by Joel A. Brown

Although not one of the largest Protestant denominations in the United States, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has an outsized legacy of members who have ascended to the top two offices in the land, reflecting Disciples’ commitment to leadership and public service. James A. Garfield, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Ronald Reagan each served as president of the United States, with Johnson serving also as vice president. Today, as Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, a lifelong Disciple, is among those being considered to be Kamala Harris’s running mate, it is a fitting moment to reflect on the role and impact of Disciples who’ve served in the top offices of the Executive Branch.  

James Garfield

James A. Garfield is the only preacher ever to occupy the White House. In youth and young adulthood, Garfield was deeply shaped by the religious ideals and ferment of the early-nineteenth-century Stone-Campbell Movement. Baptized by a Disciples preacher at the age of 18 in 1850, Garfield immediately started preaching and quickly developed a following on the Western Reserve. After an education that began at the Disciples institution that would become Hiram College (Ohio) and then continued at Williams College, he returned to Hiram, where he was quickly appointed President of the College. At Hiram, he developed a strong network of Stone-Campbell leaders and became their “favorite preacher.” In 1859, at the age of 27, Garfield was elected to the Ohio Senate, a vocational calling he pursued because he believed there were plenty of good preachers but not enough godly men in politics.

When the Civil War broke out, Garfield responded to the crisis and assumed command of the Forty-Second Ohio, where he actively recruited Disciples to fight to defend the Union. At the outset of the war in 1861, he gave a passionate speech at the American Christian Missionary Society (ACMS) gathering, an organization founded and led by his friend and mentor Alexander Campbell, in which he combined their appeals for Christian unity with the Union’s mission to preserve the nation. After achieving the rank of major general in the Union Army, Garfield left in 1863 to begin his career in Congress, which would last until his election to the Presidency in 1880. During his tenure in Congress, Garfield served as an elder in the Vermont Avenue Christian Church (the forebearer to National City Christian Church), where he often taught Sunday School. 

Garfield’s bid for the Presidency was aided significantly by Disciples from the Western Reserve, among whom he’d built a considerable political base over nearly two decades. This association extended to other states nationwide as Disciples coalesced to support his presidential campaign, helping him win the White House in the general election. 

Garfield’s presidency lasted less than eighteen months, unfortunately, as he was shot by political rival Charles J. Guiteau. Although the bullet did not kill Garfield, an ensuing infection from the surgery would prove fatal, dying more than two months after the assassination attempt. Garfield’s assassination has largely overshadowed his anti-corruption and pro-civil rights efforts during his short presidency.

Among the many tributes to Garfield upon his assassination, Yale College President Noah Porter’s stands out: “In my judgment, there is no more interesting feature of his character than his loyal allegiance to the body of Christians in which he was trained, and the fervent sympathy with which he shared in their Christian communion.… President Garfield adhered to the church of his mother, the church in which he was trained, and which he had served as a pillar and an evangelist.”

Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan was similarly influenced by the “church of his mother.” Raised in Illinois, Reagan’s early life was shaped considerably by his mother’s religious inclinations, a devout member of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). When he was ready to choose a college to attend, her approval was required, which led to Ronald enrolling at Eureka College in Eureka, Illinois, a Disciples institution. His mother, Nelle, was a devout Disciple, associating with a part of the Christian Church that believed strongly in the Social Gospel. Ronald credited her spiritual influence in his decision to be baptized and become a Christian.

After a career in Hollywood and a stint in the United States Army Reserves during World War II, Reagan entered the political arena in 1945. Beginning his political career as a Democrat, Reagan cited Franklin D. Roosevelt as a “true hero.” He also volunteered to lead anti-nuclear rallies and spoke out frequently against racism, including multiple speeches condemning the KKK in California and throughout the country. His early political career aligned closely with his mother’s Social Gospel Christianity. 

In the 1950s, Reagan’s politics began drifting to the right, supporting the presidential campaigns of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. It was during this time, around 1963, that Reagan also began attending a Presbyterian church. In the 1960s, his political emphasis turned to defending “free markets,” and his strong support of the Goldwater campaign in 1964 helped secure his own election as the Governor of California in 1966, an office he would hold until 1975. 

