By Al Knight
Denver Post ColumnistWednesday, March 05, 2003 - It has long been true that, while members of certain groups are not to be ridiculed in the nation's culture, members of other groups are fair game year-round.
Evangelical Christians top the list of groups that can be safely targeted without apology or regret.
Thus, it's no surprise that Newsweek, one of the nation's leading news magazines, devotes its cover story this week to the issue of President Bush's relationship with God. The headline of this piece is, in fact, "Bush and God." The article suggests that the president's beliefs are more important now because of the possibility of war. The article, however, offers no information that would suggest the president's faith is a factor in his policy regarding Iraq.
It needs to be said at the outset that the long-winded article isn't really a direct attack on President Bush's religious beliefs.
Rather, Newsweek uses time- honored news-magazine methods of making the trivial seem important while steadfastly ignoring more obvious matters. Comments are attributed to people without names or specific titles. Aides, friends and observers provide anonymous comments or insights that advance the central theme of the article. Unrelated facts are tossed together to create a series of calculated impressions.
So what is the result? Well, George Bush, it turns out, is a guy who not only is a practicing Christian but one who reads the Bible and relies on his faith to help him face the challenges of life and the presidency.
This is not surprising news. Millions of Americans use similar approaches in dealing with life's concerns. Newsweek finds something sinister in Bush's past. It asserts that Bush started way back in 1987 to organize the forces of evangelical Christians and that, today, evangelical Christians make up the "core" of the entire Republican Party.
That will come as huge news to the many members of the GOP who are more interested in tax policy and national defense than in the president's faith-based initiatives. It also will surprise Christians who make up a sizable portion of the Democratic Party.
Newsweek insists it has discovered the political "wish list" that Bush is pursuing to solidify his base of "believers."
This list, it says, "includes conservative, pro-life judicial nominations; new HUD regulations that allow federal grants for construction of 'social service' facilities at religious institutions; a ban on human cloning and 'partial-birth' abortion; a sweeping program to allow churches, synagogues and mosques to use federal funds to administer social-welfare programs; strengthened limits on stem-cell research; increased funding to teach sexual abstinence in schools rather than safer sex and pregnancy prevention; foreign aid policies that stress right-to-life themes; and federal money for prison programs that use Christian tough love in an effort to lower recidivism rates among convicts."
The problem with this long passage is that it implies that only evangelical Christian Republicans support these steps. That is nonsense. A ban on partial-birth abortions, for example, has wide public support. So, too, does a ban on human cloning. As for the other elements, such as sex education, these are relatively minor matters addressed by small federal initiatives.
The Newsweek article presents both a false and misleading picture, one that deliberately misses the larger issue: how the nation's politics and culture is being affected by the Bush administration.
Is the culture being coarsened by this president? Hardly.
It is widely reported that elements of the Muslim faith "hate" the United States because of its coarse culture. The evidence of that coarseness need not be listed here. It is true, however, that its most offensive elements are associated with some of the very people who are Bush's most strident and persistent critics.
Some of these critics, in Hollywood and out, would have the nation think that having a believing president represents a greater risk to the nation than the continuing spread of a corrupt and immoral culture.
They are wrong about that. Most Christians know it, and so do most Muslims. The wonder is that Newsweek has yet to discover it.
Al Knight (alknight@mindspring.com) ) is a member of the Denver Post editorial board. His column appears Wednesday and Sunday.
