Is George Bush a fundamentalist christian?

In today's NY Times, Frank Rich writes the religious right has figured out who's to blame for the prisoner mis-treatment. No, it's not them. It's Howard Stern. I thought it would come out the it was all Spec. England's idea, you know, the whole thing. She thought up the WMD stuff and got the US to invade so that she could satisfy her lust upon some brown men, but no, it goes further up the chain, or leash, as the case might be. Not the chain of command, no no, horrors, no. Up the chain of culture. Here Frank says it better :

It was the porn that made them do it

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/arts/30RICH.html

Joe

Lightwizard wrote:


Thank you LW. The fact is any serious search will find GWB's pronouncements re God/religion etc. no more sinister than the many many MANY references of God/religion that Bill Clinton, or Ronald Reagon, or Jimmy Carter used in political rhetoric.

And considering his Episcopal roots and current Methodist membership, I can say with much confidence that he is no fundamentalist and would view the Old Testament as containing some history, some allegory, some metaphor, some poetry, and some myth/legend/whimisical illustration as most mainstream Christians view it.

fox

Your confidence is not shared.

It's unclear what Bush really thinks, for three sound reasons.

First, he lies ("I've made no decision to go to war", "We've found them [WOMD]", "We are turning over full and complete sovereignty to the Iraqis", etc etc).

Second, he commonly speaks to placate a large and important fundamentalist voting block. See here... http://slate.msn.com/id/1006378/

Third, there's no evidence, as the piece above notes, that Bush has either the intellectual curiosity or the educational prerequisites to have a sophisticated philosophy of religion at all.

We do know, from the statements of friends (PBS documentary we've all seen) that he holds one must be 'born again'. We also know that he's been quite happy to appoint fundamentalists to important positions (Attorney General), to forward policies internally and externally which hold to fundamentalist precepts (Olasky, funding to particular foreign aid programs eliminated or made contingent upon sex ed/abortion criteria, etc).

We do know that Bush holds notions of his own relative importance in a godly scheme of things (Woodward's book and elsewhere) which were certainly not voiced by the precedents you mention.

So, whether or not Bush matches your criteria for spotting a fundamentalist seems rather irrelevant.

I found a huge, lumbering write-up about Fundamentalism, which says the term has been co-opted andmorphed to mean so many things to so many people--that the term is useless.

Some like to think Fundy's are a hoard of militant people, who are all embroiled in an attempt to change the world to their moral temperature. This, while used politically, is false. There are many Fundamentalists, who are quiet about their beliefs.

Of all the definitions shared-- this is the one I think is accurate:

Brief History of Christian fundamentalism
Within the United States, fundamentalism was originally a movement beginning in the late 19th century of Christian evangelical conservatives, who, in a reaction to modernism, insisted on adhering to a set of core beliefs. Fundamentalists, in this sense, have engaged in criticism of more liberal movements. The original formulation of American fundamentalist beliefs can be traced to the Niagara Bible Conference in 1878. In 1910, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church distilled these into what were known as the "five fundamentals", which were:

Inerrancy of the Bible
The virgin birth and deity of Jesus Christ
The doctrine of substitutionary atonement
The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ
The bodily second coming of Jesus Christ (http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/non_fundamentalist_christianity/52921)

Its not so sinister.

And, using this definition, I think Bush is a Fundamentalist. You actually can't be born again, without this belief. These beliefs are the primary building blocks at the foundation of born-again Christianity.

from the over $100 million dolled out under executive order (President Bush) for faith based initives, so far only applications from christian based organizations have been funded even though applications have been made by other faiths (jewish and muslim, specifically)

dys

Yes, that is from the PBS documentary. They noted that funds allocated are not easily traceable other than from one particular agency which keeps exact records. That statistic you note is is from that agency.

sofia

You repeat fox's wording...it isn't, you feel, 'sinister'. I don't think it is sinister either, as a belief system. But throw it into the political arena, and yes, it certainly could be. For all the many reasons already noted here on this thread.

