You're talking about the president as a politician, not a pastor. Do you think that some of his public displays of religion aren't entirely authentic?
I think it's a really bad idea to judge someone else's public displays of religion. In general, I'm not gonna go there.
One of the things that I write is that George W. Bush's religious orientation was probably among the most closely managed aspects of his public persona. It may be one of the most important things that, from the 2000 campaign on, people have managed. The strategic focus on evangelicals in 2000 was to convince them of George W. Bush as pastor in chief, because as pastor in chief he would be held to a different standard. People give their pastors more slack than their politicians, and I think that's important to talk about. One of the ways that it was possible was because they shrewdly understood the media, how the media would talk about things and what they would ignore. One of the things I mention in the book is the Saturday night and the Sunday morning he announced for president in 1999 he gave two sermons -- two very Christian sermons -- in a church in Houston, while everyone was staked out in Austin. Nobody from the national media covered them, which is amazing. It's amazing that no one would cover something like that.
Why do you think the media didn't cover the sermons?
Listen, the reality is we used the media, but I don't know, actually. I think the media can just get in their mind just one or two certain stories, and I know that was true with faith-based. We counted on how the media would report on stories to further our agenda, because we knew that what the media would report on, and wanted to report on, was story lines like "George W. Bush wants to establish theocracy," "George W. Bush wants to require students to accept Jesus before graduating high school." I'm obviously being silly, but in some quarters the frenzy was almost like that. But from our perspective, that allowed us to really give messages to our evangelical base, because the more that he was criticized for those sorts of things, the more that the conservative base and the evangelicals would like it. They wanted to see him in those ways. I think in general the media doesn't get religion, I think that they don't understand it -- not [because of] hostility, more [from] lack of personal experience. You write about what you know.
You're saying "we" and "our" when you talk about the Bush administration, and yet you're very critical of how the administration has used the evangelical community for political ends. Do you feel any sense of personal responsibility for that?
Yes, I do. I did not write this book from a holier-than-thou perspective; I wrote this book from years of very painful personal experience. I know what it's like when politics becomes God. I know what that does to personal relationships, to family. I know what it does to one's own soul. I've been part of that world.
Anybody in politics who goes after the evangelical vote, I think, has a measure of spiritual accountability, especially when you invoke the name of God. Invoking God's name to get anything can be a very dangerous thing spiritually. So, yes, I do think that I have responsibility, and I think one of the reasons to speak out, to write, is to confront that, to say to others: I know of what I speak.
How do you think the Christian right will respond to your book?
It's rather extraordinary. I saw one evangelical political leader [Tony Perkins, of the Family Research Council] say that no one will touch me now, which I found just an amazing phrasing. That's the way the lepers were treated in Jesus' time, and what Jesus was known for was going to the lepers: [Jesus wanted] to be where the sickest, most hurt people [were]. It's amazing to me that someone in politics would say that anyone, anywhere, would become untouchable. That is extraordinary to me, and sad confirmation, frankly, of the political seduction that Christians are going through. I think that's true of the Christian political leadership class, but my hope is that the tens of millions of people out there who aren't controlled by these particular people will see this, read this, hear about this and think, "Wow. You know what? Maybe I need to rethink this. Maybe this makes some sense." And frankly, that's why I say we need to have this fast from politics, which I think is absolutely vital.
I think that evangelicals have gotten so involved in politics that it's the way people primarily identify them, and I think it's important for us, for them, to take a step out of politics for a while. Obviously vote, but don't give money to these organizations. The problem is that Christians have been so invested in evangelizing politics that they have politicized their religion, and they've bought into an us-and-them mentality, so that frankly we -- they -- can no longer even communicate with people who happen to have different political views. Jesus sought out people who were prostitutes, outcasts and lowlifes. I fear that Christians are forgetting to invest in these very people and in the process isolating themselves by focusing too much on politics. I hope that by taking a step back we can give some of those hundreds of millions of dollars that are spent on attack ads, give it to the poor, give it to an after-school program, spend time with neighbors. As hokey as that may sound, it's what Jesus said to do, and I think it's more important right now than politics.
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