amen, Amen.”
That’s what the 33rd president of the United States, Harry Truman, wrote down in 1950 after five years on the job. He said he had recited that prayer “over and over” throughout his adult life, starting when he was a “window washer, bottle duster, floor scrubber.” The life and presidency of Truman (born 140 years ago on May 8, 1884) contrasts powerfully with that of Donald Trump, who this spring is melding court appearances with commercials for his new $60 “God Bless the USA” Bibles. Amazon sells Bibles for $6.
Truman advocated reading the Bible, but did not profit financially from sales. Instead, he repeatedly attested to its spiritual benefits starting from his childhood time at the First Presbyterian Church in Independence, Missouri, where he “learned all the good stories of the Old and New Testaments.” He professed his own faith in Christ at age 18 and later said the Bible didn’t tell him how to vote but gave him historical perspective: Political conflicts that “appear to be new … existed in almost identical form at various times during the past 6,000 years.”
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Truman also differed from Trump in his attitude to churchgoing. On June 2, 1945, two months into his presidency, Truman with no advance notice walked one-tenth of a mile to the church closest to the White House, St. John’s, and slipped into a back pew. He wrote in his diary, ‘Don’t think over six people recognized me.” Trump amid Washington demonstrations in 2020 walked to but not into St. John’s, and on camera held up a big Bible — but showed no familiarity with its contents except for what in 2016 he said was his favorite Bible verse: “An eye for an eye.”
Times and Secret Service concerns, of course, have changed, but Truman saw the Bible as offering perpetual challenge to the USA rather than automatic blessing. In a 1937 Senate speech Truman said, “We worship money instead of honor. … We worship Mammon, and until we… return to the Giver of the Tables of Law and His teachings, these conditions are going to remain with us.” He frequently quoted Micah 6:8 — act justly, love mercy, walk humbly with God” — and Matthew 25, which calls for helping “the least of these my brethren.” That’s one reason his refugee policy led to the admission of 400,000 World War II victims, 80,000 of them Jewish.
Truman did stand on the Bible in a specific foreign policy crisis that led to his overruling of the U.S. Department of State concerning recognition of the nation of Israel in 1948. U.S. diplomats overwhelmingly argued that support for Israel would damage U.S.-Arab relations, decrease oil imports, and open Middle East doors for the Soviet Union. State Department staffer Albert Lilienthal complained that Truman “was a Biblical fundamentalist who constantly pointed” to Deuteronomy 1:8 to justify his actions: God through Moses tells the Israelites, “I have set the land before you. Go in and take possession.”
Clark Clifford, Truman’s favorite aide, discussed with him that verse and other Old Testament prophecies from which Truman concluded that God wanted the land to be “an everlasting possession” for Israel. When the country thus named declared its independence on May 14, 1948, Truman recognized it eleven minutes later, making the U.S. the first country in the world to do. Staffer David Niles said Israel would not have survived had Truman’s predecessor, Franklin Roosevelt, still been president. U.N. secretary general Trygve Lie said “no Harry S. Truman… no Israel.”
Truman relied on Scripture in a more general way when he assessed the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. Truman wanted Americans to show “the same devotion and determination the Communists give to their godless creed.” Christian teachings, he added, “are a sure defense against the godlessness and the brutality of ideologies which deny the value of the individual.” He said, “The international Communist movement… denies the existence of God and, wherever it can, it stamps out the worship of God [and] belief in the dignity of man and the value of human life.”
Truman continued: Communism “attacks our churches, our guarantees of civil liberty, our courts, our democratic form of government. Communism claims that all these things are merely tools of self-interest and greed—that they are weapons used by one class to oppress another.” Truman labeled his favorite chapters, Exodus 20 (the Ten Commandments) and Matthew 5-7 (the Sermon on the Mount) “the greatest bulwark” against “a godless system of slavery.” He wrote to Pope Pius XII: “All who cherish Christian and democratic institutions should unite against… the Soviet Union, which would substitute the Marxian doctrine of atheistic communism for Revelation.”
Truman did not want either church or state to be dominant. In notes from the 1952, Truman said Jesus “taught that every man is the creation of a merciful God, that men are sinners and that he had come into the world to teach sinners how to approach His Father—and the way was not through Caiaphas the High Priest or Augustus the Roman Emperor. The way is direct and straight. Any man can tell the Almighty and Most Merciful God his troubles and directly ask for guidance. He will get it.”
He maintained that emphasis on God’s power rather than government’s. In 1946 he called for a “moral and spiritual awakening” that would counter the “forces of selfishness and greed and intolerance.” He said only “the flame of a genuine renewal of religious faith” would suffice. In 1948 he confided in his diary, “We need an Isaiah, John the Baptist, [or] Martin Luther” to bring a spiritual awakening—“may he come soon.”
Truman’s last presidential Christmas message, in 1952, quoted John 3:16: “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
Truman said Jesus is “the savior of the world” and “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”
Marvin Olasky is chairman of the Zenger House Foundation, which annually awards prizes for biblically objective journalism. He is also the author of “Moral Vision: Leadership from George Washington to Joe Biden.”