When we think of Richard Nixon, the first thing that comes to mind is his Machiavellian cunning. Power was important to him above all else: gaining power, maintaining it, and exerting it over his enemies, all the way up until his brutal downfall.
But there was another, equally powerful force that drove America's 37th president: his conflicted but sincere Christian faith. Nixon was no one-dimensional politician; he was a man deeply embroiled in a lifelong struggle with God.
Nixon is not thought of as a religious man, and if by “religious” you mean “moral,” “devout,” and “likes going to church,” then he is not a religious man.
The struggle, according to a new biography by Daniel Silliman, “A Lost Soul: Richard Nixon's Search for Redemption” It determined his actions and haunted his conscience until his final day.
William B. Erdmans
Hidden tensions
Mr. Silliman, editor of Christianity Today, carefully peels back Nixon's public persona to reveal the spiritual tensions beneath.
According to Silliman, Nixon's search for divine guidance was not a peripheral aspect of his life but central to his personal drama, and this inner conflict, often overshadowed by his public scandals, is crucial to understanding the tragic side of his story.
Even on the eve of his resignation, Nixon felt so overwhelmed by the weight of his grief and the collapse of his career that he turned to prayer for solace. But as Silliman points out, Nixon's turning to heaven wasn't some desperate, last-minute attempt at salvation; it wasn't some cheesy Hail Mary.
On the contrary, it was a habit that had been ingrained in him since childhood.
Religious roots
Nixon's religious journey began with a Quaker upbringing in a household that emphasized simplicity, honesty, and self-control, and these values became the foundation of his early worldview.
But his relationship with these ideals was by no means simple: a strict father and a devout mother instilled in him a sense of duty and moral rigor that shaped his complicated relationship with his faith.
His marriage to Thelma Katherine “Pat” Ryan, who had been raised Methodist, further grounded Nixon in a faith that provided both support and stress, and Nixon's interactions with two influential religious figures, Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peale, would later play pivotal roles in shaping his political decisions and moral outlook as well as his personal struggles.
Graham, a well-known Baptist preacher, was perhaps the greatest religious influence in Nixon's life, and their friendship, which began in the early 1950s, was a powerful intersection of faith and politics.
“In his mission to bring Christianity to the masses, Graham embodied the religious orthodoxy and moral authority that Nixon deeply respected. At the same time, Graham's unwavering belief in moral purity often clashed with Nixon's political pragmatism. Not surprisingly, this created tensions and highlighted the inconsistency between Graham's strict ideals and Nixon's actions.”
Positive Thinking
Norman Vincent Peale, a Presbyterian minister famous for “the power of positive thinking,” offered Nixon a different kind of religious guidance. Peale's teachings, with their emphasis on optimism and self-confidence, resonated with Nixon's ambitious personality and provided him not only with a psychological framework but also a road map for navigating the treacherous terrain of American politics.
Peale's philosophy, which emphasized overcoming adversity through positive forces alone, rather than repentance or redemption, was closer to that of Tony Robbins than to that of Thomas Aquinas. This approach offered Nixon a “better” way of maintaining his public image and dealing with the pressures of his career.
But Peel's teachings also evoked a certain ambivalence for Nixon: the contrast between Peel's optimism and Nixon's own experience of personal failure and moral compromise produced deep inner conflict.
The power of positive thinking helped Nixon project a resilient public persona that often clashed with the darker impulses and ethical ambiguity that characterized his political career.
Complete Man
According to Silliman, none of this story makes sense without considering Nixon's spiritual struggles. He told Align magazine, “Nixon is not thought of as religious. If you think of 'religious' as meaning 'moral', 'devout', 'I like going to church,' then he is not religious. But if you think of one of the meanings is wrestling with God, then he is very religious.”
“Throughout his life, Nixon struggled with a core Christian idea of God's grace. I argue that this struggle was his essence, and in the book I show how it explains his great successes and tragic humiliations,” he added.
In Silliman's view, Nixon's existential struggle with his inner God is the key to a full understanding of the man, and is inseparable from his particular place in American history. Seeing Nixon in the context of mid-20th-century American religious trends, especially the rise of religion,Christianity in the Cold War and the influence of evangelical literature — Silliman paints a complex character with compelling nuance.
Like all of us, Nixon was far from perfect, but to portray him as a calculating villain does not fully capture his true character. Certainly, his illegal acts served his political ambitions, but what were those ambitions for?
Silliman tries to explain: “I'm not a crook,” Nixon famously protested. Whether or not he actually believed this, Silliman suggests that Nixon was unable to shake off a deeper sense of guilt, that of being a hopeless sinner in desperate need of salvation.
