Balkinization: Bush's Faith Now Fair Game?

Bush's Faith Now Fair Game?

Maureen Dowd's latest column exemplifies an important trend: until quite recently most people would have thought that President Bush's faith was a strong point. It demonstrated that he had a moral compass and that he could be trusted with the most serious decisions facing the country. The recent Suskind article describing the Administration's rejection of the "reality based community" and the recent interview with Pat Robertson stating that Bush did not believe there would be any casualties in Iraq suggest something different: Now, two weeks before the election, Bush's critics are breaching an unspoken taboo. They are arguing, sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly, that Bush's religious faith blinds him and prevents him from making sound public decisions.

One must tread very carefully here. Criticizing Bush on these terms requires that one must take care to distinguish his kind of faith from that practiced by many other Americans. One must make the case that unlike other Americans, whose faith strengthens and grounds them in reality, Bush's faith limits him and allows him to avoid facing hard questions. That is to say, Bush uses his religion in a particular way: to justify what he wants to do to himself, to avoid recalcitrant experience, and escape criticism and condemnation. For George W. Bush, religion is the opiate of the Presidency.

Is this a criticism of religious faith in general? Certainly not. The point of having faith is not to escape reality, but to see it clearly, as it is, and still be able to go on, because one has hope for something better and believes in something higher. This sort of faith takes strength of character, and it gives strength in return. It is precisely this sort of faith-- and this sort of strength of character that Bush lacks. Bush's problem, in short, is not that he has faith. It is that he lacks character.

It is disturbing enough that Bush blinds himself and uses his faith as an excuse for his behavior. What is equally disturbing is that his advisers, many of whom are not particularly religious, have become deeply codependent with his him. He demands completely loyalty from them, and they, in turn, make up whatever stories are necessary to justify an increasingly disastrous course of action to themselves. Their actions cannot be blamed on misguided religious faith. Instead, one must blame their actions on a different kind of faith: a particularly toxic combination of syncophancy toward the President, arrogance toward the outside world, groupthink, and hubris.

Posted 8:56 AM by JB [link]

Comments:

There is a complete double standard when it comes to questioning the faith of Kerry and Bush.

Journalists will report on the details of Kerry's worship - such as, whether he takes the wafer in his hand or directly in his mouth. However, journalists will not ask the President why he does not attend regular church services the way previous Presidents have (including Clinton).

Of course, the attendance or non-attendance of regular church services is not an indication of the strength of one's religious faith, but neither is the placement of the wafer at a Catholic service.

# posted by

Raging Red : 11:52 AM

I'm not sure I understand "the point of having faith is ... to see [reality] clearly". Isn't a good definition of faith "belief in the absence of evidence"? Whatever good points faith may have, I don't see how one can argue that seeing reality clearly is one of them.

In other words -- perhaps it's time to make attacks on faith in general fair game. How long can we ignore the dramatic fraction of the world's suffering that is caused by extremely religious people?

# posted by

Sean Carroll : 12:53 AM

like sean, I did a double-take. normally, I would write off such a comment, but coming from a critical thinker like prof B, it must have some logical basis. I hope he will elaborate.

# posted by

Charles T. Wolverton : 10:15 AM

What worries me about discussions of "faith" in the first place is that the strength and consistency and devotion of one's faith is supposed to commend them somehow as potentially good leaders.

I would venture to suggest that most of the 9/11 hijackers were men of probably deeper faith than most of us could aspire to.

So we start adding qualifications to exclude them, like saying that to be a valid faith in this context it has to lead to compassion, integrity, responsibility, all sorts of things. But those are issues of character, and complete atheists with those same characteristics could be considered good potential leaders.

Which means that people's faith is really irrelevant. Maybe we could say that at the very least, we can decide if someone is a hypocrite if his faith teaches one thing and he practises another. But if so, that hypocrisy is going to show up elsewhere in his life because it's a basic character flaw. So again the faith is irrelevant.

It's such a smokescreen, to prevent people from really judging character. My mother, a devout fundie, just has to hear that Bush is a "Bible-believing Christian" and that settles everything for her. All of his character flaws after that just become "matters of interpretation" because I am NOT a "Bible-believing Christian." Discussions of a candidate's faith are merely excuses to avoid having to look at their real character and actions.

# posted by

Unknown : 6:28 PM