The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #117438   Message #2549107
Posted By: Bill D
25-Jan-09 - 07:03 PM
Thread Name: BS: Atheists: No 'so help me God'
Subject: RE: BS: Atheists: No 'so help me God'
"Only three U.S. presidents have been non-religious or at least unaffiliated with a religion .."

well...as a matter of fact, Eisenhower had to look about hastily for a church when HE decided to run. His earlier affiliations were awkward, and he had not attended church much for 30-40 years. He ended up with a quiet, non-political little Presbyterian church.

"Eisenhower's family originally belonged to the local River Brethren sect of the Mennonites. However, when Ike was five years old, his parents became followers of the WatchTower Society, whose members later took the name Jehovah's Witnesses. The Eisenhower home served as the local WatchTower meeting Hall from 1896 to 1915, when Eisenhower's father stopped regularly associating due to the WatchTower's failed prophesies that Armageddon would occur in October 1914 and 1915. Ike's father received a WatchTower funeral when he died in the 1940s. Ike's mother continued as an active Jehovah's Witness until her death. Ike and his brothers also stopped associating regularly after 1915. Ike enjoyed a close relationship with his mother throughout their lifetimes, and he even used a WatchTower printed Bible for his second Presidential Inauguration. In later years, Eisenhower was baptized, confirmed, and became a communicant in the Presbyterian church in a single ceremony on February 1, 1953, just weeks after his first inauguration as president. In his retirement years, he was a member of the Gettysburg Presbyterian Church in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.>