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<H4>COMMENTARY</H4>
<H1>The White House Wasn't Always God's House</H1>By Arthur Schlesinger
Jr.<BR>Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. was a top aide to President Kennedy. His
most recent book is a memoir, "A Life in the 20th Century: Innocent
Beginnings."<BR><BR>October 26, 2004<BR><BR>George W. Bush's presidency is the
first faith-based administration in U.S. history. <BR><BR>The founding fathers
did not mention God in the Constitution, and the faithful often regarded our
early presidents as insufficiently pious.<BR><BR>George Washington was a nominal
Anglican who rarely stayed for Communion. John Adams was a Unitarian, which
Trinitarians abhorred as heresy. Thomas Jefferson, denounced as an atheist, was
actually a deist who detested organized religion and who produced an expurgated
version of the New Testament with the miracles eliminated. Jefferson and James
Madison, a nominal Episcopalian, were the architects of the Virginia Statute of
Religious Freedom. James Monroe was another Virginia Episcopalian. John Quincy
Adams was another Massachusetts Unitarian. Andrew Jackson, pressed by clergy
members to proclaim a national day of fasting to seek God's help in combating a
cholera epidemic, replied that he could not do as they wished "without feeling
that I might in some degree disturb the security which religion now enjoys in
this country in its complete separation from the political concerns of the
general government."<BR><BR>In the 19th century, all presidents routinely
invoked God and solicited his blessing. But religion did not have a major
presence in their lives. Abraham Lincoln was the great exception. Nor did our
early presidents use religion as an agency for mobilizing voters. "I would
rather be defeated," said James A. Garfield, "than make capital out of my
religion."<BR><BR>Nor was there any great popular demand that politicians be men
of faith. In 1876, James G. Blaine, an aspirant for the Republican presidential
nomination, selected Col. Robert G. Ingersoll, a famed orator but a notorious
scoffer at religion, to deliver the nominating speech: The pious knew and feared
Ingersoll as "The Great Agnostic"; a 21st century equivalent of Ingersoll would
have been booed off the platform at the Republican convention of
2004.<BR><BR>There were presidents of ardent faith in the 20th century. Woodrow
Wilson had no doubt that the Almighty designated the United States — and himself
— for the redemption and salvation of humankind. Jimmy Carter, like Bush, was
"born again." Ronald Reagan, though not a regular churchgoer, had a rapt
evangelical following. But neither Wilson nor Carter nor Reagan applied
religious tests to secular issues, nor did they exploit their religion for their
political benefit. These are the standards that Bush has systematically
violated.<BR><BR>The southernization of the Republican Party and the rise of
evangelicals as a political force have restructured U.S. politics. When I was a
young fellow, fundamentalists were a disdained minority, raw material that H.L.
Mencken and Sinclair Lewis ("Elmer Gantry") used to make jokes about the Bible
Belt.<BR><BR>But in recent years, the religious right has made alliances with
right-wing Catholics over abortion and right-wing Jews over the Holy Land. Such
alliances have given the evangelicals a measure of political
respectability.<BR><BR>Statistics on religion are notoriously unreliable, but it
may be, as the Pew Center for the People & the Press asserts, that
evangelicals now outnumber mainline Protestants. The religious right constitutes
Bush's political base, and the result is the first faith-based presidency in
U.S. history.<BR><BR>Bush's first executive order was to establish the White
House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. In fiscal 2003, as our
president told a White House conference, the federal government gave more than
$1 billion to faith-based organizations. And Bush is unique among presidents in
his extensive application of religious tests to secular issues. <BR><BR>The
opposition to stem cell research that so disturbs Nancy Reagan is typical. Stem
cell research promises to expedite cures for Alzheimer's, diabetes, AIDS,
Parkinson's and other diseases. But evangelicals are against it, and so is
Bush.<BR><BR>Equally alarming is the use of churches for political purposes. A
Bush campaign document, according to the New York Times, lays out "a brisk
schedule for legions of Christian supporters to help enlist 'conservative
churches' and their members, including sending church directories to the
campaign." <BR><BR>There is no doubt about the authenticity of Bush's
conversion. He would not be president today unless the born-again experience had
charged his life with new meaning, purpose and discipline. Redemption through
commitment to Jesus is what made him a man and a leader.<BR><BR>But, as author
Bob Woodward said in "Bush at War": "The president was casting his mission and
that of the country in the grand vision of God's master plan." There is a
messianic certitude about our president's pronouncements.<BR><BR>A fanatic, as
Finley Peter Dunne's fictitious Mr. Dooley said, does what he thinks the Lord
would do if he only knew the facts in the case. The most dangerous people in the
world today are those who persuade themselves that they are executing the will
of the Almighty.<BR><BR><STRONG>Lincoln summed it all up in his second inaugural
address. Both warring halves of the nation, he said, had read the same Bible and
prayed to the same God. Each invoked God's aid against the other.
<BR></STRONG><BR>As Lincoln said, " … let us judge not, that we be not judged….
The Almighty has his own purposes." <BR clear=all></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>