Christine Wicker - The Simple Faith of Franklin Delano Roosevelt: How FDRs Faith Was A Vital Influence

Franklin Delano Roosevelt giving a speech from the rear platform of the Roosevelt Special.

IMAGE COURTESY OF THE FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY

Franklin D. Roosevelt, with daughter-in-law Betsey and eldest son James, visiting Fort Worth, Texas, in 1938.

IMAGE COURTESY OF THE FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY

My mother was among those whom Franklin D. Roosevelt helped keep alive with programs created during the Great Depression.

In 1940 my grandfather was working the oil fields of Illinois, while my grandmother tended to seven kids, the oldest one a lanky deaf boy who was not able to communicate with anyone. When she wanted him, she had to chase after him until he wore out and let her catch up. My mother was the youngest. Her birth certificate lists her as a blue baby, meaning her chances werent the best. But she hung on, big-eyed and skinny.

In 1942, before my mother was old enough to remember her father, he collapsed and died of what seemed to be a heart attack. No reason for an autopsy; whatever he died of didnt matter. What did matter was that he could help the living no more. The oil company bought train tickets to take the family back to Oklahoma, where theyd come from. President Roosevelts programs for the poor provided eleven dollars a month for each of my grandmothers children. It wasnt enough to keep them adequately fed or clothed. They were hungry, their shoes were too small, and in winter they didnt have coats. By 1949, when my mother was in junior high, the country was enjoying a postwar economic boom that my mothers family had no part of. That year my mother dropped out of school, unable to bear the smell of lunches that more fortunate children threw away. She and her siblings were scorned, shunned, and shamed, as poor children often are, but none of them starved to death, thanks to FDR.

My grandfather on my fathers side was a Kentucky coal miner in a part of the country where people so revered FDR that they had his picture displayed in their homes. When the president died, my dad was a teenager. What he remembers of those days was the fear. Everyone was scared of what would happen to us without him, he told me. He was the only president a lot of people had ever known.

I began writing about Roosevelt and his great faithreligious and otherwiseafter Ken Burnss The Dust Bowl documentary showed a hundred thousand people gathering in July of 1938 to see FDR in Amarillo. I live in Texas, which is a far different place today than it was in 1938, more prosperous and far more conservative. I doubt a liberal president could attract half that many people to an Amarillo speech today. The states most famous megachurch evangelical ministers would certainly not support such a president.

The television documentary featured a photo of the president looking jaunty as he rode in an open car. It rained a gully washer the day FDR came to Amarillo, and the drenched president smiled even more. That it would rain that day he visited the Dust Bowl seemed just too perfect. It was as if even God was giving the president a big welcome. Like many Americans, I didnt think of FDR as a particularly religious man, but I love a good coincidence. Lots of people see the hand of God in what others call no more than coincidence. My interest was piqued.

It is not a coincidence that I should write a book delving into Franklin Roosevelts faith and how it played out in his politics and policies. My own religious roots are deep and have held fast despite my many attempts to sever them. My great-grandfather was an Alabama preacher who moved his family to Oklahomas Indian Territory to pastor a church there. I was an infant when my grandmother carried me the half mile it took to reach the nearest Baptist church so that I could be dedicated to the Lord. At nine, I was saved and baptized in an Oklahoma City Southern Baptist church. As a reporter, Ive covered religion in the press and in books for most of my adult life. I was not a practicing Christian for much of that time. But as I only recently realized, there has hardly been a day that I havent thought of Jesus and what he expects of me. Having admitted that, I cant help remembering a verse I heard often in my childhood, Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Baptists are big on memorizing scripture. A lot of it comes to me still. But as Ive grown older, those verses have taken on different meanings. The way has come to seem more complicated than it did when I was a child.

The Christianity I grew up with required that we read the Bible, pray, go to church, tithe, win others to Christ, and not have sex outside of marriage. And, oh, yes, not drink alcohol, not do drugs, and not curse. We were expected to love sinners but not to accept their behavior, and if that meant rejecting them, we did. We were obliged to help those who needed it, but the best help we could give them was to tell them about salvation. I was in my early twenties before I ever heard another Christian say that Jesus expected us to work for social justice. I didnt believe it and said so.

As I studied Christianity through the years, I began to see it differently, and I began to think that Jesuss commands regarding brotherhood, love, and humans responsibility for one another were directly reflected in policies like those of FDRs New Deal. The evangelical Christians who are most often in the news and have dominated the public square for almost four decades do not commonly laud Roosevelt for his Christian influence on government, even though many of his policies came directly out of their core religious values. White Christians, at least, have widely supported Republican policies that favor business, low taxes, and restricting aid to the poor. Reagan, not FDR, has been their favorite modern president.