Is George W Bush a Born Again Christian?
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 |  |  There's no question that the president'due south faith is existent, that it's authentic, that it's genuine, and there's no question that it's calculated. I know that sounds like a contradiction. Simply that will always be the instance for a public figure, regardless of their religion, whether they're Islamic, or Jewish, or Christian. … Gandhi in one case said, "He who says that religion and politics don't mix understands neither one." I would say that I don't know when he's sincere and when he's calculated, and a reporter for FRONTLINE doesn't know. George Bush doesn't know when he's operating out of a 18-carat sense of his own faith, or when it's calculated, and at that place must be gray areas in betwixt. I think he operates instinctively. … But all of this word is presuming you know the roots of George Bush's faith and why he believes the way he believes, and why he believes and so strongly. When 1 understands that, one is pretty tolerant to his religion and sees that George Due west.'s religion is the good guy in his life. It's the restraining influence in his life. Information technology'southward non something to be afraid of. George W. Bush is someone to be afraid of without his faith. His faith has brought more than of a sensitivity, a feminine side, to his personality that was needed. ... If you talk nigh the origins of his faith, what is that? … He loves his father and he loves his daughters. He was going to lose his daughters if he lost his spousal relationship, and he was going to lose his marriage if he didn't stop drinking. The marriage was in trouble. The relationship within the union was in trouble. He's a handsome guy, and there were girls all over him during the entrada. He was faithful to Laura, but he's a handsome guy. That spousal relationship was under stress, and he blamed himself. I know that he blamed himself. He couldn't trust anybody. All through his life, his dad was a U.Due north. administrator or was caput of the CIA or caput of the Republican Party, before he was vice president for eight years. So he couldn't talk; he couldn't get to a advisor. He couldn't talk to a friend about what's going on in his life. But he's going every Lord's day to this Methodist church with Laura for the kids' sake, for the girls' sake, no thing what he believes. He'south there. He's hearing this stuff, and he knows he'south got a drinking trouble. I summer, Baton Graham's invited up there. He's already had some literature that shows that people who are able to beat their drinking problem often do so by invoking a college ability. So he asked Billy Graham some questions. I've talked to Billy Graham well-nigh it. He was not impressed with George beingness unusually inquisitive, but information technology was apparently a big deal to George W., because he told me nigh information technology back in 1987 and 1988. It was important in his life. |  + "Bush-league and God" + "A Charge to Keep" memo + The "Jesus Day" Proclamation + The President's Public Expression of Faith | |||
| And then he had that birthday party, and he woke up ane morning in Colorado Springs and he said, "Eureka, that's it. I'll take God. I'll trounce drinking. I proceed Laura and the girls; that simple. I will never take a potable over again the rest of my life. Washed." And then I'thou not saying that today his faith is based on the fact that he wants to have a normal human relationship with Laura and continue his daughters. I'thou but saying that certain got his attending. That brought him into the procedure. "Yes, I'll take God if that'll aid me beat drinking. If beating drinking will help me salvage my marriage and keep my daughters, done bargain. Then where exercise you go to sign up? How practice you believe? I'll believe." … He wanted to save his marriage, and in the process, he came to discover that this was real. It's something that happened to him, that he'd had a spiritual experience. … After ix/11, in item, people have voiced concern that George Bush feels like he's doing God's will. Can you lot talk nearly that -- that he feels that God is nigh on America'south side, that divisions between president and being God'due south selection accept been blurred? Yeah. I know that [in] France, and Germany, and in New York, Washington, Boston, in the corridor, that there'southward business organization that Bush'southward faith is playing an unhealthy role in his state of war on terrorism, somehow, makes him emboldened in attacking an Islamic land, mayhap, for example. That'due south nonsense. George Bush'due south organized religion is the good angel of his personality. Without that faith, he is so difficult, he is so decisive, he is so quick, he is so brutal, he is then unapologetic, so self-righteous -- "I'm correct, this is the right way to go, we're going." I think the people could sense that in the war in Republic of iraq, part of the problem was they sensed he was going, even before there was testify, before the American people were ready. They could sense, no matter what he said, that before long afterwards ix/11, this guy was going, and it made it somewhat doubtable. Then, the logic for the war, when it came forth a piffling bit later, information technology was somewhat suspect, because certainly exterior of this state, they could sense it that he's going. Just a very decisive guy. It's his faith that would make him finish and say, "Wait, is this information technology right thing to do?" Information technology'south not his faith that would say, "Go set on those people. Start a war. Do this." It'due south just the reverse. His religion has been a real tempering outcome on who he is and his personality. "Y'all may not know everything, bigshot. Irksome down. Heed to the other side." People ought to be thankful that he has a faith; [information technology's] not something to fearfulness. | ||||||
