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Headline: The private faith of a public man
Byline: Francine Kiefer Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Date: 09/06/2002
(WASHINGTON)It was the first meeting between President Bush and his Russian
counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
The summit in the imposing Brdo Castle, a 500-year-old sanctuary for
kings and nobles in the rumpled hills of Slovenia, carried an agenda of
issues both portentous and prickly: antimissile defense, Russian
participation in NATO, violence in the Balkans, oil exploration in the
Caspian Basin.
When the two heads of state met on that sun-dappled day in June 2001,
however, the first topic of discussion wasn't wars in space or fuel
underground.
It was about God.
"You know, it's interesting, there is a universal God, in my opinion,
and the first conversation I ever had with Vladimir Putin was about God
- in Slovenia," Mr. Bush revealed a year later. "It was a way that we -
we'd never met each other, and the first discussion we had was about
our personal beliefs."
The revelation of this private moment, which clearly moved the
president, offers a glimpse of how much faith has become a part of the
Bush presidency.
Almost two years into his term, Bush's religious beliefs are emerging
as a central influence in his policy and politics - inextricably linked
to everything from the war on terrorism to the November elections.
While presidents throughout history have leaned on and invoked God,
Bush has been far more public than most with his personal beliefs and
values. Some of this clearly reflects the times: Moments of crisis - in
this case, a horrific attack and the residue of fear in its aftermath -
often bring out overt expressions of faith, as the nation looks to a
president for comfort as well as leadership.
But for Bush, who reads his Bible every morning, faith extends beyond
the national catharsis of the moment. By his own admission, his
religious views shape much of who he is and, by extension, experts say,
some of his most important decisionmaking.
"One of the animating principles of this administration is the
restoration of the role of faith in the public square," says Marshall
Wittman, the former legislative director for the Christian Coalition.
In some ways, Bush's religious fervor echoes that of one of his recent
predecessors, Jimmy Carter. The peanut farmer from Plains, Ga., was the
first born-again Democrat to be president. Bush is the first among
Republicans.
Mr. Carter would sometimes show up unannounced at the First Baptist
Church in Washington to teach Sunday school. While Bush hasn't yet
taken to teaching tots about Daniel in the lions' den, he may have
surpassed Carter in another area: He is "perhaps the first modern
president who actually sees policy applications" for his faith, says
Mr. Wittman.
Faith's influence on policy
Some of this is rooted in the issues surfacing today, such as human
cloning, that already reflect a complex intersection of science and
religion. In other cases, Bush has pushed a values-based agenda on his
own - often with controversial results.
One of the most visible examples of a Bush-led program is the White
House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which seeks to
ease the federal restrictions on the role religious groups can play in
providing welfare and other services for needy Americans. Encouraging
churches to help solve some of the nation's social ills has long been a
central tenet of Bush's "compassionate conservative" philosophy.
The initiative, for now, remains bottled up in Congress.
Last summer, when Bush finally announced his position on the morally
charged issue of human embryo stem-cell research, it didn't come
without extensive consultation with scientists, ethicists - and
religious leaders. A strong opponent of abortion, he decided to allow
federal funding for research only on existing lines of stem cells.
"I don't think there's any question that his faith was absolutely
determinative in his decisionmaking," says Richard Land, president of
the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist
Convention. A fellow Texan who has known the president for about 15
years, Mr. Land consulted with the White House at "high levels" on the
stem-cell issue.
At the time, the stem cell case was viewed as one of the most important
decisions facing Bush. But that was before Sept. 11.
Since then, the war on terror has been the predominant issue, and there
is no doubt that here, too, the president believes God is on the
battlefield. Many religious conservatives have publicly said it's
providential that Bush is president at this moment and, given his past
comments about divine plans superseding human ones, it's possible he
shares this opinion.
When men and women reach across the rope line to shake his hand, or
yell that they are praying for him and his wife, he responds by saying
he feels it, and that their prayers are "the greatest gift" the first
couple could receive.
"I often tell people that if you want to respond to what has happened
to our country, you can do so with prayer, but, as importantly, you can
do so by loving your neighbor like you'd like to be loved yourself,"
said Bush at a Hispanic prayer breakfast in May, quoting a central
tenet of Jesus' teachings.
The views of an unusually religious president or simply ones that could
be uttered by anyone with a moral sense? "Both," says White House
spokesman Ari Fleischer. "Faith influences the president in that it
helps make up his character and his judgments, and his policy decisions
are based on his character and his judgments," Mr. Fleischer explains.
Indeed, advisers to past presidents say their bosses' religious views
helped shape their presidencies, although often indirectly. Former
Carter chief of staff Hamilton Jordan says it wasn't the president's
theology, but the closely related impulses of compassion and
humanitarianism that influenced his decision to return the Panama Canal
to the Panamanians.
Gary Bauer, who worked in the Reagan administration, describes his boss
as having a kind of civil religion composed of God, the flag, and apple
pie. Mr. Reagan seldom talked in terms of his personal faith, says Mr.
Bauer, yet his basic beliefs caused him to see communism as a dark
force in the world.
