While reading William Inboden’s Religion and American Foreign Policy, I came across several sentences that caught my eye. Inboden dedicated a chapter of his book to a discussion of US Senator H. Alexander Smith, a prominent anti-Communist and ardent prayer warrior. Inboden was interested in Smith’s epistemology, the source of his certainty that God had told him how to fight the Cold War. The senator spent much time each day in prayer asking for divine intervention in his own personal struggles as well as for guidance in Congress. Thankfully, Smith journaled about his prayer life. Representative of the quotes that Inboden included was Smith’s prayer asking God to “make me true to thine principles which are true and guided by thee and not those which are merely expedient or vote-getting.” Commendable, but not extraordinary.
But these quotations grabbed my attention: “God is with me and will guide me or I will make a failure in a big [illegible]. Of course God will not fail me but I must be consecrated” (Inboden 196).
