I remember once near the beginning of my years in New York I sought out an authentic Norwegian restaurant in Manhattan (my father was 100 percent Norwegian; his parents came over from Bergen area) and when I walked out of it after dining there by myself, not far from it (possibly even next door or across the street, as I remember) I was shocked to find I was outside the Marble Collegiate Church made famous by Norman Vincent Peale, who, and this was the real shocker for me, has a life-sized statue of himself, in preacher-mode, right off of the sidewalk on Fifth Avenue!!
When I was in high school, living in the Sunday morning TV realm of Robert Schuller's Crystal Cathedral out of Garden Grove, Calif., (especially when my dad decided to my delight some Sundays at the last minute that we would not be attending the main service at our First Baptist church in downtown Loudonville, OH) I was totally aware of Norman Vincent Peale. Peale was Schuller's mentor who appeared on his nationally televised Hour of Power service. Peale had best-selling books on how to be a happier, fully confident, always upbeat--and above all, "successful"--Christian.
Think about this. Trump was following his parents in going to Marble Collegiate when he was young. That's where HIS father made him go and he LOVED it--worshipped it, in fact. There are quotes from him saying that no one wanted Peale's sermon to end on those Sunday mornings he was in attendance.
I never remember being told by anyone as a kid that Peale was a phony preacher. He was admired and respected--just like a kind of Dale Carnegie, really!
I can now see the great marketing job with Peale, a 33rd Degree Scottish Rite Freemason!!! This is where Trump got his skills to be such a master trickster. It's been engrained in his psyche starting with his childhood preacher!
From the website Esoteric Freemasons: "The 33rd degree Mason Ritual has its origins in 18th century France, when members of the Masonic Lodge developed rituals as a way to bring new members into their ranks. These rituals were used to symbolize various concepts, such as brotherhood, justice, and morality. Over time, more elaborate rituals were developed and eventually the Scottish Rite emerged as an independent organization with its own set of rituals.
"The 33rd degree Mason Ritual consists of four parts: initiation, instruction, instruction in symbolism, and passing through the degrees. During initiation, new members are instructed in the principles and values of Freemasonry. They are then instructed in symbolism such as handshakes and symbols that represent various concepts. Therefore, they pass through each degree until they reach the 33rd degree."
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Here's an excerpt from an online article posted by Politico magazine in 2016, entitled "How Norman Vincent Peale Taught Donald Trump to Worship Himself":
Is this guy for real? Or more to the point, could anyone really possess that much self-confidence? There has been no shortage of explanations—a huge inferiority complex, infantile narcissism, delusional thinking—for Trump’s undying self-assurance. But as I discovered when writing a book about Donald, his father, and his grandfather, if you want to understand what goes on underneath the blond comb-over, you’d do well to look back to two crucial events in the early 1950s.
Event No. 1 occurred in October 1952, when a book appeared called The Power Of Positive Thinking. Written by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale and translated into 15 languages, it remained on the New York Times best-seller list for 186 weeks and sold 5 million copies. Donald was only 6 years old at the time and didn’t read the book until much later, but it quickly became important in the large Queens household in which he grew up, and it would play a critical role in his future. His parents, Fred and Mary, felt an immediate affinity for Peale’s teachings. On Sundays, they drove into Manhattan to worship at Marble Collegiate Church, where Peale was the head pastor. Donald and both his sisters were married there, and funeral services for both Fred and Mary took place in the main sanctuary.
“I still remember [Peale’s] sermons,” Trump told the Iowa Family Leadership Summit in July. “You could listen to him all day long. And when you left the church, you were disappointed it was over. He was the greatest guy.” A month later, in the same news conference at which Trump tossed out Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, he again referred to Peale as his pastor and said he was “one of the greatest speakers” he’d ever seen.
Known as “God’s salesman,” Peale merged worldliness and godliness to produce an easy-to-follow theology that preached self-confidence as a life philosophy. Critics called him a con man, described his church as a cult, and said his simple-minded approach shut off genuine thinking or insight. But Peale’s outlook, promoted through his radio shows, newspaper columns and articles, and through Guideposts, his monthly digest of inspirational messages, fit perfectly into the Trump family culture of never hesitating to bend the rules, doing whatever it took to win, and never, ever giving up.
“Believe in yourself!” Peale’s book begins. “Have faith in your abilities!” He then outlines 10 rules to overcome “inadequacy attitudes” and “build up confidence in your powers.” Rule one: “formulate and staple indelibly on your mind a mental picture of yourself as succeeding,” “hold this picture tenaciously,” and always refer to it “no matter how badly things seem to be going at the moment.”
Subsequent rules tell the reader to avoid “fear thoughts,” “never think of yourself as failing,” summon up a positive thought whenever “a negative thought concerning your personal powers comes to mind,” “depreciate every so-called obstacle,” and “make a true estimate of your own ability, then raise it 10 per cent.”
Peale’s philosophy fell on willing and eager ears in the Trump family. Long before this self-esteem guru codified his canon, Donald’s grandfather Friedrich used Peale-like confidence and tenacity to make the first Trump fortune during the Klondike gold rush. A few decades later, Donald’s father, Fred, deployed proto-Peale thinking to become a multimillionaire real estate developer in Brooklyn and Queens. And Donald Trump himself has cited Peale’s advice many times in his own career.
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