George W. Bush: Cardboard Christian Part One
Having the form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. – Christian Scripture
Bush is no devout Christian. In fact, he may not be a Christian at all. – Ayelish McGarvey
There are active elements which are attempting to present the history of George W. Bush in a sanitized/revisionist light.
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They will ardently work to counteract the damage Bush did to Evangelical identity.
Bush apologists will vigorously present GWB as a "devout Christian" who was misunderstood and persecuted for his outspoken personal faith, whitewashing his personal intellectual shortcomings, character flaws, egregious mistakes, and moral failures. There is another side which needs to be examined: The tremendous damage Bush did to the Evangelical tradition and reputation worldwide.
Bush Tailored Himself to the Myth of American Moral Exceptionalism
George W. Bush learned during his time working for his father’s election to president that an accommodation with the religious far right had to be made and utilized if there were any hope of success. Among the advisers that were involved were Karl Rove, Kenneth Mehlman, Matthew Dowd, Doug Wead, an Assemblies of God minister and Amway promotional speaker, and Micheal Gerson, a youthful Washington insider, graduate of Wheaton College, known also as the "Evangelical’s Harvard."
There were, however, even larger and more powerful elements involved. The Heritage Foundation, with its mix of religious and laissez-faire conservative capitalists and the secretive cabal, the Council for National Policy were pivotal elements in this process. These two groups had grown powerful, beginning in the Reagan Era, and had continued on to be kingmakers in relationship to the eventual candidacy of George W. Bush. The CNP actually vetted Bush for the presidential candidate slot in 2000, with Timothy LaHaye presiding.
The religious far right, inclusive of Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and a string of mega-church operations across America, had one vital system with which they could communicate and accomplish political goals—Christian Broadcasting.
By the time of George W. Bush’s nomination for president in the fall of 2000 there were hundreds of Christian Radio stations and even a well-organized national organization (National Religious Broadcasters @ http://www.nrb.org/ ) which coordinated and enhanced the ability of these stations to communicate directly with Evangelicals on a hour-to-hour basis via music, self-help, religious teaching, and carefully crafted news and opinion. For Evangelicals NRB became their prime source of a national and world outlook.
NRB had shown that, given the right issue, it could gently and directly encourage its listeners to literally shutdown congressional switch boards in protest of or in support of a given issue presented as "in crisis" on their airtime. And of course the NRB members made sizable profits!
These were the key tools available to ensure the success of George W. Bush’s deliberate decision to use his born-again persona and myth to bring on board a critical block of voters—soon known as his Evangelical Base.
The outcome of the highly contested, Supreme Court decided opinion that settled the 2000 election in Bush’s favor tilted in his favor because of his earnest and blind faith following--which accepted Bush’s proclamation of being born-again as gospel—therefore as fact he was accepted as "one of us." Driven by family values, anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-pornography, and other hot button issues, here was a ready made group (base) of grassroots activists and local leaders who could deliver for Bush, at least in the beginning of his career, and then again in his tight race for reelection against John Kerry in 2004.
"God Put George Bush There for a Time Like This."
Gary Bauer, Family Research Council, and former GOP candidate for U.S. President, Far Right leader, on the role of George W. Bush:
"People like me...believe that God's hand has been on America from the very beginning -- the Founders believed that -- and that our success as a nation is attributed at least in part to God's blessings. Evangelicals believe that no leader rises without God allowing that leader to rise. No nation rises and falls without God permitting that nation to rise and fall.
"If you believe that God may be taking his hand off of America because we have moved away from him, then what the scriptures say is that we as Christian leaders must be on our knees asking for forgiveness for how we have failed. And we should be asking God what we as Christian leaders ought to be doing -- not suggesting that somebody else's sins or somebody else's failures" are the cause.
In this period of divine destiny, Bauer added, with evil striking a fallen America, evangelicals believe that George W. Bush is a man chosen by God for a reason. "There is a very strong feeling in the evangelical world that this hotly contested election, the longest election night in history, lasting for months, [meant that] somehow God was working to put into the White House a man whose life had been transformed by accepting Christ," Bauer said. "Then, when 9/11 happened, there was this sense that God had blessed us again to have in the Oval Office such a man when such a horrible thing had happened. You'll often hear in evangelical churches: 'Can you imagine if Al Gore were president and this had happened to our country?!'
