Bush is no devout Christian. In fact, he may not be a Christian at all. – Ayelish McGarvey
George W. Bush: Cardboard Christian Part Three
Part One: http://www.dailykos.com/...
Part Two: http://www.dailykos.com/...
Related Dairies:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
http://www.dailykos.com/...
A great paradox in Bush’s Use of Religion for His Partisan Political Purposes
Join the ongoing discussion of Irreparable Harm below the fold...
The profane and obscene language of George Bush used since his proclaimed "born again conversion" has revealed a willingness of complainant "Christians" and moralizing right-wing Christian leaders/theologians to remain silent and complacent--a profound hypocrisy, based on Bush’s high religious claim v. his behavioral reality.
There’s a great paradox in Bush’s use of religion for partisan political purposes: The profane and obscene language of George Bush repeatedly used since his proclaimed "born again conversion" has revealed a willingness of complainant "Christians" and moralizing right-wing Christian leaders/theologians to remain silent and complacent about their own moral standards—creating hypocrisy based on Bush’s claim v. reality.
One Evangelical Group Called Out George W. Bush for the "Bawdy and Lewd" Speech Given By First Lady Laura Bush to Which He Made No Objection or Apology
"President Bush's Evil vs Good Fruits" @ http://www.cuttingedge.org/...
For the past five years, Cutting Edge has stood strong and true to our realization that President Bush was NOT the Born Again Christian he claimed to be. Since we post 50-100 articles every single day, we saw the many actions this President was taking which absolutely destroyed any possibility that he was genuinely Born Again. The evidence became so overwhelming that we created this table, above, listing the evil and the good spiritual fruits which George W. Bush had created since becoming President. We have posted this table, above, updated to include Laura Bush's sexual lewdness -- of which her husband showed his support.
Laura Bush's shocking sexual innuendos -- including her reference to her husband masturbating a horse's phallus -- provide a "Smoking Gun" evidence that Mr. Bush's heart is not genuinely Christian. Let us begin our awful story.
NEWS BRIEF: "Laura Bush’s naughty talk", By JOHN TIERNEY, The New York Times, reprinted by "The State," South Carolina:
"... on Saturday night, Laura Bush set a new standard. After interrupting her husband and telling him to sit down, she did a stand-up routine that included what was probably the first joke told in earshot of a president that involved him and a horse's phallus. Mrs. Bush called her husband Mr. Excitement for going to bed by 9 o'clock and turning her into a 'desperate housewife'.
She said that Lynne Cheney's Secret Service code name became Dollar Bill after they both went to Chippendales (where they ran into Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg). Noting that Andover and Yale did not have 'real strong ranching programs', she said Mr. Bush had started his ranching career by trying to milk a horse - a male horse ... Her timing had the audience howling, and the edgier lines had them gasping. Jokes about pent-up sexual frustration from a prim librarian? With her born-again husband sitting there and enjoying it? And cameras recording it ..."
This one paragraph succinctly expresses the most incredible filth I have ever heard! Let us quickly examine the points Mrs. Bush voiced:
- Laura said her husband was going to bed so early that she has become sexually dissatisfied. She has now become one of the "Desperate Housewives". In this TV series, housewives who are sexually unfulfilled seduce a wide variety of men who come into their lives. A friend related to me that in the one episode he saw, one of the "desperate housewives" seduced her young gardener! The First Lady's remarks will be seen my millions as a positive endorsement of this awful TV series.
- Laura's joke about President Bush masturbating the phallus of a horse -- a male horse -- is absolutely unthinkable! The phrase "trying to milk a horse - a male horse" is a farm country idiom which means that Mr. Bush was masturbating a male horse! This is bestiality, and quite disturbing coming from the lips of the First Lady with President Bush sitting there laughing. But, most importantly, it reveals the true heart of Mr. Bush; when you consider Mr. Bush's reaction to her joking, you will see he has a heart of an unsaved sinner!
- Mr. Bush was just "sitting there and enjoying it"!... The President is laughing heartily! If my wife were speaking these filthy jokes, I would have immediately arisen from my chair, walked quickly up to the stage with as stern a face as I could muster, and take my wife away from the microphone and off the stage. By sitting there and enjoying it, President Bush signaled to the entire world that he approved of what his wife was saying and considered her remarks not only acceptable, but enjoyable.
