Bush’s “Evangelical Conservatism”
February 24, 2005 · By Tom Cerber
Wilfred McClay has a fascinating speech on what he calls George Bush’s “evangelical conservatism” (not to be confused with Evangelical conservatives). In it he argues that those two terms do not easily fit together because:
As a faith that revolves around the experience of individual transformation, it inevitably exists in tension with settled ways, established social hierarchies, customary usages, and entrenched institutional forms. Because evangelicalism places such powerful emphasis upon the individual act of conversion, and insists upon the individual’s ability to have a personal and unmediated relationship to the Deity and to the Holy Scriptures, it fits well with the American tendency to treat all existing institutions, even the church itself, as if their existence and authority were provisional and subordinate, merely serving as a vehicle for the proclamation of the Gospel and the achievement of a richer and more vibrant individual faith.
This is how Bush manages to defeat Democrats. In combining the story of his personal life, and his conversion, with the broader American faith in progress and human dignity, he has created a narrative that effectively corners the Democrats into a party that finds itself having to play the pessimist that defends all the entrenched interests that weigh on the “common man.” Bush ties into the central American myth of the self-made, responsible individual who guides his own life, but under the guise of “ordered liberty,” not the romantic notion of the “expressive self.”
Forgotten in Bush’s forging of a moral/political message is perhaps the sobriety of someone like Reinhold Niebuhr, the preeminent Protestant public intellectual of the twentieth-century. Bush, Americans, and liberal democrats in general, don’t like to hear bad news, especially the bad news about human limitations and sin (to use Niebuhr’s religious langauge). McClay argues that Bush, and America in general (and liberal democrats to generalize further), could use a dose of Niebuhr. Conversely, others have argued that behind Bush’s “evangelical conservatism” stands a realpolitik that fully recognizes the darkness in human hearts. (hat tip: No Left Turns).
[...] ttitude that so characterizes their culture. It might also have something to do with what Wilfred McClay has called “evangelical conservatism”. [...]
[...] 20;conservative” in Canada. At least Bush, who’s not a thorough conservative, can justify what he’s for. Incidently, Canada once had two p [...]
[...] icy are more complex than I can hint here. I’ve tried to provide some background on Bush’s “evangelical conservatism” as well as that [...]
[...] s conservative evangelical groups because African poverty is one of their primary issues. George W. Bush’s compassionate conservatism is an attempt to [...]
[...] Joe Knippenberg responds to conservatives who argue that George Bush is either not a conservative or at best a luke-warm one. He refers to Wilfred McClay’s excellent treatment of Bush as an “evangelical conservative” which I commented on a while back. An “evangelical conservative” is one who prizes the responsible individual. Knippenberg’s best response to the libertarians and “pragmatic” conservatives: Unlike libertarians, then, Bush recognizes that the responsible exercise of freedom requires a self-discipline that is available largely to those whose lives have been touched and transformed by faith…or at least by relationships with people of faith. Strong individuals are products of strong relationships, not with government bureaucracies, but with communities constituted above all by neighbor-love. [...]