The Spiritual-Industrial Complex and God-Fearing and Free

For those of us who spent our grammar school days diving beneath school desks in the civil defense drills of the 1950s, the link between faith and the cold war was pretty obvious. We had to keep the communists at bay at any cost, and although it was never clear to me how a school desk would protect me against a Soviet attack, I understood full well that our family's contribution to the effort was crucial. We needed to maintain a fully stocked larder, recite the Pledge of Allegiance (including the newly inserted words "under God") at school every day, never—never!—eat snow and, most important, attend church every Sunday.

The stakes could not have been higher. Nothing less than the survival of the free world hung in the balance. God was counting on us in the titanic struggle against godless communism.

And we Americans, God's favorite people, did not disappoint. As Jonathan P. Herzog demonstrates in The Spiritual-Industrial Complex, the years following World War II witnessed a surge in both nationalism and religiosity: "Millions of Americans, from presidents on down, participated in a spiritual crusade—not with bullets or bayonets but with patriotic affirmations."