References that Bush seems adverse to explaining with any kind of elaboration. When asked what he meant by “Jesus changed my heart”, Bush skirted around the question by replying: “If you don’t know, then I won’t be able to explain it”.

Openly Religious, to a Point (washingtonpost.com)

“I think most of us recognize him as a guy who sure has the same orthodox beliefs we do,” said Charles W. Colson, a Nixon White House aide who heads Prison Fellowship Ministries.

Bush himself said in a 2000 interview with Beliefnet.com, a religion Web site: “To be frank with you, I am not all that comfortable describing my faith, because in the political world, there are a lot of people who say, ‘Vote for me, I’m more religious than my opponent,’ ” he said. “And those kind of folks make me a little nervous.”
NO, just let your campaign be run with that CLEARLY communicated, and you never have to say it. But Bush leaves no doubt by his tactics that this is a “political strategy”.

Neuhaus, who has met several times with the president to discuss abortion and other issues, said that “the whole realm of biblical prophecy . . . with respect to the Middle East” is “quite alien to George W. Bush.”

It woud be interesting to hear the fundamentalist Bush supporters response to this one, since “Bible Studies” often have certain pre-requisite curriculum to include, and the prophecies, end-times scenarios are required discussions. (ala Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind Series). That Bush is not “up on these” casts a great deal of doubt in my mind about the depth of that Bible Study.

The beat goes on about the difficulty even writes of books about Bush’s faith have in identifying any “theology” in BUsh:

Aikman, who was given wide access to Bush’s friends and senior officials to write “A Man of Faith,” said he “could not get from anybody a sort of credo of what [Bush] believes” and was forced to “intuit” many elements of the president’s faith. In the end, he said, he concluded that Bush is “a mainstream evangelical with a higher-than-normal tolerance of dissent.”

This one I find quite ironic:

Tim Goeglein, who directs the White House Office of Public Liaison and is the president’s official intermediary with Christian groups, said Bush is an evangelical but also fits the Irish theologian C.S. Lewis’s definition of a “mere Christian” — someone who looks beyond denominational lines to the central, common teachings of the universal church.

A Church that on the ecumenical level is fairly strongly AGAINST the Iraq war, and strongly against the idea of pre-emptive strikes.

“The real question is how he moves from this vague constellation of beliefs to specific policies,” Casey said. “That’s an enigma.”