Posted on 12/29/2004 4:39:43 PM PST by PrinceMarko
Here is a closer look at what a much-misquoted president actually says and how it compares with his predecessors.
“I BELIEVE that God wants me to be president.” What? Did George Bush really say that? Does the president imagine he has a divine mission?
Well, he was quoted to that effect by Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention. The full quote, however, does not quite sound as if Mr Bush is labouring to scrap the republic and replace it with a theocracy. “But if that doesn't happen, that's okay,” the president continued, “I have seen the presidency up close and personal. I know it's a sacrifice, and I don't need it for personal validation.”
Still, the first part of the comment goes to the controversial nub of Mr Bush's religiosity. If you believe, along with him and John Calvin, that God involves himself in the workings of the world and all our lives, then you are always going to be vulnerable to the accusation that you think you have some sort of divine mandate.
Mr Bush clearly does believe God is involved in his life. Asked at a debate in the Republican primary contest in 1999 which philosopher he most identified with, Mr Bush replied promptly, “Christ—because he changed my heart.” At a national prayer breakfast in February 2003, he said he “felt the presence of the Almighty”. The president has talked of making decisions “on bended knee”.
Mr Bush also seems to believe there is some sort of divine plan for the world. In his speech to Congress nine days after the September 11th attacks, the president said that “freedom and fear, justice and cruelty have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.” In other words, God is involved in the affairs of men, and to be against freedom and justice is to go against the will of God.
By the standards of most evangelical Christians, these beliefs would be considered unremarkable. But Mr Bush cannot be judged by those standards. He is president of all Americans. What about the measure of America's political mainstream? Do these beliefs make him “too religious”, meaning that he crosses the fuzzy line between church and state? Not necessarily.
Mr Bush is in fact in the mainstream of recent presidents. As Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Centre points out, Jimmy Carter taught Sunday school while president. Bill Clinton talked about Jesus more often than Mr Bush and has spoken in more churches than Mr Bush has had rubber-chicken dinners.
Nor, in the American context, is the president's belief that God is involved in the world's affairs exactly ground-breaking. The last paragraph of the declaration of independence—no less—starts by appealing to the “Supreme Judge of the world” and ends “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence.” Both references in America's founding document are considerably more sectarian than Mr Bush's comment about God not being neutral between freedom and fear. They associate God with America's national interest; Mr Bush did not.
In these two core beliefs, then, the president's religiosity does not seem out of the mainstream. Yet it is worth examining Mr Bush's religious rhetoric more closely, for he does speak about religion more often, and more openly, than most of his predecessors. Mr Bush uses religious rhetoric in five main ways:
• As a literary device. In his first inaugural address, he referred to the parable of the good Samaritan: “When we see that wounded traveller on the road to Jericho, we will not pass to the other side.” He is especially fond of references to hymns: “There is power, wonder-working power in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people,” he said in the 2003 state-of-the-union address. Critics have complained that such quotations are code to please evangelicals, who recognise them. But religious imagery has been common currency in American public speaking since John Winthrop's “city on the hill” in 1630. Lincoln's speeches are rich with the sounds and rhythms of the Bible. Mike Gerson, the president's chief speech-writer, argues that to fillet out references to God would flatten political rhetoric.
• As consolation. “This world he created is of moral design,” said Mr Bush at the National Cathedral three days after the September 11th attacks. “And the Lord of life holds all who die, and all who mourn.” American presidents have long used religion in their role as comforter-in-chief. Remember Ronald Reagan's tribute to the crew of the space shuttle Challenger: “We will never forget them...as they prepared for the journey and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God’.” Mr Bush's usage is little different, and sometimes as eloquent.
• As history. On his trip to Africa in 2003, Mr Bush visited a slave-trading post at Goree Island, in Senegal. “Christian men and women,” he said, “became blind to the clearest commands of their faith...Enslaved Africans discovered a suffering Saviour, and found he was more like themselves than their masters.” In talking about the historical influence of religion, Mr Bush is highly unusual among presidents. But this is the least controversial feature of his rhetoric, since it concerns itself with historical facts, rather than the justification of present policies in religious terms.
• Arguing for his faith-based policies. Potentially this is more problematic, since the point of Mr Bush's faith-based initiative is to use religious institutions to deliver social welfare. The proposals have been criticised on those very grounds (for breaching the wall between church and state). But Mr Bush is careful not to claim too much for the role of faith, saying merely that religion is an aid to social welfare, not the heart of it. “Men and women can be good without faith,” he told a national prayer breakfast in 2001, “but faith is a force of goodness. Men and women can be compassionate without faith, but faith often inspires compassion.”
• To talk about providence. At a 2003 prayer breakfast, Mr Bush argued that “behind all of life and all of history, there's a dedication and purpose, set by the hand of a just and faithful God.” Yet, as he admitted in his 2003 state-of-the-union address, he does not think himself privy to that purpose: “We do not know—we do not claim to know—all the ways of Providence, yet we can trust in them.”
