Running on Their Faith
Bush and Gore are making religion a big issue, and praying voters buy the sermon
It's been generations since so many politicians have talked so much about Jesus--and their personal relationship with him. Just back from a jog, George W. Bush is game to talk more. He slings a towel over his shoulder and plops into a seat on the patio of the Texas governor's mansion. "What are we talking about?" Faith. "Good. I like talking about faith." Five minutes later, he's discoursing on the Crucifixion and whether Jews can enter heaven. ("Governors don't decide that.")
Across the country, Bush's spiritual twin in the campaign--the other major evangelical candidate--leans over the arm of his chair and speaking in an uncommonly gentle voice. As if confiding a secret, Al Gore lists the defining moments in his spiritual life: attending revivals as a child, becoming born again at Harvard, his adult baptism. And prayer, he says, has gotten him through the bumpier stretches of the campaign. "I just don't know how I would react to the challenges that have made me stronger without my faith," Gore said in an interview. (The complete interviews with Gore and Bush on faith are available at U.S. News Online, www.usnews.com.)
When candidates make public displays of religion, a common reflex is skepticism: American politicians have always found votes in church. But with the governor and vice president, there is evidence of devotion. Bush, a Methodist, reads daily from The One Year Bible; he prays with ministers on his cell phone; he asks staff, "Did you go to church on Sunday?" Mine the biography of the Baptist Gore, and you'll find similar stories: He peppers conversation with references to Numbers and Acts; when friends or family have a problem, he advises them to "pray on it." At a recent midnight meeting in the vice president's mansion, Gore told aides that he had decided to pare down his campaign. To explain his decision, he kicked into the cadence of a revival minister, telling the story of Gideon girding for battle. "And the Lord said, 'Gideon you've got too many people.' "
Post-Clinton craving. But there is a bigger point than piety here. For both front-runners, their political agendas are bound to their religious agendas. When Bush touts compassionate conservatism (especially his idea that government should fund faith-based charities), he is applying evangelical principles to politics. And when Gore talks about his signature issue, the environment, he draws heavily on theology gleaned in divinity school. This welding of faith to policy harks back to another era. According to University of Akron Prof. John Green, an analyst of religious politics, "We haven't seen anything like this since William Jennings Bryan"--the fundamentalist who ran for president in 1896, complaining the country was being crucified on an idolatrous "cross of gold." It's the culmination of a long trend in American politics. After decades of agitation by the religious right, faith has become an accepted fixture on the landscape. (This fall, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops published its first-ever voter guide.) There are also brute political reasons for trumpeting faith, and one of those is Bill Clinton. After scandals--and school shootings--the public tells pollsters that it craves politicians who address "declining moral values."
But does the public crave this much talk about faith? While polling suggests a resurgence of religiosity, history suggests an aversion to gaudy displays of faith. Democratic contender Bill Bradley, for one, is hoping for a backlash. At every turn, Bradley has declined to discuss his beliefs (Page 30) and, according to an aide, he hopes to turn his silence into an electoral virtue: "There's still a sizable segment of our party that isn't comfortable with politicians who wear Jesus on their sleeves."
Bush and Gore, baby boomers both, have led parallel spiritual lives. In the postwar decades when they grew up, faith played a decreasing role in American life. In the '60s, when they came of age, old orthodoxies (religious and otherwise) weren't cool. Then they acquired children, midlife anxiety, and spiritual hunger.
Old-time religion. Their stories begin in homes largely devoid of religious fervor. True, in eighth grade, Bush had been an altar boy. But there wasn't much talk of God at the Bush family dinner table, friends say. Likewise, Al Gore Sr., an old-fashioned populist and nominal Baptist, didn't much trust big institutions, including organized religion. But both young men walked between two worlds--the Northeastern elite and the Bible Belt. In his days playing on the streets of Midland, Texas, how could Bush avoid fundamentalism? And during his summers in Tennessee, Gore caught a glimpse of old-time religion. "I attended revivals regularly," he told U.S. News. "I felt very much a part of it." In conversation with friends--let alone reporters--Gore speaks only elliptically of his most powerful spiritual experiences. He says: "As a young child I made a commitment in prayer." Then as a Harvard junior in 1968--the height of the counterculture protest movement--he was born again: "I felt a transformational relationship with my own interpretation of God, and Christ in God."
"My own interpretation of God." The words recur in Gore's musings about faith. Gore concedes that he is theologically eclectic--melding Baptist conservatism with progressive Christianity, learned at Vanderbilt Divinity School. He wasn't baptized until his mid-30s, in a tub at his suburban Virginia church, after he'd been elected to Congress. Some evangelical leaders have criticized Gore's mismatched doctrine as being "profoundly out of step with his denomination," as Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention puts it.
