Woodrow Wilson

Ruling Elder, Spiritual President

Barry Hankins

Spiritual Lives

Highlights that Woodrow Wilson was profoundly influenced by Calvinist theology and viewed his political career as a sacred calling.
Probes into the spiritual pilgrimage of this conflicted and tragic figure.
Focuses on the theological views and spiritual practices that undergirded Wilson's public role and how the challenges of his public life shaped those practices.

Woodrow Wilson

Ruling Elder, Spiritual President

Barry Hankins

Description

When Woodrow Wilson was elected as a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church in 1897, his preacher father allegedly remarked, "I would rather that he held that position than be president of the United States." Fifteen years later he was both. Easily one of the most religious presidents in American history, almost all of Wilson's policies and important speeches were infused with religious concepts. The son, grandson, and nephew of southern Presbyterian divines, with six consecutive generations of preachers on his mother's side, Wilson viewed his political career as a sacred calling. As he remarked to a Democratic Party leader just before his inauguration in 1913, "God ordained that I should be the next president of the United States."

As a scholar, Princeton University president, governor of New Jersey, then president, Wilson spent his entire career trying to further the cause of public righteousness. In 1905, he uttered his life's credo: "There is a mighty task before us and it welds us together. It is to make the United States a mighty Christian nation and to Christianize the World." Nonetheless, the 28th president was not principally a religious figure, and he didn't fit comfortably in any religious camp, either in his own time or today. In Woodrow Wilson: Ruling Elder, Spiritual President, Barry Hankins tells the story of Wilson's religion as he moved from the Calvinist orthodoxy of his youth to a progressive, spiritualized religion short on doctrine and long on morality.

Woodrow Wilson

Ruling Elder, Spiritual President

Barry Hankins

Spiritual Lives

Woodrow Wilson

Ruling Elder, Spiritual President

Barry Hankins

Spiritual Lives

Author Information

Barry Hankins is Professor of History at Baylor University, as well as a Resident Scholar with the Institute for Studies of Religion (ISR). His publications include Baptists in America: A History (OUP, 2015) and Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism: A Documentary Reader (NYU Press, 2008). Hankins's biography Francis Schaeffer And the Shaping of Evangelical America: Fundamentalist Warrior, Evangelical Prophet (Eerdmans, 2008) was awarded the 2009 John Pollock Award for Christian Biography.

Woodrow Wilson

Ruling Elder, Spiritual President

Barry Hankins

Spiritual Lives

Reviews and Awards

A. Donald MacLeod Award in Presbyterian History

"The book includes a helpful index (225-35), a selected bibliography (219-23), and recommends itself not only to scholars interested in the U.S. presidency, but also in the manifold interrelations of religion and politics in modernity, which are in such dire needof more substantial research." -- Philipp Reisner, Amst

"All in all, this is an impressive brief biography, easily read by undergraduates as well as scholars in the field. ... Hankin's book is a valuable introduction to Woodrow Wilson's spiritual beliefs and to those of the Progressive Era." -- Hans P. Vought, Fides et Historia

"In this slim and eminently readable volume, Hankins deftly narrates Wilson's 67-year journey from Staunton, Virginia, where he was born in 1856, to Princeton, the White House, and beyond."--Heath W. Carter, The Christian Century

"Essential."--CHOICE

"Hankins, who teaches at Baylor University, has crafted a worthy portrait of the twenty-eighth president, one that portrays Wilson as both profoundly stubborn and thoroughly southern."--Journal of Southern Religion

"Hankins packs a tremendous amount of material into just over two hundred pages of text, inclusive of endnotes. It is impressive, then, how readable this book is, especially in light of its wide-ranging subject matter. Given its relatively brief length, its strong and vivid prose, its concise notes, and the unobtrusiveness of historiographical discussions, this book is certainly suitable for a popular audience with interests in presidential history or in the intersectionality of politics and religion...Hankins s work serves as a model for scholars striving to match a rigorous methodology with an engaging and concise prose style in order to produce a monograph that is rich in its argumentation, historical insights, and a joy to read. "--Reading Religion