President Bush's Worldview Heretical, Pragmatic Christianity
By Al Cronkrite The Covenant News ~ March 10, 2005
Almost three years ago, in May 2002, I wrote a commentary entitled "Which God". In this piece I mentioned the fragmentation of American Christianity and reviewed some of the ways cohesive Christianity had been maintained. Though I did mention denominational division, I did not address the vastly different ways in which individual Christians perceive their Faith.
Famous American Christian, President George W. Bush, practices a broad-based Christianity. His ignores the exclusivity claimed by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in favor of a more inclusive religion along the lines of a new world religious order. Muslims are included, Jews are included, Buddhist, Hindus, Sikhs, and Mormans, and apparently secularists of the agnostic and atheistic persuasions are also acceptable.
According to Christianity Today shortly following the 9/11 attack, President Bush had his administrative aide, boyish Missouri Lutheran, Timothy Goeglein, assemble a group of religious leaders. "Twenty-seven leaders, including 13 evangelicals, attended. The group included evangelists Luis Palau and Franklin Graham, pastors Max Lucado, Bill Hybels, T.D. Jakes, and Charles Blake, and Edward Cardinal Egan of New York. Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, and Mormon leaders also attended the meeting."
During the meeting Gerald Kieschnick, president of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, said "Bush has a divine calling in this crisis, and he read aloud from Romans 13.
Kieschnick gushed "Mr. President, I have just come from the World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan. I stood where you stood. I saw what you saw I smelled what you smelled....You not only have a civil calling, but a divine calling....You are not just a civil servant; you are a servant of God called for such a time like this."
"I accept the responsibility," said our audacious President.
Converted through the antinomian endeavors of Billy Graham, our President practices a Pietistic religion in which the "heart" is more important than the actions. Dr. Rousas Rushdoony says of Pietism, "Such a religion is interested only in what it can get out of God: hence, ‘grace’ is affirmed, and ‘love,’ but not the law, nor God’s sovereign power and decree."
If George Barna’s surveys are correct, Americans have a President after their own hearts. Barna found that 44% of the general population believe that Jesus Christ committed sins during His time on earth. More than two out of three adults and four out of five teens believe that truth is based on feelings, experience, or emotion and is relative to the individual and circumstances. Divorce is as prevalent among Christians as among non-Christians. Mormons read the Bible more frequently than Christians. More than 50% of non-Christian American adults support legalization for same-gender sexual relations and one-third of born again Christians support it as well. Three out of ten born again adults say that co-habitation, gay sex, sexual fantasies, breaking the speed limit or watching sexually explicit movies are morally acceptable behaviors.
Barna found that only 51% of America’s Protestant pastors held a worldview when it was defined with the cursory requirements of absolute moral truth based on the Bible plus six core beliefs: the accuracy of Bible teaching, the sinless nature of Jesus, literal existence of Satan, omnipotence and omniscience of God, salvation by Grace alone, and personal responsibility to evangelize.
It is little wonder considering the tenor of religion in America that our President’s religious convictions are heretical and that hosts of prominent Christian leaders are willing to support him.
Dispensational eschatology is poison to vibrant Christianity. In spite of Christ’s assertion that only The Father knows the time, hundreds of thousands of American Christians are keyed to accept world government, secular Zionist terrorism, and tyranny as inevitable results of the "end times". Siding with Satan in anticipation of the Second Coming these gullible individuals and their equally gullible leaders nullify righteousness, celebrate apostasy, and desecrate The Lord’s Prayer.
In a piece entitled "An Island of Faith" Israel Shamir lauds the Greek Orthodox Church for its theological belief that salvation does not come from the Jews but from Christ who has already completed the transaction. They feel no need to seek a Dispensational Rapture. The Greek Church played a major role in keeping Greek youth out of the War on Terrorism.