Gore never aspired to join the ministry. Entering Vanderbilt, the 23-year-old seemed more interested in resolving existential questions preying on his mind after a disillusioning stint in Vietnam. Prof. Jack Forstman says Gore told him he "wanted some kind of grounding that might make it possible to reconstruct things for himself." He found himself immersed in a 1970s hotbed of Protestant ultraliberalism. (Vanderbilt became a hub of support for Latin American revolutionaries.) Sitting in his suburban home, he'd later tell his children parables, with Jesus playing the role of liberal activist, eschewing materialism and striving for social justice. The seeds of Gore's environmentalism were sown in a course on "Theology and the Natural Sciences," which stressed the doctrine of "stewardship." Drawn from the New Testament, "stewardship" teaches that Earth is the domain of the Lord, not man. Man has a duty to God to preserve it.
George W. Bush's conversion is a staple in his autobiography. "He is the prodigal son," says adviser Ralph Reed, "the baby boomer who walked on the wild side, then found God." His evangelical admirers tell it as parable: As Bush neared middle age, he'd failed at business and drank too much. But a moment of truth arrived in 1985, as he walked along Maine's craggy shores with the Rev. Billy Graham. "Are you OK with God?" Graham asked him. A pregnant pause. Then Bush's response, "No, but I'd like to be." A mustard seed had been planted. "It took a while to understand what was happening," Bush told U.S. News. "But when it happened, it happened fast." Months later, the day after he turned 40, he quit drinking cold turkey. Back in Midland, Bush immersed himself in a men-only Bible study in the Promise Keepers mode. His friend Don Evans, now his chief fund-raiser, recalls, "We talked an awful lot about our own lives and problems."
Preacher man. Bush is the first major politician to emerge from the new milieu of suburban megachurches. Eschewing tradition, Bush's evangelicalism cut a deal with mass culture, importing pop music and pop psychology, especially self-help theories. It embraced racial tolerance. If you strain to listen, you can hear the message in Bush's speeches. Pet phrases like "the commonplace miracles of faith" and "I want to share my heart" have been borrowed straight from the pulpit.
When asked to compare his faith with his father's, the affability drains from Bush's voice, "You're going to have to figure that out for yourself." But the subtext is clear: There is a gulf between us. The president never felt comfortable dealing with evangelicals, and they returned the unease. Not so the son. When the father's relations with the religious right grew tense, he'd tell advisers to consult George W.: "Junior understands them." Last spring, father and son entered a Dallas church for a meeting with evangelical leaders. Pointing to his dad, the son told the ministers, "If you think that you're going to get a rerun of this, you're mistaken."
Centrist Democrats like Gore have made much of breaking with their party's heritage of staunch secularism. Or as a Gore adviser clumsily announced, "The Democratic Party is going to take back God this time." This smacks of post-Monica posturing. But Gore has always had a social conservative streak. The centrist buzzwords--responsibility, civil society--had been Gore favorites before they acquired their current chic. Through the mid-'80s, he had even been an abortion opponent.
It's here that one can see a primary fight brewing. Liberal activists--with the notable exception of African-Americans--tend toward the secular side of the spectrum. Bradley has subtly played to these voters, emphasizing that religion is private business. When Gore said that local schools had the right to teach creationism, Bradley quickly denounced him.
However, there is a common spiritual denominator among Bradley, Gore, and Bush. All applaud federal funding of faith-based charities. With his running shoes kicked up on a patio table, Bush hints there might be other reasons he supports the programs. "I say in my speeches, clearly, that cultures change one heart, one soul. One of the ways is for religion to be introduced. You know, my heart was changed, my little old heart."
"Sissified." This evangelical assumption, that faith can and should be spread, triggers a question about his support of faith-based institutions. Does he want government to fund a religious revival? In conversation, Bush realizes he treads on tricky turf, re-emphasizing the importance of separating church and state. Part of Bush's strategy is to woo religious voters with his choice of words and life story. He doesn't need to rail against abortion to convince evangelicals he's on their team. "He talks to God. That's all I need to know," says preacher Ed Young. But some of his spiritual advisers have been less shy of controversy. James Robison helped found the Moral Majority and loudly condemns homosexuality. Tony Evans, another favorite preacher, spearheaded the Promise Keepers and landed in trouble with feminists by urging "sissified" men to seize control of their households.
Americans have always had a complicated relationship with religious politics. They've fallen in love with both high-toned moralists like Billy Graham and loose-cannon agnostics like Jesse Ventura. Historically, politicians who succeed talk about God--but not too much. A case study is Jimmy Carter, the first evangelical president. His frankness about faith helped boost him from obscurity. But as his presidency wore on, complaints rose about his "holier than thou" attitude.
Both Bush and Gore recognize the peril of appearing too pious. Back in the White House, Gore says, "Even as I respond to your questions, I'm conscious of the way it may sound to some readers, and I respect that." Bush, meanwhile, is railing against a pernicious trend in politics: "Vote for me--I'm more religious than my opponent: It's a new motto that people ought to be concerned about." With a flourish, Bush smiles and adds, "I fully recognize that I'm a sinner just like you."
This story appears in the December 6, 1999 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.