On same-sex marriage, Bush supports a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between one man and one woman, but supports some form of civil union to extend legal protections to same-sex couples.
Bush surely has been honest about his religious conversion, from hard-drinking frat boy to leader of the free world, but his message isn't quite on the level on glossolalia. Millions of Americans have changed the direction of their lives through spiritual growth, and other American presidents have been far more "religious" in their public conduct.
Jimmy Carter taught Sunday school while he was president. Bill Clinton toted his personal Bible to church. During the recent presidential campaign, John Kerry frequently affirmed his Catholicism.
Bush's invocations of God, meanwhile, are never gratuitous but are appropriate to context - a funeral, or prayer breakfast, or the finishing touch on a State of the Union address: "God bless America." Hardly the rantings of a theocrat.
One can find other references to God, most notably in Bush's articulation of what is surely the central narrative of his presidency: "Freedom is not America's gift to the world. Freedom is the almighty God's gift to every man and woman in the world." Again, this is not rain dancing. Such is the seed that grew the United States of America.
In other words, the notion that Bush is imposing his religious beliefs - or that he is going reshape America in the image of some fundamentalist fantasy - is a bum rap. Indeed, some close observers of the Bush-evangelical dynamic predict that Bush will have caused more consternation than consolation among his conservative Christian brethren before the first year of his second term is up.
Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, which is sponsoring the Key West seminar, says that religious conservatives insisting on immediate social change have misread Bush. "They are in a crisis of patience," he says, "and are likely to be disappointed."