So, is President Bush an Evangelical?
ABC news caught up with President Bush and amid various questions about the economy, Cynthia McFadden engaged him on his view of the Scriptures. Below is a portion of the dialog:
MCFADDEN: Is it literally true, the Bible?
BUSH: You know. Probably not … No, I’m not a literalist, but I think you can learn a lot from it, but I do think that the New Testament, for example is … has got … You know, the important lesson is “God sent a son.”
I want to be careful not to read too much into interviews, especially interviews with someone who is known to not be as precise as he might like to be. And, truthfully, I post this not to take a shot at the president (no matter how ‘in style’ that happens to be at the moment). Instead, I highlight this because I think it is actually indicative of the overall theological pulse of evangelicalism today.
Listen to what else came out in the interview as McFadden tried to logically reconcile how someone could read the Bible but then not believe what they are reading is to be taken literally:
MCFADDEN: So, you can read the Bible…
BUSH: That God in the flesh, that mankind can understand there is a God who is full of grace and that nothing you can do to earn his love. His love is a gift and that in order to draw closer to God and in order to express your appreciation for that love is why you change your behavior.
So in this quick exchange we see the following:
- The Bible is not literally true
- It has the good ‘lesson’ that God sent his son
- God is full of grace
- We cannot earn his love
- His love is a gift
- We change our behavior to draw closer to God and show that we are thankful
As I read this I yelled real loud and my voice hurt. I remember the last time my voice hurt like that. I was listening to a Christian Radio Station fumble the gospel like a Big Ten running back (OK I am being sarcastic, but you get my point). This is exactly what you hear on Christian Radio and from many evangelical pulpits. The Bible’s inerrency is not asserted, depravity is replaced with pelagianism, and the gospel is redefined as moralism.
What is the point? We have a Bible who’s integrity is compromised, a God who allows his Son to be brutally killed so that we might get our lives together, change our behavior and be thankful.
This is Moralanity not Christianity.
And sadly, moralanity is on the increase within evangelicalism today. Within evangelicalism, the truth of the cross of Christ has gone from being proclaimed, to assumed, to marginalized, to forgotten, and now it has been sadly redefined as a loving gift to compel us to change our behavior.
I can understand becoming unfamiliar with your favorite team’s stats or not being up on the happenings in the government or being out of touch on some of the newer music being offered, as these things that we may shuffle in and out of our lives as time and situations permit. However, we are talking here about the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is the eternal truth of a loving and holy God providing the only suitable sacrifice to pay the penalty for a rebellious people and provide the merit that they might stand before the righteous throne holy, blameless, with great joy. The truth of Christ’s sacrificial death in the place of sinners is never to be assumed, marginalized, much less forgotten or redefined! It is to be proclaimed to our hearts and to the world every single day in such a way that it rivets our wandering hearts to think upon and delight in its truth.
This might be a good time for all of the conservative evangelicals who thought George Bush was the 13th Apostle to come to grips with the fact that he is decidedly outside of the bounds of an orthodox understanding of the gospel. In fact, he may actually be behind President-Elect Obama in his biblical orthodoxy (or perhaps I should say, he is leading in liberalism–though it is probably close).
If the president’s comments are indicative of American Evangelicalism then maybe the question I should be asking is not, “Is President Bush an Evangelical” but, am I?
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Great post, Erik! It is confusing, and he is confused. Much like many others… BTW, great new template.
It’s been over four years since the president’s interview with Charles Gibson in which claimed that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. He doesn’t appear to have changed his position. So, is he an evangelical? Perhaps. Is he a Christian? Not by my understanding.
Erik, the reality is that Pres Bush elucidated an understanding of Christianity which is largely identical to that which the majority of ‘evangelicals’ in America would under the same circumstances. I like your term, Moralanity. It’s a much more succinct term for the dominant ‘evangelical’ belief system of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. I’m realizing that even in a church like I am part of, where we are gifted with some great expositors of the Word in teaching and preaching, there are few people who adequately engage their minds long or hard enough on the truths and doctrines that are taught to really own, understand and be able to communicate them. And if this is the case in a Christ-centered and Word-centered community of believers, what then of the run of the mill ‘evangelical’ church that preaches and teaches platitudes and practical advice? We have a lot of work to do…
[...] Erik Raymond asks if President Bush truly is an evangelical. [...]