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 | | Bush believes very much in the core ideas of Christianity -- the belief that you must believe in Jesus in order to become to sky, that there is no other way to salvation. … That's a fundamental Christian belief, and he embraces it. He believes in the accented nature of God. Fundamentally, he believes in the existence of evil, non as an abstract idea, a philosophy, but as something that's real and tangible. It's something we've seen really most recently when he talks well-nigh the terrorists. He talks of them openly nigh the beingness of evil on Earth. That's something that means something to him. That'southward a designed annotate. That'due south something that comes out of his centre, because he absolutely believes it. When he was governor, he would read the Bible every morning. It was something that he had begun doing years earlier in Midland, Texas. It was office of a programme, and it was role of something that helped settle him. I know we talked a number of occasions virtually how he felt in the forenoon when he'd wake up in Austin, Texas, at the governor's mansion. First thing he'd practice was brand coffee for his wife and feed the animals, a growing group of cats and dogs, and then he would read the Bible. He didn't want to talk most that publicly early on. But information technology was very much core part of who he was. When George Bush was in higher, he was a political conservative. He had come out of a tradition wherein the family unit had gone to the Episcopalian Church. It was natural that he would exist offended by, and talked a lot about being offended by the "If it feels good, exercise it" generation. Those weren't his guys. He was a frat rat, a frat boy in college. But he was also someone that liked the fundamental ideas of religion, even though at that fourth dimension he had non been born once again and he was not really following a rigorous church building attendance. But when he was in higher, he was offended, I call up, by the kind of full general tolerance, the political tolerance that reflected itself in the 1960s. Then information technology became only natural, I think after, that when he ultimately embraced religion in a new fashion, in a fundamental way in his heart, in the very attribute of who he was, that it would seem very consistent with a conservative political philosophy which believed in hard piece of work, practiced things for business organization and an accented right and wrong in everything. So I remember his religion, which he really embraced at the centre of his life, was something that was very consistent with the politics that he embraced all the manner through it. So in other words, his politics ran deeply through him throughout his entire life? Information technology was sort of when he turned 40, or in his late 30s and his early 40s, when he was actually sort of caught up in the religious side of things, and then those things became parallel? Is that right? George Bush, equally he began to grow and approach 40 years erstwhile, found himself every bit the dark sheep of the family. He talked about that. You know, Jeb was the one who was going to be successful. Jeb was the i who was going to be the political success of the family. George told the Queen of England one time, "Well, I'm the blackness sheep in my family." He told me that early when he was drinking a lot, when he was smoking, he wasn't very productive. He clearly was going nowhere, although he idea he could succeed in the concern world. But within, he had these two girls. He had a wife who was actually a very solid force for him, and he began to re-evaluate who he was. It was a natural affair for him, at that signal, to stop drinking, and to brainstorm looking at something primal in his background, something fundamental inside [him]. Religion provided that for him. But his religion, the religion that he seems to accept embraced in Midland, seems like a very different religion than the organized religion of his parents. … His father and mother's church, the Episcopalian Church, is seen by some Methodists almost every bit a liberal or much-too-tolerant adjunct. The Methodist Church building gives you an opportunity, and the Baptist Church even more, to believe in certain absolutes in an absolute way. The inerrancy of Scripture, non all Methodists believe that. But certainly there is that strain of thought that the Bible is the inerrant discussion of God. The advantage of that is it gives someone like George Bush an accented sense that there are absolutes in the world -- that the globe is divided betwixt good and evil; that the Bible is the accented inerrant truth; that it is the word of God. … … Information technology'due south interesting how his choices to run for governor, to run for president, are all motivated, he says, by his beliefs. Yes. I don't think he's done anything in his political life that hasn't been guided, at least in part, in what he believes God wants him to practice. He and I have talked about this when he was governor. He believed that God had a very articulate role in his decision to run for governor and had a very clear presence in the decisions he made every bit governor, whether information technology was nearly tort reform or whether it was near welfare. It was very much a part of his approach to governance. The cardinal moment I call back happened in this regard in Austin, Texas, when subsequently his inauguration for a second term, he was in a church service, a individual church building service across the street from the Capitol. This is a tradition for the incoming governor, in this case, the governor beginning his second term. During that church service, the pastor read a piece of Scripture and delivered a sermon that conspicuously said to him, "We need someone." That "Someone is needed to dominion this country, to guide this country. Leadership is needed in this country." Bush thought, "That's me." His mother reinforced the thought by saying to him, turning to him and saying, "Honey, he'due south talking about yous." Conspicuously, what he was talking well-nigh at that indicate was non -- although information technology was 1998, early on 1999 -- simply serving another term as governor, merely to lead the nation as the president of the U.s.. Now, publicly he's very, very wise non to say, "I'm God's candidate." He's never said that, that I know of. He's never said that, "God admittedly wants me to run, and I'grand the person he wants in the White House." Privately, he has said those things. He said he believes that he is God'southward candidate -- that God has called him -- not necessarily to the exclusion of whatever other leaders somewhere else. But conspicuously that he is a person chosen by God at this particular point and time to represent the interests, non but of a nation, merely the guidance of God at a troubled time in the land. It'southward something he absolutely believes. … | ||||
