Print

xv Overview On the evening of June 6, 1944, D-Day, the Allied invasion of Europe dur- ing World War II—as American and Allied troops went ashore on the beaches of Normandy, France, after a surprise landing and bloody day of fighting—President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced the landings over national radio. His announcement of the critical military operations took the form of a prayer. It was not the first or last time that an American presi- dent, including Roosevelt, prayed during wartime. Presidential prayer, public and private, during American conflict has occurred frequently in the course of American history. However, on that particular June evening, technology in the form of the radio allowed millions of citizens to listen to and join with President Roosevelt as he prayed over the airwaves for the safety and victory of Allied forces. For most Americans of the 20th century, that the president would lead the nation in prayer was not understood to be an aberration. Religion and politics have been two domains of American history and life that are prominent and ever present in the bold experiment known as the United States of America. They were prominent in the past and they remain so in the present. “I Am Bound for the Promised Land” When Americans think and talk about war and the nation’s history of warfare, there has often been an assumption or assertion that the war is just and that the United States is entering the conflict with divine favor. Such a belief is rooted deeply in the history of the United States that predates its existence as a nation. The arrival from Holland of English religious dis- senters in 1620 and the subsequent establishment of the Plymouth Colony heralded the beginning of a colonial experiment that was infused with the belief that the colonists were mirroring the history of the biblical Israelites who journeyed from oppression to a wilderness wandering and finally