On February 1, 1953, at the National Presbyterian Church in Washington DC, the Rev. Edward Elson baptized the newest member of his congregation. Elson also made history, of a sort. The person baptized was Dwight D. Eisenhower, newly inaugurated as president of the United States – and the only president to be baptized while in office. Besides its spiritual significance for Eisenhower's faith, his baptism also represented a new era of public religiosity in American life. The signs could be seen and heard everywhere. From Eisenhower's unprecedented offering of his own prayer before his inaugural address, to his decision to open Cabinet meetings with prayer, to the creation of the National Prayer Breakfast, to adopting “In God We Trust” as the United States' motto and printing it on the nation's paper currency, to adding “one nation, under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance, to the new highs in church membership throughout the land, the Eisenhower Administration oversaw the establishment of a new American civil religion.

The reasons behind this public piety were not hard to discern. They lay as near as the home fallout shelters American families had begun to construct, and as far away as the menacing walls of the Kremlin. The United States faced a foe of an unprecedented nature, an enemy whose cardinal ideology enshrined not only atheism but also active hostility to any and all religious faith. And this enemy was armed with the most destructive weapons ever to threaten the planet.