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Politics/story?id=6417361&page=1
View excerpts from the interview.
OUCH!!!
Great post. Our first clue that Pres. Bush had strayed into false doctrine/heresy was after 9/11 when he included a muslim imam and his prayers in the memorial service. His continued expressions of universalism through the years have been most distressing and then he actually went to a mosque. Voof!
Very informative. Funny how sometimes Christians are so afraid to really say the Truth they should know in their hearts. Thank you for posting.
I would not want that post (President). I can’t imagine the pressure to tailor all my responses to satisfy as many people as possible (being politically correct), the pressure is bad enough just being me! Is he saved?…I don’t know. But I see in him a problem that plagues most in public office; they are unable (or unwilling) to be straightforward (some are worse than others). Listening to them there are no absolutes, everything has multiple interpretations (this placates the majority of people groups, and gets votes). Unfortunately it’s the norm in their business. Lame duck president or not, he has had many, many years in public office to hone his responses so as not to get pinned down on a point. It’s the name of the game and again it’s unfortunate. I would like to think that his “private” faith is more solid than his “public” faith apparently is. But if he does have two “faiths”, then he is at best lukewarm and will be spit out, so maybe the question is answered?
Thanks for your site, I enjoy it!
Bro. Erik,
Thanks for your post on this. I watched the whole interview last night and was going to post myself. I still might…we’ll see.
Bush does say that all religions worship the same God, but that we just have different paths. Interesting how he said that terrorists who claim religion don’t worship God. Why? Because they are terrorists i.e. another moral lens that he filters his beliefs through.
Did you find it interesting that he said God sent a Son?
Mark
I would argue against the idea that “moralanity is on the increase within evangelicalism today”. While the proclamation of the message of the cross is decreasing today, many of yesterday’s moralanists were merely paying lip service to it. Today’s moralanists are simply being more honest about what they truly believe.
Either way, they’re wrong. But at least today’s moralanist isn’t compounding the problem with deception.
Sad interview. An opportunity lost for Christ to be glorified in his exclusivity and show His grace and love by calling all men, no matter what religeous or national background, to come to him. Luke 9:26.
Hi Erik,
I came across your blog through Challies.com, and saw this article. Thank you for posting your thoughts on this interview.
A couple points: While I doubt that the whole interview represented President Bush’s whole view on religion and the Gospel (people can always choose what they don’t want to say on camera), it is worth noting that people fumble the ball the best when they’re in the spotlight, and that is usually the case in public office. Part of upholding the Gospel as a good word for secular cultures and secular cities with the Lord involves lifting up prayers to the Lord on behalf of people in political offices, that they would come to a saving faith in Christ, and that the Lord would protect their hearts from idols.
This truth is drawn from 1 Timothy: the apostle Paul wanted to let Timothy know that Paul wanted prayer and intercession on behalf of authorities, for this is good to God, who wants all men to repent. By Paul’s mention of all men, he is referring to people from among the nations; the Gospel goes deep and wide among elect individuals’ hearts among the nations, and a vital way to get this Gospel spread is through offering up respect for civil authorities, including the use of prayer on their behalf. President Bush may have offered some eyebrow-raising thoughts on the character of God in the Gospel (grace being detached from justice, for example – the Gospel is the fulfillment of the divine and moral Law). But that simply means that President Bush, and President-elect Obama, could use our prayers.
The other point worth mentioning here is that morality is on the rise in evangelicalism, and in the visible church in general, simply because morality itself, and really the concept of justice, is idolized by churchgoers, and by moral people in general. This is a symptom of postmodernity gone bad; but really it is a sad reality of the flesh. Proverbs points out that perverted measures and tilted scales are an abomination to the LORD. And what that really says to moral people is this: Immorality, or injustice, is not your problem. It’s justice that’s your problem. You twist around justice to suit your own standards. And you don’t see your good intentions as real actions of wickedness.
This is a powerful point from Proverbs, simply because Proverbs is a book about words: human words as fallible words, and God’s words, and specifically the Gospel message as a saving word, as better words for our lives. Our words and our actions are well suited to self-righteousness; they are the tipping points to creating radical moral depravity in our lives apart from God, and radically fragmented relationships among our neighbors. You could say to someone: You want proof of sin? Look at what you said to so-and-so yesterday. Try justifying that before a perfect and holy and just God. We want to be good (to be sufficient); God Himself is holy. That’s a radical divide between our intentions and God’s character. And our tongues and our actions become massive problems on the blogosphere and in church gatherings and in our overall lives.
