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The Cold War was in many ways a religious war. Presidents Truman and Eisenhower and other American leaders believed that human rights and freedom were endowed by God, that God had called the United States to defend liberty, and that Soviet communism was evil because of its atheism and enmity to religion. Along with security and economic concerns, these religious convictions helped determine both how the United States defined the enemy and how it fought the conflict. Meanwhile, American Protestant churches failed to seize the moment. Internal differences over theology and politics, and resistance to cooperation with Catholics and Jews, hindered Protestant leaders domestically and internationally. Frustrated by these internecine disputes, Truman and Eisenhower attempted to construct a new civil religion to mobilize domestic support for Cold War measures, determine the strategic boundaries of containment, unite all religious faiths against communism, and to undermine the authority of communist governments abroad.

In Faith in Freedom, Andrew R. Polk argues that the American civil religion so many have identified as indigenous to the founding ideology was, in fact, the result of a strategic campaign of religious propaganda. Far from being the natural result of the nation's religious underpinning or the later spiritual machinations of conservative Protestants, American civil religion and the resultant \"Christian nationalism\" of today were crafted by secular elites in the middle of the twentieth century. Polk's genealogy of the national motto, \"In God We Trust,\" revises the very meaning of the contemporary American nation. Polk shows how Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, working with politicians, advertising executives, and military public relations experts, exploited denominational religious affiliations and beliefs in order to unite Americans during the Second World War and, then, the early Cold War. Armed opposition to the Soviet Union was coupled with militant support for free economic markets, local control of education and housing, and liberties of speech and worship. These preferences were cultivated by state actors so as to support a set of right-wing positions including anti-communism, the Jim Crow status quo, and limited taxation and regulation. Faith in Freedom is a pioneering work of American religious history. By assessing the ideas, policies, and actions of three US Presidents and their White House staff, Polk sheds light on the origins of the ideological, religious, and partisan divides that describe the American polity today.

In 1946, President Harry Truman sought to reform the German education system and appointed Bishop Aloisius Muench as the Catholic Liaison to assist the U.S. occupational forces. Simultaneously, Muench was appointed as the Vatican's official visitor to Germany. Using these roles, Muench influenced denazification and educational policies in Bavaria. Drawing on unused primary sources from Muench's personal correspondence, OMGUS files, the papers of Lucius Clay, the Christian Social Union Archives, the personal papers of Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, and the files from the archives of the archdiocese of Munich and Freising, this article concludes that Muench played a key role in preserving Catholic schools in Bavaria. Muench's case proves that denazification policies were contested and formed by a coalition of secular and religious individuals.

According to his son Converse Hunter, when his father approached individuals for their autographs, his question to them was always, \"Have you a favorite hymn?\" Out of the over four thousand signatures these hymnals contain, a few stand out: Human effort was needed to distill the names from the hymnal to learn about the significance of the hymnal in historical context. Because the list of names had to be coherent for future users, it required a structured approach to cataloging the information. [...]a special Notes field provided flexibility for adding information not in the hymnal itself, such as whether an entry needed further review, was the signature of a notable figure, or required any necessary clarifications. Because people signed not only pages with hymns on them, but also the front and back matter of the hymnal, the Hymn Number field was used to signify which piece of front or back matter or page a person signed. According to the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, Truman was Baptist, though he was very private regarding his faith; his inscription is quite secular in nature: \"Best wishes for a long and honorable life.\"

This essay is less concerned with the broader argument that Truman's religion influenced the decisions he made between 1945 and 1948 than with more specific claims that Harry Truman believed that the restoration of Jews to Palestine or his role in recognizing Israel were in varying ways prophetic fulfillment of biblical promises. While still others have dismissed the role of the Bible or religion in Truman's decision to recognize Israel, no one has yet critiqued these specific claims or critiqued the evidence mobilized in support of them. The question of whether one of the most important American foreign policy decisions of the 20th century was informed by the president's understanding of biblical prophecy, however, demands deliberate attention. This essay directly takes on these more specific claims, arguing that they neither fit with what we know about Truman's religion or approach to the Bible nor find support in contemporary evidence.

This paper sheds light on how religious cultural heritage influences the decision-making framework of state leaders by considering U.S. President Harry Truman through the lenses of history, political science, and religious studies. By utilizing archival data from Truman’s presidential library and museum, this paper connects his philosophical ethics, his philosophy of government, and his philosophy of human nature to a coherent decision-making framework employed by Truman for issues ranging from economics to race. This paper does not conclude that religious cultural heritage is the determining factor in Truman’s decisions. Rather, this paper demonstrates the usefulness of incorporating religious cultural heritage into analyses which explore how leaders make decisions, for religious cultural heritage can complete analyses based on competing interests, cost-benefit criteria, and other factors. By implication, the methodology applied successfully to Truman in these cases may be applied to Truman’s other decisions (for example, nuclear decisions); moreover, generally similar approaches may be applied to other leaders in future work.

Ardolino discusses the 1951 baseball fantasy Angels in the Outfield which is an ameliorative rewriting in baseball terms of the related political problems facing the US at that time: the Korean War, the threat of nuclear war with China and Russia, and the conflict between President Truman and General MacArthur. The co-writers of the screenplay which was adapted from the story by Richard Conlin create a comic plot which reflects the crises the nation was experiencing and the arguments, patterns of aggression and retreat, and the resolutions which characterized the crisis created by the Korean War are rearranged and shaped into a benign myth of the republic's being protected by its social, cultural, and religious traditions.