President Bush's Religion

Thursday April 15, 2004

Many in America regard President George W. Bush's religious beliefs to be one of his most important features. For supporters, it means that he shares their religious values. For opponents, it means that he endorses a right-wing theocratic agenda. Is either group correct?

Alan Jacobs, writing in the Boston Globe, argues that there isn't as much of a connection between Bush's religion and his policies as most people might assume - for better or for worse:

First, there are differences between evangelicalism in general and the subset called fundamentalism; and second, those differences are hard to specify because they are matters of tendency and preference rather than doctrine or belief. Basically, all evangelicals (fundamentalist or not) believe that Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sins; that people need to repent of our sins and "accept Jesus as Lord and Savior"; that we must preach the Gospel to those who don't know or don't believe; and that the Bible is the authoritative Word of God. The hard part begins when we get down to asking what the Bible actually says.

Evangelicals, in short, are unpredictable -- and nowhere more so than in political matters. While most evangelicals continue to vote Republican (largely because of the abortion issue), a significant subset is either ambivalent towards or critical of many Republican policies. ... President Bush, like most evangelicals (and most Americans), is intellectually mongrel. The likelihood that his thinking and his policies are shaped by a single, coherent, radical ideology is virtually nil. Bush may be a bad president -- he may pursue bad policies on the domestic front and abroad -- but if so, his Christianity has little or nothing to do with it.

Jacobs makes a lot of good points about the political and religious diversity that makes up "evangelical" Christianity. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that his argument actually works. On the contrary, his entire presentation fails utterly to support his claim that Bush's politics and political decisions have nothing to do with his religion.

Why? It simply doesn't matter if Bush is "intellectually mongrel," if his policies aren't shaped by "a single, coherent, radical theology," or if evangelical Christians can all be evangelical without also agreeing on particular political policies. None of that - absolutely none of it - prevents George W. Bush from basing his political decisions on religious dogma, including the idea that "he is God's chosen instrument in our time" (which is rather likely, since he reportedly gets instructions from God.

So why does Jacobs make this argument? I'm at a complete loss to understand it. Like I said, he provides very valuable information about how much diversity there is among evangelicals - but why would he imagine that that would establish a disconnect between his idea of evangelical Christianity and his political decisions? I assume he must have thought there was a logical connection between the two, but I not only can't see it, I can't figure out where anyone would mistakenly find one.

Jacobs does make on further point that is interesting:

Ronald Reagan became beloved of the "religious right" while rarely darkening the door of a church and articulating only vague belief in a vague God, while the church-going, Bible-toting Bill Clinton was despised by them.

I think this shows that, for the average conservative Christian in America, it doesn't matter whether a person actually shares their religion - what matters is that they mouth the right platitudes and act like they are creating Christian policies. Unfortunately, that makes conservative Christians in America look awfully bad.

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