Christianity Makes George Bush
A Better President

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Bush's faith conviction has had two other important foreign policy consequences. The first of these to emerge was the strong support from President Putin during the U.S. attack on the Taliban despite advice from his advisors not to help America too closely. Bush had shared his faith with Putin at their first meeting in 2001, and Putin had responded with great warmth. The second was the unity Bush established with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who had also come to Christian faith as an adult at Oxford University.

In his domestic policies, Bush has been a champion of pro-life moral issues. He signed the Congressional bill banning partial birth abortion, he stopped U.S. taxpayer funding of international organizations that actively promote abortion, he set moral limits for stem-cell research, he banned human cloning and he funded sex education programs that promote abstinence. (The only African country to reduce the instance of AIDS, Uganda, includes abstinence education in its campaign.) He supports a constitutional amendment to defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

President Bush makes no secret of his Christian convictions, but he is very welcoming of all faiths (and non-faiths) in the life of the nation. He is much more accepting both of Christian dissent and of other faith traditions than some strict evangelicals are comfortable with, yet he has been known to set aside time to pray with White House visitors facing deep personal challenges. Visiting wounded U.S. veterans in military hospitals, he has repeatedly displayed a deep sense of compassion.

He is described by some White House aides as "evangelical, but by others as a "mere Chistian" in the C.S. Lewis definition of "Mere Christianity." He is humble and he is unassuming. He reads the Bible daily and he prays intensely many times a day. He is, quite simply, one of the godliest chief executives ever to occupy the Oval Office. He is human, and he would be the first to admit he is fallible. But he is, very clearly, a follower of Christ.