Theodore Roosevelt: Preaching from the Bully Pulpit

Spiritual Lives

by Benjamin J. Wetzel

Theodore Roosevelt is well-known as a rancher, hunter, naturalist, soldier, historian, explorer, and statesman. His visage is etched on Mount Rushmore--alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln--as a symbol of his vast and consequential legacy. While Roosevelt's life has been written about from many angles, no modern book probes deeply into his engagement with religious beliefs, practices, and controversies despite his lifelong church attendance and commentary on religious issues. Theodore Preaching from the Bully Pulpit traces Roosevelt's personal religious odyssey from youthful faith and pious devotion to a sincere but more detached adult faith. Benjamin J. Wetzel presents the president as a champion of the separation of church and state, a defender of religious ecumenism, and a "preacher" who used his "bully pulpit" to preach morality using the language of the King James Bible. Contextualizing Roosevelt in the American religious world of the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Wetzel shows how religious groups interpreted the famous Rough Rider and how he catered to, rebuked, and interacted with various religious constituencies. Based in large part on personal correspondence and unpublished archival materials, this book offers a new interpretation of an extremely significant historical figure.

Genres: History, Biography

240 pages, Hardcover

Published June 8, 2021

Reviews

[Willemina Barber-Wixtrom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well written by an excellent academic. It is an effective survey of his religious life, and while greater analysis would be interested, it falls outside of this books specific purposes of reviewing the myriad facts.

[G. Salter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Covers a complex man's complex faith with honesty, a strong emphasis on primary sources, and careful descriptions of what past scholars have said.
A very satisfying, well-researched biography.

[J. Alfred · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a strong little book on one of the more interesting people this continent has produced: more specifically, it's on TR's religious beliefs, which are as definitely indefinite-- as indefinite in the most definite ways-- as is possible, as perhaps you might expect. Very interesting, very readable, very worthwhile.
I would add that its lack of bulk is an unmitigated plus. One of the downsides of being interested in history as a subject is that every book written on the subject, and especially every biography, apparently has to be at least five hundred pages long before any serious historians will give it the time of day. (And if you're used to reading books like a novel-reader does, that means that they will take the time of many days to get through.) So it is gratifying and helpful to have a scholarly volume on an important historical topic that one doesn't have to earmark a month to read.

[Ryan Michaud · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good religious biography of TR. The author doesn't really lay out a final conclusion of what he thinks but provides all the facts and lets the reader decide.