From the New Jersey's Star Ledger editorial page. A different view of Bush.
The Acts Of An Apostate
Bush's policies set him apart from the biblical Christ
BY RAYMOND A. SCHROTH
I used to think that it was a good thing for a president of the United States to believe in God.
Now I'm not so sure.
When I was born, there were still people alive who had seen Abraham Lincoln. The wounds of the Civil War still bled. My father, a World War I hero and long-time editorial writer for the Trenton Times, had met Woodrow Wilson, and I grew up listening to the simple prose and sonorous tones of Franklin Roosevelt promising both hope and sacrifice as he led us through World War II.
It helped me to know that these men were believers.
In Lincoln's Second Inaugural, he declined to identify God's will with the Union cause. The war was His punishment for the sins of both sides. Wilson's religious convictions most likely reinforced his righteousness: But, "too proud to fight," he had to be dragged into the horror of World War I, and he expended his last breaths struggling to build an international body, the League of Nations, to save us from future wars. FDR's prayer for the troops on D-Day told us frankly that many would not return.
The religious faith of these presidents was both a strength and a source of some humility. None was an angel or saint. But these were our greatest wartime leaders.
However, when we read the articles on George Bush's religion and watch him in action, we see a very different phenomenon. The faces of Lincoln, Wilson and Roosevelt were ravaged by stress and sorrow. Bush is on a roll. Deaf to opposing ideas, he sees himself as an instrument of providence. He sports that leather bomber jacket, and his stride has become a swagger.
Perhaps we should feel better with a president who can appear unaffected by the daily death toll on both sides. I don't.
Newsweek (March 10), the Atlantic (April), the New York Times Magazine (March 30) and others have chronicled Bush's religious conversion and its effects on his personality. At 40, he was made to realize that his heavy drinking was ruining his marriage - and threatiening his political future. He joined a 10-man community Bible study group and for two years studied the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles.
He was touched by Paul's conversion and the idea of Jesus as a friend. He gave up drinking and gained access to an evangelical political network that formed the backbone of his presidential campaign. He labeled himself a "compassionate conservative," but his visit to the ultra-fundamentalist Bob Jones University signaled that he was really one of them.
Even before I learned, to my surprise, that Bush had read Luke, I wondered how his religion could square with what Luke says.
Among other themes, Luke stresses Jesus' role as a prophet in the Old Testament tradition, someone who tells people what they don't want to hear, he honors the role of women in the early church and teaches us to pray.
Above all, Luke's Jesus stands with the poor against the excesses of the rich; he breaks down the barriers between nations and classes and replaces them with a universalism that reaches out to every sect and nation. Luke's Jesus opposes the "demons" who are threatened by the announcement of his "good news," but he does not divide human beings into "good" and "evil." He dines and drinks wine with tax collectors, sinners and women with bad reputatuions. He shocks the religious establishment by violating sabbath laws and tells us to love our enemies. And he forgives, forgives, forgives.
In Luke 1:52-53, the newly pregnant Mary tells her cousin Elizabeth how God has "filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty," and in Luke 16: 19-31, the rich man at his table tosses scraps to the dogs at this doorstep, to be shared by poor Lazarus covered with sores. Luke condemns the rich fools who pile up luxuries while the poor starve.
Square that with the Bush economic policies, which have systematically shifted wealth to the top 1 percent of the population.
In chapters 22-23, Jesus is the victim of a conspiracy between the church and state to remove an agitator who embarrasses them both. His death is the judicial murder of an innocent man. How can anyone meditate on the trial, torture, imprisonment and execution of Jesus and not consider the possibility that some prisoners today may be wrongfully convicted to death?
Of the 152 prisoners whom Bush executed as governor, between a fourth and a third had incompetent lawyers or were convicted on flimsy evidence, like the testimony of jailhouse snitches or unscientific "hair analysis." Yet Bush, unlike other governors, never had a doubt that he was right.
The Atlantic article, by a conservative, suggests that Bush lacks imagination. Imagination is what enables us to enter into and share the experiences of others. Without imagination, true compassion is impossible.
With that same certainty, he has led this country into a war that world opinion, the overwhelming majority of the United Nations and religious leaders including Pope John Paul II, the American Catholic bishops, Jesuit provincials and a cross section of Protestand and Jewish theologians and intellectuals have declared unjust.
Unjust mainly because of the cost in human lives.
The Bush administration promised us a quick war, with "precision" bombs that would kill only "evil" people and pass over the innocent. Two weeks of newspapers and TV tell us they were wrong.
But somehow the president has read something in the gospel of Luke that allows him to watch all these people die - from death row to Baghdad - and still feel sure he's absolutely right.
The Rev. Raymond A. Schroth is a professor of the humanities at Saint Peter's College in Jersey City.
