Meanwhile, on the American home front, the country had prospered greatly during the war.  Hopes were high that this economic picture might continue on into the post-war years.  Yet there was also fear that with the war ending and the need for military industry drastically reduced, the nation might sink back into the Great Depression.  The memories of the post-World-War-One depression that hit in the years immediately after that war – especially in rural America – were still fresh in the minds of many Americans.  The Truman government was quite aware of this potential for post-war economic crisis. But so also was the American work force.

The labor movement had accelerated greatly during the war, with union membership at an all-time high.  But the unions had been highly cooperative with American capitalist industry during the war years, they earned a number of material benefits, and as part of the patriotic spirit of the times labor strife had been minimal.  But now the war was over, and old highly negative attitudes about American capitalism still lay just below the surface in the thoughts of the industrial worker.  Alongside those sentiments were the rapidly rising expectations among American workers – who had served their country sacrificially – that they were now entitled to a greater share in the American economic dream.  These attitudes would become explosive in the immediate post-war period.

American industrial workers (especially miners and low-skilled industrial workers) did not yet see themselves as part of Middle-America, although that would eventually change during the 1950s.  In the immediate post-war period they still lived in a Socialist world of class conflict, and were ready to play their part in a great class struggle that Socialism had long called for.  Consequently, in just the period 1945-1946, around five million workers went on strike, much of that about labor cutbacks brought on by the post-war downscaling of American industry.  Hard hit were the coal mining, steel, auto and railroad industries.

Such behavior over the next few years by the American Labor movement, however, seemed to appear similar to the actions in Europe that Communism employed in order to advance itself – even violently – as in the well-known labor rebellions in France and Italy in 1947 which were called by Stalin in an effort to bring those nations under Communism, which ultimately failed.  Then in early 1948 in Czechoslovakia, the same labor unrest did indeed pull the country into Stalin's Communist orbit, shocking Americans who found it easy to make the connection between the militancy of American labor and these events in Europe going on at the same time. This did not serve the American labor movement well.  Even elements of the blue-collar working class began to distance themselves from the militancy of their own labor movement.

Meanwhile, on the industrial owners' side of the picture, the war had called for America's capitalist-based industrial system to swing back into full operation in order to defeat the huge industrial empires of Germany and Japan.  Many of the businessmen had done their share as "dollar-a-year men" in directing their companies in this massive war effort.  They thus felt entitled to an end to the previous shaming of capitalism that they had suffered under during the years leading up to the war.  And indeed, they did occupy a place of respect in the national social picture again.

They also still remembered how they had fared under the New Deal's rapid expansion of the national government, the government budget, and most notably the extensive government regulation and control of the nation's economic life.¹ And with the war over, big government seemed not only unnecessary, but now almost un-American by these industrial leaders.  Actually, this view was also shared increasingly by a large number of Middle-Class American voters.

Riding this wave of general feeling, the Republican Party campaigned heavily against the Democratic Party in the 1946 congressional elections, claiming that a vote for the Democrats was a vote to continue big government, whereas a vote for the Republicans constituted a vote for a dramatic reduction in the size of government activity and a balancing of the federal budget (heavily in debt due to war-time expenses).

Republicans also played on the growing fear of Middle America about the militancy of the American labor movement – which Republicans were quick to identify with the growing evil of Communism, or at least Socialism.  Gauging the mood of the country correctly, the Republicans swept the Democrats from office, taking control of both Houses of Congress, and shattering the Liberal-Left wing of the Democratic Party.

Then the newly-seated Republican-controlled Congress went on to pass the Taft-Hartley bill (1947), which put the labor unions under a number of restrictions – reversing provisions of the Wagner Act of 1935 which had sided deeply with the labor unions against American business.  Truman vetoed the bill, but Congress then overrode his veto, to bring the bill into force as federal law.²

But one piece of legislation put together by the war-time Democratic Congress and Roosevelt Presidency which the Republicans dared not to touch was the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, popularly known as the G.I. Bill.  Rather than offer war veterans a pension (remembering the 1932 fiasco over the matter), the government offered instead to pay for tuition and living expenses for veterans to undertake post-war education, whether technical school or college. And it offered low-interest-rate mortgages for veterans to buy housing, and low-interest rates to start businesses of their own.  This was not welfare but instead capital investment, increasing greatly America’s industrial talent and underwriting a huge consumer market for goods withheld from general manufacture during the war (cars and housing).  It helped solve the problem of post-war unemployment, and put in the hands of young American adults the means to achieve the American dream.

