Eisenhower drops from his rhetoric the social and economic sense of evil, embracing instead Truman's opposition between freedom and slavery. Speaking within the symbolic frame of the Cold War, Eisenhower depicts this opposition in terms of a moral struggle between good and evil, although like Truman he refrains from caling the Soviet enemy itself evil. Additionaly, even as Eisenhower adopts more religious language than his two immediate predecessors, the link they make between scientific and technological pow·er and the chalenge this power poses for future paths toward good or evil nevertheless continues to inhabit his speeches.
Eisenhower's first inaugural address establishes the rhetorical patterns for his presidential speeches. 30 He begins by asking his audience to bow their heads as he utters what he refers to as "a little private prayer of my own:' (That Eisenhower refers to a prayer said in a public ofice-taking ceremony as "private" deeply challenges the notion of private, particularly given that he speaks the prayer .aloud and asks the audience to join him in bowing their heads. Stil, the very fact that he felt compelled to refer to his prayer as "private" suggests the continued presence of some sort ofboundary separating personal expressions of religious.faith from public responsibility. In other words, were he to have no sense of the importanc� of a separation between church and state or faith and politics, Eisenhower would not have paid lip service to the distinction between public and private acts.) He then testifies to the significance of the present moment in American history: "The world and ·we have passed the midpoint of a century f continuing challenge. We sense with al our faculties that forces of good and evil are massed and armed and opposed as rarely before in history. This fact defines the meaning of this day. We are summoned by this honored and historic ceremony to witness more than the act of one citizen swearing his oath of service, in the presence of God. We are caled as a people to give testimony in the sight of the world to our faith that the future shal belong to the free:'31 Having grown in strength and responsibility in the course of confronting wars and economic depression, the United States finds itself calling upon God for guidance and "groping to know the full sense and meaning of these times:' Is the world heading toward darkness or nearing the light? This particular time of trial "comes at a moment when man's power to achieve good or to inflict evil surpasses the brightest hopes and the sharpest fears of al ages:' Yet the very hopes and promises that mankind's scientific and technological achievements have enabled now imperil life itself. The proper response to science, the only response adequate to the threat of darkness and annihilation facing the world, is faith.
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