Word: nixon
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...never know the real story about a President's faith. We know only what he does--or refuses to do--in God's name. Voters were unwilling to forgive Gerald Ford for his great act of forgiveness, the unconditional pardon of Richard Nixon. But there was another side to the pardon, the presidency and the 1976 campaign that received much less attention, in part because Ford wanted it that way. The contest between Ford and Jimmy Carter was a battle between two born-again Christians--but only one was willing...
...Ford's first acts as President was some spiritual housecleaning. Among the more ingeniously cynical inventions of the Nixon Administration was the much publicized White House church service, which in addition to providing genuine fellowship for those so inclined was a prime tool for image building, fund raising, arm twisting and dealmaking for the President's men. Two days after Ford was sworn in, his wife Betty Ford wrote in her diary, a little pointedly, "There aren't going to be any more private services in the East Room for a select few." During his first Sunday as President, Ford...
Ford did have a private source of spiritual sustenance, which was in every way different from Nixon's public displays of piety. For years Ford faithfully attended a weekly late-morning prayer session with several friends in the House: John Rhodes of Arizona, Mel Laird of Wisconsin and Al Quie of Minnesota. The sessions, which began in 1967 and continued off and on through 1975, were "very quiet," totally off the record, Ford said. Talk about going to Bible study, he worried, and people might get the idea that you think you're somehow better than they...
...easier to understand the pardon when you reckon with the prayers. The question of what to do about Nixon landed hard on Ford from the moment he was sworn in. Apart from everything else, Nixon was a longtime friend. Ford worried about what putting the disgraced President in prison would do to him, as well as to a country so shaken by the betrayals of those years. Mercy and healing were very much on Ford's mind on Saturday, Aug. 31, when he spent the morning discussing an amnesty plan for Vietnam draft evaders. When the meeting was over, Ford...
...went back to the Oval Office, practiced his speech aloud twice, moved to a smaller adjoining office and alerted congressional leaders of his plans. At 11:05, in a statement that invoked God's name six times, Ford told the nation he was pardoning Nixon. "The Constitution is the supreme law of our land, and it governs our actions as citizens," he said. "Only the laws of God, who governs our consciences, are superior to it ... I do believe, with all my heart and mind and spirit, that I, not as President but as a humble servant of God, will...