Shamir writes that the Greeks are still a religious people and that "People live together united by an idea; this idea may (or indeed, should) be their common worship and uniting communion." He likes state churches and maintains they preserve unity and morality in the states where they exist. Attributing the idea of separation of church and state to the godless French Revolution, he writes,
"the U.S., the country without a state church, became a victim and a servant of Mammon. The small, independent churches of the U.S. had no ability to form the mind of the nation; they competed for an outlet in the Jewish-owned media, they were forever threatened by tax authorities, they broke with tradition, and became prey for the wolves....The US was a first experiment of a large scale: what will happen to a society that is built on the pursuit of profit, instead of on the rock of faith."
Peter Berger, a sociologist of religion at Boston University said, "Bush simply didn’t establish a new civil religion....but the scope of religions that are recognized - that range was widened to include Islam, and to some extent the religions of South and East Asia."
President Bush may be sincere and devoted to his religious beliefs but as with most of America’s Christianity they appear to have been seriously maligned by the forces of humanism. The little golden calves he has constructed by widening his tolerance to include other religions breaches the first Commandment and strikes the very heart of Jesus, Who is the only door to salvation and the Throne of the Father.
For the President and for most American Christians the dividing line between tolerance and love is inscrutable. How many, in an effort to love the sinner, fail to address the sin? Hundreds of thousands of professing Christians rely solely on their personal relationship with Jesus to provide them with their code of right and wrong. If sin’s only definition is being separated from God, aren’t all god-connected religions acceptable as well as "co-habitation, gay sex, sexual fantasies, breaking the speed limit or watching sexually explicit movies"? Apparently many American Christians think they are.
In the Christianity Today piece Tony Carnes relates an incident where Jerry Falwell, a guest on Pat Robertson’s 700 Club, attributed the terrorist attack to the "ACLU, abortionists, feminists, homosexuals, and others who provoked God’s wrath". A Bush representative called expressing displeasure and the remarks were immediately withdrawn.
"Bush's religious supporters are his greatest cheerleaders. Rather than his spiritual guides, they are his faithful disciples. He is the leader of the America they think God has ordained. Contrary to popular opinion, the religion that this group espouses is Triumphalism, not Christianity. Theirs is a zealous form of nationalism, baptized with Christian language" writes Bethesda, Maryland Presbyterian preacher Fritz Ritsch in the March 2nd, 2003 Washington Post.
Further on, Ritsch relates a similar religious anomaly pointed out by martyred theologian Deitrich Bonhoeffer during Hitler’s heyday. Bonhoeffer called it "joyous secularism" and described it as "Christians who view the role of government as helping God to establish the Kingdom of God on Earth". Much of American Christianity seems to be infected with a similar "joyous secularism" and our President appears to be its messiah.
The positional incongruity of Dispensational Christianity and the neo-heresy of joyous secularism is often exceeded by atheistic American Liberals who accuse the Bush regime of Theonomic intentions and excoriate Dominionists as the culprits.
Every religious renewal recorded in the Old Testament was preceded by a reading of the The Law and an intent to adhere to its dictates. Obedience is a major theme of the entire Bible. The Diaspora was a result of disobedience and the decline of freedom, prosperity, and peace in America is a result of the same human malady.
Dominionists call for obedience to God’s Laws. They recognize that the world God created can never be His without obedience to His Laws. Societies that live under human laws are secular societies. President George W. Bush, his supporters, and most of America’s Christian Evangelicals have forsaken God’s Laws and seek to live under human law. The results of the Bush II tenure are much closer to joyous secularism than they are to Theonomy. He has surrounded himself with humanists and his policies are distinctly humanistic. He is emblazened with the arrogance of a baby Christian and ready to receive a mantle he is ill-prepared to carry forth.
As America’s Christians sit in their church services on Sunday morning they might consider their own world view. Are they intent on obeying the loving Laws their Creator gave to His servant Moses? Do they have a willingness to present to God a contrite heart for their failures, and grateful heart for the forgiveness He has provided in the death of His Son? Will this be followed by a resolve to go forth into the world obedient to His mandates allowing the blessing thereby derived to shine as a light to our disobedient world?
This is the worldview American Christians need to follow. Emphasis on Christian growth and Christian leadership, spooky prayer sessions, goose bumps, personal ministries, church growth, and antinomian evangelism have been useless. God seeks dominion over His creation and the road to dominion is obedience. God’s worldview should be our worldview.