The American economy, partly as a consequence of this wise investment in American talent, remained active, with consumer confidence high, and with the general standard of living continuing to grow tremendously for the Middle American.

Automobile production had come to a virtual halt during the war – Detroit and elsewhere producing only military trucks, tanks, planes and other war products. Thus at the end of the war there was a huge demand in place for new automobiles, leading manufacturers to convert back quickly to automobile production to answer the need.

But even more revolutionary in its impact on American culture was the explosion of low-cost, mass-produced, single-family homes built by the hundreds of thousands in the land surrounding America's cities (the suburbs), small houses by traditional housing standards, but inexpensive and ready for immediate purchase thanks to the G.I. Bill – and very inviting as a place to start up a young family.

Of course, having such a family was a matter that young Americans had been forced to put off during the war years.  But now peacetime presented the opportunity for young men and women to make up for that lacking.  They rather quickly married in massive numbers, and soon began to produce the next generation.  Babies were thus born in massive numbers in the period of 1946 and after, the beginning of the Baby Boom. And those babies, soon children (the 1950s) and eventually young adults (1960s) would develop into a very distinct generation of Americans, known appropriately as the Baby Boomers.  They would come to rock the nation to its core.

Maybe the boys overseas had not seen Paree (Paris) while serving in the military during the war (as many had during World War One).  But during military mobilization and training during the course of this Second World War, farm boys from Minnesota had seen sunny California, workers from Detroit had seen Florida, laborers from Massachusetts had seen Arizona or New Mexico (or California, or Florida), and were quite comfortable with the idea of moving with their new families to the West or South to take up new jobs when the war was over.  After all, there would be a familiar-feeling Presbyterian or Methodist Church in town where they could attend and make friends, their jobs and new neighbors would add to their social circle and they could start life anew, without having to depend on traditional family connections.

Besides, America's moving on from its original agricultural roots occurred massively during the war, and even picked up additional momentum after the war. Farming was becoming more a huge industrial enterprise for large-scale agricultural companies, forcing the American family farmer to have to close operations and look for work elsewhere.

And too, even the old up-East industrial world was being outpaced by changes which were employing people much more rapidly in white-collar rather than industrial jobs – white-collar jobs also widely available in the rising cities of the West and Southwest.

America was changing rapidly, becoming even more Middle Class as it developed, finally even beginning to draw the American worker away from his identity as Working-Class into the image of being an integral part of fast-rising Middle America, complete with car (often two), house in the suburbs (with a power mower to trim a large lawn), and backyard barbeques on the new patio.

Like no other people in the world at the time, the average American was living like royalty, and was quite aware of the fact as well. It was a great time to be American.

¹The national government counted nearly 2 million civilian employees during the war and a nearly 3½ times increase in the size of the population of the nation's capital city of Washington, D.C., during Roosevelt's Presidency.

²But then Truman himself during the remainder of his presidency would use the Taft-Hartley Act twelve times in his own confrontation with American unions.

Meanwhile, a combination of factors had developed a quite obvious revival in America's attachment to its Christian cultural roots.  Most certainly, in this recent war with Germany and Japan, Americans had faced the stress of war and all its accompanying tragedies with much personal prayer for themselves as they faced the grave dangers of battle, or for loved ones and friends who served abroad. Roosevelt had prayed America through the war, and church attendance had blossomed.  America felt itself indeed to be very much a Christian nation.

War, violence and death in battle call forth a very different character in the people than the character involved in simply supporting civic religion.  Instead, typically, such a deep challenge to human life brings forth in the personal lives of individuals a very powerful Christian faith – again, one that is very different from polite civic religion.  Here is where personal faith that stands at the heart of Christianity produces true human greatness, human greatness such as God himself seeks in men and women.  This is when they put their life in the hands of God, not society.

Great leaders of the past understood this key feature of Christianity. The Puritans built a strong Anglo society in the wilderness of America through such faith. Washington and Lincoln did not depend on social Christianity to support their actions, but depended on strong personal faith in God to support them in taking on huge risks – for themselves as well as the societies they led.  This faith guided, comforted and strengthened them through the most uncertain and dangerous of times.  They were leaders who built their leadership on personal faith, not social approval.

