Why do they hate Bush?

[CCTAU 3,350]

LINK

God and Governing

Why do they hate President Bush? In large part for his religious faith.

BY TERRY EASTLAND

Wednesday, December 17, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST

Among the many faults charged against George W. Bush it is probably his conservative Christian faith that most troubles the people who dislike him--or most infuriates the people who hate him. Kevin Phillips has gone so far as to argue that Mr. Bush has reshaped the Republican Party into a coalition "unprecedentedly grouped around and influenced by Southern evangelical and fundamentalist voters and their wackier leaders." This is one of those truisms that is routinely heard at Blue State cocktail parties.

But what exactly is Mr. Bush's religious belief and is there any way it can be explained without worrying Kevin Phillips even more? In "The Faith of George W. Bush," Stephen Mansfield relates, with obvious sympathy, a story of spiritual awakening whose outline is well-known to Mr. Bush's friends and enemies alike.

Mr. Bush grew up in mainline Protestant churches in Texas: Midland (Presbyterian) and Houston (Episcopal). Graduating from Yale, he returned to Houston, where he "listlessly worked a variety of jobs," reserving his energies "for women, parties and boisterous games of water volleyball." Several years later, working in Midland as an oil-company executive, he married Laura Welch. She took him to her Methodist church.

But Mr. Bush still felt a lack of purpose in his life--and began asking questions. In 1985, a remark of Billy Graham's, made during a Bush family gathering, sparked a change. Mr. Bush decided, as he put it in his autobiography, to "recommit my heart to Jesus Christ. I was humbled to learn that God sent His Son to die for a sinner like me." He started reading the Bible and joined a Bible-study group. Most dramatically, the day after a soggy celebration of his 40th birthday, in 1986, he quit drinking.

Mr. Mansfield writes believably that, because of his faith, Mr. Bush is a "better man." And he is right to say that Mr. Bush's faith helps us to understand his presidency. But Mr. Mansfield goes much too far when he writes approvingly of the "religious renovation" of government. Phrases like that would seem to confirm the worst fears of someone like Kevin Phillips. But Mr. Bush has never proposed any such renovation. Indeed, he took an oath to execute his office and defend the Constitution.

Carrying out that oath, Mr. Bush, like past presidents, must naturally, at times, consider the role of religion in public life. But here Mr. Mansfield's book is thin. He doesn't mention the Justice Department's filings in the Cleveland school-choice case of 2001, defending the use of vouchers at religious schools. Nor does he discuss the administration's argument (made earlier this month in the Supreme Court) on behalf of a college student who was denied a state grant because he planned to major in theology. And Mr. Mansfield's discussion of the president's "faith-based initiative"--government-funded social services that include church-sponsored programs--is superficial. He fails to grasp the principle behind the initiative's defense of "charitable choice": Religious charities applying for social-service grants shouldn't be discriminated against simply because they are religious.

Mr. Bush's commitment to human rights abroad--trying to stop sex trafficking, for example, or fighting AIDS--may derive from his religious conviction. But Mr. Mansfield doesn't mention them. And on the big story of the Bush presidency--the war on terrorism--Mr. Mansfield gets it half right. He grasps that the president draws on his faith to frame the war in moral terms--the word "evil" is not exactly a secular word. But he neglects to note that behind Mr. Bush's foreign policy is, among other things, a desire to spread religious liberty to countries where there has long been none.

Such an impulse is very American. As Alf Mapp Jr. makes clear in "The Faiths of Our Fathers," the Founders were dedicated to the cause of religious freedom. And little wonder, when one considers the variety of their affiliations. Among the 11 figures that Mr. Mapp discusses--including Washington, Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Alexander Hamilton, George Mason, Charles Carroll, Haym Solomon--one may find deists, Anglicans, a Catholic, a Jew and even a Unitarian.