"God," Bauer concluded, "put George Bush there for a time like this."
Source: The Power and the Glory: Who needs the Christian Coalition when you've got the White House? The religious right's covert crusade, Nina J. Easton , May 19, 2002 @ http://www.prospect.org/...
Bush Was Not God’s Man for the 9/11 Crisis
It would be inconceivable to Gary Bauer and other such religiously motivated Bush Apologists and Bush backers that the serious character flaws which evolved early on in Bush’s privileged life would be magnified and expanded into his young adulthood and married life, that Bush’s selfish and elitist failure in the service of his country, in addition to his slack behavior and drugs, his inattentiveness to business and his ability to slip stream responsibilities would culminate in a kind of Texas miasma wherein Bush was so unfocused and so unstudied and inattentive to the many warnings that came in the Presidential Daily Briefings and from previous background briefings, that he was unable to make the connections and sense the impending danger. Actually, there did not have to be a 9/11. A more focused and more capable, more skilled chief executive would have taken the clues available to him and acted, Bush did not.
Eric Alterman writes in the March 16th edition of The Nation:
"In fact, Bush left the nation in greater peril than it was on August 6, 2001, when he was informed that Osama bin Laden as "determined to attack in US" and responded, "All right, you've covered your ass now," before deciding to spend the rest of the day fishing. Look it up."
No, Mr. Bauer, it was not that "God blessed us again to have in the Oval Office such a man when such a horrible thing happened." And actually there are many evangelical citizens who could conceive of, and believe, that Al Gore could have, would have, connected the dots and stopped the hijackers—a relatively simple task given their unique method of operations.
The inconvenient truth is Bush’s initial reaction to 9/11 was non-pulsed and totally un-presidential—certainly his was not the reaction of an alert, clear thinking Commander-in-Chief entering the Florida classroom subsequent to becoming aware the attacks already underway—knowing the threats following the previous attempted basement bombing of the Twin Towers and knowing that any strike on the towers—international trade center and counter-terrorism hub would demand the attention and ready response of the presidency.
The subsequent string of tragic and regrettable decisions and blunders flowing from George W. Bush look like God’s curse on the man, certainly not God’s highest blessing that he had failed to protect the country due to his flawed abilities and drug diminished acumen.
Bush and His Divine Political Mission
According to conservative evangelicals, Bush is carrying out a divinely inspired mission. Not coincidentally, the same constituency also considers Bush the trusted guardian of its political interests. Who needs Ralph Reed and the Christian Coalition when you have the Republican Party and the president of the United States?
Using the Republican Party to pursue a Christian-right agenda, of course, was the endgame of strategists like Reed. He taught his organizers how to rise through the ranks of the GOP, how to speak in political parlance instead of "Christianeze," how to run for office with party support. During the 1990s, the Christian Coalition trained some 16,000 potential political leaders, many of whom have gone on to become state legislators, mayors, and school-board members. "We took a system that was scary and complex and had an unseemly taint, and made it understandable and friendly, something people want to participate in," said D.J. Gribbin, one of the key architects of the coalition's state network.
Reed's career is in some respects emblematic of the Christian right's evolution. After leaving the Christian Coalition in 1997, he formed an Atlanta-based Republican consulting firm. Three years later, he played a central role in galvanizing conservative evangelicals to quash the primary candidacy of John McCain, thereby securing Bush's nomination. In 2001, Reed was elected chairman of Georgia's GOP.
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Bush was quick to make good on that support. Shortly after his inauguration last year, Bush cut off funds for organizations providing abortion services overseas (the announcement perfectly coincided with a "march for life" in downtown Washington). As director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, overseeing the entire federal workforce, Bush appointed the former dean of the government school at Pat Robertson's Regent University, Kay Coles James, who also happens to be one of the nation's most articulate anti-abortion advocates. And most notably, to the U.S.'s top law enforcement post he named John Ashcroft, a Pentecostal whose insistence on holding daily prayer sessions in his Justice Department office has earned him the scorn of Beltway pundits and the adulation of the Christian right. Ashcroft's attempt to overturn Oregon's assisted-suicide law was similarly popular with evangelical activists. Bush scored still more points by crafting a compromise on stem-cell research and borrowing pro-life language in calling on the Senate to ban human cloning. "Life is a creation, not a commodity," he said, to a rumble of applause.
