Johnathan Steinberg: President Bush's form of American Evangelicalism enjoys massive popular appeal and, arguably, influences policy.

(Miami Herald) "George W. Bush is a deeply religious man, and the United States remains a very religious country. Last February, Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Trust's Religion Program, wrote that in a recent poll, '85 percent of respondents stated that religion was either `very' or 'fairly' important in their lives, and nearly 60 percent reported that they attend religious services at least once or twice a month.''
If religion matters in general, the particular religion that President Bush avows matters all the more. Bush and many of his closest advisors are evangelicals, a variant of Christianity that non-Americans scarcely comprehend and Americans in the large urban centers rarely encounter.
According to The Economist in its ''American Survey'' of last November, evangelical Christians make up the largest single religious group in the United States. Thirty percent of all Americans in 2003 -- up from 24 percent in 1987 -- belong to the group. Evangelicals generally agree on the absolute authority, and literal truth, of the Bible, the redemptive power of Christ, the importance of missionary work and the centrality of a spiritually transformed life.
Bush became an evangelical in 1985 by being ''born again.'' Being born again transforms the believer, and Bush makes no secret that God transformed his life. Asked at a televised debate during the Iowa primary in 2000 to name his favorite philosopher, he said instantly, ''Christ'' -- explaining how, through Christ, he had become a new man.
Here he shares his identity with a very large number of his fellow citizens. According to the World Christian Encyclopedia, about 35 percent of Americans have been ''born again.'' In a survey carried out in April for the Public Broadcasting Service, 71 percent of evangelicals polled said they would vote for Bush if the election were held at the time of the poll.
No wonder the White House calls them ''the base,'' that bloc of voters in ''Middle America'' whose unstinting loyalty to the Republican party and willingness to turn out to vote give the president a built-in core of support, a support strengthened by the way the Electoral College magnifies the distribution of votes in the South and Southwest, areas of evangelical predominance.

PRESIDENT'S STYLE

Journalist Bob Woodward, in his book Plan of Attack, reveals a lot about the governing style -- and the fervent faith -- of the president. Woodward writes that when he asked the president whether he consulted his father, Bush seemed surprised by the question: ''There is a higher father that I appeal to.'' And, when replying to a question about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Bush said to Woodward: ''But you run in different circles than I do. Much more elite.'' The remark pulls you up short. Bush -- the son of patricians on both sides, educated at Andover and Yale, former governor of Texas, president of the United States of America -- does not run in elite circles?
But that upper-class, Episcopalian and alcoholic playboy no longer exists. The reborn Bush is a Texas evangelical Christian, a Methodist, who feels at home among ordinary folks at the Midland Men's Community Bible Study Group in Midland, Texas. He has, in effect, become one of them. He talks like they do and believes what they believe: that the Bible is the literal truth. Good and Evil oppose each other. There can be no middle ground.
Hence, when Woodward relates how he asked the president whether he had ever doubted his course of action in Iraq, the president replied: ``I haven't suffered any doubt.''
''Is that right?'' Woodward asked. ``Not at all?''
``No. And I'm able to convey that to people.''
To those who had lost sons or daughters in the conflict, Bush said, ``I hope I'm able to convey that in a humble way.''
In the president's view, to doubt his policy would be to doubt his God-given calling. Shortly after his State of the Union message of 2002, in which he had called Iraq, Iran and North Korea ''the axis of evil,'' Bush addressed an audience in Daytona Beach. ''We've got a great opportunity,'' he said. 'As a result of evil, there's some amazing things that are taking place in America. People have begun to challenge the culture of the past that said, `If it feels good, do it.' This great nation has a chance to change the culture.''
In the State of the Union address of January 2003, Bush repeated his theme of moral transformation: ``Our fourth goal is to apply the compassion of America to the deepest problems of America. For so many in our country -- the homeless and the fatherless, the addicted -- the need is great. Yet there's power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people.''
The White House, the Cabinet and Congress all contain strong supporters of Bush's evangelical crusade. Bush appointed a devout Pentecostalist and member of the very conservative Assemblies of the Church of God, John Ashcroft, to be attorney general. Michael Gerson, the president's speechwriter, graduated with a degree in theology from Wheaton College in Illinois, a leading evangelical institution. Bush's electoral strategist, Karl Rove, received an honorary degree in May from the controversial evangelist, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, at his Liberty University for his ``commitment to conservative ideas.''
Exit polls in 2000 showed that 55 percent of those who voted for Bush placed moral reform as their highest political objective. All the so-called ''hot-button issues'' of this campaign -- conflicts over gay marriage, abortion, guns, feminism or stem-cell research -- reflect that. All those issues grow out of what evangelicals call ''secular humanism'' -- a movement they believe has debauched American life in the form of feminism, moral relativism, Bible criticism, Darwinian evolution and, worst of all, abortion.
For conservative Christians, the election of 2004 represents the ultimate struggle between good and evil in American life. Republican Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma told supporters that a vote against George Bush was a vote for Osama bin Laden. He later strengthened that to comparing it to a vote for Adolf Hitler.

