On August 6, 1945 the man once described as “an outstanding Baptist layman”, President Harry Truman, stood on the deck of the battleship “Augusta”, right after the first atomic bomb was dropped, and proclaimed “this is the greatest thing in history.” Few Americans Christians challenged his claim.
Just a few years earlier (at the beginning of WWII) President Truman issued a proclamation which said “The bombing of helpless and unprotected civilians is a strategy that has aroused the horror of all mankind. I recall with pride that the United States consistently has taken the lead in urging that this inhuman practice be prohibited.”