Donald Trump ’s popularity with evangelicals has always been confounding. He doesn’t respect them or their belief system, or embody any recognizable Christian values. Nor does he seem to have a favorite evangelist, the way George W. Bush was associated with Billy Graham. Trump does, however, have an all-time favorite pastor, whom he recalled fondly in 2015, saying, “He would bring real-life situations, modern-day situations into the sermon, and you could listen to him all day long. When you left the church, you were disappointed that it was over.” The relationship went both ways. Norman Vincent Peale officiated at Trump’s first wedding, describing him as having a “profound streak of honesty and humility.” Even those who’ve never heard of Norman Vincent Peale have been subjected to his ideas. His most famous bestseller, 1952’s “The Power of Positive Thinking,” introduced millions of Americans to his trademark trite aphorisms about how to live a successful, more fulfilling life. “Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future,” was a typical entry. “What the mind can conceive and believe, and the heart desire, you can achieve.” “When you get up in the morning, you have two choices — either to be happy or to be unhappy. Just choose to be happy.” Postwar America could not get enough of Peale, and no amount of scorn heaped by academic psychologists, theologians and sociologists could make a dent in his success. If Peale’s fluffy program of positive thinking sounds like the kind of thing Trump and his most committed supporters would be drawn to, that’s because it is. There was always an undercurrent to Peale’s pleasant-sounding pablum that appealed most to the kind of person who feels at once entitled — to money, respect or accomplishment — and frustrated with their lives. They could have everything they want, if only they persist; the key thing is to ignore and overcome negativity. And while his self-help writings mostly tried to ignore politics, a closer look at his life reveals a near-obsession with purging America of forces that he thought put the country in jeopardy: atheists, communists, New Deal Democrats, liberal theologians who criticized him — anybody, in fact, who was concerned with social justice. In doing so, he harkened back to a glorious national past, a hallmark of far-right and fascistic thinking. They could have everything they want, if only they persist. Peale was born in Ohio and began Methodist pastoral work in 1924 at the height of the Roaring ’20s. Five years later, the Great Depression changed everything, but Peale had no interest in that era’s Social Gospel, and he rejected the liberal turn among the leadership of the Methodist Church. His biggest influence was the New Thought, a “mind-over-matter” movement popular with Christian Scientists that taught adherents that obstacles, including disease, could be overcome by the power of thought. Peale rewired elements of the framework into a “practical” Christianity that assured people they could will themselves to success. A canny early adopter of radio, he started hosting a weekly NBC show, “The Art of Living,” beginning in 1935 (it ran until 1989). After his first few books sold poorly, his wife secretly sent “The Power of Positive Thinking” to an editor, resulting in a blockbuster perennial bestseller that made the Peales rich.
The book’s aphorisms and anecdotes never stray far from the Bible, a book that Peale describes as having “a particularly strong therapeutic value.” In this, he served as a prototype for a rising generation of prosperity gospel evangelists who rubbed shoulders with prominent businessmen, including Howard L. Hunt, J.C. Penney and Walter Teagle (many of whom were themselves deeply conservative or even on the far right). Businessmen are also central to his philosophy: They are the primary examples of people who “made good” through the power of positivity and prayer. With Peale, success always came back to regular prayer. Since religion had to be sold to people, why not package it with the material things that they wanted out of life? His message was unapologetically individualistic. None of the successful people profiled in “The Power of Positive Thinking” pay anything back to society or the people around them. It is a version of “social Christianity” that does not feature the poor or working class at all. Peale was already a conservative icon when he met a teenage Donald Trump at Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan in the early 1960s. Peale had made headlines in 1960 for opposing John F. Kennedy’s presidential run on the basis of his Catholicism, telling reporters , “Our American culture is at stake. I don’t say it won’t survive [if Kennedy is elected], but it won’t be what it was.” He hated atheists even more than he hated Catholics, saying, “The man who shows no interest in Christianity and fails to support it is the real enemy of our social institutions.” After blowback he was forced to walk back his anti-Catholicism, but he faced no pressure to tone down his vehement campaigns against the New Deal, beginning with his Committee for Constitutional Government , which he chaired between 1942 and 1945. Peale would remain a public critic of the welfare state and reliable ally of the GOP . When Richard Nixon was on the ropes during the Watergate scandal, Peale was a high-profile supporter, urging Congress to lay off the president and abandon investigations. Peale’s long public career benefited from his sense of when to cut and run, and his ability to wrap offensive ideas in pleasant-sounding rhetoric. When it emerged that he shared a stage with notorious antisemite Elizabeth Dilling in 1943, he apologized and claimed he was unaware of her views. Critical of unions as tools of communists, he tried to sound pro-worker by saying he preferred to see people working for themselves in the style of an idealized frontier America of “self-made” men. His idea of the United States and its history rested on complete reimagination. He proudly described his magazine Guideposts as “ teach[ing] the great fact that God is in the stream of history and this great nation was founded on belief in God and His laws.” The religious complexity of the people who signed the Declaration of Independence was erased in favor of the idea of Christianity as a national glue. Trump behaves exactly like somebody who has imbibed all of Peale’s worst ideas. Peale was not alone in forging the link between 20th century American self-help culture and the far right. Dorothea Brande, the author of “Wake Up and Live!,” was married to a leading American fascist, Seward Collins. Like Peale, her focus on the sheer force of will was almost mystical, with people supposed to be quite literally willing their fondest desires into reality. These ideas now persist in more apocalyptic form in the ideas of people such as Jordan Peterson , whose self-help messages are couched in critiques of “woke” culture and liberalism more broadly. Trump behaves exactly like somebody who has imbibed all of Peale’s worst ideas. Lacking any sense of introspection or self-criticism, he never pauses to consider whether something like attacking Iran and shutting down the Strait of Hormuz might be a bad idea. He’s incapable of admitting a mistake or even acknowledging hardship, as with his recent slip that he doesn’t think about financial hardship for Americans. When pressed, he lashes out. Constantly expecting success and denying any negativity is a formula for creating resentment, itself a strong component of far-right and reactionary thinking. He might have learned this from Peale, who routinely and publicly weighed in on small grudges or disagreements. When Eleanor Roosevelt said that Prohibition had been a mistake because it meant that young people had no chance to learn how to drink responsibly, Peale immediately shot back, “I do not like to publicly criticize a lady, especially the next first lady of the land, but in the name of heaven, how could she stand up and say that every girl early in life must find out how much rum she can hold. Her knowledge of the United States does not go west of the Hudson River, and yet there is this statement by this child of the rich who does not know anything about American life. I can’t say her husband is much better.”
Sinclair Lewis’ line about fascism coming to America wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross is only part of the story. It must also be packaged as a self-improvement program wedded to Christianity; a spiritual sales pitch about the good things awaiting you if you just behave a certain way. It had to be, in other words, an outgrowth of the national tradition in get-rich-quick schemes, wedding to WASP niceties that disappear the second anybody brings up anything uncomfortable. Peale helped to create a culture of vapid greed, aggrandizement, xenophobia and close-mindedness that easily sinks into resentment and attacks any real or perceived critics. Peale was widely criticized in the press and by other churchmen during his life; some members of the Methodist Church went so far as to declare “The Power of Positive Thinking” nearly heretical. But one of the most repeated criticisms was that Peale’s teachings fostered narcissism. The writer Edmund Fuller said that Peale’s teachings “influence, mislead and often disillusion sick, maladjusted, unhappy or ill-constructed people, obscuring for them the Christian realities.” What better proof of that could you have than Donald Trump?
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