Significantly, however, although the Christian right's support for the Bush administration is strong, it is not unconditional. Bush's effort to direct federal resources toward faith-based charities, stymied by Constitutional provisions that call for strict separation between social programs and proselytizing, lost as much conservative religious support as it captured. And many evangelicals are frustrated that the president hasn't taken a more vigorous pro-Israel stance in the Middle East war.
Source: Source: The Power and the Glory: Who needs the Christian Coalition when you've got the White House? The religious right's covert crusade, Nina J. Easton , May 19, 2002 @ http://www.prospect.org/...
Bush Created a Cocoon of Religiosity That Hummed to the Sound of Prayer
Like no president in recent memory, George W. Bush wields his Christian righteousness like a flaming sword. Indeed, hundreds of news stories and nearly half a dozen books have evinced a White House that, according to BBC Washington correspondent Justin Webb, "hums to the sound of prayer." Yet for the past four years (200-2004) the mainstream press has trod lightly, rarely venturing beyond the biographical to probe the depth, or sincerity, of Bush's Christian beliefs. Bush has no doubt benefited from the media's reluctance; Newsweek, for example, in the heat of the run-up to the Iraq War, ran a cover package on the president's faith under the headline "Bush and God" -- a story whose timing lent the war the aura of having heavenly sanction. Even lefty believers like Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners, and Amy Sullivan, journalist and Democratic adviser, politely maintain that Bush's faith is strong, if misguided.
As God Is His Witness:Bush is no devout evangelical. In fact, he may not be a Christian at all, Ayelish McGarvey | Oct 19, 2004 @ http://www.prospect.org/...
A brilliant strategy backing and supporting the presidency of George W. Bush was the advent of the Presidential Prayer Team. By framing daily prayer requests laced with partisan political overtones and directives, the PPT could mold the psyche of the Evangelical participant and connect on the goals the Bush Team would set out. What better way to communicate than by supplicating through prayer? Key issues became the subject of earnest (carefully directed) prayer.
Was George W. Bush A True Born-Again Christian ?
The very definition of born-again harks to an exact time and place where a person passes from his old life in sin to his new life in faith, it is nothing if it is not a conversion that can site both "time and place." Nothing in the varied recitals of Bush’s religious journey points to a specific time and place, to which George can give witness he "passed from darkness to light."
Richard Land, prominent leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, "denounced the scriptural cherry-picking on the part of contemporary American Christians. ‘It's only been in the last half-century when you've had the rise of groups [in] modern Christendom who believe in what I call ‘Dalmatian theology,'’ he explained. ‘The Bible's inspired in spots, and ... [t]hey think they can reject large chunks of Christian Scripture and biblical revelation that they don't agree with ... http://www.prospect.org/...
Land intended to condemn ‘liberal elements" in the Protestant tradition, however he also has condemned George W. Bush as a Dalmatian Christian, a politician who purposefully picked and chose "chucks" of Christian imagery, code, and concepts to forward an agenda that was brutal, deceptive, irresponsible and venal.
The president's storied faith journey began at the bottom of a bottle and led him all the way to the White House. But though these accounts ramble on for hundreds of pages about his steadfast leadership and prayerfulness, they all curiously rely on one single event to confirm that Bush is a man transformed by a deep Christian faith: He quit drinking and took up running instead. "I would not be president today," Bush himself told a group of pastoral social workers in 2003, "if I hadn't stopped drinking 17 years ago. And I could only do that with the grace of God."
But Christianity is more than teetotalism and physical fitness. Conservative believers liken a Christian conversion to a spiritual heart transplant -- one that completely transfigures a person's motivations, sensibilities, relationships, and actions. In the Book of Ezekiel, God tells his children: "I will give you a new heart, and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws ... ." (emphasis added)
Judging him on his record, George W. Bush's spiritual transformation seems to have consisted of little more than staying on the wagon, with Jesus as a sort of talismanic Alcoholics Anonymous counselor. Bush came to his faith through a small group program created by Community Bible Study, which de-emphasizes sin and resembles a sort of Jesus-centered therapy session.
