On June 6, 1944, when Allied troops were landing on the beaches of Normandy in western France, President Roosevelt addressed the nation on the radio.
He didn't make a speech.
He led a prayer.
It wasn't a Christian prayer, or a Jewish prayer or one aimed at any sort of religion. It was entirely non-sectarian and it would have been difficult to imagine anyone who believed in God being offended by it.
Atheists might not have been particularly thrilled, but hearing the president pray on the radio and not having to do anything to participate ranks rather low on the offensive scale.
After asking God's blessing on the effort to defeat Nazi Germany, hardly a religious crusade, FDR ended his prayer with "Thy will be done."
We lived in a very different country in 1944, and the changes that have come haven't all been good ones. If you look at some of the greatest home front movies from the WWII era, you'll see strong belief of a non-sectarian type.
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| "Mrs. Miniver" |
Not just in this country. In perhaps the greatest of all the home front movies, "Mrs. Miniver," 1942 audiences saw several scenes of the Minivers and their neighbors at Sunday services. Particularly in the famous final scene, after a particularly bad night during the Blitz, the congregation shows their pluck by worshiping in a sanctuary that has been hit by German bombs.
In 1943, "The Human Comedy" portrayed a California family with three sons. The oldest is in the Army, the middle son is in high school and the youngest is 5 years old. The movie opens and closes with the spirit of the father, who died two years earlier. While the filmmakers don't come out and say it, it is fairly obvious that the father is supposed to be in heaven.
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| "The Human Comedy" |
The ending isn't as stirring as "Miniver," when the stiff upper lip British congregation shows Hitler they will not be scared into surrendering by joining to sing "Onward Christian Soldiers." That's actually the only sectarian reference in any of the films mentioned here, and that particular hymn comes not from any church but from the Salvation Army.
Then in 1944, David O. Selznick's epic of the home front, "Since You Went Away," shows us an Ohio mother and her two daughters during a year in which the husband and father went off to war.
They have to adjust to less income, and they take a boarder into their house. As the year goes on, they get word from the War Department that "Pop" is missing in action. As for the spiritual aspect, one Sunday in what is apparently an upper-crust Protestant service, Lionel Barrymore delivers a homily about faith and perseverance that is about as non-denominational as it gets.
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| "Since You Went Away" |
It's almost impossible to imagine a mainstream Hollywood film making that sort of statement anymore.
Then again, when religion isn't presented as simply a part of life in America, people who use it in films to make a religious point greater than just "hang in there" or "have faith."
Part of the problem is the increase in fundamentalism, the belief not just that one particular religion can provide salvation but that none of the others can.
When I started high school in the fall of 1963, there was a four-line prayer posted in the cafeteria and students said grace at the beginning of the meal. No one was compelled to participate, and the only reference to a spiritual being was to "God."
It always seemed to me that was a reasonable amount of religion that shouldn't offend anyone, and indeed, the First Amendment was part of the Constitution for about 170 years before people started using it to secularize American life.
It's one thing to say we want to be free from people imposing their religion on us, like asking everyone to join in and sing "Jesus Loves Me," but it's another thing to complain because people are singing half a block away.
It's important to respect agnostics or atheists, but I don't think we're doing anyone any favors by letting them set the rules for all of us.
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