Andrew Sullivan, author of "The Conservative Soul," is a lump-'em-all-together" critic, snidely referring to the evangelicals as "Christianists" as if they're looking for an office tower to ram a jetliner into. David Brooks, reviewing the Sullivan book, writes: "When a writer uses quotations from Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and the 'Left Behind' series to capture the religious and political currents in modern America, then I know I can put that piece of writing down, because the author either doesn't know what he is talking about or is arguing in bad faith."
Evangelical Christians are attacked with the derision critics would never apply to Catholics, Jews or atheists. Conservative Protestants and other Christians voted overwhelmingly for the president when their only alternative was John Kerry, but their values, though nurtured by faith, are hardly synonymous with religion.
Belief in God begets a great variety in the thinking of thinking men and often acts as a check on behavior. So does conscience. After the Enlightenment emphasized reason as a guide, reason was nevertheless linked to religion. Woodrow Wilson, a preacher's son, a professor and the president of Princeton, was one of our most intellectual presidents, and observed that the Bible "reveals every man to himself as a distinct moral agent, responsible not to men, not even to those men whom he has put over him in authority, but responsibility through his own conscience to his Lord and Maker." He was a Presbyterian and, like the Methodist George Bush, saw his religious belief as inspiration and sustenance for his political decisions.
Religion, like reason, has its inconsistencies. Harry Truman, a church-going Baptist, was fond of contradictory references. He often quoted the prophets -- Isaiah for stressing the need to beat swords into ploughshares and Joel for emphasizing the need to beat ploughshares into swords. Conditions, he said, determined which policy to use.
That sounds about right to most of us. George Bush, like Harry Truman, should be judged on his policies and not on what inspired them. The devil, after all, is in the details.
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