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 | | What is the president's religious background, and how would you describe his kind of religious belief? President Bush is an interesting effigy in terms of his religious background. He currently is a member of the United Methodist Church, the largest mainline Protestant church building in the United States -- a very diverse church which has many unlike kinds of people. But he also had a transforming personal feel, a conversion experience every bit a middle-aged man that helped him deal with some of his personal problems and inverse his outlook on life. That's a common thing amongst Methodists. It'south also a very common thing in other religious traditions, particularly among evangelical Protestants, where the term "built-in once more" is oftentimes used to talk about these kinds of personal transformations. So President Bush, in some sense, stands astride the major Protestant traditions in the United states of america. [But] …because President Bush has such strong religious beliefs and talks about his faith and so explicitly, many people want to categorize him. They want to effigy out what religious community or religious tradition he belongs to. It's a difficult matter to do, considering President Bush, in many respects, partakes of a number of different religious traditions. He's a fellow member of the United Methodist Church building. He's very closely continued to the Wesleyan tradition, and that leads him to lean a fiddling bit towards mainline Protestantism. On the other hand, he's had a personally transforming experience. He talks about how his faith changed his life and how he'd like organized religion to change other people'south lives, and that puts him a piffling flake more in the evangelical camp. President Bush-league hasn't actually told u.s. where he stands; perhaps because he isn't entirely sure himself, considering he draws from a variety of different perspectives, merely likewise considering it may not be the all-time affair to do politically -- to place with 1 or some other religious tradition when, in fact, he can identify with several. In his political activity, he ofttimes strides beyond different religious boundaries and can, therefore, appeal to people from different religious backgrounds. Evangelicals claim him every bit one of their ain. They feel they accept an ally in the White House. At that place's no question that the evangelical community has an marry in President Bush on a number of dissimilar issues, and in terms of basic values. In that location is a neat deal of commonality betwixt President Bush and evangelicals. Technically speaking, though, President Bush is a mainline Protestant, from the more conservative or traditional, or, if yous will, evangelical fly of mainline Protestantism, only not really function of the cadre of the evangelical customs, as scholars tend to understand it. So there is a sense in which evangelicals are claiming somebody who actually isn't part of their religious community, but someone who shares many of their values, who certainly understands them well, and shares a number of their religious beliefs. And while he walks in both worlds, he also differs from both. Certainly, President Bush differs from his own denomination, from the United Methodist Church, in that he doesn't adopt a lot of its official positions. For case, he is pro-life on abortion, whereas United Methodists tend to exist pro-choice. He disagrees with many Methodists on social welfare issues, and Methodists accept a long tradition of supporting the welfare state. President Bush [is] very disquisitional of the welfare state. On foreign policy, President Bush has a somewhat more aggressive strange policy than many Methodists would concur with. But if yous compare him to the evangelical community, he doesn't completely concord with them, either. For case, when it comes to issues like how the government should chronicle to the gay population, President Bush is much more tolerant, unwilling to stigmatize people. When asked about the gay community, for example, President Bush volition often say, "Well, we accept to recognize that we're all sinners and nosotros shouldn't be critical of one another, and nosotros demand to exist tolerant of each other." On a number of other bug, even on abortion, President Bush is unwilling to commit himself to, say, a constitutional subpoena to cancel abortions, which evangelicals would really like to see. He has a much more moderate position on abortion. So on a multifariousness of issues, he contradicts both the mainline Protestant position and the evangelical Protestant position. … Even though President Bush speaks very openly about religion and his language is religious in many of his speeches, nosotros don't run across him going to church. Nosotros don't see him sort of publicly announcing that he's a United Methodist or an evangelical or a Protestant… President Bush talks almost his faith in his own terms. He understands his faith every bit this personal experience that he had, and continues to have to this day. He'southward very open up about that aspect of his religion. He does not feel compelled, however, to exist seen going into churches belongings Bibles, as some other presidents accept felt was important. He doesn't tend to share his personal devotional life with other people. In that sense, a lot of his religiosity is highly individual. But information technology does inform his public utterances. At moments of great national tragedy, when presidents are expected to condolement the nation, a lot of Bush-league's religious convictions come up out at that level. I don't think that Bush-league is particularly concerned with identifying himself with a broader religious community. In fact, in many ways, I think he sees connections to a number of unlike religious communities. I recall that's quite sincere. He sees commonalities betwixt himself and evangelicals and Roman Catholics, and even sees a certain connection to religious people outside of the Christian tradition, too -- Muslims to Jews and then forth. In fact, politically, that's probably a good matter, considering that allows the president to appeal to the more traditional members of a great variety of religious groups. Given the diversity of American faith, that'southward a pretty good political strategy. | ||||
