CRUSADING, BUT LIKE BALIAN:

Bush Tells Group He Sees a 'Third Awakening' (Peter Baker, September 13, 2006, Washington Post)

President Bush said yesterday that he senses a "Third Awakening" of religious devotion in the United States that has coincided with the nation's struggle with international terrorists, a war that he depicted as "a confrontation between good and evil."

Bush told a group of conservative journalists that he notices more open expressions of faith among people he meets during his travels, and he suggested that might signal a broader revival similar to other religious movements in history. Bush noted that some of Abraham Lincoln's strongest supporters were religious people "who saw life in terms of good and evil" and who believed that slavery was evil. Many of his own supporters, he said, see the current conflict in similar terms.

"A lot of people in America see this as a confrontation between good and evil, including me," Bush said during a 1 1/2 -hour Oval Office conversation on cultural changes and a battle with terrorists that he sees lasting decades. "There was a stark change between the culture of the '50s and the '60s -- boom -- and I think there's change happening here," he added. "It seems to me that there's a Third Awakening."

It's America--no one can be surprised to hear that it's a religious war we're waging.

MORE:
-The Me Decade and the Third Great Awakening (Tom Wolfe)
-Completing an Awakening (Richard F. Lovelace, March 18, 1981, Christian Century)
-The Day the Enlightenment Went Out (GARRY WILLS, 11/04/04, NY Times)
-President's Remarks at National Prayer Breakfast (Washington Hilton Hotel, Washington, D.C., 2/07/02)
-God and George W. Bush (Bill Keller, May 17, 2003, NY Times)
-Bush's Gospel (Terry Eastland, 03/01/2004, Weekly Standard)
-The Bush Doctrine (Tony Carnes, 04/25/2003, Christianity Today)
-With God on His Side (Garry Wills, 3/30/03, NY Times Magazine)
-George Bush and the Treacherous Country (Steve Erickson, 2/13/04, LA Weekly)
-Dangerous Religion: George W. Bush's theology of empire. (Jim Wallis, September-October 2003, Sojourners)
-The new Nero (Francois de Bernard, 3/31/03, Ha'aretz)
-Fundamentally, Bush Works on Faith (Peter Schweizer and Rochelle Schweizer, April 11, 2004, LA Times)
-Our Union’s Jewish State (David Klinghoffer, 3/17/04, The Forward)
-REVIEW: of Jonathan Edwards: a Life by George Marsden (Brothers Judd)
-ARCHIVES: Puritan Nation (Brothers Judd)
-ARCHIVES: Crusader State (Brothers Judd)
-ARCHIVES: George W. Bush--Religion (Brothers Judd)

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 13, 2006 8:13 AM