One Lost Soul: Richard Nixon’s Search for Salvation

By Daniel Silliman. Eerdmans, 2024. 336 pages. $36.99/hardcover or eBook.

In One Lost Soul, Daniel Silliman focuses his attention on one of the most notorious American politicians of the twentieth century and one who happened to have been raised a Quaker: Richard Nixon.

Shelves of books have been written about Nixon, his youthful struggles, his tumultuous political career, and the crashing failure of Watergate. Silliman, a journalist for Christianity Today, covers all this ground through the unique lens of faith. The book examines Nixon’s many victories and defeats to try to understand his spiritual growth (or lack thereof). The book’s title summarizes Silliman’s conclusion that Nixon throughout his life was spiritually lost.

The book explores Nixon’s Quaker upbringing, the tragic loss of a brother, Nixon’s inherent loneliness, and his deep-rooted sense of inadequacy. When he succeeded in academics or politics, he felt like an imposter. When he failed, he considered it proof he was unworthy. His determination to succeed was a drive to be forgiven, to be good enough, and to be accepted. He was not the brightest student or the handsomest young man, but he was a hard worker with, as one fellow student remarked, “an iron butt”—the sheer will to keep working.

But he had no faith, no solace from a consideration of a higher power. Silliman shows Nixon had a tortured relationship with Quakerism, rejecting its pacifism and at one point saying, “Quakers have allowed themselves to be sucked in by the Communists.”

He could have moments of sincerity and clarity: for example, while avoiding publicity, he met with Martin Luther King Jr.’s family quietly after MLK’s assassination to offer sympathy. But he could just as easily make ugly decisions, such as meeting with segregationists to gain their political support just weeks after visiting the King family.

Political exigencies of the moment guided many of his actions, not an abiding spirituality. Once he became president, he organized worship services in the White House, but they were more political performances than an expression of faith. He used the events to court constituencies, not to seek God.

The Vietnam War put Nixon on a collision course with Quakers (and many others). Even his mother’s meeting considered disowning him. At one point, Nixon remarked to a staffer that he hated “new Quakers,” meaning Quakers opposed to the war. “I’m sick of those pricks,” he said.

As his presidency became embroiled in numerous issues—the war, his enemies list, et cetera—Nixon wrapped himself in Christianity. When Watergate unraveled Nixon’s achievement of finally becoming president and then being reelected, he suffered what can only be considered a nervous breakdown. He wandered the White House halls talking with the portraits of past presidents and at one point forced Henry Kissinger to kneel and pray with him. He contemplated suicide.

After the shame of his resignation, what did he learn? Not much in Silliman’s estimation. Nixon told a staffer, “You’ve got to be tough. You can’t break . . . even when there is nothing left. You can’t admit, even to yourself, that it is gone.”

Reading this carefully researched book, I, of course, thought of the very human failings of other presidents, including our current one. Leaders achieve fame and power, but whatever haunted them earlier in life, if not addressed, can grow monstrous.

I was reminded of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s line from an essay on his own mental breakdown: “In the dark night of the soul, it’s always 3 a.m.” In the silence and darkness of our inner being, we have no choice but to see our true selves and weigh our actions in the balance. Silliman shows that Nixon ran from such an assessment, and his life as a consequence came crashing down around him.

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Cameron McWhirter is a journalist. He is coauthor of American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15 and author of Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America. He is a member of Atlanta (Ga.) Meeting and has served on the Board of Trustees of Friends Publishing Corporation, publisher of Friends Journal.