But trusting in the Lord’s grace in the Gospel message in new relationship with the Lord involves knowing Jesus as the substitute Word for our lives, the Word born from above and the Word born in flesh, who speaks on behalf of His believers at the cross, and entrusting our lives in Jesus’ death for our lives and our tongues in seeking rest with the Lord. And knowing the Gospel as a good word for our lives with the Lord involves bridling the tongue and guarding the mouth, in putting the horse bit of the orthodox Gospel in our mouths and reforming our language to the new language of the Gospel, for knowing deep grace for our lives with the Lord, and expressing awe and wonder toward the Lord for His first grace revealed in Jesus for believers, and communicating the Gospel message onto unbelievers’ ears and lives with the Lord.
And I think this becomes “the” crucial point to make to evangelicals and moral people overall today: we have to emphasize that moral-ese is the language they use because they want to be their own gods and their own saviors. Too often, we criticize people for being bad, like parents do when sending a kid to the corner for tearing apart the furniture. But the Gospel says this: Why not send the kid to the corner for doing something good? You never see that being done by parents; why would we expect that in the mission field? But the Gospel has to shatter our pride, our self-worshipping and self-righteous way of thinking, that we would be broken to talking to wayward evangelicals and wayward moralists about their perversion of justice, in order to point them to justifying faith in Christ alone with the Lord.
Beneath every moralistic person is a determined demon, a very liberal, wicked idol. The Gospel has to go beyond people’s surface thinking and into their hearts; that’s what we have to emphasize in our interaction with them. Break their hearts with good news, and you will bring them to awe and wonder toward God for the first time for His first grace.
Sobering. Add this to the report that he’s considering conversion to Roman Catholicism, in the same manner that friend Tony Blair has done.
Thanks, but this is nothing new. Why is it only now when the man is about to leave office that Christians are finally starting to realize that George W. Bush is not nor ever was the Evangelical everyone wanted him to be? Ridiculous bizarre stories circulated the internet about him leading small children in sinner’s prayers and witnessing to people. And anytime I questioned these “facts” you would have thought I had questioned the virgin birth! It’s time for believers to start facing up to the truth even when it’s not convenient or pleasant.
Thomas, next are going to try to tell me that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?
Brendt, I would suggest swinging by a local Christian bookstore, flipping on Christian Radio, taking a stroll through the various teleministries (like Joel Olsteen), or heck, pop your head into the local evangelical megachurch…moralanity is the message.
That’s the truth. Those who actually believe the true biblical Gospel can’t really be called Evangelicals anymore. Nor can they be called “born-again believers”. Nor can they be called “Bible-believing Christians”. They can scarcely be called “Reformed”. Old “conservative” has been pushed from “conservative” to the realm of “crack-pot lunatic”.
It reminds me of what it must have been like for people like Jeremiah and Elijah; to everyone else, they were totally out there on the lunatic fringe. This is where people who hold to the old biblical doctrines of biblical creation, substitutionary atonement, unconditional election and reprobation, the virgin birth, total depravity, justification by faith alone without works, sola scriptura etc are today. But the Lord said, “Is not my word like fire, like a hammer that breaks the rock into pieces?”
Maybe we need to go back to saying we are protest-ant. We protest to the departure of contemporary “Christianity”, and we denounce it as thoroughly un-Christian, even anti-Christian… Maybe its time we picked up some of the fiery books of the Reformers and read their denouncements of the church of Rome out to the church of today.
I am utterly convinced that the church today is in even graver need of reform than it was at the time of Luther. Only this time, its more subtle and deceptive and more white-washed with “holy jargon” and moralism, but it is no less on the inside full of mysticism, false spirituality, blatant idolatry, dead men’s bones and rotting corpses.
Is the church today not more filled with idolatry than even before? The Reformers like Knox defined idolatry as any supposed honouring of God not commanded in His word. If he saw what passes for the worship of God in the church today, he’d be burnt at the stake for the things that he would have to say. May God grant us people like Jeremiah who could not keep silent for the fire of God’s word that filled his bones.
great article.
I BTW mentioned it at
http://www.raptureforums.com/forum/showthread.php?p=126326
Erik..