If the Founders were neither atheists nor fundamentalists, neither were they coreligionists. Thus America became the first nation to disestablish religion and to protect the free exercise of religion by law. It is this political tradition, duly informed by religion, that Mr. Bush draws upon in his own governing, for instance when he welcomes people of faiths different from his own, or of no faith at all.

Mr. Bush hasn't used the word "evangelical" to describe his religious convictions, but in some ways it fits. The origins of evangelicalism go back to the Great Awakening--the revivals that began in New England in the 1740s and spread down through the Middle Colonies and the South. The preachers at these revivals (and at later ones) stressed the importance of a "new birth," i.e., a conversion or a commitment to Christ. The great New England theologian Jonathan Edwards called it a new "sense of the heart."

For almost two centuries, such Protestantism did much to shape the American character. But it lost its unified force in the 1920s, when various forms of theological liberalism captured the mainline churches. Evangelicalism re-emerged in the 1950s and has since assumed a higher profile in American society. Billy Graham, whom the president heard that day at a family gathering, has been its leading figure.

So it is that you may draw a line in American history from the Great Awakening to that day four years ago when candidate George W. Bush, asked by a reporter to name his favorite philosopher, replied, "Christ, because he changed my heart." Mr. Bush did not say that Christ was his favorite political adviser. Ye who live in Blue States, please take note.

[CarolinaTiger 0]

good read, CCTAU.

i, too, wonder from whence some of the hatred is derived.

i was in a buddy's office the other day... a sane, well-educated Christian. and he shared w/ me his sheer hatred of all-things-bush. i simply cannot understand it.

if he had said, "i disagree w/ bush on almost everything he stands for", then i might understand, but that wasn't what he said.

i mean, it's gotta be because he holds values that are opposite of his haters...

abortion?

affirmative action?

social policies?

????

does bush want to change other people? is that it?

is he judgmental?

[CShine 0]

Funny, I don't see anything at all in that article about anyone's hatred. Just because some guy uses the first sentence of his article to say the people hate Bush for his faith doesn't make it true. If you're gonna say that people hate him for his beliefs, shouldn't you at least try to back up your talk? Apparently not if you work for the WSJ. Just more hack journalism from the right.

[CarolinaTiger 0]

Funny, I don't see anything at all in that article about anyone's hatred. Just because some guy uses the first sentence of his article to say the people hate Bush for his faith doesn't make it true. If you're gonna say that people hate him for his beliefs, shouldn't you at least try to back up your talk? Apparently not if you work for the WSJ. Just more hack journalism from the right.

daggum, CShine...what's "hack" about it?

it must paint bush in a positive light...is that what makes it 'hack' journalism?

is it your contention that people don't hate him for his beliefs?

[CShine 0]

Funny, I don't see anything at all in that article about anyone's hatred. Just because some guy uses the first sentence of his article to say the people hate Bush for his faith doesn't make it true. If you're gonna say that people hate him for his beliefs, shouldn't you at least try to back up your talk? Apparently not if you work for the WSJ. Just more hack journalism from the right.

daggum, CShine...what's "hack" about it?

it must paint bush in a positive light...is that what makes it 'hack' journalism?

is it your contention that people don't hate him for his beliefs?

Part of what makes it hack journalism is saying stuff like how "people" hate Bush. Never mind who these "people" are. Never mind actually trying to write about them.

Hack journalism = overly vague & formulaic to the extreme

[Ranger12 46]

Oh, CShine, you know good and well that there have been several comments from the media about Bush's faith and he has been criticized several times about being so open about it. I can't stand it when somebody tries to play the "where's the facts" card when something is already well known without having to do that. Heck, Diane Sawyer even brough it up the other night. I remember when he ran for president, there were cracks about his faith. There was even an article posted on the board a few months ago before everything went down, where the writer was slamming Bush for being so open with his faith as the President. If I remember correctly, the author said that a President should keep that private and behind closed doors and alot of us flamed the article.

CCTAU, that was a good read!

[CarolinaTiger 0]

Hack journalism = overly vague & formulaic to the extreme

duly noted.

