Bush’s Faith-Based Politics

Re “A New Meaning for ‘Bully Pulpit,’ ” Commentary, April, 12: Susan Jacoby, in her challenge to religious values, would have you believe that Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, if they held any religious beliefs at all, kept them private. In so claiming, she ignores the Declaration of Independence, wherein Jefferson states, “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” This language certainly reflects a belief in a deity who cares enough about humans that, in creating them, he endowed them with such rights.

As for Lincoln, in his Gettysburg Address he referred to “this nation, under God.” Both men obviously had religious beliefs that they were willing to express publicly. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., in his letter from the Birmingham city jail, asserted that for a man-made law to be just, it must square with the law of God. George Orwell observed that propaganda is as much a matter of what is left out as what is actually said.

John F. Haggerty

Woodland Hills

Americans need to be reminded that this is a secular country and that most of the problems of our times are directly connected to irrational religiosity. Until there’s a U.S. president brave enough to tax churches and limit their influence on governmental policy, the media and citizens must monitor the apocalyptically inclined. You never know when they might want to send your first-born sons to their deaths in a foreign country.

Dawna Kaufmann

Los Angeles

A nightmarish thought: Are the president’s messianic beliefs in the Second Coming, Armageddon and the end of days -- espoused by right-wing religious groups -- influencing his domestic and foreign policies, from his destructive environmental actions and irresponsible spending to his alienation of our allies and invasion of Iraq? Or is he able to separate such delusions from his job as a public servant?

David Perlman

Laguna Beach

Jacoby used the cloak of seeming rationality to imply that Christians are too dangerous to be allowed to have full civil rights. Her claim that William Pryor should be “disqualified” as a federal judge because he made pro-Christian statements certainly would, if followed, result in the creation of second-class citizenship for all religious persons. Despite her claims of rational discourse, she’s not above using hyperbole. She claims there is no precedent to Bush’s infusing religious values into America’s government, and that just isn’t true.

Precedents include the abolition of slavery based on religious objections, Prohibition, the placing of “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and many more examples. Her polemics would have us believe that she is on the side of rationality against irrationality. But, in fact, she is trying to argue for the right of hegemony of materialists over people who have a more transcendent view of life.

Gary R. Bell

Corona

I would have no problem believing the statement “Fundamentally, Bush Works on Faith” (Opinion, April 11) had President Bush made an all-out effort to find Osama bin Laden and requested that our allies join us in rounding up Al Qaeda. I do not believe a word of it because we invaded Iraq, which had nothing to do at that time with Bin Laden or Al Qaeda.

The only faith I think Bush has is in his over-inflated ego. Certainly Christ would not have done as Bush has chosen to do, and Bush has shown no inclination to follow the teachings of Christ in any of his actions as president of our country. Christ did not advocate killing people. So, my question must be: In whom does Bush place his faith?

Surya-Patricia Lane Hood

Phoenix