- Mrs. Bush then stated that she was bar-hopping with Mrs. Cheney, when they ran into Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg at a showing of the Chippendales -- a male stripping group! Mrs. Cheney was so enthused by their stripping performance, she jammed so many One Dollar Bills into the G-String of the male strippers that the Secret Service began calling her, "Dollar Bill".
Once again, we see filthy, sexually explicit language from Mrs. Bush -- approved by Mr. Bush -- and a signal to the youth of America that this "born again" President finds nothing wrong with a person viewing a stripper performance on-stage, or in engaging in the kind of gutter sexual innuendo that would make a bunch of sailors blush.
Mr. Bush showed his true inner heart of hearts by allowing his wife to continue, but most importantly, by laughing along with the rest of the audience. Further, he did not apologize to the American people, nor did he order his White House Press Corps to issue an apology. No apology will ever be coming from his lips.
These are not the actions of a genuinely Born Again believer; therefore, we have added this incident to our table, "President Bush's Evil vs Good Spiritual Fruit."
Christianity Today, a flagship Evangelical Magazine, has taken a harsh stand against Hollywood and the music industry for its profane and lewd material content. CT, however, could not bring itself to focus on such Bush revelations as the one GWB made at the May 2002 White House Correspondent's diner:
Osbourne, a guest of the Fox News Channel, was led to Bush's table to greet the President - and give some advice.
"Ozzy told him he should grow his hair long," Osbourne's wife, Sharon, told the Daily News. Bush's response: "Maybe in the second term."
Osbourne and his eccentric family are the stars of MTV's smash-hit reality series "The Osbournes" - and he was the center of attention at last night's three-hour shindig.
When Bush mentioned his name, the crowd of 1,800 went wild. Osbourne then climbed onto a chair and threw up his arms.
"The thing about Ozzy is, he's made a lot of big hit recordings - 'Party With the Animals,' 'Sabbath Bloody Sabbath,' 'Face in Hell,' 'Black Skies' and 'Bloodbath in Paradise,' " the President said.
Then he added, "Ozzy, Mom loves your stuff."
Source: W ROCKED BY OZZY AT DINNER, Helen Kennedy and Timothy J. Burger New York Daily News, May 5th 2002,
http://www.nydailynews.com/...
Ozzy and family's TV reality show (highly profane and coarse) reaches to the extreme of opposite of Evangelical mores and ethical conduct, yet Bush--a self-proclaimed born-again Evangelical with respect for high morals and godly conduct--displayed no compulsion or disapproval of Osbourne's proud and gosh, outlandish and purposeful, life repertoire and production of lewd, satanic, pornographic, and anti-Christian music, lifestyle and other product.
Ozzy was once banned for life from Bush's state of Texas for urinating on a public monument.
The Deliberate Refusal to See Bush as a Moral Failure
This deliberate ignoring of Bush’s obvious moral flaws led the way to more and more denial of his dissemblance of information and use of factoids and misstatements that are designed to deceive and mislead the American public about the truth of his motivations and aims in order to pursue the aggressive and destructive agendas Neo-con Republicans have envisioned.
One of Bush’s closest and most key advisers, fellow Texan, Marvin Olasky has written a very convoluted apology for George Bush’s religious claims:
"My point, having lived through the 1960s-1970s confusion, is that the era was not one of uncommon resolution, at least not of the patriotic variety. I relished my high draft lottery number. George W. Bush played it smart like John Kerry and found a soft gig. He and I took different rotten paths -- he drank heavily, I became a communist -- but both of us could say the same thing: ‘When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible.’ "The other thing both of us can and do say is that we did not save ourselves: God alone saves sinners (and I can surely add, of whom I was the worst). Being born again, we don't have to justify ourselves. Being saved, we don't have to be saviors.
Source: http://townhall.com/...
Bush’s Failures to Live and Carry Out the Evangelical Message Has Worldwide Negative Impact
The impact of George W. Bush’s commingling his politics and personal ambitions with his attempts to produce a religious façade in order to rally and keep a base of committed Christians known as Evangelicals has been devastating for the Evangelical community worldwide.