And so it was the case in the 1940s for multitudes of ordinary Americans – who put on uniforms and took up arms to defeat two massive empires – putting behind, at enormous personal risk, the safety and security of society in order to protect that very safety and security of their society.  In their own way, their personal faith in a God who watched over them as they went to battle made them into the same heroes as Washington and Lincoln, as had been the case for American warriors in earlier days – and more than once.  And these World War Two Veterans (hereafter termed the "Vets" in this study) came through that testing of themselves and their personal faiths with that same strength of character, to now rebuild a world that had survived the horrors of war.  These Vets were thus Christians not found merely at the Sunday-morning lineup in church (which sometimes they were not), they were Christians of deep personal faith in God in Jesus Christ.  And together as a community, they formed the heart and soul of post-war America.

Now again, coming out of this horrible war with the Germans and Japanese, they found not rest and relaxation but instead ongoing war, a new war – a Cold War. Challenging circumstances produced by an aggressive Communism once again seemed to have created a situation in which only God could adequately offer a sense of true protection, diplomatic or military efforts seeming to have little effect in stopping Communism’s advance abroad.  The Cold War with Soviet Russia – and its Godless Communist ideology – brought forward the continuation of the very strong Christian character of the American people, the same character that had just brought them through their war with Germany and Japan.  The Vets were exhausted from the previous fight and they would gladly have avoided a second call to arms if they could.  But they understood the necessity of stepping forward once again, to defend social virtue and faith values of critical importance – to not only themselves personally, or to their precious nation, but to the world itself, to the very survival of civilization on this planet.

It was times like these that made Christianity more than just a very socially-useful civic religion, that is, the source of a moral code requiring proper language and behavior designed to produce the "good society."  There was nothing particularly wrong with such an approach to Christianity. The Social Gospel was an excellent moral underpinning for the Age of Progressivism.  But again, one did not need exactly to be a Christian to understand the importance of excellent social behavior to make an equally excellent society.

For Christian Americans, it was truly miraculous that God put in their midst a man who was one of them, a battle-tested soldier, someone who had tried and failed and then tried again to move himself forward in life the "American way," who was a man of great moral integrity in the way he handled power – and yet who frequently used profanity and enjoyed playing poker and drinking whiskey (major no-noes to certain Christians), just like one of the boys!

Truman was not looking for social approval – or at least not expecting it.  He found that in his wife and family – and he found it in God.  He was a man of deep personal faith.

A loyal Baptist, Truman as president however was not regular in his Sunday worship, explaining the matter as a result of finding himself in a job that kept him at work seven days a week, morning, noon and night.  Also, Truman was not at all like his presidential successor Eisenhower, who understood the importance of frequently just getting away from those same pressures, golfing or just relaxing at a retreat (Eisenhower suffered a heart attack anyway).  Truman was something of a workaholic!

But he had a hugely uncharted course to lead the nation on. And the European crises that exploded in the early post-war years moved so fast that it seemed at times that only Truman had the ability to respond to them quickly and effectively. His wisdom in shaping an America ready to take on a new form of Cold War was enormous. And he rested that wisdom on a very prayerful, deeply scripturally- based Christian faith.

But he also understood the importance of connecting the Christian faith with the American self-understanding of the nation’s place in history.  Several times he called for a National Day of Prayer, specifically urging the nation to call on God to help the people know what to do in the face of various challenges, even crises, facing the nation.  He also spoke openly before the American public about how the Christian faith had formed the democratic foundations of America and how America enjoyed its obvious blessings because of a special trust God had put in place with the nation.  And Truman looked to the church (not Washington) to take the lead in the battle against greed, racism, and injustice, both at home and abroad.

And perhaps most importantly for a national leader whose most important task was to put a clear social vision in front of the people he was destined to lead, Truman had a very strong personal belief that America was called to show the world how to live God's way, according to the very teachings of Scripture, and the example of Christ: in charity and concern for others, even for one's former enemy (in this case Germany and Japan). He truly believed that if the world would simply live by Jesus's Sermon on the Mount (Matthew chapters 7, 8 and 9) peace would prevail across the world.

This did not mean that the strongly opinionated Truman did not find himself in opposition to aspects of the way the Christian life was lived in America.  More sophisticated Christians, for instance, attacked him for his biblical simplicity, seeing only foolish ignorance in Truman's hope that living according to Biblical principles would bring the world a better peace.  He also had a terrible split with his long-time Baptist pastor Edward Pruden, when Truman appointed General Mark Clark as his personal representative to the Vatican.  While this pleased America’s twenty-five million Catholics immensely, it upset greatly many Protestant conservatives who were deeply suspicious of any Catholic pro-Vatican "popery."

