In God We Trust

Democratic presidential candidate Senator John Edwards delivers a stump speech at the New Salem Baptist Church in Ohio on February 22. Up against one of U.S' most publicly pious Presidents, the Democrats who hope to replace George W. Bush have taken to reminding voters that they believe in God, too. - SHAUN HEASLEY/AFP

Evangelism and American politics.

IN October 2003, the United States news media reported that the new Deputy Undersecretary of Defence Lt. General William Boykin had voiced some idiosyncratic views on the role of religion in the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Dressed in his military uniform, Boykin recounted his exploits in Somalia against Mohammed Farah Aidid's henchman Osman Atto a decade ago: "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol." A few months later, again in uniform, Boykin told another group that the U.S. would win the GWOT "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian and the enemy is a guy named Satan".

Boykin is a heroic figure within the U.S. military. A member of the top-secret Delta Force commando unit, he not only had a hand in the war in Somalia, but he oversaw the assassination of Pablo Escobar, the leader of the Medellin cocaine cartel in Colombia (both exploits provided journalist Mark Bowden with best-sellers, Black Hawk Down, on Somalia, and Killing Pablo, on Colombia). He is now in charge of the mission to hunt for Osama bin Laden. When the media raised the story, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld confidently said that the General had an "outstanding record" and that he made the comments "in his private capacity".

From his role in the trenches, Boykin has been brought into the policy section to help run GWOT by President George W. Bush. "Why is [Bush] in the White House?" asked Boykin at one of his public events. "The majority of Americans did not vote for him. He's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this." In other words, for Boykin, Bush is in the White House to run the crusade against the heathen.

Bush, himself, is not reticent to bring the language of God into public discourse. During his annual State of the Union address in January 2003, Bush said: "We do not claim to know the ways of Providence. Yet we can trust in them, placing our confidence in the loving God behind all of life, and all of history. May he guide us now." Bush, like Boykin, is a born-again Christian who is clear that though he must say that all religions are valuable, he believes that it is his version of Christianity that is paramount. When asked to name his favourite political philosopher in 1999, Bush chose Christ "because he changed my heart". The Bush White House conducts Bible study that is, according to Bush's former speechwriter David Frum, "if not compulsory, not quite uncompulsory". And finally, right after 9/11, Bush spoke of the "crusade" against the enemy, while his spiritual adviser Reverend Franklin Graham called Islam "a very evil and wicked religion". The compulsion of alliances with the "Muslim World" in GWOT makes such statements inappropriate, but not necessarily unarticulated.

Both Bush and Boykin are evangelical or "good news" Christians who believe in the power of Faith in the sacrifice of Jesus for individual lives and for society. Just under half of the U.S. population identifies itself as evangelical and so there are a range of ideas and beliefs that mark so vast a number of people (many of whom belong to varied sects and traditions). What unites many of the evangelicals is the doctrine of dispensationalism: the belief that human history comes in seven epochs or dispensations, that we are in the dispensation of Grace, that this dispensation will be followed by a time of great tribulation, but that those who are believers will be sprinted away to god in a Rapture. One of the signs that we are near the Rapture is when the Jews are restored to the kingdom of Israel, when they hold the keys to Jerusalem and when they begin the final battle of Armageddon, a valley that is situated toward the northeast of Jerusalem. For this reason, many evangelicals (or Zionist Christians) support Israel's control over Jerusalem - not because they are pro-Israeli, but because it is a step for them toward the Second Coming of Christ.

Many within the U.S. are incensed with what they see as a violation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (1789): "Congress [the Legislature] shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Over the last two centuries, courts in the U.S. have understood this sentence to mean that the government must neither elevate one religion over others nor should any government action promote a religious over a secular life. Freedom of religion in society and freedom from religion in governmental action are the cornerstones of the first sentence in the U.S. Constitution. Yet, Bush is able to invoke his Christian faith ceaselessly. He surrounds himself with zealots like Boykin and he has allowed government money to fund social services run by religious organisations.

HOW has this come to pass? In 1995, President Bill Clinton gave a major address on religious freedom to some high school students in Virginia. "More people go to church here every week, or to synagogue, or to a mosque or other places of worship than in any country in the world. More people believe religion is directly important in their lives than in any other advanced industrial country in the world. And it is not an accident. It is something that has always been a part of our life." Here are some statistics to back up Clinton's remarks: not only do 40 per cent of Americans go to some religious services, but 67 per cent believe in hell, 85 per cent believe in heaven, and 86 per cent believe that the Bible is a revealed text. These numbers far exceed those collected in England, for instance, where only 14 per cent of the population attends religious services.

