Recently in Bush Category

OMG: Barack Obama invokes the name of Jesus in public more the George W. Bush did! That must mean...what? Politico's Eamon Javers offers a range of non-mutually exclusive explanations, including Obama's need to demonstrate that he is a Christian, his desire to appeal to religious conservatives, an interest in reanimating a Christian Left. It's worth adding that Obama's secularist base so readily puts up with this because, in American culture, black folks are assumed to be religious and to give voice to their spiritual commitments.

What really counts, however, is the extent to which politicians associated with the religious right hide their light under a bushel on the national stage. During last year's campaign, Sarah Palin's clammed up almost completely when asked about her faith. Mike Huckabee, too, dialed his Baptist ministerial past down to zero, and made sure that no one was able to get hold of his old sermons. And George W. hissef never gave his testimony to a general audience after acknowledging Jesus as his personal philosopher and savior at that Iowa candidates' debate in December 1999. For all the chatter about how the Democrats are trying to shout God out of the public square, it's the Republicans who keep their tongues zipped. Newt Gingrich's recent religious effusions are striking for their rarity.

More important than public invocations is how politicians' religious convictions may actually affect their public acts. And here, the story of how President Bush sought to enlist French support for the war in Iraq by invoking Gog and Magog is instructive (not to say terrifying).

It seems that French President Jacques Chirac was puzzled by Bush's mentioning this prophesied war against Israel (cf. Ezechiel) that he instructed his people to find out what the hell Bush was talking about. Rather than have the thing get into Parisian salon circles, they contacted a professor in Lausanne, who explained the Biblical references. He later disclosed the conversation in an article in the school newspaper a couple of years ago. Now comes confirmation from Chirac himself. (See Clive Hamilton's post on the subject.)

Not to belabor the point, but it does seem as if Bush took us to war with visions of an End Times scenario playing in his head. I'm generally resistant to the liberal nightmare of hordes of American premillennialists waiting on the Rapture, but when they write the history of our time, George Bush's religious imagination has got to be in there, however often he mentioned Jesus.

In the Muslim world, this is not a way to show respect.

OMG he's a Mainline Protestant! He worships at an Episcopal Church.

He is something of a universalist:

When asked if he thinks that he prays to the same God as those with different beliefs [specifically, "Allah"], Bush said, "I do."

"I do believe there is an Almighty that is broad and big enough and loving enough that can encompass a lot of people," Bush said, but he drew a distinction when it comes to those who perpetrate terror.

He eschews inerrancy:

When asked if he believes the Bible is literally true, the president said that he's "not a literalist" when it comes to reading the Bible, but rather focuses on the important lessons he believes the Bible teaches.

He believes in evolution, in the normal mainline theistic way:

As for whether one can believe in the Bible and believe in evolution, Bush said he does, adding that "I happen to believe that evolution doesn't fully explain the mystery of life.

"I think that God created the Earth, created the world," he said. "I think the creation of the world is so mysterious it requires something as large as an almighty, and I don't think it's incompatible with the scientific proof that there is evolution."

To my knowledge, this is the most forthcoming Bush has ever been about his faith. You wonder what his conservative evangelical supporters might have thought about him had he said as much six or eight years ago. You wonder what they may think now.

Take a look at the excerpts from Jacob Weisberg's new book on President Bush post in Slate today. Weisberg is not the first to get behind the Billy Graham walk-on-the-beach myth, but his version seems to be the best we have so far. Evangelist Arthur Blessit, not Graham, is the guy who made the difference. Best of all is the account of Bush's relationship with Doug Wead, the sometime Pentecostal minister who did evangelical outreach for his father's campaign in 1988. Wead's a curious, excessively outspoken character. (Years ago, he explained to me how the Bush '88 campaign used religion to do away with the candidacies of Jack Kemp and Pat Robertson.) Weisberg's portrait of Bush's religion is neither credulous nor dismissive, but--to my eye--pretty well balanced.

David Kuo and John J. DiIulio Jr, former directors of the White House office of Faith Based Initiatives, criticized the Bush administration’s leadership of their department in today’s NYT. Kuo and Dilulio defended the positive effects of religious giving like providing social services to low income citizens, daycare, and assistance for the homeless. Yet, they also highlighted the President’s shortfalls in implementing such programs, i.e. the modest increase in government grants to faith based groups.

The duo did not shy away from preaching the proper role of faith based initiatives with their closing paragraph: "On Jan. 19, 2005, Mrs. Clinton, speaking before clergy members in Boston, captured the spirit that is likely to prevail in the White House, no matter who is elected: 'But I ask you, who is more likely to go out onto a street to save some poor, at-risk child than someone from the community, someone who believes in the divinity of every person, who sees God at work in the lives of even the most hopeless and left-behind of our children? And that’s why we need to not have a false division or debate about the role of faith-based institutions, we need to just do it and provide the support that is needed on an ongoing basis.' Amen.”

President Bush said today that his faith helped beat his alcohol problem. Bush speaking to a faith based program aimed at reforming inmates said, "I understand faith-based programs. I understand that sometimes you can find the inspiration from a higher power to solve an addiction problem."