OT: God and George Bush

[Guest guest]

Hi y'all,

 

This is a pretty interesting view of what drives George Bush. ;-p

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May 17, 2003

By BILL KELLER

New York Times

 

Is President Bush a religious zealot, or does he just pander to that

crowd? That, crudely put, is probably the most persistent question I

hear about Mr. Bush when I travel outside the country, and it comes up

all the time in the less godly American precincts (universities,

Bush-hater Web sites, Hollywood, the island of Manhattan). On issues

from Saddam to sodomy, the assumption is that Mr. Bush is an evangelist

for a moralistic agenda that grows from his born-again Christianity. Or

else (the more cynical variation), regardless of what he believes in, he

has handed over the presidential portfolio to the preacher pols of the

religious right in exchange for their influence as campaign ward

heelers.

 

I understand the critics' discomfort with Mr. Bush's public piety. It

contributes to an image of crusading arrogance abroad, and to a fear of

invasive moralism at home. Most recently, the president's reluctance to

offend Senator Rick Santorum — a Catholic theocrat who believes that

states should have the power to arrest gay lovers in their bedrooms, or

even to criminalize couples who use contraceptives — was an occasion to

wonder what, exactly, Mr. Bush was born-again into.

 

But I've been talking to people who think seriously about religion,

including some who know Mr. Bush, and I'm convinced that the notion of a

White House powered by fundamentalist Christianity badly misses the

point. The critics are right that Mr. Bush's religion is both the

animating force of his presidency and one of his greatest political

assets, but not in the ways they assume.

 

I've long suspected the essential fact about Mr. Bush is that God was

his 12-step program. At the age of 40, Mr. Bush beat a drinking problem

by surrendering to a powerful religious experience, reinforced by Bible

study with friends. This kind of born-again epiphany is common in much

of America — the red-state version of psychotherapy — and it creates the

kind of faith that is not beset by doubt because the believer knows his

life got better in the bargain.

 

There are lots of ways to describe Mr. Bush's religion. By church

affiliation, he is a Methodist. In theological terms he would be called

a pietist, referring to a tradition in which religion is more a matter

of the heart than the intellect. One of his fellow believers describes

Mr. Bush's Bible study milieu as " small-group evangelicalism. " However

labeled, Mr. Bush's faith entails a direct relationship between the

believer and God. It does not provide a pope, or any other intermediate

authority figure.

 

Nor does Mr. Bush's religion provide a very specific playbook, except

the Bible, and among born-again Christians that book can be regarded as

anything from a collection of inspirational poetry to a literal recipe

for life. (Mr. Bush gives no sign of being among the literalists.)

According to people who have worked closely with him or who travel in

evangelical circles, Mr. Bush's faith is therefore highly subjective. It

enjoins him to try to do the right thing, but it doesn't tell him what

the right thing might be. It is faith without a legislative agenda.

 

So how does religion influence this presidency? Gregg Easterbrook, a

liberal Christian who has written extensively about the modern search

for meaning, suspects that for starters Mr. Bush is simply more

comfortable with religious people than with nonbelievers. That may

explain the atmosphere in the White House, where, as Mr. Bush's former

speechwriter David Frum put it, " attendance at Bible study was, if not

compulsory, not quite uncompulsory. "

 

But it is a nonsectarian comfort. Mr. Bush has talked of bonding with

Vladimir Putin over the story of a crucifix Mr. Putin's mother

gave him. According to Deborah Sontag's reporting in The New York Times

Magazine last Sunday, Mr. Bush startled Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the devout

Muslim who now leads Turkey, by declaring: " You believe in the Almighty,

and I believe in the Almighty. That's why we'll be great partners. "

 

It is probably not entirely irrelevant to our international relations

that Tony Blair is, as one British columnist put it, " the most overtly

pious leader since Gladstone, " while Jacques Chirac of France and

Gerhard Schröder of Germany are adamantly secular. Mr. Schröder was the

first German chancellor to refuse to end his oath of office with the

customary " so help me God. "

 

" I suspect Bush takes the view (which may prove right) that the ultimate

argument will be between people who believe in something larger than

themselves, and people who believe that it's all an accident of

chemistry, " Mr. Easterbrook said.

