[amc] Bush and God
- From: "Ray Gingerich" <RGingerich@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Austin Center for Peace & Justice" <acpj@xxxxxxxxxx>,"Austin Mennonite Church" <amc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2003 12:12:35 -0600
Is "the love of money the root of all evil" or possibly religious
fundementalism (which religion? irrelevant). Ray Gingerich
*************************************************************
During his presidential campaign, George W. Bush said he'd been `called'
to seek higher office and talked openly about his faith
Bush and God
A higher calling: It is his defining journey-from reveler to revelation.
A biography of his faith, and how he wields it as he leads a nation on the
brink of war
By Howard Fineman
NEWSWEEK
March 10 issue - George W. Bush rises ahead of the dawn most days, when the
loudest sound outside the White House is the dull, distant roar of F-16s
patrolling the skies. Even before he brings his wife, Laura, a morning cup of
coffee, he goes off to a quiet place to read alone.
HIS TEXT ISN'T news summaries or the overnight intelligence dispatches. Those
are for later, downstairs, in the Oval Office. It's not recreational reading
(recently, a biography of Sandy Koufax). Instead, he's told friends, it's a
book of evangelical mini-sermons, "My Utmost for His Highest." The author is
Oswald Chambers, and, under the circumstances, the historical echoes are loud.
A Scotsman and itinerant Baptist preacher, Chambers died in November 1917 as he
was bringing the Gospel to Australian and New Zealand soldiers massed in Egypt.
By Christmas they had helped to wrest Palestine from the Turks, and captured
Jerusalem for the British Empire at the end of World War I.
Now there is talk of a new war in the Near East, this time in a land
once called Babylon. One morning last month, as the United Nations argued and
Washingtonians raced to hardware stores for duct tape amid a new Orange alert,
the daily homily in "My Utmost" was about Isaiah's reminder that God is the
author of all life and history. "Lift up your eyes on high," the prophet of the
Old Testament said, "and behold who hath created these things." Chambers's
explication: "When you are up against difficulties, you have no power, you can
only endure in darkness" unless you "go right out of yourself, and deliberately
turn your imagination to God."
Later that day, the president did so. At Opryland in Nashville-the old "Buckle
of the Bible Belt"-Bush told religious broadcasters that "the terrorists hate
the fact that ... we can worship Almighty God the way we see fit," and that the
United States was called to bring God's gift of liberty to "every human being
in the world." In his view, the chances of success were better than good.
(After all, at the National Prayer Breakfast a few days before, he'd declared
that "behind all of life and all history there is a dedication and purpose, set
by the hand of a just and faithful God." If that's so, America couldn't fail.)
After his speech in Nashville, Bush met privately with pastoral social
workers and bore witness to his own faith in Jesus Christ. "I would not be
president today," he said, "if I hadn't stopped drinking 17 years ago. And I
could only do that with the grace of God." The prospect of war with Iraq was
"weighing heavy" on him, he admitted. He knew that many people-including some
at the table-saw the conflict as pre-emptive and unjust. ("I couldn't imagine
Jesus delivering a message of war to a cheering crowd, as I just heard the
president do," one participant, Charles Strobel, said later.) But, the
president said, America had to see that it is "encountering evil" in the form
of Saddam Hussein. The country had no choice but to confront it, by war if
necessary. "If anyone can be at peace," Bush said, "I am at peace about this."
Every president invokes God and asks his blessing. Every president promises,
though not always in so many words, to lead according to moral principles
rooted in Biblical tradition. The English writer G. K. Chesterton called
America a "nation with the soul of a church," and every president, at times, is
the pastor in the bully pulpit. But it has taken a war, and the prospect of
more, to highlight a central fact: this president-this presidency-is the most
resolutely "faith-based" in modern times, an enterprise founded, supported and
guided by trust in the temporal and spiritual power of God. Money matters, as
does military might. But the Bush administration is dedicated to the idea that
there is an answer to societal problems here and to terrorism abroad: give
everyone, everywhere, the freedom to find God, too.
