Calvinism at the top

[pynchonoid]

<http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/878520.asp>

Bush and God 	  
A higher calling: It is his defining journey—from
reveler to revelation. A biography of his faith, and
how he wields it as he leads a nation on the brink of
war 	 

By Howard Fineman
NEWSWEEK

  	  	March 10 issue —  George W. Bush rises ahead of
the dawn most days, when the loudest sound outside the
White House is the dull, distant roar of F-16s
patrolling the skies. Even before he brings his wife,
Laura, a morning cup of coffee, he goes off to a quiet
place to read alone.	  
  	  
       HIS TEXT ISN’T news summaries or the overnight
intelligence dispatches. Those are for later,
downstairs, in the Oval Office. It’s not recreational
reading (recently, a biography of Sandy Koufax).
Instead, he’s told friends, it’s a book of evangelical
mini-sermons, “My Utmost for His Highest.” The author
is Oswald Chambers, and, under the circumstances, the
historical echoes are loud. A Scotsman and itinerant
Baptist preacher, Chambers died in November 1917 as he
was bringing the Gospel to Australian and New Zealand
soldiers massed in Egypt. By Christmas they had helped
to wrest Palestine from the Turks, and captured
Jerusalem for the British Empire at the end of World
War I.
[...] At Opryland in Nashville—the old “Buckle of the
Bible Belt”—Bush told religious broadcasters that “the
terrorists hate the fact that ... we can worship
Almighty God the way we see fit,” and that the United
States was called to bring God’s gift of liberty to
“every human being in the world.” In his view, the
chances of success were better than good. (After all,
at the National Prayer Breakfast a few days before,
he’d declared that “behind all of life and all history
there is a dedication and purpose, set by the hand of
a just and faithful God.” If that’s so, America
couldn’t fail.)
        After his speech in Nashville, Bush met
privately with pastoral social workers and bore
witness to his own faith in Jesus Christ. “I would not
be president today,” he said, “if I hadn’t stopped
drinking 17 years ago. And I could only do that with
the grace of God.” The prospect of war with Iraq was
“weighing heavy” on him, he admitted. He knew that
many people—including some at the table—saw the
conflict as pre-emptive and unjust. (“I couldn’t
imagine Jesus delivering a message of war to a
cheering crowd, as I just heard the president do,” one
participant, Charles Strobel, said later.) But, the
president said, America had to see that it is
“encountering evil” in the form of Saddam Hussein. The
country had no choice but to confront it, by war if
necessary. “If anyone can be at peace,” Bush said, “I
am at peace about this.” 	
	
[...] In 1993—the year before he ran for governor—Bush
caused a small tempest by telling an Austin reporter
(who happened to be Jewish) that only believers in
Jesus go to heaven. It was a theologically
unremarkable statement, at least in Texas. 

 [...]       For his public speeches, he hired Michael
Gerson, a gifted writer recommended to him by Colson,
among others. A graduate of Wheaton College in
Illinois (“the Evangelical Harvard”), Gerson
understood Bush’s compassionate conservatism. 

[...]      Still, faith helps Bush pick a course and
not look back. He talks regularly to pastors, and
loves to hear that people are praying for him. As he
describes it, his faith is not complex. In recent
weeks he has added a new note to his theme of the
personal uses of faith, drawn from CBS. Now there is a
sense of destiny that approaches the Calvinistic.
“There is a fatalistic element,” said David Frum, the
author and former Bush speechwriter. “You do your best
and accept that everything is in God’s hands.” The
result is unflappability. “If you are confident that
there is a God that rules the world,” said Frum, “you
do your best, and things will work out.” 

[...] The atmosphere inside the White House, insiders
say, is suffused with an aura of prayerfulness. There
have always been Bible-study groups there; even the
Clintonites had one. But the groups are everywhere
now. Lead players set the tone. There is Gerson, whose
office keeps being moved closer to the Oval. Chief of
staff Andrew Card’s wife is a Methodist minister.
National-security adviser Condi Rice’s father was a
preacher in Alabama.
        The president is known to welcome questions
about faith that staffers sometimes have the nerve to
share with him. But he’s not the kind to initiate
granular debates about theology. Would Iraq be a “just
war” in Christian terms, as laid out by Augustine in
the fourth century and amplified by Aquinas, Luther
and others? Bush has satisfied himself that it would
be—indeed, it seems he did so many months ago. But he
didn’t do it by combing through texts or presiding
over a disputation. He decided that Saddam was evil,
and everything flowed from that.
        The language of good and evil—central to the
war on terrorism—came about naturally, said Frum. From
the first, he said, the president used the term
“evildoers” to describe the terrorists because some
commentators were wondering aloud whether the United
States in some way deserved the attack visited upon it
on September 11, 2001. “He wanted to cut that off
right away,” said Frum, “and make it clear that he saw
absolutely no moral equivalence. So he reached right
into the Psalms for that word.” He continued to stress
the idea. Osama bin Laden and his cohorts were “evil.”
In November 2001, in an interview with NEWSWEEK, he
first declared—blurted out, actually—that Saddam
Hussein in Iraq was “evil,” too.

[...]  But as a matter of politics and principle, the
president knows that he needs to deliver on his
faith-based domestic agenda, especially since his
party controls Congress. [...] 



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