Norman Vincent Peale's Secret Manuscript, Smiley Blanton and the JFK Fight

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Norman Vincent Peale was born in Ohio in 1898, the son of a physician who became a Methodist minister. He first worked as a newspaper reporter in Ohio and Detroit, was ordained in 1922 and earned theology degrees in Boston. In Brooklyn he grew a congregation of about 40 to about 900 in three years, and in Syracuse in 1927 he began broadcasting sermons on commercial radio. In 1932 he took over New York's Marble Collegiate Church, down to about 200 attendees in the Depression, and at his wife Ruth's suggestion partnered with psychoanalyst Smiley Blanton on a clinic that combined psychiatric treatment with spiritual counseling.

When the manuscript of his 1952 book on positive thinking was ready, Peale lost his nerve and wanted to throw it away, so Ruth submitted it to a publisher behind his back. It stayed on the bestseller list for 186 weeks. Blanton refused to endorse it, psychologists documented breakdowns among people trying to suppress negative thoughts, and deans from Yale Divinity School and Union Theological Seminary attacked it. Peale never answered publicly but privately threatened to resign. In 1960 he chaired a group of Protestant clergy that opposed John F. Kennedy because he was Catholic; a dozen newspapers dropped his column, and he later claimed he had not written the group's manifesto. Ronald Reagan still awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1984.

• His NBC radio show ran for 54 years, and he and Ruth hosted a television show and founded Guideposts magazine.
• He co-founded an organization for unemployed executives with partners including the founders of IBM and JCPenney.
• In the 1940s he chaired a political pressure group that opposed Franklin Roosevelt's policies.
• He opposed Adlai Stevenson because Stevenson was divorced, and Stevenson replied that he admired the apostles of the Bible but found this self-appointed one offensive.
• He went on to advise Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush despite the Kennedy scandal.