Bush believes in God's will-and in winning elections with the backing
of those who agree with him. As a subaltern in his father's 1988 campaign,
George Bush the Younger assembled his career through contacts with ministers of
the then emerging evangelical movement in political life. Now they form the
core of the Republican Party, which controls all of the capital for the first
time in a half century. Bible-believing Christians are Bush's strongest
backers, and turning them out next year in even greater numbers is the top
priority of the president's political adviser Karl Rove. He is busy tending to
the base with pro-life judicial appointments, a proposed ban on human cloning
(approved by the House last week) and a $15 billion plan to fight AIDS in
Africa, a favorite project of Christian missionaries who want the chance to
save souls there as well as beleaguered lives. The base is returning the favor.
They are, by far, the strongest supporters of a war-unilateral if need be-to
remove Saddam.
Now comes the time of testing. The war is controversial, more so every
day, and the nuclear crisis in North Korea intensifies. The president hasn't
played his diplomatic hand well, and is tied down by the likes of Hans Blix,
the Philippine military and the Turkish Parliament, which late last week denied
American troops transport rights through the country. Bush advisers know that
many Americans-and much of the world-see him as a man blinded by his beliefs
(and those of his most active supporters) to the complexities of the world as
it is. He makes a point of praising Islam as "a religion of peace." But to many
Muslims, especially Arabs, he looks sinister: a new Crusader, bent on retaking
the East for Christendom. Aides say the president's quiet but fervent Christian
faith gives him strength but does not dictate policy. He's only seemed like
preacher in chief, they say, because of what one called "a confluence of
events": the horrors of 9-11, the terror alerts and the Columbia shuttle
explosion. Still, belief gives him something more than confidence, says his
closest friend, Commerce Secretary Don Evans: "It gives him a desire to serve
others and a very clear sense of what is good and what is evil."
How did he get that way? Consider this a "faith portrait" of the
president, the story of the power of belief to save a life and a family-and to
shape a political career and a national government.
GROWING UP-'God's Frozen People'
The story begins in Connecticut. Protestants there long ago were a
fiery breed, with Jonathan Edwards's (Yale '21-as in 1721) warning sinners to
avoid the wrath of an "angry God." But by 1946, when George W. Bush was born
there, the old-line Episcopalians-Bushes among them-spoke in quieter voices.
His dad was a "duty, honor, country" guy, a World War II hero and a punctilious
churchgoer. But he was uncomfortable with public testimonies of faith,
especially his own. The hoary joke among Episcopalians seemed apt: we're "God's
Frozen People."
The Bible belt was another story, but not for the Bushes. Moving in
1948 to the oil patch of west Texas, they joined other Ivy League immigrants
from back East at the Presbyterian church in Midland. (Barbara Bush had
been reared in the denomination.) It was staid compared with other churches
there, more madras than denim. Dad raised money for the building fund, and
taught in Sunday school. "Georgie" was a dutiful son and churchgoer. Years
later, in an excess of spin, his mother claimed that he'd always shown an
interest in reading the Bible. George smilingly said he was unable to remember
such a fact. Sent back East to prep at Andover, he became a school "deacon."
But that role had long since lost any true religious significance; Bush used it
to engineer pranks, not minister to the student flock.
Come-to-Jesus stories are more dramatic if the sinner is a pro. Bush
was a semipro, a hardy partyer-his Triumph convertible was famous in
Houston-until he married Laura in 1977. They joined her Methodist church. In
most respects, he became what his father was, a respected member of the
congregation. But he was a drinker, and a serious one. Only after work and at
night, he told himself. But sometimes the nights were long. He could be
famously obnoxious at parties, and, worse, a bore to his patient wife. The
birth of his twin daughters in 1982 brought him joy. But, friends say, Laura
grew increasingly fed up with his drinking. By 1985, as he approached 40, he
needed to fix his relationship with the women in his life. "Nothing was
broken," Evans said. "But he wanted it to be better." Mostly, he had to leave
alcohol behind.
