EISENHOWER’S BAPTISM

The following statement may shock some people who believe that in recent years we American citizens have always voted for baptized Christians as president. Not true.

After Dwight D. Eisenhower defeated Adlai Stevenson for the presidency in 1952 and before his inauguration, it was revealed that Eisenhower had never been baptized.

A political junkie back in 1952 (who voted for Stevenson) I discovered this in an article in “Time” magazine, the week of February 9, 1953.The writer of that article pointed out that Eisenhower’s parents were devoted God fearing Christians who believed their children should be baptized only when they were old enough to make that decision for themselves. Eisenhower never made that decision, probably because he was so involved in his military career at West Point and then as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in WW II. He did regard himself, however, a Protestant.

After he won the presidency in the election of 1952, some of his advisors suggested that he be baptized before his inauguration in March when the oath of office was taken. The writer says “ This week President and Mrs. Eisenhower slipped quietly into the National Presbyterian Church on Washington's Connecticut Avenue. The church's board of sessions met with them in private. Their Christian faith was formally attested. The President, after baptism and confirmation, was received into the congregation. His wife, a Presbyterian by childhood baptism, was received with him. The ceremony was completed at the church's 9 a.m. Sunday service, when the Eisenhowers received communion.”

"A man of simple faith, who is sincere in his religious doctrine," said the National Presbyterian's minister, the Rev. Edward L. R. Elson, of his new communicant. Eisenhower, he added, had at last "staked down his faith—this is his home church now."

Dwight Eisenhower was a good but rather dull president in the fifties. At the end of his second term, however, he warned us to beware of the giant industrial military complex which would threaten our nation. For these words and warning, he deserves to be called a great president. Too bad many presidents who followed him have ignored his warning. Presently, our country is spending at least 15 billion dollars a month to fight a war that we should never have started and would not have started had Eisenhower been president.

Nowhere in the Constitution do our Founding Fathers stipulate that the president must be a baptized Christian; only a person who will follow and defend the Constitution as Eisenhower did.

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