Let us preach the cross and the blood of Jesus the Messiah and focus all of our attention truth. It is foolishness to those who have not been quickened by Holy Spirit but it is the wisdom of God to those who believe that the Father sent the Son to seek and save the lost. If our current President does not know the truth we need to pray for him and pray that God will send someone with the clear message of the Gospel to him.
The service at the National Cathedral following 9/11 may have been the beginning of a world church who embraces the false
notion that all religions worship the same God. The President Elect has embraced this amalgamation of religions more than the current President so challenging days are ahead. Tolerance is our most important virtue in the US and the world and believing believers will be viewed as the most intolerant of all.
There is only one way to the Father and that is through the Son..
Jesus who takes away the sin of the world because of the sacrifice of his own life on the cross. The veil that was torn was his flesh and his blood was shed in mercy so that we could enter into the presence of a holy God. There is no other way.
I am not sure if the question of whether someone is an evangelical or not is any longer a meaningful question…. Perhaps the question should be whether someone is a believer and does their life demonstrate what they say they believe. I don’t think we should ever have to guess whether someone is a follower of Jesus who beleives in him. Words and action should all line up to affirm each of our lives.
I have been reading “Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson” by Edwin Gaustad. Although Jefferson was a practicing Anglican, he was disinterested in theology which he regarded as mystery and therefore myth. Anything in the Bible that could not otherwise be discovered by the rational senses was not to be taken seriously. Thus, out goes the Trinity, the deity of Christ and the atonement. All that Jefferson sought to retain from his edited NT was the moral precepts that one could already ascertain with out so-called special revelation. He maintained a kind of natural theology that was concommitant with Enlightment Deism. Jeffeson was in total agreement with the famous 18th century deist Matthew Tindal. He said that true Christianity consisted “in a constant disposition of mind to do all the good we can, and thereby render ourselves acceptable to God answering the end of our creation.” In other words, God created human beings to act with as much benevolence as we can as our duty before God.
This is the sum and subtance of Jefferson’s religion and I believe this notion has reigned supreme in so-called “Christian America” up until the present time. It has also been the reigning religion of most of our presidents from Washington on down. The addition of the therapeutic in our culture makes the designation Moralistic Therapeutic Deism a very appropriate designation for most who call themselves Christians and unfortunately that now includes most who identify themselves as evangelicals.
I have never liked Bush (either one) but I’m going to cut him slack on this – he’s not very articulate and if you read between the lines you can sort of see what he’s saying from a Biblical perspective. Or course, I’m more of a literalist than he is, which surprised me. Also, I’m still confused by the fact that the people who voted for him didn’t ask these questions first, before we killed a lot of people in a bogus war that cost the US a Trillion dollars (that’s a dollar more than $999,999,999,999!) and threw the economy of the greatest nation ever into a tailspin that will hurt a lot of good hard working people and will take 10 years to recover from.
Hi Erik,
1.Iam not an evangelical! Iam Reformed Baptist
2. I find no demand in Scripture that the president be an evangelical Christian
3. I generally think that Bush has done a good job and Yes I believe the war was a just war
4.Can we expect a farther post on the “evangelical ” faith of Obama……. otherwise you come across as a partisan.
5. I agree with this….http://www.dennyburk.com/?p=2835
From the Southern Baptist Geneva
Robert I Masters
BTW….Iam a graduate of Grace College of the Bible (aka Grace University ) in the Big O.
[...] So, is President Bush an Evangelical? – Irish Calvinist This might be a good time for all of the conservative evangelicals who thought George Bush was the 13th Apostle to come to grips with the fact that he is decidedly outside of the bounds of an orthodox understanding of the gospel. … [...]
[...] So, is President Bush an Evangelical? – Irish Calvinist This post reflects on a recent interview of President Bush regarding his faith. The author concludes that Bush adheres to a set of beliefs he terms 'moralanity' not Christianity. (tags: religion politics christianity) SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “links for 2008-12-11″, url: “http://michaelwender.com/2008/12/11/links-for-2008-12-11/” }); This entry was written by Michael Wender, posted on December 11, 2008 at 2:00 pm, filed under Links. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. « Google Zeitgeist [...]
[...] Poor President Bush. He Just Cant Seem to Catch a Break. His Religious Views If You Havent Seen It. [...]
[...] Raymond ends his post with an excellent question. You can read it here. [...]
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