Episcopalian Bush Opens Religious Counteroffensive for a ‘Just War’ : Morality: Despite opposition to military action from leader of his church and other mainline Christian denominations, the President has received support from evangelicals. : News ANALYSIS

For President Bush, a lifelong Episcopalian, finding moral justification for war was apparently important enough to listen on two occasions to the anti-war views of his church’s presiding bishop.

He even conceded to the Rt. Rev. Edmond Browning one day before the bombing of Baghdad began that the bishop and his counterparts in mainline Protestant, Eastern Orthodox and Catholic churches had taken the “high moral ground” by opposing military action against Iraq.

But Bush has launched a religious counteroffensive this week, bolstered by supportive views from evangelical leaders.

To the friendly convention of the National Religious Broadcasters on Monday, Bush talked at length about moral justification for the war.

In his State of the Union address Tuesday, Bush said, “Our cause is just. Our cause is moral,” and in a brief message to Congress Wednesday Bush declared that the goal was to establish a new “moral order.”

On Thursday the President designated Sunday, Feb. 3, as a National Day of Prayer for Peace. “I have learned, as all Presidents have, that you cannot be President of our country without faith in God,” Bush told lawmakers and religious figures at the annual National Prayer Breakfast.

“I encourage all people of faith to say a special prayer on that day, a prayer for peace, a prayer for the safety of our troops, a prayer for their families, a prayer for the innocents caught up in this war,” the President said. Bush was accompanied by evangelist Billy Graham, who with his wife, Ruth, was a guest at the White House for the second time in three weeks.

Bush met also on Thursday with officials of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, who had just returned from a visit to Israel. Most Jewish groups have publicly backed U.S. goals to destroy Iraq’s military might, and Bush told the Jewish delegation Thursday that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was “an evil man” whose aggressive behavior must be stopped.

A close examination of Bush’s speech to the broadcasters and of his contacts with clergy friends indicate that moral/religious considerations have weighed heavily on the active Christian in the White House.

In the last analysis, the President turned primarily to theologically conservative Protestants to reaffirm his determination to force Iraq to evacuate Kuwait. During old friend Graham’s overnight stay at the White House Jan. 16, the evangelist endorsed the fighting at a special service for Bush and government officials the next morning.

It was the U.S. Catholic bishops who last November publicly laid out the traditional “just-war” criteria in letters to the Bush Administration while urging the government to stay with nonviolent solutions. But the President answered those points in his fifth appearance before televangelists, pastors and others at the broadcasters’ convention in Washington, which had just announced its support of Bush’s decisions.

The war against Iraq has met just-war conditions, Bush said, because it was authorized by legitimate authority (the United Nations), was initiated as “a last resort” after diplomatic efforts failed, and has not been conducted out of proportion to the threat.

On the last point, Bush said, “That is why we must act reasonably, humanely and make every effort possible to keep casualties to a minimum. And we’ve done so.”

Bush told the broadcasters that the conflict embodied what is basic to religion--”good versus evil, right versus wrong, human dignity and freedom versus tyranny and oppression.” Bush cast the battle as primarily one to respond to the “rape, pillage and plunder of Kuwait” by Iraq. “Our cause could not be more noble,” he said.

Bush said that Abraham Lincoln was asked during the Civil War whether he thought God was on the Union side. Bush quoted Lincoln as saying, “My concern is not whether God is on our side, but whether we are on God’s side.” At present, Bush said, “the world is overwhelmingly on the side of God.”

The speech was welcomed by another convention speaker, Charles Colson, an ex-Nixon Administration aide who became an influential evangelical after he served prison time for his part in the Watergate scandal.

“I know from people who have talked to (Bush) that he has really wrestled with the moral implications of war,” Colson said. “But a time comes when, if there is anything called morality in the world, that you have to be willing to wield the sword from a biblical perspective.”

Evangelicals agree with the Apostle Paul on that point, said Robert P. Dugan, public affairs director for the National Assn. of Evangelicals. Dugan quoted Paul’s Letter to the Romans (13:4) that a nation’s ruler “does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.” Dugan said he thought that Bush “made a superb case for a just war” in his speech to the broadcasters.

Colson said he congratulated the broadcasters for issuing a statement supporting the President.

‘We seem to be in a minority position among Christians,” said Colson. Other exceptions recently were Cardinal Bernard Law of the Boston Catholic Archdiocese and the Christian Science Board of Directors, who, in separate statements on Jan. 25, backed the war as necessary in light of Iraq’s aggression.

In fact, since Iraq’s August invasion of Kuwait, the heads of mainline denominations and the U.S. Catholic bishops expressed strong misgivings about the military buildup while evangelical bodies were quiet.

The mainline church leaders had an opportunity to catch Bush’s ear when Episcopal Bishop Browning, who knew Bush from previous contacts, outlined his anti-war views Dec. 20 at the White House. With a report from Amnesty International on Iraqi atrocities in Kuwait before him, Bush asked Browning pointedly whether it was moral to do nothing in response. Bush promised to read a letter that Browning wrote opposing war while Browning promised to read the atrocity report.

As the Jan. 15 deadline approached, however, Bush made it clear in public statements that he was determined to act.

On Jan. 14, Bush telephoned the Rev. Robert Schuller, pastor of the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove and television minister. Schuller said they discussed the Persian Gulf crisis and the President asked him to tell his audience, the largest of any syndicated religious program, that he was praying and wanted their continued prayers.

On Jan. 15, Browning said he was in Washington for a peace vigil when he decided to telephone the White House and ask if the President wanted to pray with him.

“So he called me back and said he wanted to talk about my letter in which I said that two wrongs don’t make a right,” Browning said in a recent interview.

“He said, ‘You and others have taken the high moral ground,’ but that he had to take another route,” the bishop said. “Then I talked to Mrs. (Barbara) Bush, and the next morning Secretary of State James Baker (also an Episcopalian) called and said he wanted to pray together over the phone.”

Bush found more compatible religious opinions from his overnight guest on Jan. 16-17. Graham has been considered the unofficial chaplain to the White House since the Eisenhower Administration in the 1950s. However, Graham has also known the Bushes for 30 years and vacationed with them most recently in August at Kennebunkport, Me.

In public statements, Graham had described the Persian Gulf crisis in dire terms. On Aug. 8, he termed Saddam Hussein’s actions as “potentially one of the most dangerous threats to world peace since World War II.”

On Jan. 10, Graham called for prayer for enemies as well as for allied troops, saying that “no sane person wants war.” At the same time, he added, “there is an ethical responsibility that goes with power, and sometimes it becomes necessary to fight the strong in order to protect the weak.”

It was unknown whether Graham’s statements were conveyed to the White House, said A. Larry Ross, a spokesman for Graham.

But Graham’s perspective was plain in the morning service on Jan. 16 at Ft. Myer, attended by the Bushes, the vice president and his wife, military officers, chaplains and most of the Cabinet.

“There come times when we have to fight for peace,” Graham said in a sermon. He said that out of war may “come a new peace and, as suggested by the President, a new world order.”