Similarly, Bauer is convinced that this president's view on the war
emanates directly from the prism of his religious beliefs.
"Many people will point to his faith-based initiative as evidence of
how faith has influenced policy, but I think I would point to the war
on terrorism and the fact that he's most comfortable talking about the
war in terms of good and evil," says Bauer, a conservative Christian.
His vocabulary "is very consistent with an evangelical world view," he
says, as is the conviction that America is blessed, and God is
protecting the country.
A life-transforming experience
Officially, Bush is a Methodist, having adopted his wife's religion.
Yet he retains a heavy evangelical accent.
Bush himself talks extensively about the "renewing" of his faith as a
life-altering moment in his autobiography, "A Charge To Keep" (the
title comes from a hymn.) Raised an Episcopalian, he was an altar boy
and even taught Sunday School. But he didn't find deep conviction until
a summer weekend in 1985, when the Rev. Billy Graham visited the Bush
compound in Kennebunkport, Maine.
At the time, Bush was in his late 30s and the chief executive officer
of a struggling oil company. By his own admission, he drank too much
and was unfocused. One evening, Mr. Graham, at the request of George
Bush senior, joined the family for a chat around the fireplace. The
next day, Bush junior and the clergyman took a stroll along Walker's
Point.
"I knew I was in the presence of a great man," Bush writes in his
autobiography. "I felt drawn to something different. He didn't lecture
or admonish; he shared warmth and concern. Billy Graham didn't make you
feel guilty. He made you feel loved."
When Bush returned to Midland, Texas, he joined a Bible study group
with Don Evans, now his secretary of commerce. Shortly after his 40th
birthday, he woke up hung over one morning and decided to give up
drinking. The time with Graham, he says, planted the seeds of
transformation.
With his autobiography published in time for his presidential campaign,
Bush had few qualms about mass marketing his faith. But he is
surprisingly private in his practice of it. Last year, White House
aides were miffed when the media discovered Bush had invited the
visiting president of Macedonia - a fellow Methodist - to his private
study, where the two men knelt alongside each other in prayer.
Bush has said he frequently prays in the Oval Office. "I pray all the
time," he once told Fox News. But unlike past presidents, he does not
regularly attend a Washington church with motorcade and media in tow.
Instead, his pastoral home for now is the military-led services at the
Camp David chapel, in the woodsy hills of Maryland.
Sometimes, the president prays on the phone with a minister in Texas
whom he knows well. On the flight back from a trip to South America in
March, several staffers traveling with Bush on Air Force One wanted to
celebrate Palm Sunday. They put together an informal service in the
plane's conference room, which the president attended.
Despite his strong religious views, Bush doesn't roam the West Wing
quoting scripture or trying to influence others, though Cabinet
meetings often begin with a prayer. When the president gathered the
White House staff on the south lawn after the terrorist attacks, it was
an ecumenical moment of silence. Bush has met with Muslim leaders and
consistently preached a message of including Islam in American culture.
Faith, says Fleischer, is a part of the American heritage, and the
president "has a wonderful way of sharing that in an inclusive fashion."
Apparently, many Americans agree. According to a July Newsweek poll, 60
percent of those surveyed said it was "good for the country" for
leaders to publicly express their faith.
Preaching from the bully pulpit
All presidents invoke the Almighty, sometimes for political purposes,
sometimes out of deep conviction. But, generally, religion and the
White House go well together only in times of deep crisis, says Martin
Marty, a religious historian and professor emeritus at the University
of Chicago.
Spiritual rhetoric flowed from the bully pulpit in both world wars, and
although President Lincoln was the only president who did not belong to
a church, he was not shy about bringing God into his speeches during
the crucible of the Civil War.
In contrast, deific rhetoric was scarce in the 1960s, when civil rights
was the national religion, and Vietnam divided the country, says Mr.
Marty. One reason Carter's religiosity caused such a stir, he adds, is
that the public just wasn't in the mood for it.
Bush also makes some people uncomfortable. Groups like Americans United
for the Separation of Church and State, and the Interfaith Alliance, a
nonpartisan organization, believe the president has breached the
firewall between religion and government. "Sometimes Bush comes close
to crossing the line of trying to serve the nation as its religious
leader, rather than its political leader," says G. Welton Gaddy,
executive director of Interfaith Alliance.
Others believe the danger for the president lies in becoming a captive
of the Christian right. Marty says many of the issues being debated
today - from school vouchers to the Pledge of Allegiance - look as if
they're religious, "but they're really politics."
There's no question that Bush's appeal to people of faith - especially
Christian conservatives - is of paramount political importance to the
White House. Bush senior antagonized the religious right, and this
White House does not want to repeat the mistake.
Yet even this group is not entirely happy with the president. Religious
conservatives worry about whether he'd really appoint a "pro-life"
person to the Supreme Court. Bush has not completely toed their line on
homosexuality, and he's let issues such as school prayer drop.
All of which points up the complicated intersection of politics and
religion in the United States, a tension that has inspired and
bedeviled presidents since the days of George Washington.
As Marty puts it: "A nonreligious president - or an overly religious
one - could get himself in trouble."
(c) Copyright 2002 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
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