{"id":1209,"date":"2010-11-23T05:00:55","date_gmt":"2010-11-23T12:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=1209"},"modified":"2010-11-23T05:00:55","modified_gmt":"2010-11-23T12:00:55","slug":"decision-points-george-bushs-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=1209","title":{"rendered":"Decision Points: George Bush’s Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"

“As I deepened my\u00a0understanding of Christ, I came closer to my original goal of being a better person — not because I was racking up points on the positive side of the heavenly ledger, but because I was moved by God’s love.”\u00a0 George W. Bush, (Decision Points, page 33)<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Perhaps like no American President since Jimmy Carter has faith\u00a0been so\u00a0integral in their decisions while\u00a0in office than George W.\u00a0Bush.\u00a0 I have been reading about\u00a0the fascinating\u00a0role\u00a0that personal faith\u00a0has played in the life of the 43rd President.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

For my birthday last week, my mother-in-law bought me a copy of President Bush’s book, Decision Points<\/em>.\u00a0 I admit that I like the 43rd President and, given the choice of the current occupant\u00a0or a Bush sitting in the Oval Office, I should be happy to take George W. or his father, George H.W. Bush.\u00a0 Hey, at this point, I would even take the last Baptist that served in the White House instead of President Obama!<\/p>\n

I have only read the first 80 pages of this 481 page tome, just now getting to the section dealing with the Florida recount.\u00a0 As one who was a resident of Florida in 2000,\u00a0I was privileged to\u00a0cast my vote for\u00a0George W. Bush\u00a0for President.\u00a0 I guess one (or a few thousand) votes can really make a difference in the outcome of an election.<\/p>\n

As a student of politics, I have thus far found President Bush’s “memoirs” to be engaging.\u00a0 Whenever I have picked up Decision Points\u00a0<\/em>to read a few pages, I find myself not being able to put it down.\u00a0 In the first\u00a0two chapters alone, there have already been passages which have piqued my curiosity because\u00a0the issues raised intersect both politics and religion.<\/p>\n

Between now and the end of the year, I will devote one blog post each week\u00a0to\u00a0an analysis and\u00a0discussion of those issues where President Bush’s personal faith intersected with his politics and governance.\u00a0 Some of these issues touch\u00a0on principles of religious liberty in a pluralistic society.\u00a0 In the two years since Bush left office, many of these hot-button issues have only intensified,\u00a0most especially\u00a0the view of Islam within American culture.\u00a0 In these posts, I will not only\u00a0state my agreements with the former President, but also my disagreements as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Perhaps the best place to start is with Bush’s\u00a0own personal faith journey, which\u00a0began in earnest after a\u00a0visit with well-know evangelist Billy Graham.\u00a0 It was the summer of 1985 and Rev. Graham had been invited by George and Barbara Bush to visit them at their home in Kennebunkport, Maine.\u00a0 Graham, a Southern Baptist who was the most influential Christian evangelist in the 20th Century, has been a friend and advisor to every President since Dwight Eisenhower.<\/p>\n

During a Q & A with the entire Bush clan (about 30 in all), Bush 41 asked\u00a0Billy Graham about\u00a0being born again:<\/p>\n

“Billy, some people say you have to have a born-again experience to go to heaven.\u00a0 Mother here is the most religious, kind person I know, yet she has had no born-again experience.\u00a0 Will she go to heaven?”\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In what I hope was just Dr. Graham’s way of not trying to offend his hosts, he gave what appears to be a Biblically weak answer.\u00a0 To this question, Graham said:<\/p>\n

“George, some of us require a born-again experience to understand God, and some of us are born Christians.\u00a0 It sounds as if your mom was just born a Christian.” (Decision Points, page 31)<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Far be it from me to disagree with Rev. Graham, but his answer to George H.W. Bush conflicts with Jesus’ own words recorded in the third chapter of the Gospel of John. Contrary to what Billy Graham told the Bush family that summer night, I find no “loopholes” to Jesus twice-stated requirement that Nicodemus and everyone else must be “born again” in order to see the Kingdom of God.<\/p>\n

Thankfully for George W. Bush, the following day’s activities included\u00a0a walk around the compound with Rev. Graham where the evangelist provided a much clearer (and Biblical) explanation of salvation.\u00a0 According to Bush’s own account:<\/p>\n

“Billy explained that we are all sinners, and that we cannot earn God’s love through good deeds.\u00a0 He made clear that the path to salvation is through the grace of God.\u00a0 And the way to find that grace is to embrace Christ as the risen Lord — the son of a (sic)<\/strong> God so powerful and loving that He gave His only Son to conquer death and defeat sin.” (Decision Points, page 31)<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s no question that George W. Bush was greatly influenced by Billy Graham’s Gospel witness 25 years ago.\u00a0 Not only would his\u00a0deeper understanding of the Christian faith have a profound affect on\u00a0his life, but Bush’s personal faith would influence the way he viewed his role as President and the decisions that he made during his eight years in office.<\/p>\n

From\u00a0his answer in the Presidential debate about his favorite philosopher to\u00a0his faith-based initiative to his\u00a0view of Islam as\u00a0a “religion of\u00a0peace” (remember,\u00a0he was Commander-in-Chief, not\u00a0Theologian-in-Chief), President George W. Bush had an active faith that\u00a0played a vital role in his Presidency.\u00a0 And his faith, like ours, led him to make decisions that he thought were right.\u00a0 We’ll explore\u00a0some of those decisions — the right ones and the wrong ones —\u00a0as we tackle those issues where politics and religion collided in the Bush White House.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“As I deepened my\u00a0understanding of Christ, I came closer to my original goal of being a better person — not because I was racking up points on the positive side of the heavenly ledger, but because I was moved by God’s love.”\u00a0 George W. Bush, (Decision Points, page 33) Perhaps like no American President since…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22,34],"tags":[130,158,3374,437,438,556,582,735,799],"class_list":["post-1209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-politics","tag-barbara-bush","tag-billy-graham","tag-decision-points","tag-george-hw-bush","tag-george-w-bush","tag-jimmy-carter","tag-kennebunkport","tag-obama","tag-president"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LP7G-jv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}