I started this book this past week, and this passage has much to do with my previous post, about how easily and uncritically the Religious Right accepts and even “justifies” that Bush is “God’s man”, based on this kind of thing:

when asked about his life as a man of prayer and the decision to go to war, nothing will sound amiss when President Bush responds with the following:
(from interview with Tom Brokaw on NBC, April 24, 2003)

I don’t bring God into my life to be a political person; I ask God
for strength and guidance: I ask God to help me be a better decision. The decision about war and peace is a decision I made based upon what I thought were the best interests of the American people. I was able to step back from religion, because I have a job to do. And I, on bended knee to the good Lord, asked Him to help me to do my job in a way that’s wise.

As a testimonial, this is a powerful portrait of the liberal view of religion, and it should be familiar to all of us, there is a pathos at work, and it’s reflected in the way we balance our jobs with out Sunday morning faith, the way we do business, the way we often feel obliged to put our faith to the side when we’re buying and selling, the way we go about being realistic. This is the struggle of vocation, of faithfulness to a job with certain demands that might not coincide with the language usually associated with religion, of a human heart in conflict with itself.

The view of God as a nonpolitical being that we can bring in for wisdom and comfort and keep respectfully separate from our business, our “job to do,” is a view held by Americans across party lines, and it will often be hard to remember that it bears no resemblance to anything the Jewish Christian tradition has ever deemed orthodox. Nevertheless, it’s standard procedure. And in a faithful reflection of these values, we insist that our presidents “step back from religion” while simultaneously giving lip service to everybody’s own private, personal Jesus.

Throughout much of American society, getting the job done, living in the real world (the business world), and being effective will demand the seemingly supernatural ability to step back from religion, and liberalism is a carefully designed attempt to overcome these conflicts of interests.

(from page 35, The Gospel According to America)

With recommedations from Phyllis Tickle, Will Campbell, and Brian McLaren (on the back cover) , and a big one from me, David Dark has a lot to say, and says it very well.

The above quote of Bush is plush with phrases that the Religious Right themselves should be concerned about: the phrase “step aside from religion” for one. That seems to me to be a very “secular” thing to say, and indeed sounds very “clueless” to someone with anything of an intelligent faith, or one with some seblance of a cliam to be relevant. Bush’s statement there seems to betray a secularlism that would have sent me far away from supporting him back in my initial, but brief fundamentalist days.

(“The good Lord” is also one of those phrases that I tend to hear more often from the mouths of those outside the Church than from within).

Basically, Bush says he “Asks the Good Lord” to help him “step back from religion” where appropriate. That’s reassuring.