Jacobs on evangelicals and Bush

After the second entry on feminism and plastic surgery in as many days this morning, thought I should get back to religion for a bit...

Rudy (a daily read indeed) gets the hat tip for this Alan Jacobs op-ed in the Boston Globe, entitled: "How the left's fear of a right-wing Christian conspiracy gets George W. Bush -- and today's evangelical Christians -- all wrong." It's an outstanding piece by Jacobs, a Wheaton College prof who is one of evangelicalism's shining lights. Here's how he begins:

As the presidential election draws closer, some people are asking, in ominous tones, a question: What impact does President Bush's evangelical Christianity have on his administration's policies? As an evangelical, an interpreter of literary and cultural texts, and a long-time observer of the evangelical world, I have both a personal and a professional interest in this question. And I'm here to offer an answer: Probably not much.

And here is how he ends:

President Bush, like most evangelicals (and most Americans), is intellectually mongrel. The likelihood that his thinking and his policies are shaped by a single, coherent, radical ideology is virtually nil. Bush may be a bad president -- he may pursue bad policies on the domestic front and abroad -- but if so, his Christianity has little or nothing to do with it. And with the exception of John Ashcroft, there's no one among his core advisors who could possibly teach him what right-wing evangelical politics are supposed to look like -- at least, not until Donald Rumsfeld becomes an ardent premillennialist or Karl Rove a disciple of Christian Reconstruction.

The connection between Christian commitment and politics has always been pretty strange in this country. Ronald Reagan became beloved of the "religious right" while rarely darkening the door of a church and articulating only vague belief in a vague God, while the church-going, Bible-toting Bill Clinton was despised by them. If there has been a recent American president whose policies were derived relatively consistently from evangelical Christian theology, it would be Jimmy Carter, that Baptist Sunday-school teacher from Plains, Ga. But that's a story for another day.

Emphasis is mine.

Comments

[krk realty]

Such a huge commitment to make. It's a serious thing to go with.