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Norman Vincent Peale |
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Norman
Vincent Peale (1898-1993) Norman Vincent Peale was born in Cincinnati at the turn of the Twentieth Century. His father, who was both an ordained Methodist minister and a medical doctor, taught him the beliefs of the conservative Wesleyan Methodists and the Republican Party. He attended Wesleyan College and earned three degrees, eventually getting his doctorate. Early after college, he went to work for the Findlay Morning Republican as a reporter. While highly intelligent and glad to be working for a newspaper, he early on got a call that he would be more effective in ministry. Getting his feet wet in the pulpit created a burden to preach and he went to seminary, eventually becoming a great speaker about the love of God. Norman Vincent Peale was not at first comfortable around people like his father had always been. It was, however, in these early stages of his life that he established relationships that would benefit him for a lifetime. He was in the Army Reserves in World War One, and while ironically not serving overseas it gave him a military philosophy that lasted over six decades and influenced Presidents and generals. Norman relocated to New York in 1934, and though before then he had spent little time in New York, he was accepted as a New Yorker even by New Yorkers. A Methodist, he was hired to preach in a church that was historically Dutch Reformed and was ordained by that fellowship. Clearly a conservative and Evangelical in his own preaching, he parted company with his Evangelical brethren on a few matters. A lifelong participant in the Masonic order, he was such an ardent supporter of Helen Keller that he agreed to write the foreword for her spiritual autobiography, though it was largely written to further the religious philosophy of a "prophet" of universalism. As a preacher, author, speaker, statesman, and moral psychology advocate, Norman Vincent Peale has few rivals in American history. Even before his all-time classic The Power of Positive Thinking was published, he had already written over twenty books. His two monumental works that would take most of a lifetime were established by his middle years, first Guideposts, a monthly journal of positive primarily Christian tidbits from home and hearth. The other, the first of its kind anywhere in the world, was the Blanton/Peale Institute for positive living. Along with psychologist "Smiley” Blanton, his lifelong friend and collaborator, they set up a mental health institute to turn people on to the power of positive thinking through spiritual principles. In 1934 he became pastor of Marble Hill Collegiate Church, a role he held for forty-five years. His greatest best-sellers are compared to other great American positive thinkers like Dale Carnegie, who spoke at his pulpit. He spoke in front of church pulpits, Rotary clubs, lawyers' conventions, labor unions, Presidents, doctors, astronomers, authors, and blue-collar workers delivering over twenty thousand speeches and sermons throughout his long life. He knew every President of the US from the second term of Grover Cleveland through George Herbert Walker Bush. He influenced five generations of Americans from the one that fought in World War I (his own) through the end of the Cold War. Peale's legacy as a statesman in addition to a preacher, author, and positive speaker is cemented by his relations with Presidents and military figures. He knew sixteen Presidents in his ninety-five years and was particularly close to Dwight D. Eisenhower Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan, who shared many of his beliefs. In 1960 he got both good and bad publicity for participating (as the most famous conferee) in a conference on raising up a godly man to succeed Eisenhower in the White House, which the media took as an all-too clear reference to keeping the White House Protestant, and not letting John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, win the election. When Kennedy did win, however, he became friends with him and they met several times. A staunch Republican from his boyhood days in the heartland, Peale could be happy with a Democrat in the White house like his friends Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, but he seemed to have more issues with Democrats like the latter's firing of the stalwart Douglass MacArthur. Nonetheless, Norman Vincent Peale was an American's American, and he ministered to Presidents, service men, and leaders regardless of their views. He wrote more than forty books, preached and spoke in at least three dozen countries, and was a spiritual adviser to troops in Vietnam. Peale went all over the world, traveling millions of miles, counseling people in Singapore, Cincinnati, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Nairobi, India, Israel, Latin America, Louisiana, London, and Lisbon through five decades of pulpit ministry. By the time he died in 1993, Norman Vincent Peale was able to say he saw America at her best and worst, in sickness and health, good times and bad, and he loved her and worked to advance her causes. In 1984 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award that can be given to a civilian. Making his ninetieth year in good health, he continued to speak and write. In his last half decade he published the monumental, but relatively brief, autobiography This Incredible Century, that reads as both a commentary on his life and on the Twentieth Century, both overwhelming stories of triumph from the ordinary to the extraordinary. He also performed the wedding of Dwight D. Eisenhower's grandson David to Richard Nixon's daughter, Julie. In 1993, he was found dead by his wife Ruth, herself an American icon and hero of hope in her own right. He is and will long be remembered as one of the greatest legacies of faith, hope, writing excellence, and the American ideals for centuries to come. His spiritual leadership will forever be remembered. Norman Vincent Peale's philosophy of life and his ability to enjoy and influence it for decades was simple: think positive, love and trust Jesus, have intellectual and spiritual goals for which to get up every day and plan every year, forget your age, it is just a number, thrive at any age, face your problems because they are a sign of a healthy and vigorous life, eat moderately, exercise as much as possible, and never use alcohol or tobacco.
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