Evangelicals have for generations undertaken medical, social, and religious missions in foreign lands. To have been forcefully and deliberately aliened with George W. Bush because he chose to affiliate himself with them for his own purposes is a nasty blow against what they really stand for and the good they seek to do in the world. Irreparable harm has been done to the Evangelical image and message by a man who used both religion and conservative ideology in pursuit of and support for evil purposes: preemptive war, torture, radical disregard for human rights and freedoms, unnecessary secrecy, and massive spying on ordinary citizens.
The following is the viewpoint of one Evangelical Christian pastor from India who speaks of the impact Bush’s use of faux Christianity has had in his country:
President George Bush is the darling of most born again Christians in the US of A. But in India many regard him as a liability to the Christian cause. His identification as a believer and his advocacy of the war that the rest of the world regards as unjust has embarrassed Christians who are in a minority in India.
Pastor Chandy is not just critical of Bush, but has strong words of both challenge and encouragement for believers in the U.S.:
People will never agree on whether or not Bush is an aggressor. That really depends on political views.... Christians living in America, suffering from fear aroused by 9/11 and desiring their own self-preservation and prosperity will approve of Bush's war against Iraq and look for ways to justify it even from a biblical viewpoint. It is heartening though to see that there are born again Christians, even in the U.S., who are opposed to the warmongering and see the war as something they have been unable to support precisely because of their faith in Christ. However the vast majority of Americans, especially those who describe themselves as born again Christians, are solidly in support of Bush, and even question the Christian identity and commitment of those who disapprove of Bush.
Pastor Chandy further describes the connection between Bush's faith and Bush's war:
In effect, Bush has given Christ a bad name. As a Christian writer in India, I wrote an article arguing that Bush's war had not having to do with his being a born again Christian, and all to do with his being the American President (Times of India April 7, Lucknow, April 21, 2003). The only problem is that somehow his aggressive American-ness has been identified with his being a Christian. But we in India cannot see the war as the work of a Christian. In this regard, I represent the view of most Christians in India.
In my article I essentially defended born again Christianity as what is practiced by Christians who are committed to Christ and take His teachings seriously. I am myself a born again Christian. I did not deny that, just because Bush had made being a born again Christian unpopular. Being a born again Christian has nothing to do with Bush. It has all to do with following Christ faithfully with a desire to make Him known. In the Indian context it was necessary to show what born again Christianity really stood for. I had to demonstrate that being a Christian did not mean approving Bush's war.
Perhaps even more sad than the damage Bush has done to the cause of Christ globally is the response of Christians in the U.S.:
I also circulated the article among Christian friends in the U.S., to share my concern as a Christian from a country where Christians are a minuscule minority. I shared it with my friends in America trying to somehow influence Christian opinion in the U.S. Suddenly I lost friends--not just Americans, even Indians settled in the U.S.
As I reflected on my loss of some of my Christian friends living in America, I sadly noted the great divide that has occurred among Evangelical Christians. I know that Evangelicalism is not White Christianity, but somehow I get the impression that the agenda of White Evangelical Christianity is being thrust on Evangelicals around the world. It would seem that if one is to be accepted as a born again Christian, then one is required to approve of the world's only born again Christian statesman. If you don't approve of Bush, you're not okay.
Most American Christians have put their faith in Bush imagining that he will ensure their safety. If anything, he has made the world more unsafe for Americans and even for those who side with Americans.
@ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Pastor Chandy's blog: http://pastorkuru.blogsp
Bush Overplayed the God Card: President or preacher?
President Bush has hardly made a secret of his faith in the power of God," wrote the Baltimore Sun’s David L. Greene. "But recently, Bush has taken to sprinkling more religious language into his speeches, even drawing upon evangelical hymns and expressing his conviction that events are often driven by a divine force.
"With, in rapid succession, his State of the Union Address, remarks after the Columbia space shuttle disaster, and comments to the National Prayer Breakfast and the National Religious Broadcasters convention, George W. Bush ushered in a renewed period of media anxiety about the place of religion in his presidency." As Barbara C. Neff of the Religion News Service posed it, "President or preacher?"
In reaction, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, no supporter of the White House, was moved to protest, "[C]an we please stop pretending that Bush’s regular invocations of the Almighty make him some sort of strange religious fanatic? In how he speaks of God, Bush is much more typically presidential than he is painted, especially by our friends abroad."