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 | | The most interesting matter to me about Bush'due south spirituality during my interview with him was that he seems to be both a devout Christian and a genuine religious pluralist. He was i of the first candidates to routinely, in entrada speeches, refer to the importance of synagogues, churches and mosques. That was new. When I would talk to him about the faith-based initiative, I remember thinking, "Oh well, I'm going to trap him on this." And I'd say, "Okay, but what if you requite faith-based money and there'southward this great Muslim program that reduces prison house recidivism, only they exercise information technology by instruction the Quran. Are you really going to want to use federal coin to teach the Quran?" He said, "Absolutely. If it helps reduce law-breaking, and it's a good program, absolutely." And when I asked, "Do you recall i faith is more than true than another?" He artfully avoided that. He said, "That'due south non for me to know." I thought he was really bright at both talking near the importance of faith and faith in his life in a way that was inoffensive to everyone else who didn't take that experience. … | ||||
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 | | Allow'southward talk about President Bush-league and his personal organized religion. You have said that it's non that you question his personal faith and his belief in Jesus. Information technology's that y'all question how it affects our domestic and international policies. … … I'm often asked what I think well-nigh the religion of the President George Westward. Bush. I recollect it is sincere. I think it's very real. I think it'due south deeply held. I met the president when he was president-elect at a coming together in Austin. He spoke of his faith; he spoke of his desire for a compassionate conservatism, for a faith-based initiative that would do something for poor people. Afterwards, [when] he was talking to us, George W. took me aside and said, "Jim, I don't understand poor people. I don't live, never lived around poor people. I don't know [how] poor people think. Bluntly, I'thousand a white Republican guy who but doesn't go it. Merely I'd like to. How practise I get it? How practise I understand?" I said, "You need to mind to poor people, and people who work and live with poor people." In the inaugural accost, which talked more nearly poverty than any inaugural in years, he said, "We have to listen. Most of us don't understand poverty," he said. "Nosotros take to mind to those who exercise." I take that seriously. Just when I met the president and began talking with him, and listening to what he was saying, I felt that he was sort of a self-help Methodist -- meaning, someone whose faith had fabricated a difference in his personal life. Solved some drinking issues and some family unit bug, and changed him. Gave him purpose. That's office of Methodism. Always has been. Kind of a 12-step God -- you know, irresolute my life. My hope was that he'd make a pilgrimage from being a self-help Methodist to a social reform Methodist, like John Wesley was. John Wesley talked near your religion irresolute your life, solving drinking problems, saving your family and your union. Simply also he talked nigh the abolition of slavery. I wanted to hear George Bush talk non just about how personal behaviors cause poverty, merely how structures and social oppression, and hardness of eye of the rich, and laws and lack of only laws cause and perpetuate poverty. So that'd be a pilgrimage from cocky-help to a social reform Methodist. That was my promise -- that in this process of his faith-based initiative, we'd see some motility in the president'southward theology; deepening of his theology, where he'd understand that poverty'south not simply rooted in individual choices, merely in social policies, practices, and behaviors. So Sept. 11 came. I think his role changed dramatically, his notion of himself and his identify in history, and he became commander in primary of the state of war on terrorism. The self-help Methodist became now nearly a messianic American Calvinist, speaking of the mission of America, and fifty-fifty of his possibly divine appointment to be president at a fourth dimension such as this. This raises some deep and unsettling theological questions, I recall, whether there'due south a confusion now in the role of church and nation -- the trunk of Christ, the Christian customs, what its office is versus the role of the nation. Hymnology is often used in the president'southward speeches, and his 2003 State of the Wedlock, in that location's "wonder working ability" in the faith and values of the American people. Well, that's not what the vocal says. Those of us who are evangelical hear that song, "Wonder Working Power" -- information technology's a hymn. "In that location'southward wonder working power in the blood of the Lamb," the vocal says, which means the conservancy in Christ, not in the values of the American people. It's not what the song says. Or Ellis Island, on the showtime ceremony of Sept. 11. He talked about how America stands as a beacon of light to the world, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has non overcome it. Well, that's in the Gospel of John. But the calorie-free at that place is the word of God, and the lite of Christ, non the beacon of American freedom. And then hymns are existence contradistinct and put in a different context. I recollect what you encounter at present is more an American ceremonious religion than evangelical biblical religion. … That's bad theology. It confuses American civil religion and biblical faith. It confuses church building and nation. Information technology confuses God'south purposes with the best interests for American foreign policy, and so there'due south a confusion here. Information technology's bad theology and bad foreign policy at the same time. | ||||
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