Bush religious rhetoric riles critics

Christian Century, March 8, 2003 by John Dart

RELIGIOUS TERMS and allusions were increasingly used by President Bush, stirring both cheers and fears as he began his third year in the White House. Analysts debated the significance of the evangelical God-talk, while critics warned that the rhetoric inhibits debate in a pluralistic democracy.

In his State of the Union address in January, Bush said that the U.S. trusts a loving God who is behind "all of history" and that "we go forward with confidence because this call of history has come to the right country."

Bush's affirmation of personal prayer at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington on February 6 was hardly out of place, nor were words of consolation for a nation absorbing the space shuttle tragedy. But his 40-minute speech in Nashville February 10 to the National Religious Broadcasters convention sparked more comment--despite the fact that Republican presidents have often spoken in person or by videotape to the conservative evangelical gathering.

After praising "armies of compassion" and reiterating his goal for government social-service agencies to "welcome faith-based groups as allies in the great work of renewing America," Bush finished his speech with words about "an outlaw regime in Iraq that hates our country." Should the U.S. need to send military forces into Iraq, "American troops will act in the honorable traditions of our military and in the highest moral traditions of our country," he averred.

"As I said in my State of the Union, liberty is not America's gift to the world. Liberty is God's gift to every human being in the world," Bush said. The nation "is called" to meet challenges at home "and to lead the world to peace," he added. To heavy applause, Bush was introduced by NRB chairman Glenn Plummer, who, citing Proverbs 29:2, said people rejoice when the righteous are in authority but mourn when the wicked rule. "Mr. President, as you can see, we are rejoicing," Plummer said.

The Washington Post said the president's NRB speech "brought the most thorough linkage yet" between Bush's policies and his evangelical Christian faith. Asked on February 11 about Bush's speech and religious outlook, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said the president "speaks in a very inclusive way, very respectful of the fact that we are a nation whose great strengths come [from] the fact that we have people of so many faiths, and people who have chosen not to have any particular religious affiliation."

But in a national telephone news conference the same day, Bush was accused of misusing religious language to further political aims and to imply that his critics do not share his moral high ground. "The president uses religious language to cloak and at times promote national policy," said Baptist minister C. Welton Gaddy, executive director of the Interfaith Alliance, who was joined in the news conference by Elaine Pagels, a religion professor at Princeton University.

"The language of good and evil is used naturally to interpret specific events like September 11," said Pagels, author of The Origin of Satan and other books. "What is dangerous ... is to use it to characterize countries and whole people," she said, referring to Bush's year-ago phrase "axis of evil" for Iraq, Iran and North Korea. By doing so, "he is placing himself at the axis of good."

Although Bush has defended Islam as a peace-loving religion and has met with American Muslim leaders, Gaddy and Pagels said the president's words may, in effect, give credence to descriptions of a "holy war" between Christians and Muslims. Given the potential for polarizing interpretations in Christianity and Islam, the rhetoric employed by Bush "could set us up to be perceived that way"--as engaged in a holy war; Pagels said.

Some evangelical leaders contend that the fuss is unwarranted. Bush's expressions of faith and moral fortitude are what Americans expect to hear from the White House, said Rich Cizik, vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals. The people of America"are a religious people, and our president has not transcended the boundaries of what is appropriate in the public arena," Cizik told the PBS program Religion and Ethics News Weekly.

Recalling the former Texas governor's religious background with evangelical United Methodist churches, ex-Dallas journalist Deborah Caldwell wrote that Bush's newly public faith echoes Calvinist thinking about divine providence and plans for America. Writing for Beliefnet, an Internet site where she is senior religion producer, Caldwell said that by 1999 Bush believed in a "divine plan that supersedes all human plans."

Caldwell quoted Robin Lovin, an ethicist at Southern Methodist University, as saying, "All sorts of warning signals ought to go off when a sense of personal chosenness and calling gets translated into a sense of calling and mission for a nation." In addition, Lovin said that Bush seems to lack an awareness of moral ambiguity. All to the better, according to Southern Baptist leader Richard Land of Nashville, who argued that Bush has a "moral clarity" befitting a wartime leader, in contrast to the "relativist universe" inhabited by European leaders.