By Lee Cullum, KERA 90.1 commentator
Dallas, TX –
What can we expect from a second term with George W. Bush? Everyone is saying his victory is a triumph for Christian evangelism, and indeed Karl Rove's strategy to get all 25 percent or more of them to the polls scored impressively.
The effect was immediate. Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times wrote that Democrats must learn to express their faith more forthrightly. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi lost no time picking up the cue and that very night declared on National Public Radio that we "are all God's children." Illinois' newly elected Senator Barack Obama already knew the drill, drummed into him from childhood, and thanked his pastor before anybody else at his victory party on election night.
It made me glad that I know the second, third and fourth verses of all the major Methodist hymns. That includes the "wonder working power" to which President Bush referred in one of his state-of-the union addresses and "A Charge to Keep," the title of the autobiography Karen Hughes wrote for him before the 2000 campaign. Though some were put off by the use he made of these religious songs, I was not. They seemed to me a nice evocation of his faith.
Even so, I worry about what James Madison called "the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority." The reelected president may have as many as three appointments to the Supreme Court and a Republican-controlled Senate likely to confirm them. Here is where the evangelicals, who may not be an absolute majority but will seem like one, will exact payment for their mighty service to Bush. Nor can he be blamed for settling an obvious political debt. We can only hope that the justices he chooses will be capable of wise and serious thought about a country too diverse to go back to the Protestant establishment of the 1950's, much less the happy-clappy awakenings of pioneer America.
It's not just a matter of various religious persuasions but also of different religious temperaments. Some speak openly of their faith. For others, it's a matter more private, more personal. Some believe works are more powerful than words, example more important than exhortation. The concerns I have heard about President Bush is that he is part of a growing group of evangelicals who feel that God speaks directly to them in terms both specific and prescriptive. Hence they fear that he is guided by a God who is telling him to go to war in Iraq, to launch an all-out assault on Fallujah, while the Muslim Allah apparently is instructing Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to attack Fallujah but President Ghazil al-Yawar to forbear. All are honorable men, faithful to their religion. Which one is right?
I too honor divine providence and seek divine intention. But that does not relieve any of us of the hard work of analysis, search for historical analogies and consultation. No doubt President Bush and his people pursue every avenue I have mentioned and more. The president just needs to make a little clearer his involvement in this process and the reasons that undergird his actions.
As for the Democrats, as we look ahead to 2008, I suppose that Hillary Rodham Clinton is brushing up on her Methodist hymns.
Lee Cullum is a contributor to the Dallas Morning News and to KERA. If you have opinions or rebuttals about this commentary, call (214) 740-9338 or email us.