Harry
Truman is one of my favorite presidents, Masons and men. Never having gone to college, he started out
as a machine politician, but one with unquestioned integrity. He became president on the death of Franklin
D. Roosevelt. He should have been
overwhelmed with the prospect of leading the nation in time of war with little
counseling having been paid him by FDR.
But, Truman rose to the occasion.
I
have read and reread a book by Alan Axelrod, When the Buck Stops With You:
Harry S. Truman on Leadership. It
is a series of quotes by Truman, with some discussion on them by the
author. I highly recommend the book.
Truman
was a deeply religious man, having said that “A person who is fundamentally honest doesn't
need a code of ethics. The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount are all
the ethical code anybody needs.”[i]
However, he was an
extraordinarily tolerant man, having ordered that the United States United
States Armed Forces be desegregated.[ii] His tolerance extended to religious freedom
as well:
"We
have gone a long way toward civilization and religious tolerance, and we have a
good example in this country. Here the many Protestant denominations, the
Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church do not seek to destroy one
another in physical violence just because they do not interpret every verse of
the Bible in exactly the same way. Here we now have the freedom of all
religions, and I hope that never again will we have a repetition of religious
bigotry, as we have had in certain periods of our own history. There is no room
for that kind of foolishness here." – Harry S Truman, Mr. Citizen,
1960
It
is clear to me that when our Founding Fathers discussed religious tolerance,
they were talking about different Christian
beliefs. This is not surprising, as
different Christian sects had a history of persecuting each other. Like so many things that have changed in our
country since the Constitution was adopted, we have come to accept and respect
peoples of many different races and religions.
With
our world torn in so many different ways, we as a society, cannot afford to
reject the works of good people simply because they have a different faith than
we.
There
is no room for that kind of foolishness here.
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