Was Dwight D. Eisenhower Jewish?

Church Name May Provide New Clues

by Winsip Custer CPW News Service

     Researchers at the Center for Ecclesiastical Transparency in Washington D.C. say that President Dwight David Eisenhower who attended the National Presbyterian Church may have been secretly Jewish.

     "A year after we dropped the big bombs on Japan the Presbyterian General Assembly voted to change the name of Eisenhower's future church from First Covenant Presbyterian Church to National Presbyterian Church,"  said Fulbright B. Foreman the center's director. "Every Christian knows that the First Covenant is a reference to the Biblical Covenant of Abraham, which with Moses would become the Covenant of Law, but which Abraham sealed with the prior act of circumcision.  The Second Covenant is, in the New Testament, a reference to the Covenant of Grace in Jesus Christ.  Now we have not been able to fully ascertain whether First Covenant Presbyterian Church's name was chosen because another Covenant Presbyterian was threatening their primacy in Washington or whether the church was being secretly directed by opportunistic closet Hebrews.  It may also have been a wish to identify the church with the swelling nationalistic zeal felt by Americans after military victory in World War II, but this is less likely given the denomination's emphasis on sound doctrine and high educational standards which would have prevented it from doing anything to threaten the long cherished American emphasis upon separation of church and state which had its roots in avoiding the religio-political wars of England and Europe or, more importantly for Christians, the idolatry associated with elevating anything other than faith in God as an ultimate object of true devotion. 

     A church neighbor, John Summers, who parked his car in a no loading zone in front of the church, only to be severely reprimanded by what he described as a 'very legalistic church lady', is convinced that the name of the church before 1946, First Covenant, still applied, at least, to this woman.  He said that her emphasis on the rule of law clearly pointed to Old Testament legalism versus Second Covenant forgiveness and grace," said Foreman.

President and Mrs. Eisenhower
leaving National Presbyterian
in 1956

     President Dwight D. Eisenhower was baptized at the church in 1953 three years before his decision to support the "In God We Trust Bill" which put that phrase on our national currency. According to Mr. Foreman, as Ike left a Sunday service he said to a fellow parishioner... "by golly if money is the root of all evil we'll just make it that much harder for it to be used for any evil purposes!" When Eisenhower's church's name changed to National Presbyterian from First Covenant in 1946, however, some members who raised issue with the name change were accused of being unsupportive, legalistic and unpatriotic. 

     Actually, Washington's "Old First" Presbyterian merged with the newer Covenant Presbyterian Church in years past to create First Covenant, thus laying the groundwork for the inevitable confusion.  Some historians have indicated that the inclusion of the word "First" in church titles, common among warring Protestants on the road of Westward expansion, is absent from Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches that predate the Protestants by about 1500 years, but that inherent in human nature is a desire to be first as evidenced by mountain climbers, pilots, deep sea divers and lust-struck adolescent teens, especially boys.  "It should have been First Second Covenant Presbyterian Church to avoid the problem," said Fred C. Williamson of the church that had been home to John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Ulysses S. Grant and Grover Cleveland.  "Jesus was the first-born son of Mary, but he didn't act like one," continued Williamson, who also admitted that the use of the office of "Elder" among some churches made him nervous for the same reason.  "My big brother treated me like crap!' he continued.  "I thought about him every time I looked at the church Elders," he said with a visceral response.

     Mr. Williamson insisted that putting the name "National" in the church title clearly showed a wandering disregard for the separation of church and state that was the bulwark of the U.S. Constitution  as clearly spelled out in the First Amendment.  "American civil religion is not what the Founding Fathers had in mind," said Williamson in his letters to his new pastor at The First Second Covenant Christian Fellowship in Bethesda, Maryland.  The First Second Covenant Christian Fellowship had changed its name in 1986 from First New Covenant Christian Fellowship believing that the 2000 year old Second Covenant could not in all honesty be called "New" and that their former name may have implied a form of false advertising.  In a written response to Mr. Williamson's letters of concern about National, his new Pastor, Figley W. Shrivilfork, a distant relative of the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence, John Witherspoon, wrote "Hope to see you this Sunday when the title of my two-part sermon will be 'The Nation That Follows Christ Will Lead The World'. Then my next sermon, Part II,  will have to be a shorter title...simply 'Oops!'," wrote Rev. Shrivilfork.  Williamson was counseled by Shrivilfork not to continue to encourage any of his friends who, now well on in years, had criticized Eisenhower's decision by saying...."Who do people think we trusted before Ike put that on the money? Odin?"