The Acts Of An Apostate
Bush's policies set him apart from the biblical Christ
BY RAYMOND A. SCHROTH
I used to think that it was a good thing for a president of the United States to believe in God.
Now I'm not so sure.
When I was born, there were still people alive who had seen Abraham Lincoln. The wounds of the Civil War still bled. My father, a World War I hero and long-time editorial writer for the Trenton Times, had met Woodrow Wilson, and I grew up listening to the simple prose and sonorous tones of Franklin Roosevelt promising both hope and sacrifice as he led us through World War II.
It helped me to know that these men were believers.
In Lincoln's Second Inaugural, he declined to identify God's will with the Union cause. The war was His punishment for the sins of both sides. Wilson's religious convictions most likely reinforced his righteousness: But, "too proud to fight," he had to be dragged into the horror of World War I, and he expended his last breaths struggling to build an international body, the League of Nations, to save us from future wars. FDR's prayer for the troops on D-Day told us frankly that many would not return.
The religious faith of these presidents was both a strength and a source of some humility. None was an angel or saint. But these were our greatest wartime leaders.
However, when we read the articles on George Bush's religion and watch him in action, we see a very different phenomenon. The faces of Lincoln, Wilson and Roosevelt were ravaged by stress and sorrow. Bush is on a roll. Deaf to opposing ideas, he sees himself as an instrument of providence. He sports that leather bomber jacket, and his stride has become a swagger.
Perhaps we should feel better with a president who can appear unaffected by the daily death toll on both sides. I don't.
Newsweek (March 10), the Atlantic (April), the New York Times Magazine (March 30) and others have chronicled Bush's religious conversion and its effects on his personality. At 40, he was made to realize that his heavy drinking was ruining his marriage - and threatiening his political future. He joined a 10-man community Bible study group and for two years studied the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles.
He was touched by Paul's conversion and the idea of Jesus as a friend. He gave up drinking and gained access to an evangelical political network that formed the backbone of his presidential campaign. He labeled himself a "compassionate conservative," but his visit to the ultra-fundamentalist Bob Jones University signaled that he was really one of them.
Even before I learned, to my surprise, that Bush had read Luke, I wondered how his religion could square with what Luke says.
Among other themes, Luke stresses Jesus' role as a prophet in the Old Testament tradition, someone who tells people what they don't want to hear, he honors the role of women in the early church and teaches us to pray.
Above all, Luke's Jesus stands with the poor against the excesses of the rich; he breaks down the barriers between nations and classes and replaces them with a universalism that reaches out to every sect and nation. Luke's Jesus opposes the "demons" who are threatened by the announcement of his "good news," but he does not divide human beings into "good" and "evil." He dines and drinks wine with tax collectors, sinners and women with bad reputatuions. He shocks the religious establishment by violating sabbath laws and tells us to love our enemies. And he forgives, forgives, forgives.
In Luke 1:52-53, the newly pregnant Mary tells her cousin Elizabeth how God has "filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty," and in Luke 16: 19-31, the rich man at his table tosses scraps to the dogs at this doorstep, to be shared by poor Lazarus covered with sores. Luke condemns the rich fools who pile up luxuries while the poor starve.
Square that with the Bush economic policies, which have systematically shifted wealth to the top 1 percent of the population.
In chapters 22-23, Jesus is the victim of a conspiracy between the church and state to remove an agitator who embarrasses them both. His death is the judicial murder of an innocent man. How can anyone meditate on the trial, torture, imprisonment and execution of Jesus and not consider the possibility that some prisoners today may be wrongfully convicted to death?
Of the 152 prisoners whom Bush executed as governor, between a fourth and a third had incompetent lawyers or were convicted on flimsy evidence, like the testimony of jailhouse snitches or unscientific "hair analysis." Yet Bush, unlike other governors, never had a doubt that he was right.
The Atlantic article, by a conservative, suggests that Bush lacks imagination. Imagination is what enables us to enter into and share the experiences of others. Without imagination, true compassion is impossible.
With that same certainty, he has led this country into a war that world opinion, the overwhelming majority of the United Nations and religious leaders including Pope John Paul II, the American Catholic bishops, Jesuit provincials and a cross section of Protestand and Jewish theologians and intellectuals have declared unjust.
Unjust mainly because of the cost in human lives.
The Bush administration promised us a quick war, with "precision" bombs that would kill only "evil" people and pass over the innocent. Two weeks of newspapers and TV tell us they were wrong.
But somehow the president has read something in the gospel of Luke that allows him to watch all these people die - from death row to Baghdad - and still feel sure he's absolutely right.
The Rev. Raymond A. Schroth is a professor of the humanities at Saint Peter's College in Jersey City.
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