The current President of the United States, George W. Bush, is often derided for his mis-speaks—malapropism is too elite, one could even say too Yale-like— and comical facial gestures. More importantly, he is heavily criticized for his policies, whether they be economic, foreign, or faith-based. The reality is that he has contributed greatly to the one area that American public life has been sorely lacking: religion.
I don’t mean the practice of religion; Americans represent one of the most ritualistically observant countries of developed nations. Nor do I mean injecting God into politics; let us not forget “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” God is with this country in its founding document.
Nor do I mean President Bush’s plan to start a war in Mesopotamia, to help make Israel a land for Jews only, and to keep all children in ignorance in order to usher the second coming of Jesus according to one reading of Revelation. (However, I must say I am deeply impressed by his ability to use the Left Behind series of books as a guide for governance. I always assumed religious people used scripture, not fiction.)
No, what President Bush has done is forced popular discourse on religion to become more intelligent. For such a supposedly deeply religious country, we do not have a sophisticated vocabulary to talk about religion. One’s religion defines the way one governs. It can’t inform, it is the way one governs. If you are religious, and you can’t not be religious as a politician, then your religion has to be able to give rules on every matter of life and these must be the way you will govern. Ironically, it is the creation of a law in Christianity, and Jesus reviles the law in the synoptic gospels. The one Christian tradition that does have a strong legal sense in this country is Catholicism, and it is originally this structure that made it suspect in the eyes of the American populace. Now, it serves as a single-issue bogeyman regarding abortion. Judaism and Islam are better equipped, as traditions wedded to the law, to actually run a state according to religious doctrine, and are also better equipped to deal with and manage legal difference. However, we know both of these traditions are too foreign for most Americans, despite the fact that Jesus was Jewish and Morocco was one of the first countries to recognize American independence.
No, the sophistication of language I refer to is the one of nuance. The curse that has plagued the coverage of Islam since the Iranian Revolution, that it is one monolithic religion, is really the plague on religion coverage in general. Over these last years, as the religious right has risen in power, as it attempts to actually create a monolithic understanding of Christianity, Christians have fought back. We now know that not all Evangelicals believe in the “Gospel of Gun.” Some care about helping the poor and protecting the environment. More American Jews are coming out to say that being pro-Jewish doesn’t automatically being pro-Israel, nor is all criticism of Israel anti-Semitic. Although the actions of Osama bin Laden were catalytic in organizing the silent majority to speak out against atrocities done in the name of Islam, it is actually President Bush who made it OK for us to speak out, but giving voice to our concerns.
As religious progressive voices are getting louder, the caricature of religion has to fade away and we can begin having more intelligent conversations at a popular level about the role of religion in public life. We still have a way to go in terms of putting theory into practice. A recent collections of essays about the religious left fails to include any Muslim voices (disclosure: I know several of the contributors and have much respect for them), and a group called Faithful Democrats is really for Christians only (their current website makes this clear, but their earlier public face did not).
President Bush can and should be maligned for a great number of things. However, he should also be credited for good things as well. Intentionally or not, his conception of religion has pushed us to talk about religion more intelligently than we have so far.
