February 2, 2005
God and the Oval Office
Bush's Brand of Christianity
By DAVID DOMKE and KEVIN COE
Since the night of September 11, 2001, when George W. Bush quoted Psalm 23
and
declared the day's events to be the opening salvo of a cosmic struggle of
good
vs. evil, administration officials and supporters have claimed that this
president's mixture of religion and politics is nothing new in the
presidency.
Just last month in speaking to journalists, Bush speechwriter Michael
Gerson
offered this viewpoint.
That simply is not so. We have the data to prove it.
What makes Bush distinct from other modern American presidents is not that
he
believes in or refers to a supreme power in his public communications. What
sets
Bush apart is how much he talks about God and what he says when he does so.
The
pattern is so clear that we guarantee Bush will invoke God several times in
his
State of the Union address on Wednesday.
Consider that Bush referenced God seven times in his second-term inaugural
address on January 20. This came on the heels of 10 invocations of God in
his
first inaugural and another 14 references in his three State of the Union
addresses. No other president since Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933
has
mentioned God so often in his inaugurations or State of the Unions.
The closest to Bush's average of 6 references per each of these addresses
is
Ronald Reagan, who averaged 4.75 in his comparable speeches. Jimmy Carter,
considered as pious as they come among U.S. presidents, only had 2 God
mentions
in four addresses. Other also-rans in total God talk were war-time
presidents
Franklin Roosevelt at 1.69 and Lyndon Johnson at 1.50 references per
inaugurals
and State of the Unions.
God talk in these addresses is important because in these ritualized
occasions
any religious language becomes fused with American identity. This is
particularly so since the advent of radio and television, which have
facilitated
presidents' ability to connect with the U.S. public writ large; indeed,
inaugurals and State of the Unions commonly draw large media audiences.
Bush also talks about God differently than most other modern presidents.
Presidents since Roosevelt have commonly spoken as petitioners of God,
seeking
blessing, favor, and guidance. This president positions himself as a
prophet,
issuing declarations of divine desires for the nation and world. Among
modern
presidents, only Reagan has spoken in a similar manner - and he did so far
less
frequently than has Bush.
This striking change in White House rhetoric is apparent in how presidents
have
spoken about God and the values of freedom and liberty, two ideas central
to
American identity. Consider a few examples.
Roosevelt in 1941, in a famous address delineating four essential freedoms
threatened by fascism, said: "This nation has placed its destiny in the
hands
and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women; and its faith
in
freedom under the guidance of God."
Similarly, Dwight Eisenhower in 1954, during the height of the Cold War,
said:
"Happily, our people, though blessed with more material goods than any
people in
history, have always reserved their first allegiance to the kingdom of the
spirit, which is the true source of that freedom we value above all
material
things. ... So long as action and aspiration humbly and earnestly seek
favor in
the sight of the Almighty, there is no end to America's forward road; there
is
no obstacle on it she will not surmount in her march toward a lasting peace
in a
free and prosperous world."
Contrast these statements, in which presidents spoke as petitioners humbly
asking for divine guidance, with Bush's claim in 2003 that "Americans are a
free
people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future
of
every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it
is
God's gift to humanity." This is not a request for divine favor; it is a
declaration of divine wishes.
Similarly, two weeks ago in his second inaugural Bush hammered home the
ideas of
freedom or liberty - using these words, in some form, 49 times, including
this
instance: "We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of
mankind,
the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our Founders
declared a
new order of the ages; when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union
based on
liberty; when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner
'Freedom
Now' - they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled.
History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a visible
direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty."
Some might wonder if all of these words should be attributed to Gerson, a
graduate of evangelical Wheaton College who served as Bush's primary
speechwriter in his first term. The words are Bush's. Bob Woodward, in his
book
about the administration's push toward Iraq, Plan of Attack, includes this
quote
from Bush: "I say that freedom is not America's gift to the world. Freedom
is
God's gift to everybody in the world. I believe that. As a matter of fact,
I was
the person that wrote the line, or said it. I didn't write it, I just said
it in
a speech. And it became part of the jargon. And I believe that. And I
believe we
have a duty to free people. I would hope we wouldn't have to do it
militarily,
but we have a duty."
The claim that the U.S. government is doing God's work may appeal to many
Americans, but it frightens those who might run afoul of administration
wishes-*****-demands. This is particularly so when one considers how
declarations
of God's will have been used by European-Americans in past eras as
rationale for
subjugating those who are racially and religiously different, most notably
Native Americans, Africans, Chinese, and African Americans.
Indeed, scholar R. Scott Appleby in 2003 declared that the administration's
omnipresent emphasis on freedom and liberty functions as the centerpiece
for "a
theological version of Manifest Destiny." Unfortunately, this twenty-first
century adaptation of manifest destiny differs little from earlier American
versions: the goal remains to vanquish any who do not willingly adopt the
supposedly universal norms and values of white, conservative Protestants.
The
result, by implication in the president's rhetoric, is that the
administration
has transformed Bush's "Either you are with us, or you are with the
terrorists"
policy into "Either you are with us, or you are against God."
To the great misfortune of American democracy and the global public, such a
view
is indistinguishable from that of the terrorists it is fighting. One is
hard
pressed to see how the perspective of Osama bin Laden, that he and his
followers
are delivering God's wishes for the United States, is much different from
Bush's
perspective that the United States is delivering God's wishes to the
Taliban or
Iraq.
Clearly, flying airplanes into buildings in order to kill innocent people
is an
indefensible immoral activity. So too, some charge, is an unprovoked
pre-emptive
invasion of another nation, the cost in casualties of which has been paid
by
U.S. military personnel sent to fight on the basis of erroneous
intelligence and
by Iraqi civilians - 1,429 (with 10,502 wounded) and 15,563 (with no
reliable
estimate of Iraqi civilian wounded), respectively, according to
conservative
estimates at this writing.
And that isn't freedom and liberty, no matter how many times you use the
word or
link it to God.
David Domke is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at
the
University of Washington. He is the author of God Willing? Political
Fundamentalism in the White House, the "War on Terror," and the Echoing
Press
(Pluto Press, 2004).
Kevin Coe is a doctoral student in the Department of Speech Communication
at the
University of Illinois.
http://www.counterpunch.org/domke02022005.html
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