"But the consensus at home was that Bush’s religion went beyond the presidential norm. Ceremonial piety was one thing. It was something else to speak as though you were anointed by God to take the nation into a war of your own choosing."
Religion in the News adds background to the Bush phenomenon "A century ago, the Student Volunteer Movement set out to achieve 'the evangelization of the world in this generation.' That avatar of muscular Christianity seemed reborn in Bush’s statement to the religious broadcasters that the United States had been called to bring God’s gift of liberty to "every human being in the world." Pax Americana, Pax Divina.
The GOP Gets Religion, Mark Silk, Religion in the News, Spring 2003, Source: http://www.trincoll.edu/...
The Goals of Evangelicalism Laid Out: Evangelicalism Attempts a New Beginning
One group of Evangelicals has undertaken to correct and address the failures it perceives in the purity of the Evangelical tradition which spans centuries and has had direct and positive effect on America. While this group cannot and does not speak for all Evangelicals it is an important new direction for Evangelicals who wish to recover the heart of their religious tradition.
Executive Summary: AN EVANGELICAL MANIFESTO
A Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment
Keenly aware of this hour of history, we as a representative group of Evangelicals in America address our fellow-believers and our fellow-citizens.ii We have two purposes: to clarify the confusions that surround the term Evangelical in the United States, and texplain where we stand on issues that cause consternation over Evangelicals in public life.
The global era challenges us to learn how to live with our deepest differences—especially religious differences that are ultimate and irreducible. These are not just differences between personal worldviews but between entire ways of life co-existing in the same society.
Our Identity
First, we reaffirm our identity. Evangelicals are Christians who define themselves, their faith, and their lives according to the Good News of Jesus of Nazareth. (The Greek word for good news was euangelion, which translated into English as evangel.) This Evangelical principle is the heart of who we are as followers of Jesus. It is not unique to us. We assert it not to attack or to exclude, but to remind and to reaffirm, and so to rally and to reform.
Evangelicals are one of the great traditions in the Christian Church. We stand alongside Christians of other traditions in both the creedal core of faith and over many issues of public concern. Yet we also hold to Evangelical beliefs that are distinct—distinctions we affirm as matters of biblical truth, recovered by the Protestant Reformation and vital for a sure knowledge of God. We Evangelicals are defined theologically, and not politically, socially, or culturally.
As followers of Jesus Christ, Evangelicals stress a particular set of beliefs that we believe are true to the life and teachings of Jesus himself. Taken together, they make us who we are. We place our emphasis on:
- Jesus, fully divine and fully human, as the only full and complete revelation of God and therefore the only Savior.
- The death of Jesus on the cross, in which he took the penalty for our sins and reconciled us to God.
- Salvation as God’s gift grasped through faith. We contribute nothing to our salvation.
- New life in the Holy Spirit, who brings us spiritual rebirth and power to live as Jesus did, reaching out to the poor, sick, and oppressed.
- The Bible as God’s Word written, fully trustworthy as our final guide to faith and practice.
- The future personal return of Jesus to establish the reign of God.
- The importance of sharing these beliefs so that others may experience God’s salvation and may walk in Jesus’ way.
Sadly, we repeatedly fail to live up to our high calling, and all too often illustrate our own doctrine of sin. The full list of our failures is no secret to God or our generation.
Notes
- This is an abbreviated version of the full Evangelical Manifesto which can be read at www.EvangelicalManifesto.com.
- The terms "an Evangelical" and "Evangelicals" are proper nouns, rather than common nouns, and should be spelled with an upper case -- as are the terms Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant, or Christian, Jew, and Muslim.
- This brief expression of repentance is more fully developed in the full Evangelical Manifesto.
Source:http://www.anevangelicalmanifesto.com/docs
Future Challenge: The Long Post-Bush Road to Evangelical Revitalization
Of all America's religious traditions...evangelical Protestantism, at least in the twentieth-century conservative forms, has long ranked "dead last in intellectual stature." Now evangelical thinkers are trying to revitalize their tradition. Can they turn an intellectual backwater into an intellectual beacon?
The Opening of the Evangelical Mind, by Alan Wolfe, October 2000, @ http://www.bc.edu/...