Bush's God talk: to a born-again theology of individual salvation, Bush has added a providential view of America's role in world history

Christian Century, Oct 5, 2004 by Bruce Lincoln

The verse was well chosen, and it resonated with other aspects of this address, in which Bush first introduced a discourse on "evil." He used the term four times (more than any other, save "terror/terrorist/terrorism") and it let him characterize the situation with a stark moral simplicity. Elsewhere he spoke of America as defender of all that is good and just, "the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity," thereby implying a struggle of light and darkness ("And no one will keep that light from shining"). His dualistic vision was best captured, however, in another passage.

   Today, our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature.
   And we responded with the best of America-with
   the daring of our rescue workers, with the caring
   for strangers and neighbors who came to give blood and
   help in any way they could.

Courage here was of a defensive sort--the daring of rescue workers--while compassion took varied forms (caring for strangers, etc.). Both showed America at its godly best, confronting demonic evil. In subsequent days, Bush recalibrated the balance between the two virtues so that courage overshadowed compassion but never eclipsed it completely. At the same time, the kind of courage he invoked was increasingly aggressive. He pledged to pursue and destroy not just al-Qaeda, but terrorism; not just terror, but evil. Meanwhile, he informed the world there could be no neutrality in the coming struggle. "Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make," he announced on September 23. "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."

To his credit, Bush never (with a single unfortunate exception) cast the conflict as a crusade. When influential evangelists (Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson), academics (Samuel Huntington, Bernard Lewis) and generals (William G. Boykin) have construed Islam as the enemy, Bush has not rebuked them, thereby permitting some to believe he shares their views. In his own statements, however, he has staked out a more temperate and prudent position, speaking of Islam as a religion of peace. Our enemies are not those of a different faith, but "barbaric criminals who profane a great religion by committing murder in its name," a phrase he used when commencing war in Afghanistan (October 7, 2001).

Countless changes can be rung on Manichaean chimes once the binary opposition of Us and Them is aligned with plots pitting Good against Evil. Among the many variants Bush employed during and after the Afghan war were narratives of American courage vs. cowardly terrorist attacks; American goodness and compassion vs. blind hatred and resentment; true American piety vs. self-deluded fanaticism; and modern civilization vs. medieval resistance to progress.

The last of these binaries implies a temporal sequence: the good future will succeed an evil past, just as surely as spring follows winter. Toward the end of the Afghan war, Bush began to develop this into a theological position, as when he told the United Nations: "History has an Author who fills time and eternity with his purpose. We know that evil is real, but good will prevail against it."