If Americans ever lived in a Billy Graham nation, they do so no longer. They live now in a nation defined by Norman Vincent Peale, though few Americans today may even know this name.
It is Peale’s influence that permeates the cultural landscape. He is a founder of our secular religion of achievement and well-being. His vision is echoed in the mystical certainties of figures like Oprah Winfrey. Even the Trump presidency is confirmation that our country is now Normal Vincent Peale’s America.
Certainly, Graham was the exemplar and perhaps the culmination of a religious tide that blanketed the whole of American history until his day.