Bush vs. God

It increasingly looks like evangelicals won’t have a prayer in the 2008 presidential election. The so-called values voters are in a state of disillusionment with George W. Bush, who seems to have fractured nearly everything he’s touched (most notably Iraq, the Republican Party, and the long-hoped for Conservative realignment). Indeed, George Bush’s Road to Nowhere appears to be leading back to the candidate many on the religious-right view as the anti-Christ: namely Hillary Clinton. How could it all go so wrong for the Right?

When you mix religion with politics you get the worst of both worlds. Politics is about compromise, half-measures, give and take, meeting halfway, and cutting practical deals in order to achieve outcomes most of us can accept as we try to make our way in an imperfect world. Religion is about bedrock principles, eternal truths, God’s commandments, and ordering our human affairs to accord with Natural Law. The politician thinks in terms of provisional and incremental progress, while the religious leader frequently surveys the social world and sees social and moral decline.

Abortion, evolution, and secularization are bogeymen as far as leaders on the religious right are concerned. Many of them earnestly believe God will punish the United States if it does not reverse its evil ways, which include a decadent culture, a depraved indifference to fetal life, and an indifference to God in the public arena. I happen to believe that the notion of God punishing the U.S. because Roe vs. Wade is the law of the land is irrational, but that in no way dismisses their legitimate concerns that a widespread and cavalier attitude towards abortion is injurious to the social fabric.

Ironically, many countries that have permissive abortions laws have far lower rates of abortions than countries with Draconian bans on the procedure. The perfect, it seems, is the enemy of the good (a cliché that could well summarize the Bush administration’s tragic errors when it comes to its efforts to export democracy to Iraq).

Evangelicals and the so-called values voters are undergoing a period of heartfelt reflection and reappraisal regarding the infusion of religion and politics. How could a president they prayed so fervently for end up leading America into an abyss of abuse and torture characterized by Abu Ghraib, water boarding, and extraordinary renditions? How could a man of faith, like Bush, make so many fundamental misjudgments? Wasn’t God guiding him?

There’s an Oriental saying that the gods only laugh at those who pray for money. But perhaps prayers directed at political ends elicit heavenly chuckles too. Certainly Bush’s reign has been as much farce as tragedy. Evangelical leaders, incidentally, are distancing themselves from the failures of the Bush administration, a move that more or less excuses the fact that they supported Bush in droves. It seems an agnostic liberal like me – I’ve been sounding the warning bell against Bush ever since the political gods overturned the will of the American people with their indefensible and constitutionally dubious decision in Bush vs. Gore – recognized just how pernicious G.W.B would be for America’s values long before the righteous right did. Now isn’t that a Divine irony? For more on the subject check out this article in The New York Times Magazine.

Sphere: Related Content