BORN AGAIN-Walking 'The Walk'
In campaign biographies, ghostwriters highlight the role that Billy Graham
played in launching Bush on what he and Evans call his "Walk." The truth is
more prosaic, and explains far more about Bush's evolving views, not only of
faith but of government. Evans, married to a Bush elementary-school chum, was
the key. He had been the golden boy of Midland, a handsome straight arrow, a
"Cowboy" at the University of Texas (the Skull and Bones of Austin). He had
gone home to climb the ladder of Tom Brown Oil Co., a booming concern in a
booming economy. But in 1984 the oil business caved in. "It was the worst
industrial collapse in the history of the American economy," says Evans, who
was left with the task of plowing through piles of corporate debt. Personal
life was hard, too. By that time, he'd learned that a daughter, born severely
handicapped, would need lifetime care.
As a west Texan, Evans did what came naturally in a storm: he joined a
nondenominational Bible-study group. He coaxed his friend George to come along.
The program was called Community Bible Study-started, ironically, in the
Washington, D.C., area in 1975 by a group of suburban women. By the time it got
to Midland, it was a scriptural boot camp: an intensive, yearlong study of a
single book of the New Testament, each week a new chapter, with detailed
read-ing and discussion in a group of 10 men. For two years Bush and Evans and
their partners read the clear writings of the Gentile physician Luke-Acts and
then his Gospel. Two themes stood out, one spiritual, one more political:
Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus, and the founding of the church.
Bush, who cares little for the abstract and a great deal for people, responded
to the conversion story. He liked the idea of knowing Jesus as a friend.
The CBS program was a turning point for the future president in several
ways. It gave him, for the first time, an intellectual focus. Here was the
product of elite secular education-Andover, Yale and Harvard-who, for the first
time, was reading a book line by line with rapt attention. And it was ... the
Bible. In that sense, Bush is a more unalloyed product of the Bible belt than
his friends, who may have deeply studied something else in earlier days. A
jogger and marathoner for years, Bush found in Bible study an equivalent mental
and spiritual discipline, which he would soon need to steel himself for his
main challenge in life to that point: to quit drinking.
Bush says he never considered himself to be an alcoholic, and never
attended an AA meeting. But it turned out he didn't have to. CBS was something
akin to the same thing, part of what has since come to be called the "small
group" faith movement. It's a baby-boomerish mix of self-help, self-discipline,
group therapy (without using what, for Bush, is a dreaded word) and worship.
Whatever, it worked. As the world knows, Bush did quit drinking in the summer
of 1986, after his and Evans's 40th birthday. "It was 'goodbye Jack Daniels,
hello Jesus'," said one friend from those days.
THE POLITICS-Making New Friends
Bush turned to the bible to save his marriage and his family. But was
he also thinking of smoothing his path to elective office? We'll never know for
sure. But he knew the political landscape of his near-native Texas. He knew
that, by 1985, the South had risen to take control of the GOP, and that
evangelical activism and clout was rising with it-indeed had been instrumental
in making it possible. He also knew that his father's way-Episcopalian reserve,
moderation on cultural issues, close ties to back East-was a tough sell, to say
the least. Bush the Younger had experienced it firsthand, in 1978, when he
impetuously ran for Congress in Midland. He was a proud alumnus of Sam Houston
Elementary and San Jacinto Junior High. But he had been clobbered as an Ivy
League interloper nonetheless.
When Bush moved to Washington in 1987 to help run his father's
campaign, he seized the main chance: to take over the job of being the
"liaison" to the religious right. He quickly saw that he could talk the talk as
well as walk the walk. "His father wasn't comfortable dealing with religious
types," recalled Doug Wead, who worked with him on evangelical outreach.
"George knew exactly what to say, what to do." He and Wead bombarded campaign
higher-ups with novel ways to reach out. Wead slipped Biblical phrases-signals
to the base-into the Old Man's speeches. Dubya, typically, favored a direct
approach. He wanted to feature Billy Graham in a campaign video. Dad nixed the
idea.