Source:As God Is His Witness http://www.prospect.org/...
Some observers refer to George W. Bush’s conversion as an example of "Texas Born-again." It appears to contain more religious show and appearance than inner transformation and a godly renewed life with righteousness and moral resolve in word and deed.
Bush Was Never Actually Transformed By His Faith: He Was Neither Born-again Nor Evangelical
Born-again means a radical transformation: To be born again, a seeker must painfully acknowledge his or her innate sinfulness, and then turn away from it completely. And though today Bush is sober, he does not live and govern like a man who "walks" with God, using the Bible as a moral compass for his decision making. Twice in the past year -- once during an April (2004) press conference and most recently at a presidential debate -- the president was unable to name any mistake he has made during his term. His steadfast unwillingness to fess up to a single error betrays a strikingly un-Christian lack of attention to the importance of self-criticism, the pervasiveness of sin, and the centrality of humility, repentance, and redemption.
Source:As God Is His Witness http://www.prospect.org/...
In fact, this trait as cited and others have led critics to assert that Bush is a dry drunk. That is an addictive personality with characteristics of dependence and thought constructs that remain even if alcohol is no longer being imbibed. Bush displays several kinds of behavior and decision making that highly resemble those of an active alcoholic. Don’t forget that the key to the assertion that George W. Bush is a Christian is that he went dry and gave up alcohol. Going on the wagon is the chief event his apologists offer as empirical evidence of his religious conversion.
Save for a few standout reporters, the press has done a dismal job of covering the president's very public religiosity. Overwhelmingly lacking personal familiarity with conservative Christianity, political reporters have either avoided the topic or resorted to shopworn clichés and lazy stereotypes. Over and over, news stories align Bush with evangelical theology while loosely dropping terms like fundamentalist to describe his beliefs.
Once and for all: George W. Bush is neither born again nor evangelical. As Alan Cooperman reported in The Washington Post last month, the president has been careful never to use either term to describe his faith. Unlike millions of evangelicals, Bush did not have a single born-again experience; instead, he slowly came to Christianity over the course of several years, beginning with a deep conversation with the Reverend Billy Graham in the mid-1980s. And there is virtually no evidence that Bush places any emphasis on evangelizing -- or spreading the gospel -- in either his personal or professional life. Contrast this to Carter, who notoriously told every foreign dignitary he encountered about the good news of Jesus Christ.
Source:As God Is His Witness http://www.prospect.org/...
Bush Always Kept His Self-Descriptive Religious Lingo Non-Specific
Often, the precision of Bush's religious language cuts in the other direction, making references (to his faith) more generic. He avoids such evangelical terms of art as "born again" and "saved" in his journey-to-faith narrative—and even "Jesus" as opposed to "God." He similarly avoids using the specific terminology "evangelical" or "alcoholic" in reference to himself. The vagueness frees Bush from the assumptions people make when they hear the more conventional terms. According to Doug Wead, Bush's break with the bottle came after he and Laura read an Alcoholics Anonymous pamphlet that emphasized the need for help from a higher power. "The tract brought a lot of things together," Wead said. Bush has never spoken of reading A.A. literature; following 12-step guidance would make him sound like an alcoholic.
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What his faith stories have in common is the way they put George W. Bush's religious experiences to political use. The beliefs themselves may be entirely genuine. But Bush does not appear to surrender himself to the will of God in the way a conventionally religious person does. If we look closely at his relationship to religion over a period of two decades, we see him repeatedly commandeering God for his exigent needs. His is an instrumentalist, utilitarian faith that puts religion to work for his own purposes. Faith made it possible for Bush to order his life and emerge as a plausible leader. Once he became president, it helped him cope more effectively than his father had with the monumental pressures of the job.
The Bush Tragedy: The Doubtful Faith of George W. Bush, Jacob Weisberg, March 11, 2008, @ http://www.slate.com/...