[Donutboy 0]

LINK

God and Governing

Why do they hate President Bush? In large part for his religious faith.

BY TERRY EASTLAND

Wednesday, December 17, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST

Among the many faults charged against George W. Bush it is probably his conservative Christian faith that most troubles the people who dislike him--or most infuriates the people who hate him. Kevin Phillips has gone so far as to argue that Mr. Bush has reshaped the Republican Party into a coalition "unprecedentedly grouped around and influenced by Southern evangelical and fundamentalist voters and their wackier leaders." This is one of those truisms that is routinely heard at Blue State cocktail parties.

But what exactly is Mr. Bush's religious belief and is there any way it can be explained without worrying Kevin Phillips even more? In "The Faith of George W. Bush," Stephen Mansfield relates, with obvious sympathy, a story of spiritual awakening whose outline is well-known to Mr. Bush's friends and enemies alike.

Mr. Bush grew up in mainline Protestant churches in Texas: Midland (Presbyterian) and Houston (Episcopal). Graduating from Yale, he returned to Houston, where he "listlessly worked a variety of jobs," reserving his energies "for women, parties and boisterous games of water volleyball." Several years later, working in Midland as an oil-company executive, he married Laura Welch. She took him to her Methodist church.

But Mr. Bush still felt a lack of purpose in his life--and began asking questions. In 1985, a remark of Billy Graham's, made during a Bush family gathering, sparked a change. Mr. Bush decided, as he put it in his autobiography, to "recommit my heart to Jesus Christ. I was humbled to learn that God sent His Son to die for a sinner like me." He started reading the Bible and joined a Bible-study group. Most dramatically, the day after a soggy celebration of his 40th birthday, in 1986, he quit drinking.

Mr. Mansfield writes believably that, because of his faith, Mr. Bush is a "better man." And he is right to say that Mr. Bush's faith helps us to understand his presidency. But Mr. Mansfield goes much too far when he writes approvingly of the "religious renovation" of government. Phrases like that would seem to confirm the worst fears of someone like Kevin Phillips. But Mr. Bush has never proposed any such renovation. Indeed, he took an oath to execute his office and defend the Constitution.

Carrying out that oath, Mr. Bush, like past presidents, must naturally, at times, consider the role of religion in public life. But here Mr. Mansfield's book is thin. He doesn't mention the Justice Department's filings in the Cleveland school-choice case of 2001, defending the use of vouchers at religious schools. Nor does he discuss the administration's argument (made earlier this month in the Supreme Court) on behalf of a college student who was denied a state grant because he planned to major in theology. And Mr. Mansfield's discussion of the president's "faith-based initiative"--government-funded social services that include church-sponsored programs--is superficial. He fails to grasp the principle behind the initiative's defense of "charitable choice": Religious charities applying for social-service grants shouldn't be discriminated against simply because they are religious.

Mr. Bush's commitment to human rights abroad--trying to stop sex trafficking, for example, or fighting AIDS--may derive from his religious conviction. But Mr. Mansfield doesn't mention them. And on the big story of the Bush presidency--the war on terrorism--Mr. Mansfield gets it half right. He grasps that the president draws on his faith to frame the war in moral terms--the word "evil" is not exactly a secular word. But he neglects to note that behind Mr. Bush's foreign policy is, among other things, a desire to spread religious liberty to countries where there has long been none.

Such an impulse is very American. As Alf Mapp Jr. makes clear in "The Faiths of Our Fathers," the Founders were dedicated to the cause of religious freedom. And little wonder, when one considers the variety of their affiliations. Among the 11 figures that Mr. Mapp discusses--including Washington, Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Alexander Hamilton, George Mason, Charles Carroll, Haym Solomon--one may find deists, Anglicans, a Catholic, a Jew and even a Unitarian.

