The Rev. Norman Vincent Peale put his stamp on Donald Trump
President Donald Trump gestures as he concludes his remarks during a dinner aboard the USS Intrepid, a decommissioned aircraft carrier docked in the Hudson River in New York, Thursday, May 4, 2017. Credit: AP
President Donald Trump was raised under the influence of the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, who coined the famous doctrine of “the power of positive thinking.”
“I know that with God’s help,” Peale once wrote, “I can sell vacuum cleaners.”
Coming out of the early 20th century Midwest, Peale pioneered what would later be known as “prosperity gospel.”
Nearly two years ago at the Iowa Family Leadership Summit, the Republican then-candidate said, “The great Norman Vincent Peale was my pastor. . . . I still remember his sermons. And you could listen to him all day long.”
So Thursday, which was National Prayer Day, Trump made flamboyant remarks and signed an order associating himself with continued religious freedom. It was a day when the Peale portion of his biography emerged as especially relevant.
At the historic Marble Collegiate Church at Fifth Avenue and West 29th St. in Manhattan, Peale performed Trump’s first wedding, to Ivana Trump.
And later, Peale’s successor at Marble Collegiate, the Rev. Arthur Caliandro, peformed the second of Trump’s three marriages, to Marla Maples. (Trump’s no longer an active member).
During his 95 years, Peale was ordained as a Methodist, but later affiliated with the Reformed Church, which in New York goes back to the Dutch.
Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio makes clear a linkage between Peale’s message and lifettyle, and what father and son Fred and Donald Trump would become.
“For a Christian minister, he devoted precious little attention to the Bible or to God,” D’Antonio writes. “When God did appear in Peale’s writings and sermons, he was often portrayed as a sort of life coach or an object of meditation.”
His 1952 book “The Power of Positive Thinking” sold 2 million copies in two years. He drew financial support from such big names as Branch Rickey of the Brooklyn Dodgers and Thomas Watson of IBM.
Peale was a huge hit on the radio, with a show called “The Art of Living.” (Trump later wrote the book “The Art of the Deal.”)
As with Trump, Peale’s popularity was laced with controversy, and his critics condemned him as prejudiced and a con man.
Some major theologians saw him as leading a cult. Some psychologists warned his prescribed practices could cause mental disorders. Peale spoke mainly of “power and efficiency,” as D’Antonio describes.
And Peale caused a furious stir when, in opposing John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential bid, he famously said: “Faced with the election of a Catholic, our culture is at stake.”
Nonetheless, Peale, who died in 1993, kept a strong following among New York’s business elite, D’Antonio writes.
And, he writes, Peale continued to stand apart as “corporate America’s favorite preacher as he offered both a moral argument for capitalism and inspiration for vacuum salesmen.”
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