Bush and Rove built their joint careers on that new base. Faith and
ambition became one, with Bush doing the talking and Rove doing the thinking on
policy and spin. In 1993-the year before he ran for governor-Bush caused a
small tempest by telling an Austin reporter (who happened to be Jewish) that
only believers in Jesus go to heaven. It was a theologically unremarkable
statement, at least in Texas. But the fact that he had been brazen enough to
say it produced a stir. While the editorial writers huffed, Rove quietly
expressed satisfaction. The story would help establish his client's Bible-belt
bona fides in rural (and, until then, primarily Democratic) Texas. As a
candidate, Bush sought, and got, advice from pastors, especially leaders of
new, nondenominational "megachurches" in the suburbs. His ideas for governing
were congenial to his faith, and dreamed up in his faith circles. The ideas
were designed to draw evangelicals to the polls without sounding too
church-made. "Compassionate conservatism"-mentoring, tough love on crime,
faith-based welfare-was in many ways just a CBS Bible study writ large. The
discipline of faith can save lives-Bush knew it from personal experience-and
undercut the stale answers of the left.
The presidential campaign was Texas on a grander scale. As he prepared
to run, in 1999, Bush assembled leading pastors at the governor's mansion for a
"laying-on of hands," and told them he'd been "called" to seek higher office.
In the GOP primaries, he outmaneuvered the field by practicing what one rival,
Gary Bauer, called "identity politics." Others tried to woo evangelicals by
pledging strict allegiance on issues such as abortion and gay rights. "Bush
talked about his faith," said Bauer, "and people just believed him-and believed
in him." There was genius in this. The son of Bush One was widely, logically,
believed by secular voters to be a closet moderate. Suddenly, the father's
burden was a gift: Bush Two could reach the base without threatening the rest.
"He was and is 'one of us'," said Charles Colson, who sold the then Governor
Bush on a faith-based prison program.
For his public speeches, he hired Michael Gerson, a gifted writer
recommended to him by Colson, among others. A graduate of Wheaton College in
Illinois ("the Evangelical Harvard"), Gerson understood Bush's compassionate
conservatism. More important, he had a gift for expressing it in stately,
lilting language that could appeal, simultaneously, to born-agains and to
secular boomers searching for a lost sense of uplift in public life.
The Bush campaign conducted its more-controversial outreach below
radar, via letters and e-mail. Only once was it forced to reach out in a raw
public way. After John McCain won the New Hampshire primary, Bush made his
infamous visit to South Carolina's Bob Jones University, the
ultrafundamentalist and officially anti-Roman Catholic school. Strategists were
opaque in public, unapologetic behind the scenes. "We had to send a
message-fast-and sending him there was the only way to do it," said one top
Bush operative at the time. "It was a risk we had to take." Bush won.
THE RECKONING-Forged in the Fire
Faith didn't make Bush a decisive person. He's always been one. His
birthright as a Bush gives him a sense of obligation to serve, and a sense of
an entitlement to lead. West Texas, where dust storms and the gyrating economy
buffeted the locals, left him with a love of straight shooters and a
come-what-may view of life. A frat man at Yale in an increasingly radical
time-the late 1960s-he came to loathe intellectual avatars of complexity and
doubt-especially when they disparaged his dad. He is a Pierce, too: a
quick-to-judge son of a quick-to-judge mother.
Still, faith helps Bush pick a course and not look back. He talks
regularly to pastors, and loves to hear that people are praying for him. As he
describes it, his faith is not complex. In recent weeks he has added a new note
to his theme of the personal uses of faith, drawn from CBS. Now there is a
sense of destiny that approaches the Calvinistic. "There is a fatalistic
element," said David Frum, the author and former Bush speechwriter. "You do
your best and accept that everything is in God's hands." The result is
unflappability. "If you are confident that there is a God that rules the
world," said Frum, "you do your best, and things will work out." But what some
see as solidity, others view as a flammable mix of stubbornness and arrogance.
"No one's allowed to second-guess, even when you should," said another former
staffer.
The atmosphere inside the White House, insiders say, is suffused with
an aura of prayerfulness. There have always been Bible-study groups there; even
the Clintonites had one. But the groups are everywhere now. Lead players set
the tone. There is Gerson, whose office keeps being moved closer to the Oval.
Chief of staff Andrew Card's wife is a Methodist minister. National-security
adviser Condi Rice's father was a preacher in Alabama.