By God, by George All this amounts to a great deal of God-talk. But is it too much? Does it cross the line? That depends, of course, on where you think the line is.
Mr Bush has been careful not to sound sectarian when talking about religion. He angered many supporters by claiming, for instance, that Muslims worship the same God as Christians (a view espoused by Harry Truman but not by most evangelicals). He visited a mosque after September 11th. “We do not impose any religion; we welcome all religions,” he said at a 2001 prayer breakfast. “We do not prescribe any prayer; we welcome all prayers.”
By and large, Mr Bush has not associated the workings of providence with America or himself. The best evidence is his frequent assertion that “the liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world. It is God's gift to humanity.” To many Europeans, this formulation seems unnecessary. They argue that liberty is good in itself, not because it is God's gift. But to Americans the association is almost axiomatic, since it is rooted in the declaration of independence (“all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”). In some ways, Mr Bush is actually rejecting the “exceptionalist” claim that America is a unique nation singled out by its liberty.
Mr Bush's followers have been less prudent. They talk as if he has the mandate of heaven. “The Lord has just blessed him,” said Pat Robertson, the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network. “I think President Bush is God's man at this hour,” said Tim Goeglein, of the White House Office of Public Liaison, soon after the September 11th attacks. But when Mr Gerson said the same thing (“Mr President, when I saw you on television, I thought God wanted you there”), Mr Bush retorted: “He wants us all here, Gerson.”
Lastly, while Mr Bush goes on about the importance of faith, he never talks about policy—even issues with a moral component—in terms of doctrine or revelation. Evangelicals, for example, want to ban gay marriage because (they say) it is against God's will. Mr Bush never says this. He opposes it on the grounds that marriage is an institution so fundamental to society that it should not be changed. That is also why he has been so cautious in arguing for his faith-based policies.
That said, to speak frequently and directly about religion in a divided America can itself be divisive. Some Americans think religion should be purely private. The Texas Republican Party's 2004 platform “affirms that the United States of America is a Christian Nation”. The Supreme Court discusses the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance. When he talks about religion, Mr Bush rarely strays far from the mainstream. But America is a country in which the place of religion in the public sphere has never been fixed, and probably never will be.
Anyone who asks the question, "Is Bush too religious?" is a bigot.
I hear you, but I think your stretching a bit. If one means "too religious" as in "too pious", then it is a fair question.
But in this case I think the author is addressing those who think that actually believing in Jesus (rather then paying empty lip service in Church) disqualifies one to be President, which I would have to agree is a rather disturbing premise.
Exactly. The accusation that President Bush is "too religious" is a common one. This Economist article reads like it is answering the question, not asking it.
The real issue, which energizes liberals, lies in their belief that a God-fearing man does not respond to his constituents, but rather to an internal message. One which is beyond the reach of others. It's a pretty good argument.
That's rich. It was God-fearing men who wrote the Bill of Rights.
By contrast the modern day Liberals (or Leftists) are far more pious about overriding the will of the people then any Evangelical. The left just loves judicial activism based on a "Living" Constitution overriding the simple will of the people or the plain words a constructionist sees in the Constitution. Consider the abortion and gay marriage controversies.
Its God-fearing men who don't try to cheat on their constituents because it is God-fearing men who don't think of themselves as god-like!
Excellent!
Hold that thought.
Jimmy Carter is a born-again Christian, but he didn't provoke such anger about mixing religion and politics and governing as Bush. Reason -- Carter is Democrat, and it's ok to be a Christian Democrat, but it's not ok to be a Christian Republican. That's why Bush gets so much flack on this issue.
President Bush is president of all the people.
By being "religious" he is being divisive
So he should not be "too religious"...
And for those of us who are "religious"
If he is not "religious" then is he our president too?
Since Carter, the religious conservatives have been more activist, more aware, more willing to vote their convictions, and their votes have been going overwhelmingly to Republican candidates. Also, since Carter, the so-called "culture war" has heated up so that today it's something of a white-hot battle. This wasn't so much the case during Carter's term. As you suggest, if the vast majority of evangelical Christian votes were going to the Democrats, they wouldn't complain.
This is kind of a twist on the old discussion of whether an elected official should represent the views of his or her constituents, or should represent his or her own convictions. In Bush's case, his convictions are "informed" by his Christian faith. Reagan is deemed a great leader because he was guided by a set of internal convictions -- agree or disagree with him, at least you always knew where Reagan stood on an issue. History will (and to a large extent already has) judged Clinton as a poor president because he wasn't guided by an internal moral compass, but by his own appetites.
I think the left's animosity toward Bush is sharper than it was against Reagan because Bush is more vocal about his faith than Reagan was, and the left has become increasingly more hateful of people with religious convictions, and of God in general. And, of course, Bush's religious convictions are more of a political plus than a minus, which really infuriates the left.
"Congress shall fund establishments of lawyers with the sacred mandate to judicially regulate establishments of religion and any public practice thereof."
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