Dear Editor,
In your story on George W. Bush’s faith, “Bush’s openness connects with religious youth,” which took up almost a full page of Monday’s 12-page edition, a young Republican is quoted as saying, “President Bush is a Christian man, and he’s not afraid to talk about it.”
Indeed, it seems that talking about faith is what a lot of self-styled Christians do best. I’d be more impressed if their behavior were Christian.
My own Christian education taught me that the substance of Jesus’ philosophy was peace, altruism and caring for others – values I’ve rarely detected in either President Bush or the young conservatives whose primary social gospel seems to be avoidance of gay sex.
That a leader who has engineered a war of aggression costing more than 10,000 lives to date, can call himself a Christian is a nauseating hypocrisy – and a perverse misuse of language. Or, has American Christianity become so degraded that it stands for violence and fraud?
We’ve come to know that Bush lied in order to hustle the nation into his chosen war.
His claim to faith in the philosophy of Jesus is an even bigger lie.
Patricia G. Buck

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