The president is known to welcome questions about faith that staffers
sometimes have the nerve to share with him. But he's not the kind to initiate
granular debates about theology. Would Iraq be a "just war" in Christian terms,
as laid out by Augustine in the fourth century and amplified by Aquinas, Luther
and others? Bush has satisfied himself that it would be-indeed, it seems he did
so many months ago. But he didn't do it by combing through texts or presiding
over a disputation. He decided that Saddam was evil, and everything flowed from
that.
The language of good and evil-central to the war on terrorism-came
about naturally, said Frum. From the first, he said, the president used the
term "evildoers" to describe the terrorists because some commentators were
wondering aloud whether the United States in some way deserved the attack
visited upon it on September 11, 2001. "He wanted to cut that off right away,"
said Frum, "and make it clear that he saw absolutely no moral equivalence. So
he reached right into the Psalms for that word." He continued to stress the
idea. Osama bin Laden and his cohorts were "evil." In November 2001, in an
interview with NEWSWEEK, he first declared-blurted out, actually-that Saddam
Hussein in Iraq was "evil," too.
The world, and the Bush administration, are focused on Iraq. But as a
matter of politics and principle, the president knows that he needs to deliver
on his faith-based domestic agenda, especially since his party controls
Congress. The wish list compiled by Rove is a long one. It includes
conservative, pro-life judicial nominations; new HUD regulations that allow
federal grants for construction of "social service" facilities at religious
institutions; a ban on human cloning and "partial birth" abortion; a sweeping
program to allow churches, synagogues and mosques to use federal funds to
administer social-welfare programs; strengthened limits on stem-cell research;
increased funding to teach sexual abstinence in schools, rather than safer sex
and pregnancy prevention; foreign-aid policies that stress right-to-life
themes, and federal money for prison programs (like the one in Texas) that use
Christian tough love in an effort to lower recidivism rates among convicts.
While Rove and Hill leaders work the domestic side, Bush is dwelling on
faith-based foreign policy of the most explosive kind: a potential war in the
name of civil freedom-including religious freedom-in the ancient heart of Arab
Islam. In the just-war debate, he has strong support from his base. Leading
advocates for the moral virtue of his position include Richard Land, the key
leader of the Southern Baptist Convention's political arm. Another supporter is
Michael Novak, the conservative Catholic theologian. Novak recently journeyed
to Rome to make his case at the invitation of the U.S. ambassador to the
Vatican, Jim Nicholson, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.
All politics is local.
But the president is facing a mighty force of religious leaders on the
other side. They include the pope (Bush will meet with a papal envoy this week,
NEWSWEEK has learned), the Council of Bishops, the National Council of
Churches, many Jewish groups and most Muslim leaders. "People appreciate his
devotion to faith, but, in the context of war, there is a fine line, and he is
starting to make people nervous," says Steve Waldman, the editor and CEO of
Beliefnet, a popular and authoritative Web site on religion and society. "They
appreciate his moral clarity and decisiveness. But they wonder if he is
ignoring nuances in what sounds like a messianic mission."
Muslims are especially wary. Bush has gone to great lengths to reassure
them that he admires their religion. He has hosted Ramadan dinners, and
periodically criticized evangelicals, including Franklin Graham, who denounce
Islam as a corrupt, violent faith. Still, evangelical missionaries don't hide
their desire to convert Muslims to Christianity, even-if not especially-in
Baghdad. If one of the goals of ousting Saddam Hussein is to bring freedom of
worship to an oppressed people, how can the president object?
For Bush, that's a nettlesome question for another time. If he's
worried about it or other such weighty matters, it wasn't obvious at dinner
upstairs in the private quarters of the White House the other week. He and
Laura had invited close friends and allies such as Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld. Bush, as usual, was a genial, joshing host. Also, as usual, he didn't
want the evening to last too long. "He tends to rush through cocktail hour,"
says a friend. "One quick Coke and he wants to eat." The president asked
Rumsfeld to say grace. ("Can you help us out here, Mr. Secretary?") As 10:30
p.m. approached, the commander in chief seemed eager to turn in. Knowledgeable
guests understood that he wanted to catch at least a few minutes of his beloved
"SportsCenter" on ESPN. But he also needed to get up early, very early. He had
some reading to do.
With Tamara Lipper, Martha Brant, Suzanne Smalley and Richard Wolffe
© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.
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