After losing the 1976 Republican primary to Gerald Ford, Reagan became one of President Jimmy Carter’s chief critics, mounting a successful Presidential campaign against him in 1980. Reagan’s two terms as President were marked by the rise of the Religious Right and federal deregulation. Following an assassination attempt in 1981 in which he was shot, Reagan returned to the anti-nuclear position of his early political career, seeking worldwide peace and an end to the Cold War. In a May 9, 1982, speech at Eureka College, his alma mater, Reagan challenged the Soviet Union to a new era of negotiations to reduce nuclear arms, called START. The speech has been labeled “The Beginning of the End of the Cold War.”

Lyndon B. Johnson

Perhaps the closest Disciples comparison to Governor Beshear is Lyndon B. Johnson, who also ran as Vice President alongside John F. Kennedy in 1960 before assuming the Presidency after JFK’s assassination in 1963. 

Johnson was born to a mother and father who were devout Texas Baptists. His mother, Rebekah Baines Johnson, often described her family as “Baptist and Democrat.” LBJ also had Baptist roots on his father’s side. However, his grandfather eventually converted to the Christian Church, and his father joined the Christadelphian Church later in his life.

Although raised in Baptist churches in Texas, Johnson chose to join the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), which would be his spiritual home for the rest of his life. As a teenager, he attended a summertime revival in 1923 in his hometown of Johnson City, Texas, hosted by the First Christian Church. There, he decided that the Disciples’ teachings better aligned with his own religious views than those of the Baptist churches in which he was raised. For the rest of his life, he considered First Christian Church in Johnson City his “home church.” 

During his political career in Washington, D.C., Johnson joined the National City Christian Church and frequently worshiped there on Sundays. However, in true Disciples fashion, LBJ embraced an ecumenical approach to worship. In addition to worshiping in Disciples churches, he also frequently attended services with his wife, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson, in Episcopal churches and Catholic mass with his daughter. Upon his death, Johnson’s funeral was held at National City on January 25, 1973.

Johnson’s political vision, which eventually led to his presidency’s “Great Society” legislation (e.g., the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the 1965 Medicare Amendment to the Social Security Act), was shaped by two influences in his early life: First, he fell in love with politics at an early age. His father and maternal grandmother were both Texas politicians. In his youth, LBJ enjoyed campaigning across the Texas Hill Country with his father in his populist political campaigns. Although he would not immediately pursue politics as a young adult, he eventually followed that calling in the early 1930s, when Texas Democrat Richard Kleberg was elected to Congress, inviting Johnson to accompany him to Washington as his top aide. 

In Depression-era Washington, Johnson was a rising star in the world of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal politics. He was elected to Congress in 1937, served in the Navy during WW2, and then was elected to the Senate in 1948, where his art for politics was perfected and put on full display. Running to be the Democratic nominee for President in 1960, he lost to his colleague in the Senate from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy. Upon securing the nomination and knowing he needed help to win Democratic votes in the South, Kennedy immediately asked Johnson to be his running mate.

The second major influence in Johnson’s early life that shaped his political imagination was his exposure to the socially concerned form of Christianity that he encountered in the Disciples church he joined as a teenager in Johnson City. By the 1920s, many Disciples preachers had embraced a form of the Social Gospel that applied traditional Protestant doctrines to pressing social concerns brought on by urbanization, immigration, and industrialization. Rather than pursuing his childhood dream of entering politics upon graduation from High School and the equivalent of what we would call “gap years” today, LBJ was likely driven by this religio-social vision to enter college to become a teacher. Later in life, LBJ remarked that he made the decision to pursue a career as an educator specifically with the intention of using education as a means to help uplift underprivileged youth, reflecting a core belief of Social Gospel theology. He left college for a year to take a job teaching middle school students at a segregated Mexican-American school in the South Texas town of Cotulla, an experience that had a profound effect on Johnson’s later political agenda. Forty years later, in reflecting on his time teaching in Cotulla, LBJ shared how that experience, as much as anything in his life, inspired his political vision that culminated in the monumental Progressive accomplishments of his presidency’s Great Society legislation. 