One of the explanations for Bush's religious language is that the people are religious and so they not only tolerate, but expect their leaders to act in a religious manner. Presidents routinely end their talks with the statement "God Bless America", a slogan that is frequently seen on bumper stickers behind cars. In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower championed and signed a Bill that placed the motto "In God We Trust" on all U.S. currency and in 1956 Congress adopted the phrase as the "national motto". Twice challenged in court, the motto remains because, as a 1970 ruling put it: "It is quite obvious that the national motto and the slogan on coinage and currency, `In God We Trust', has nothing whatsoever to do with the establishment of religion. Its use is of a patriotic or ceremonial character and bears no true resemblance to a governmental sponsorship of a religious exercise." That the association of God and Trust is only Biblical and not used by Jews, Muslims, Hindus or others is set aside for the formal declaration that "God" is generic and not specially Christian. The slogan is now better known than the earlier Latin phrase, E Pluribus Unum - (Out of Many One), the original slogan on coinage from 1792 to the 1950s.

While the rate of religious observance is very high in the U.S., this does not mean that people are united in their rejection of the First Amendment. In its early days, when the state first stopped its patronage of specific religions, the major religious leaders understood the value of this separation. Lyman Beecher, a famous preacher and the father of Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom's Cabin) initially bemoaned the caesura: "It was as dark a day as ever I saw." But then, in 1824, he wrote: "Christians are not to attempt to control the administration of civil government, in things merely secular. This is what our Saviour refused to do, when he declined being a king, or ruler or judge." The same may be said for many of today's Americans and many religious leaders. The U.S. Catholic hierarchy is insistent that "the identification of religious law with civil law can stifle religious freedom and restrict or deny other inalienable rights". Confronted with a proposal to allow prayer in school in the liberal State of Massachusetts, the population (almost half of whom are Catholic) voted overwhelmingly against it in both 1982 and 1986. Among other minority religions (Judaism, Islam and Hinduism), the rate of support for the separation of church and state is very high.

SO why does Bush use religious language and try to include "faith-based initiatives" into almost all his policies? Political commentators across the spectrum note that this is partly to secure Bush's base within the Republican Party and to draw in the four million Christian conservatives who did not go to the polls in 2000. Politics is as crass as this and such demographic data might indeed drive the process. But, more fundamental than the election itself is that the Republican Party is now the party of U.S. evangelicals and of the Christian Right.

Until the election campaign of Ronald Reagan in the late 1970s, the Christian Right had been relatively dormant. It registered several million new voters into the Republican Party and, when Reagan won, white evangelicals provided the victory margin. Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority not only performed this service, but it undertook to shepherd the flock for the next decade. In 1982, a few of the evangelical leaders formed the Coalition on Revival as an umbrella group to coordinate their political activities. Its "Manifesto for the Christian Church" said that the U.S. must "function as a Christian nation" and that the "world will not know how to live or which direction to go without the Church's Biblical influence on its theories, laws, actions and institutions".

A high point for the explosion of evangelical investment in secular politics came when the preacher Pat Robertson ran a failed campaign to become the Republican Party's nominee for President in 1988. The effort created a network that led to the formation of Robertson's Christian Coalition (created with his assistant Ralph Reed, now an adviser to President Bush). In 1994, the Christian Coalition's effort helped the Republican Party win control of Congress - and the party, from then, has become effectively the political arm of the Christian Right. At the national strategy conference of the Coalition that year, Robertson rallied the troops: "The world is going to be ours, but not without a battle, not without bloodshed. We are not coming up against just human beings to beat them in elections. We're going to be coming up against spiritual warfare [against Satanic forces]. And if we're not aware of what we're fighting, we will lose." Robertson's battles mimic the GWOT: a temple must be created in Jerusalem (or Israelis must not negotiate with the Palestinians) and Babylon must be destroyed (or Iraq has to be vanquished).

In 1990, Ralph Reed spoke of a long-term strategy to take over the state through control of "neighbourhoods, school boards, city councils and State legislatures". Or as the leader of Concerned Women for America put it: "In the nineties, the religious right is going to be composed of a host of independent, locally sponsored and funded organisations that work in unison." The local strategy created a base that voted overwhelmingly for George W. Bush in 2000 and he has staffed his administration with evangelicals who are eager for more "faith-based" government, and a "faith-based" foreign policy.

Evangelicals are not gloomy, but optimistic, in search of deliverance. As the economic tide turns against the U.S. middle and working class, they find salvation not in a new economic system, but in the afterlife. One survey among evangelicals conducted in October 2003 showed that while one half per cent believed that they would go to hell, almost two-thirds felt that they were on their way to heaven. To make a little heaven on earth, they elect Bush and Boykin to go after the satanic forces that hold the oil - once freed, that oil will make it easier to drive to the mall, to shop till you drop. Satan, then, is the guy who denies you the oil.