Andrew Jackson, America’s seventh President, never has been remembered as a pleasant fellow. He had a severe temper. He once killed a man in a duel. He supported the removal of American Indians from the South, sparking the infamous Trail of Tears.
Yet this gruff man may also have been a Christian. Nearing death in 1845, he reportedly told his family, “Death has no terror for me … . What are my sufferings compared to those of the blessed Savior? I am ready to depart when called.” Later, he told them: “Be good children, and we shall all meet in heaven.”
Such stories are at the heart of a new book, “God and the Oval Office” (W Publishing Group), by John C. McCollister. At 244 pages, it recounts the religious faith of all 43 American Presidents, from George Washington to George W. Bush.
The book does not argue that every President – including the Founding Fathers – was an evangelical Christian, but it makes clear that the overwhelming majority of Presidents expressed a faith in God.
“The book does not make judgmental statements,” McCollister told Baptist Press. “It simply says, ‘These are the facts. You draw your own conclusion.'”
“Nobody will ever be elected to the presidency of the United States who does not show a strong faith in Almighty God,” McCollister told BP. “… There’s not going to be any President elected who is an agnostic or refuses to acknowledge that he depends on God.”
Studying the beliefs of America’s first few Presidents, McCollister said, can help in the contemporary debate over the separation of church and state. Americans should embrace a separation of church and state that says no “particular denomination” can “rule the United States at the expense of others,” he said.
“But while we have separation of church and state in that regard, we dare never, ever lose sight of the fact that we were founded on belief in Almighty God, and that the power of Almighty God and the benevolence of God is the reason that America has survived and will survive,” he said.