`PROSPERITY PREACHING'

Like their president, conservative evangelicals accept a peculiarly American version of Christian rebirth. They rarely mention Christ's command: ''Sell all that you have, and give to the poor'' (Mark, 10:21). American Christians in general have never obeyed that command. In today's mega-churches, that message is known as ``prosperity preaching.''
As a disillusioned evangelical told The Philadelphia Inquirer on May 9, ''Prosperity preaching tells us that God wants us all to be super-rich right now.'' Poverty still exists in America, as Bush argued in the State of the Union address of 2003, because the poor fail to find true Christian charity among their neighbors. Hence, his ''compassionate conservatism'' requires ''faith-based initiatives'' by local churches and not progressive taxation.
Just as the president sees nothing wrong with his Iraq policy, he can't accept the view that his tax cuts are immoral. Bush is not disturbed by the huge transfer of wealth from poor to rich. He believes that returning moral choice and economic liberty to individuals matters more than any obligation of the rich to help the poor. He was entirely consistent when he urged his fellow citizens to react to the 9/11 attacks by going shopping.
When the president repeats the mantra ''It's your money,'' he reiterates that very American, individualistic morality that makes each of us the architect of our own salvation. The state stands for alien power and, in the black-and-white morality of conservative Christians, it -- together with the United Nations -- shows the power of the Antichrist.
Whereas in traditional sacramental Christianity (Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox or Anglican), the priest, the church, the sacraments and the liturgy are necessary for salvation because the Church is God's manifestation on earth, evangelical Christians emphasize the individual experience of God's love. Doctrine or denomination plays little part. It is a very individualistic, hence deeply American, faith.
This version of the evangelical message has substantial benefits for Bush and the Republican Party. Large corporations are delighted to accept the evangelical attack on the state. They like to see the Federal Communications Commission relax regulations on media mergers; the Federal Power Commission ease strictures on energy companies; the Environmental Protection Agency modify air pollution regulations; and the Interior Department condone logging in the national parks. Bush easily raises record-breaking sums for his presidential campaigns from all the biggest corporations, even though only a few have evangelical chief executive officers.

FAITH UNSHAKEN

The 9/11 attacks added urgency to the president's sense of mission. The subsequent reverses -- the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, the absence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and the al Qaeda terrorists, the failure of Iraqis to greet the Americans as liberators, the mounting death toll among U.S. servicemen and women, the stories of abuse of Iraqi prisoners, the incoherent planning for an Iraqi interim government -- none of these has shaken George Bush's faith in God's purpose, or the faith of the ''base'' in him. His public justifications for making war on Iraq have, of course, changed, but his religious zeal has not lessened.

~Johnathan Steinberg is Walter H. Annenberg professor of modern European history at the University of Pennsylvania."