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Sightings 5/26/05

Petitioner or Prophet?

David Domke and Kevin Coe

President Bush delivered his first 2005 commencement address on May
21 at Calvin College, a small evangelical Christian school in western
Michigan. This address marked the latest attempt by the Republican
Party to use talk about God for political gain.

In the past two months alone, GOP leaders have suggested God is on
their side in public discussions about the medical care of Terri
Schiavo, judicial-nominee votes in the U.S. Senate, and the treatment
of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay over charges of unethical conduct.
This follows an election in which the president regularly spoke of
the need for government to support "faith-based" initiatives, a
religiously grounded "culture of life," and traditional marriage.

For some time now there has been heated debate about whether
President Bush is different from other presidents in his wielding of
religious rhetoric. He is. What sets Bush apart is both how much he
talks about God and what he says when he does so.

In his Inaugural and State of the Union addresses earlier this year,
Bush referenced God eleven times. This came on the heels of
twenty-four invocations of God in his first-term Inaugural and State
of the Union addresses. No president since Franklin Roosevelt took
office in 1933 has mentioned God so often in these high-state
settings.

The president nearest Bush's average of 5.8 references per each of
these addresses was Ronald Reagan, who averaged 5.3 references in his
comparable speeches. No one else has come close. Jimmy Carter,
widely considered to be as pious as they come among U.S. presidents,
only mentioned God twice in four addresses. Other also-rans in total
God talk were wartime presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon
Johnson at 1.8 and 1.5 references per address, respectively.

Bush also talks about God differently than have most other modern
presidents. Presidents since Roosevelt have commonly spoken as
petitioners to God, seeking blessing, favor, and guidance. The
current president has adopted a position approaching that of a
prophet, issuing declarations of divine desires for the nation and
world. Among modern presidents, only Reagan has spoken in a similar
manner -- and he did so far less frequently than has Bush. This
change in rhetoric from the White House is made all the more apparent
by considering how presidents have historically spoken about God and
the values of freedom and liberty, two ideas central to American
identity.

For example, in 1941, Roosevelt, in a famous address delineating four
essential freedoms threatened by fascism, said: "This nation has
placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions
of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of
God." Similarly, John F. Kennedy, in 1962, during the height of the
Cold War, said: "[N]o nation has ever been so ready to seize the
burden and the glory of freedom. And in this high endeavor, may God
watch over the United States of America."

Contrast these statements, in which presidents requested divine
guidance, with Bush's claim in 2003 that "Americans are a free
people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the
future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift
to the world, it is God's gift to humanity." He has made similar
statements a number of times, across differing contexts of national
addresses, presidential campaign debates, and press conferences.
These are not requests for divine favor; they are declarations of
divine wishes.

Such certainty about God's will is troubling when found in a
president and administration not known for kindly brooking dissent.
This makes it particularly noteworthy that Bush encountered something
in his visit to Calvin College that he has rarely faced as president:
vocal and public criticism from other Christians, many of them
evangelicals.

More than 800 faculty, alumni, students, and friends of the college
signed a letter published by the Grand Rapids Press, decrying Bush
administration policies. The letter included these words: "By their
deeds ye shall know them, says the Bible. Your deeds, Mr. President
-- neglecting the needy to coddle the rich, desecrating the
environment, and misleading the country into war -- do not exemplify
the faith we live by." Another letter expressing similar sentiments
was signed by one-third of Calvin's faculty, while dozens of
graduating seniors wore stickers on their caps and gowns that read,
"God is not a Democrat or a Republican."

Such courageous words prompt the hope that, in these challenging
times, politicians who are quick to speak about God might also learn
to listen.

 

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David Domke is an Associate Professor in the Department of
Communication at the University of Washington, and is the author of
God Willing? Political Fundamentalism in the White House, the "War on
Terror," and the Echoing Press. Kevin Coe is a doctoral student in
the Department of Speech Communication at the University of Illinois.

 

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