Is George Bush a fundamentalist christian?

I think ALL Christians believe the basic entrance into Heaven...

I may be wrong... Catholics? Methodists? I know ALL Baptists believe there is only one path to Heaven. Belief in Christ as the Son of God, and submission to His will.

That's the doctrine of many of the formal Christian denominations. I would guess that it is the personal belief of a minority of Christians.

Conservative Group Amplifies Voice of Protestant Orthodoxy
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
Published: May 22, 2004

As Presbyterians prepare to gather for their General Assembly in Richmond, Va., next month, a band of determined conservatives is advancing a plan to split the church along liberal and orthodox lines. Another divorce proposal shook the United Methodist convention in Pittsburgh earlier this month, while conservative Episcopalians have already broken away to form a dissident network of their own.

In each denomination, the flashpoint is homosexuality, but there is another common denominator as well. In each case, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a small organization based in Washington, has helped incubate traditionalist insurrections against the liberal politics of the denomination's leaders.

With financing from a handful of conservative donors, including the Scaife family foundations, the Bradley and Olin Foundations and Howard and Roberta Ahmanson's Fieldstead & Company, the 23-year-old institute is now playing a pivotal role in the biggest battle over the future of American Protestantism since churches split over slavery at the time of the Civil War.

The institute has brought together previously disconnected conservative groups within each denomination to share resources and tactics, including forcing heresy trials of gay clergy members, winning seats on judicial committees and urging congregations to withhold money from their denomination's headquarters...

This country, like it or not, is overwhelmingly dominated by the ideology of the Christian story. It is not so much that our founders were all Christians. Rather, they lived in an atmosphere scented throughout by Christian thought and rhetoric. Just as most of us can't imagine how to keep things cold without refrigeration, so too our founders couldn't help but think through the lens of the Christian story. And what they saw was that America had become the New Israel (the new Promised Land) of God. America has understood itself as a benevolent nation seeking only the good of all. We have understand our wealth as a blessing given to us as a sign that we are a "chosen, special people" whose larger meaning is to help the world into an era of peace, prosperity and justice. Every politician draws on this "civil religion story", which gives authority to the politicians ambition and agenda. Another way of saying this is that every nation needs sacred legitimacy. It needs the authority of transcendence: of a story larger than itself; a story that connects past with present and future. An Empire needs an even broader story: one that connects with cosmic and/or historical redemption and new creation.

This piece doesn't speak to the issue of Bush's personal beliefs, but it does speak to the growing control of Christian groups by conservative voices...a purposeful and planned strategy to radicalize these denominations.

It was only when anti-religious types became proactive to deny religious expression that had previously been national tradition--that pesky creche on the courthouse lawn or the prayer ushering in the Friday night football game, etc.--that the churches became proactive in politics to defend what they saw as anti-religious attacks and to preserve what they saw as their heritage and constitutional rights. Oddly this generated even more church wars as some more liberal church leaders joined with the ACLU and others to combat the conservative status quo crowd.

Are Christians more politically proactive than they were 30 years ago? Absolutely. But if social and political forces had left the churches alone, I doubt it would be any kind of issue today.

Source: me. I teach this stuff.

the course itself provides all prevailing views relative to each issue,

I do not need guest lecturers.

A class of extremely well educated adults -- you mean they are tested?

That "prism of faith" should break up the world into all it's colors. Unfortunately, too many possess a prism that breaks up the world into black-and-white.