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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1799.htm
While past presidents have invoked the name of God in public remarks,
President Bush has done so, arguably, more than others-and has
increasingly moved beyond broad statements on faith to include overt
Christian references. An overview:
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.
Forwarded for your information. The text and intent of the article
have to stand on their own merits.
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"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do
not believe simply because it has been handed down for many genera-
tions. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and
rumoured by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is
written in Holy Scriptures. Do not believe in anything merely on
the authority of teachers, elders or wise men. Believe only after
careful observation and analysis, when you find that it agrees with
reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all.
Then accept it and live up to it." The Buddha on Belief,
from the Kalama Sutra
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