I was trying to finally find a universally accepted definition--and accurately answer the thread topic question.

sofia

Sorry. Yes, you did weigh in with helpful data. I was sharpening my teeth and some old blood from yesterday got me going.

<think yew>
<smiles>

Christian beliefs certainly aren't sinister. I do think that many Fundamentalist beliefs are extreme and are incredibly dangerous and have no place in the political arena.

It is individual belief which is private that is in question. I still don't believe anyone can pronounce Bush fundamentalist or non-fundamentalist as we don't know how he feels personally about evolution and some of the more quaint and mythological sections of the Bible.
It doesn't matter what a particular sect teaches -- it's what he has personally absorbed. It is troublesome if he is making any decisions based on communicating directly with God or Jesus. I haven't seen any verifyable evidence of this.

Of course, if he were to somehow reveal tomorrow that he doesn't understand that a species of fish many millions of years developed legs and lungs or how and why the chimpanzee is so close to the homosapien species, and the earth is around 6000 years old, that's another story. The key is "inerrancy in the Bible."

BTW, Sofia, where did that definition come from?
I hope not Wikipedia.

Just like the law, there can be a belief in the letter of the Bible but there can merely be a belief in the spirit of the Bible, meaning that most of the Old Testament can be disregarded as fact or history and still considering it as a moral fable. It is a bit disconcerting that Jesus summarily endorsed the laws that came before him but one could debate just how many of those laws were in existance (one could also presume he also meant Roman law).

It is also erroneous to state that all the settlers who came to early America came here for religious freedom. In fact, only a small percentage came here for that reason -- the Puritans. The rest? Discovery, adventure, greed, escaping the law in England and many other non-religious reasons.

Oh! It was Wikepedia. What's wrong with it? The five fundamental tenets are true to, at least, Baptist doctrine. May be so in other Christian denominations.

It did have quite a long blurb on the popularly accepted Fundy-As-Militant belief.

Way down at the bottom of their home page is a small link "Disclaimer:"


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_disclaimer

I have to disagree with you that "it is not so sinister", since included is a biggy, Inerrancy of the Bible . There is one hell of a lot of sinister nonsense in that book. To me that phrase means that the bible is without error. To subscribe to that concept in this day and age is evidence to me of a problem in reasoning ability not befitting a person in such a powerful position as President of the United States.

I could easily see where Bush has offered himself up as neither fish nor foul...er...fowl:

http://slate.msn.com/id/1006378/

Well, I'm just an ignorant country boy (no, I'm not.) but if someone is asked who their favorite philosopher is and they answer 'Jesus Christ', you can pretty much bet the farm that you got yourself a fundamentalist Christian.

And when asked to explain what he means when he says "Jesus changed my heart." he stammers and explains that unless it's happened to you it's hard to understand, you can pretty much count on the guy's being part of the evangelical movement.

I usually smile, pretend to see someone I know across the room and beat it. Once I did ask a fellow what he thought a philosopher was and got a long, serious look before he answered " Someone trapped by the falseness of the world." which I thought was a good answer.

Is the Methodist church he belongs to part of the Evangelical Methodist sect? If he is not a dyed-in-the-wool fundamentalist he's certainly flirting with it. He's also a politician and so will probably keep us guessing.

"newsweek" magazine of 24 may 2004 has a lenghty and interesting article on: "the new prophets of revelation" (authors tim lahaye and jerry b jenkins) and why their biblical "left behind" novels have sold 62 million (yes, sixty-two milllion) copies and counting ! (has anyone on this thread read any of these novels ?). these authors are currently outselling stephen king, john grisham and every other pop novelist in america.here is a short statistic from the newsweek article :"what we believe" - a newsweek poll gauges americans' opinions on the "book of revelation" and "the end of times"; 36% believe that the book of revelation contains 'true prophecy'; 47% say it is metaphorical; 55% think that the faithful willbe taken up to heaven in the rapture; 74% of americans believe that satan exists, among evangelicals, the number increases to 93%; 17% believe that the end of the world will occur in their lifetime. ... i would be interested to know if similar information is available on the belief of europeans revelation theories. hbg