BORN AGAIN FROGKILLER:

A mighty fortress is his God: President Bush's form of American Evangelicalism enjoys massive popular appeal and, arguably, influences policy. (JOHNATHAN STEINBERG, 7/18/04, Miami Herald)

Journalist Bob Woodward, in his book Plan of Attack, reveals a lot about the governing style -- and the fervent faith -- of the president. Woodward writes that when he asked the president whether he consulted his father, Bush seemed surprised by the question: ''There is a higher father that I appeal to.'' And, when replying to a question about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Bush said to Woodward: ''But you run in different circles than I do. Much more elite.'' The remark pulls you up short. Bush -- the son of patricians on both sides, educated at Andover and Yale, former governor of Texas, president of the United States of America -- does not run in elite circles?

But that upper-class, Episcopalian and alcoholic playboy no longer exists. The reborn Bush is a Texas evangelical Christian, a Methodist, who feels at home among ordinary folks at the Midland Men's Community Bible Study Group in Midland, Texas. He has, in effect, become one of them. He talks like they do and believes what they believe: that the Bible is the literal truth. Good and Evil oppose each other. There can be no middle ground.

Hence, when Woodward relates how he asked the president whether he had ever doubted his course of action in Iraq, the president replied: ``I haven't suffered any doubt.''

''Is that right?'' Woodward asked. ``Not at all?''

``No. And I'm able to convey that to people.''

To those who had lost sons or daughters in the conflict, Bush said, ``I hope I'm able to convey that in a humble way.''

In the president's view, to doubt his policy would be to doubt his God-given calling. Shortly after his State of the Union message of 2002, in which he had called Iraq, Iran and North Korea ''the axis of evil,'' Bush addressed an audience in Daytona Beach. ''We've got a great opportunity,'' he said. 'As a result of evil, there's some amazing things that are taking place in America. People have begun to challenge the culture of the past that said, `If it feels good, do it.' This great nation has a chance to change the culture.''

In the State of the Union address of January 2003, Bush repeated his theme of moral transformation: ``Our fourth goal is to apply the compassion of America to the deepest problems of America. For so many in our country -- the homeless and the fatherless, the addicted -- the need is great. Yet there's power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people.''

The White House, the Cabinet and Congress all contain strong supporters of Bush's evangelical crusade. Bush appointed a devout Pentecostalist and member of the very conservative Assemblies of the Church of God, John Ashcroft, to be attorney general. Michael Gerson, the president's speechwriter, graduated with a degree in theology from Wheaton College in Illinois, a leading evangelical institution. Bush's electoral strategist, Karl Rove, received an honorary degree in May from the controversial evangelist, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, at his Liberty University for his ``commitment to conservative ideas.''

Exit polls in 2000 showed that 55 percent of those who voted for Bush placed moral reform as their highest political objective. All the so-called ''hot-button issues'' of this campaign -- conflicts over gay marriage, abortion, guns, feminism or stem-cell research -- reflect that. All those issues grow out of what evangelicals call ''secular humanism'' -- a movement they believe has debauched American life in the form of feminism, moral relativism, Bible criticism, Darwinian evolution and, worst of all, abortion.

For conservative Christians, the election of 2004 represents the ultimate struggle between good and evil in American life.

"arguably"? His entire presidency proceeds from his faith.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 22, 2004 12:02 PM