Johnson might have continued in his chosen vocational path as an educator serving underprivileged children if the Depression had not dried up teaching opportunities, which had already paid little. However, while LBJ left his career in education for one in politics in the wake of the Depression, he carried with him the belief that applied Christianity could help solve social ills, and it was that socially-minded faith that at least in part motivated him to pursue a legislative agenda throughout his political career that aimed to build a “Great(er) Society.”

Andy Beshear

The most obvious comparison between Johnson as a former VP and Andy Beshear as a potential VP pick is that, like Johnson with Kennedy, as the Democratic Governor of Kentucky, Beshear offers the top of the Democratic ticket greater appeal in Southern battleground states. However, there is also an important religious factor that would be mirrored in their selections beyond simply being from the same Protestant denomination. One of the greatest challenges for Kennedy’s campaign was religion. Although not the first Catholic to run for president, JFK was the first to win the presidency (Joe Biden was the second). It certainly helped Kennedy to have a Southern Protestant in Johnson on the ticket, even if it did not completely quell anti-Catholic sentiment throughout the campaign and into his presidency. Although less obvious than in Kennedy’s case, similar obstacles with regard to religion could be an issue for Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign, especially within a political environment in which White Christian Nationalism is gaining ground. Vice President Harris is Baptist, but it’s her multireligious upbringing and family connections that will likely concern some voters who exhibit a Christian bias (whether knowingly or not). Raised by a Hindu mother, Harris also attended Christian churches growing up, and as an adult, she joined a Black Baptist church in San Francisco, where she has remained a member. She is also married to a Jewish husband, who would become the first non-Christian “first spouse” (not to mention the first “first gentleman”) if Harris is elected. So again, as with JFK, religion (and religious bias) likely factors into the equation in selecting a running mate. Beshear’s identity as a Christian, and even as a Governor who gained some recognition for exhibiting a seemingly pastoral sensibility during the early days of the pandemic, certainly helps to balance any religious concerns prospective Harris voters might have about her multi-religious identity.

Beyond their shared Disciples identity, LBJ and Beshear also share a similar theological vision. They both emphasize the role of faith in creating a better society. More specifically, they are both Disciples who seem to have been shaped by a similar vision of social Christianity. Now, not all Disciples share this theological heritage, but many Disciples, from the era of Walter Rauschenbusch to now, have ascribed to a version of social Christianity that has shaped the public witness of Disciples in otherwise secular social and political spheres. 

A lifelong Disciple, Beshear is a member of Beargrass Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), where both he and his wife have served as deacons. Beargrass is a Disciples church whose mission is to “Worship with hope, grow with love, and serve with a passion for justice.” They exemplify a form of twenty-first-century Social Christianity shared among many Progressive mainline Protestants in the US: “We are led by love, compassion, and kindness – following the example and commands of Jesus to love our neighbors as ourselves and to serve the ‘least of these’ … including the thirsty, hungry, unhoused, impoverished, ill, refugees, grief-stricken, children, elderly, and those affected by disaster, violence, domestic abuse, substance abuse, inequity, and injustice. We prioritize our resources and our time to ensure that our generosity matches our values with meaningful service opportunities for all ages. Beargrass is called to be a voice for hope, justice, and equality for all people.”

In his public speeches on religion, Governor Beshear has exhibited a theological vision that clearly reflects social gospel concerns. Earlier this year, at the 2024 Kentucky Governor’s Prayer Breakfast (March 13, 2024), he reflected on the state’s experience of several recent natural disasters and remarked that we “experience God in the response” to human tragedy and suffering. In the same address, Beshear also conveyed his understanding that the goal of Christian unity (a core Disciples belief) is not just that we come together to worship but that it should ultimately lead to Christian service of the “least of these,” reminding the audience that what unites us is the belief that “everyone is our neighbor,” and that our faith should inspire us to serve them and care for them. 

In his address to the most recent General Assembly of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Louisville in 2023, Governor Beshear articulated a vision for unity in divisive times that could be effective in the campaign for the White House. He welcomed the Assembly by saying, “I have faith in God. I have faith in us. In this most divisive time, I believe that love will win.”