Posted on 07/19/2005 5:56:56 PM PDT by CHARLITE
David Aikman's recent book, A Man of Faith: The Spiritual Journey of George W. Bush, highlights the pivotal role religious faith plays in George W. Bush's life and presidency. The book chronicles Bush's slow ascendancy to his faith, taking note of the key people and seminal events that helped shape his Christian worldview.
Aikman, a former senior correspondent for Time magazine, is an open Christian who is sympathetic to Bush's core religious principles. Aikman's work is the second one that touches on Bush's faith. Stephen Mansfield wrote the first, The Faith of George W. Bush, which was released last year, but received little attention. Although Aikman's book covers some of the same ground as Mansfield's, it goes much further in giving the reader insight into how Bush became a Christian and the man and president he is today. There is a detailed account of Bush's roots and the role his parents played in instilling the traditional values of God, country and family.
Bush's solid upbringing always remained central to his life, despite his college and bachelor years as a free spirit who enjoyed dating and drinking. His marriage to Laura Welch, a devout Methodist, helped stabilize him spiritually. However, it was numerous meetings with evangelist Billy Graham that convinced Bush to embrace a muscular Christianity.
Aikman rightly argues that what distinguishes Bush from many of his predecessors is his unabashed openness regarding his faith. He scandalized the secular liberal media elites when he declared Jesus Christ to be his favorite philosopher during the 2000 Republican presidential primaries. Pundits widely predicted that the answer would be Bush's downfall. But he proved them wrong. His admission did not compromise the separation of church and state, as many claimed; on the contrary, Bush's public Christianity demonstrated his understanding that American democracy is predicated on Judeo-Christian underpinnings.
Once elected, Bush implemented his faith-based initiative, which bolstered support for religiously oriented charities in providing social services to the poor and needy. He also demonstrated his compassion for the millions of AIDS victims in Africa, endorsing several major initiatives to help conquer this ravaging disease.
In researching his book, Aikman was privy to accounts of Bush's faith from his top advisers and close friends. Bush prayed with British Prime Minister Tony Blair at Camp David. He held religious services aboard Air Force One when he was unable to make regular services. His top advisers, such as National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and former Communications Director Karen Hughes, would frequently join him.
Two sources also claim that "the president of the United States was lying prostrate on the floor in prayer ... with only his shoes protruding from behind his desk" when a courier entered the Oval Office unannounced to make an important delivery.
According to Aikman, the president makes many of his decisions "during his frequent moments of prayer throughout the day and his morning and evening Bible and devotional readings." The president also "made it clear that he wanted grace to be said before meals, no matter who the visitor was to the White House, Camp David, or the ranch at Crawford."
Bush's fervent religious faith is not something that simply sets the tone in the Oval Office or at his ranch in Texas. Rather, it is central to the conduct of his foreign policy—especially the war on terrorism. Bush's faith has endowed him with the conviction that every human being has inherent dignity and worth. It is precisely this Christian universalism that has led the president to believe that human rights and democracy can be established in every part of the globe, including the Middle East. As Bush has stated on numerous occasions, "Freedom is not America's gift to the world; it's God's gift to humanity."
Moreover, Bush's faith has also given him a keen sense of moral clarity—in stark contrast to former President Bill Clinton, who embodied the moral equivalence and sexual radicalism at the heart of modern liberalism. Clinton's ethical shortcomings not only led to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, but more importantly, contributed to the ineffectual response to the rise of Islamist fascism during the 1990s. The direct result was the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Yet while Clinton was morally ambiguous in the face of international terrorism, Bush has been morally resolute. He rightly understands that there can be no ambivalent position in a war in which Islamic fundamentalists are prepared to ram planes into buildings and attach bombs to themselves, killing thousands of innocent civilians.
Bush believes that the mission of his presidency is to win the war against global terrorism. His administration has so far toppled brutal dictatorships in Afghanistan and Iraq, liberated over 50 million people from oppression, neutered barbaric regimes in Syria and Iran, compelled Libya to dismantle its weapons of mass destruction program and decapitated much of the al Qaeda leadership.
The numerous successes of Bush's administration can be traced to his absolute moral convictions that the West is in a life-and-death struggle against the forces of Islamic extremism. Bush's Christian worldview is not peripheral to his policies, but a central guiding force. It is what gives him the moral anchor needed to win this long and costly military campaign.
Perhaps it is even God's destiny that Bush should be occupying the most powerful office in the world at this unique time of peril.
Loredana Vuoto is a speechwriter for the assistant secretary at the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The views expressed in the article are solely her own.
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His compassion? It wasn't his money. This is government imposed "compassion." That's where the government officials get all the credit while the American people pay the tab. And the only African "victims" are the children and maybe a few innocent adults (I am for helping the innocent). The rest of the victims are the American people who are being forced to fund the consequences of other people's immorality. Sorry, but that's the truth. Liberty Schmiberty! Choices have consequences. If you want the freedom to choose immorality, fund the consequences yourself! Or at least get help from people who give help freely.
I don't even mind helping these people out. I just resent being forced to do it via the government.
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