If the Founders were neither atheists nor fundamentalists, neither were they coreligionists. Thus America became the first nation to disestablish religion and to protect the free exercise of religion by law. It is this political tradition, duly informed by religion, that Mr. Bush draws upon in his own governing, for instance when he welcomes people of faiths different from his own, or of no faith at all.

Mr. Bush hasn't used the word "evangelical" to describe his religious convictions, but in some ways it fits. The origins of evangelicalism go back to the Great Awakening--the revivals that began in New England in the 1740s and spread down through the Middle Colonies and the South. The preachers at these revivals (and at later ones) stressed the importance of a "new birth," i.e., a conversion or a commitment to Christ. The great New England theologian Jonathan Edwards called it a new "sense of the heart."

For almost two centuries, such Protestantism did much to shape the American character. But it lost its unified force in the 1920s, when various forms of theological liberalism captured the mainline churches. Evangelicalism re-emerged in the 1950s and has since assumed a higher profile in American society. Billy Graham, whom the president heard that day at a family gathering, has been its leading figure.

So it is that you may draw a line in American history from the Great Awakening to that day four years ago when candidate George W. Bush, asked by a reporter to name his favorite philosopher, replied, "Christ, because he changed my heart." Mr. Bush did not say that Christ was his favorite political adviser. Ye who live in Blue States, please take note.

Matthew 24:10-11 Signs of the End of the Age

At that time many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.

Is Bush a true Christian? One of the popular symbols of Christians today is the WWJD symbol. Being a Christian entails more than making a public show of it. You live it everyday. Bush reminds me of Mike DuBose. He's as corrupt as they come but as long as he professes to be doing the Lord's work, few people are willing to question him on it. Bush is also not a conservative (even some members of his own party are willing to acknowledge that) even though some believe that he is because he professes to be. A true conservative isn't as reckless with the nation's money as he is. Our federal budget deficit will soar to at least 1/2 trillion dollars next year. A true conservative believes in state's rights, which Bush doesn't. He believes in the federal government having more control over the states, from trying to prevent the state approved medical use of marijuana in California to stopping some states from allowing the purchase of Canadian pharmaceuticals.

It's also not that we hate Bush. We hate his policies. Many people think that we're immune to the excesses of this administration because we're America and we're mighty. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Read up on the 1920s and the decade of excesses that preceded the great depression. It's eerily similar to the excesses of today. There was no invulnerability to the stock market crash and the great depression either. It destroyed the lives of the wealthy as well as the midle class.

[CarolinaTiger 0]

Matthew 24:10-11 Signs of the End of the Age

At that time many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.

Is Bush a true Christian? One of the popular symbols of Christians today is the WWJD symbol. Being a Christian entails more than making a public show of it. You live it everyday. Bush reminds me of Mike DuBose.

lol

[CCTAU 3,350]

Matthew 24:10-11 Signs of the End of the Age

At that time many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.

Is Bush a true Christian? One of the popular symbols of Christians today is the WWJD symbol. Being a Christian entails more than making a public show of it. You live it everyday. Bush reminds me of Mike DuBose. He's as corrupt as they come but as long as he professes to be doing the Lord's work, few people are willing to question him on it. Bush is also not a conservative (even some members of his own party are willing to acknowledge that) even though some believe that he is because he professes to be. A true conservative isn't as reckless with the nation's money as he is. Our federal budget deficit will soar to at least 1/2 trillion dollars next year. A true conservative believes in state's rights, which Bush doesn't. He believes in the federal government having more control over the states, from trying to prevent the state approved medical use of marijuana in California to stopping some states from allowing the purchase of Canadian pharmaceuticals.

It's also not that we hate Bush. We hate his policies. Many people think that we're immune to the excesses of this administration because we're America and we're mighty. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Read up on the 1920s and the decade of excesses that preceded the great depression. It's eerily similar to the excesses of today. There was no invulnerability to the stock market crash and the great depression either. It destroyed the lives of the wealthy as well as the midle class.

What a waste of typing effort. Now Bush is the anti-christ? EDITED-Name calling