Christian corporate-America continues to develop.  Meanwhile, Vereide's Christian Leadership prayer-breakfast groups not only continued their development through the war, in the post-war period they expanded their reach not only across America but across the world.  Besides key corporate leaders, Washington senators and congressmen filled the ranks of these prayer-breakfast groups as a sense of moral-spiritual mission took center place in American social-political thinking in the post-war period.

And then there was the very young Billy Graham, who would have a huge impact in how Christian America would develop over the next generation or two. He had started out with an amazing revival – or crusade as he called it – in 1949 in Los Angeles which over an eight-week period had drawn over 350 thousand people. The next year he covered the country with his crusades, from Boston, to Columbia (South Carolina), to Portland, to Atlanta, to other points in between. By the next year the Graham name was well-known across the country, and his crusades were so fully attended that often masses of people had to be turned away when the stadiums had become completely filled.

Unfortunately, Truman developed a particular dislike for the evangelist Billy Graham, when in 1950 it appeared to Truman that the young Graham had turned his visit to the White House into a grand publicity opportunity for himself (actually clumsily or even accidentally prompted by the press rather than Graham himself).³

Nonetheless, Graham remained very popular with Corporate America as well as Congressional America, though he never succeeded in warming the heart of a suspicious Truman.

At the beginning of 1952 (mid-January to mid-February) Graham found himself in Washington again, working closely with Vereide in yet another major crusade, shaped clearly to help Washington focus on key issues that needed the Christian touch.  Indeed about a third of the senators and a good number of congressmen attended the crusade, along with another half million people (and millions more listening in over the radio).  So well was the crusade received that Congress even at one point authorized it to move to the very steps of the Capitol Building itself.

That same February, Congress took up the idea of an annual National Day of Prayer, proposed as a Congressional Act to which Truman, who generally did not like public displays of religiosity, finally gave his approval.  And thus began the annual National Day of Prayer – eventually scheduled for the first Thursday in May.

That same year Vereide was able to get Congress on board with a National Prayer Breakfast, held in February of 1953, and which has been held annually in Washington on the first Thursday of February ever since.

³Things did not improve over the next couple of years when Graham complained openly about Truman’s handling of the Korean War, the national debt, political corruption in Washington, and Communist infiltration in American society.

As we have noted throughout this work, the people's religion had always played a key role in the life of the American nation since its founding centuries earlier.  It certainly was held quite strongly at the time of the drafting of the Constitution back in 1787, as demonstrated in Ben Franklin's call to the Constitutional Convention to begin each of its daily sessions praying for Divine guidance in its proceedings.

Jefferson, however, was someone in those days who would have preferred that such public religion played no such role in the life of the young Republic.  His moral-spiritual preferences lay with properly-developed Human Reason.  And in his later years he would be a particularly strong advocate for this more "rational" approach to life.

But he himself was not part of the group that wrote the Constitution, being off in France as the Republic's representative to the French government at the time. But he would finally – years after his death – have a huge impact finally on how America was to come eventually to view the place of America's traditional Christianity in the life of the nation.

This would occur through a seemingly innocent event in 1947, one that would not at the time draw much notice.  But this event was the start of a development that would have huge implications as to how American culture was to move forward over the next several generations.  What is being referenced here is the famous (famous later, anyway) Everson v. Board of Education court case.

This key Supreme Court case would introduce into American culture the idea that somehow the American Constitution establishes a "wall of separation between church and state."  This case would have huge implications in terms of how America would thus soon be reading the protections written into the First Amendment.  It would open the doors to the Orwellian fear that thought-control from on high might eventually take over the country, that even in America there might someday develop a public authority with no known limits to its power, able to alter, redirect and even undo the long-held features of the nation's most precious moral and spiritual character.  ndeed, on the basis of the Supreme Court's re-reading of the First Amendment, the Supreme Court would bring itself gradually, step by step, to take the position that – like Orwell's Big Brother – it had the right to dictate what religious views could and could not be brought into the ever-widening "public" realm, one increasingly directed by Washington authorities themselves.

