Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Toto · 02-16-2003, 12:51 PM

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0210-06.htm

Quote:

David Frum, a speechwriter for Bush until last year, wrote in his recent book, The Right Man: The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush, about first entering the White House. Frum said he heard a staff member say to Bush's chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, "Missed you at Bible study."

"The news that this was a White House where attendance at Bible study was, if not compulsory, not quite uncompulsory, either, was disconcerting to a non-Christian like me," Frum wrote.

02-16-2003, 01:41 PM

I bet Bushie just loves the book of Revelation.

Toto · 02-16-2003, 08:13 PM

Now even the likes of Elaine Pagels is criticising Bush's god talk.

The Gospel according to Bush

Quote:

"There is a distinction between America's civil religion and the language that President Bush uses, which comes from a specific evangelical Christian viewpoint,� said the Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, a Monroe, La., theologian and president of the Interfaith Alliance, a Washington-based group that advocates religious tolerance. "When [Bush] speaks in these terms, he leaves out whole segments of America ... His language implies a lack of appreciation for the vastness of religious pluralism in this land.�

Gaddy spoke by phone last week to a group of newspaper reporters linked in a conference call. He was joined by Elaine Pagels, a Princeton University professor of religion.

Gaddy and Pagels said they wanted to express their concerns about the way the president has infused his every program -- but especially his call for war on Iraq -- with religious language.

"The president reminds me of a first-year seminary student,� Gaddy said. The first-year seminarian has great faith, and great energy, but "has not yet learned the key virtue, which is humility,� he said.

In the absence of this virtue, Pagels said, Bush has framed the conflict with Iraq as "God's people versus Satan's people ... �

In framing it that way, only one outcome is possible, she said: "One side can only annihilate the other.�

...

dangin · 02-17-2003, 08:38 AM

Here's to hoping it is going to cost him in the next election.

02-18-2003, 07:00 PM

Bush oblivious to the faithless

Toto · 02-19-2003, 02:20 PM

More on Bush's religious thinking:

Joe Klein

Quote:

George W. Bush lives at the intersection of faith and inexperience. This is not a reassuring address, especially in a time of trouble.
. . .

And this, I think, is at the heart of what is disturbing about Bush's faith in this moment of national crisis: it does not discomfort him enough; it does not impel him to have second thoughts, to explore other intellectual possibilities or question the possible consequences of his actions. I asked one of Bush's closest advisers last week if the President had struggled with his Iraq decision. "No," he said, peremptorily, then quickly amended, "He understands the enormity of it, he understands the nuances, but has there been hand-wringing or existential angst along the way? No." (This, in contrast to his torturous quasi-Solomonic decision on stem-cell research.)

There are religious traditions � the Jesuits, the Jews, the Shi'ites, certain suffering segments of Protestantism � for which grace is a constant anguish, a goal never quite attained but approached through learning or good works. "The Evangelicals take their marching orders from Paul, who said you have to 'work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,'" Martin E. Marty, the University of Chicago theologian, told me last week. "The implication is that once you've worked it out, once you've been born again, you don't have to be fearful or tremble so much anymore."

There are plenty of thoughtful, angst-ridden Evangelicals, of course; the President's simple swagger isn't merely a consequence of his religious faith. He has long disdained the tortured moral relativism he first encountered at Yale. He doesn't come from the most introspective of families. And he has recently found an intellectual home in the secular evangelism of the neoconservatives, who posit a stark world of American good and authoritarian evil. But George W. Bush's faith offers no speed bumps on the road to Baghdad; it does not give him pause or force him to reflect. It is a source of comfort and strength but not of wisdom.

02-16-2003, 01:41 PM	#52
atheist_in_foxhole Guest Posts: n/a	W.H. bible study I bet Bushie just loves the book of Revelation.

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02-17-2003, 08:38 AM	#54
dangin Veteran Member Join Date: Dec 2000 Location: The Middle, Kansas Posts: 2,637	Here's to hoping it is going to cost him in the next election.

02-18-2003, 07:00 PM	#55
atheist_in_foxhole Guest Posts: n/a	Bush oblivious to the faithless

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