 

So God is a kind of fraternity handshake. He is also a reliable source

of rhetorical flourishes. Mr. Bush's frequent invocation of the Almighty

in his speeches grates on the ears of worldly Europeans, who, when the

president says, " God bless America, " imagine they hear, " And to hell

with everybody else. " But it is a tradition of long standing in America,

where our dissident origins, First Amendment protections and

entrepreneurial spirit have created the most diversely religious

population in the world. Mr. Bush comes nowhere near the profuse

sectarian language of, say, Lincoln or the Roosevelts. He is also the

first president to expand the routine homage to " churches and

synagogues " to include " mosques. " That amendment came long before 9/11,

and was welcome, even if it was motivated by the awareness that American

Muslim voters constitute a growing, unexploited voter pool.

 

How his faith influences policy is harder to tell. People who know Mr.

Bush say his religion tells you more about the way he makes certain

decisions than about the outcome. One adviser, who does not share the

president's religious views, said: " Once you see something as belonging

in the moral realm, you have a strong desire to act in such a way that

you can live with your conscience. " Even people who know Mr. Bush are

not always sure how much issues are shaped by his conscience and how

much by the political calculation that this White House has refined to

high science.

 

His advocacy of faith-based social programs, for example, clearly grows

from his conviction, based on personal experience, that religion can

bring an extra charisma to problems like drug abuse. If that also

happens to win him religious votes and to coincide with the Republican

aversion to government social programs, so much the better for Mr. Bush.

 

On many of the most morally charged issues, Mr. Bush has so far avoided

quixotic battles. He endorsed a law against certain late-term abortions,

but shows no inclination to go after Roe v. Wade, a move that would be

enormously unpopular. He has not declared — because no situation has

forced him to — whether he thinks private sexual behavior falls under a

constitutional right to privacy.

 

 

Perhaps the most important effect of Mr. Bush's religion is that, for

better or for worse, it imparts a profound self-confidence once he has

decided on a course of action. This has been most conspicuous since

Sept. 11 in the way he has talked about his mission to make the world

safe for democracy. Some listeners take it as presumptuous, messianic,

even blasphemous. John Green of the University of Akron, a scholar of

religion in politics, sees it as a perfectly ordinary way for a

religious man to understand a task history has presented him.

 

" For Bush to conclude that this was God's plan, " he said, " is not a

whole lot different from a plumber in Akron deciding that God wants him

to serve lunch to homeless people. "

 

As for the enduring notion that Mr. Bush takes his instructions from the

organized Christian right, it misses a much more interesting story: as

an independent political structure, the Christian right is dying.

 

For one thing, the organizations that hit their stride in the 1980's

have waned. The Moral Majority is long gone. The Christian Coalition is

withering. Bombastic evangelical power brokers like Jerry Falwell and

Pat Robertson have aged into irrelevance, and now exist mainly as

ludicrous foils. Their attempt to turn the war on terror into a

religious war — Mr. Robertson called the prophet Muhammad " a wild-eyed

fanatic, " and Franklin Graham, the preacher son of Billy Graham and a

friend of Mr. Bush's, described Islam as " evil " — afforded Mr. Bush a

chance to play ecumenical healer by rebuking them.

 

At the same time, noted Mr. Green, who has studied the Christian right,

many local activists have gravitated into the Republican Party as county

chairmen and campaign consultants. Once an independent force hammering

at the president and Congress, they are now an institutional part of the

party base. They must be kept mollified — but in balance with other

parts of the coalition, like business, and within the bounds of what a

majority of voters will accept. Karl Rove, the White House political

genius, has a master plan for enlarging that ecumenical array of

believers — churchgoing Catholics, Mormons and Jews as well as the

evangelicals — and welding them permanently into the Republican

mainstream.

 

The interesting story, then, is not that Mr. Bush is a captive of the

religious right, but that his people are striving to make the religious

right a captive of the Republican Party.

 

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company