This all began when the Supreme Court issued its 5-4 decision in the Everson v. Board of Education case, ruling against the New Jersey plaintiff who claimed that public support for the bussing of students to religious (Catholic) schools was in violation of the U.S. Constitution.  According to the Supreme Court decision, New Jersey school authorities in fact had every right to give full support to its tax-paying public, even if it meant paying for public transportation to private Catholic schools.  Thus the decision at the time caused no particular stir. It seemed to be quite strongly in support of religion in America's public life.

However, what was not realized at the time was the critical impact this decision would have on the way future Supreme Court decisions would go forward against Christianity practiced in public life – citing this particular court case as providing the precedent for such Court decisions.

That is because the explanation given at the time for this particular Court decision was that the bussing reimbursement was distributed to parents without regard to the religious affiliation of the parents, and thus did not violate "the wall of separation between church and state" implicit in the First Amendment to the Constitution.  What "wall of separation"?  The Constitution mentions no "wall of separation."  The Constitution’s First Amendment itself states simply but quite clearly:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The First Amendment begins its list of precious rights or freedoms of the people with the matter of religion because this was the one area that so much controversy had developed over back in the 1700s.  The freedom of religion was a very big deal in colonial America.

The term itself, "wall of separation," actually came from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson (at that point the U.S. president) in 1801 (some fourteen years after the Constitution was actually written) to the Danbury (Connecticut) Baptist Association.  In this letter Jefferson describes such a "wall of separation."

Indeed, Jefferson in his younger years had fought the place of political privilege in Virginia enjoyed by the Church of England, because of its royal sponsorship under the Hanoverian kings, who were of course the head of that very institution. Something similar to that same place of privilege had been enjoyed by the Congregational Churches in New England, and the New England Baptists also had been long opposed to that privilege … often bitterly so.  Thus Jefferson and the Baptists were in agreement that no religious group should enjoy such preferential treatment by the governing public authorities.

In general, this idea that no particular religion should enjoy special privileges actually was shared widely across America at the time that Jefferson wrote the letter – as was also the case in post-World-War-Two America.  Of course to post-war America, this did not mean that there was to be no religion.  It was just that there was to be no particular religion enforced by the powers of the state. That was the people’s – and only the people’s – jurisdiction.  Thus supposedly the wall of separation was an acceptable concept … as long as it was understood to mean a wall keeping the state out of the business of the people’s religion.  The First Amendment certainly did not mean – as the Supreme Court would, beginning in the early 1960s, turn the Amendment to mean – that religion was to be excluded or walled off from America’s public life.  Hardly so, for Americans held their Christian religion as a key part of their national identity, especially in the Godless age of Fascism and Communism.  But in any case, that was a matter of the people alone to decide and support, not the Federal Government.  That seemed clear enough at the time.  And thus the Supreme Court’s decision raised no alarm bells back in 1947.

But they were not yet understanding the implications of this 1947 court decision.  It raised all kinds of questions which would then have to be eventually answered, again by the Supreme Court as it took on these matters as falling completely within its jurisdiction.  Would the Supreme Court also claim the same thing for speech and the press, that a wall of separation existed there as well, and that the people’s thoughts and words were to be walled off from the federal state’s official thoughts and words?  This was what was happening in totalitarian societies all around the world – where the government suppressed all public thoughts, all social commentaries, all beliefs that did not conform to the official version of thoughts and beliefs, usually some quite atheistic, supposedly more scientific, theory of society ... one that left all power in the hands of an enlightened political elite.

In any case, with the 1947 Everson v. Board of Education decision, the Supreme Court opened the door for future court decisions to do just that – by judicial decree, move to establish Secularism (so beloved by the Humanists) as the only worldview to be allowed and supported by America's public authorities, because Secularism was supposed to be "non-religion" (oh, really?!!) and thus not forbidden in public life.

Not immediately, but gradually over the next quarter of a century, the authority of the state (as per several decisions of the Supreme Court) would reach vigorously into America's public schooling and its curriculum, and ultimately permit only the Secularist worldview to be taught to America's future generations.

But the very strongly Christian Vets did not see this coming.  Thus little was said at the time (1947) about this Jeffersonian idea of a wall of separation, because Vets went at life with the understanding that America was a nation under God.  There was no such wall prohibiting religion in their world.  Who would dare to think it could be otherwise?

But big changes in this long-standing view were soon to come to America and its freedom of religion, thanks to the enlightened views of a handful of ideologically-inspired lawyers in black robes.