Query renews debate on Bush, fundamentalism

WASHINGTON — An exchange between President Bush and a Cleveland attorney who asked whether apocalyptic religious views color his decision-making on Iraq has added new fuel to the debate over the religious right's role in his administration.

Bush seemed flummoxed by the question Jan Roller asked after the president's speech last Monday in Cleveland, where he was defending his handling of the Iraq war.

Citing the newly released book "American Theocracy" by former Nixon administration official Kevin Phillips, Roller asked whether Bush agrees with "prophetic Christians" who view the Iraq war and the rise of terrorism as "signs of the apocalypse," the end-of-the-world cataclysm described in the Bible's Book of Revelation.

"I haven't really thought of it that way," Bush told her after a long pause, adding that he hadn't previously heard the theory. "I guess I'm more of a practical fellow."

The exchange has touched off new arguments over an old subject: conservative Christian influence over Bush and the Republican Party.

Bush critics, including Phillips, contend the president feigned confusion. Had the president embraced the controversial views of his religious backers, the critics say, he would have alienated moderates.

"For him, it was a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea," Phillips said. "Half the people who voted for him in past elections are religious Christians who believe in Armageddon and end times, and half the coalition would not be impressed if he said he agreed with it."

But evangelical leaders said Roller's question seemed designed to marginalize them. They disputed the premise that many of their members believe the end of the world is near, that they view the Iraq war as a symptom of impending apocalypse or even that they hold inordinate sway over the president and the Republican Party.

"The president answered the question fairly, in the sense that he was just being honest," said Mark Fuller, pastor of the 3,500-member Grove City Church of the Nazarene in Ohio. "A lot of things are foisted upon his actions that have never been his motivation, which is true in any position of leadership."

Roller, a Democrat who is a partner in the Davis & Young law firm, said she asked Bush that question because she is concerned about his administration's "ties to and promotion of the religious right and its overstepping into government and politics." She said she was disappointed that Bush didn't use his answer to "firmly establish the separation of church and state in this country."

Phillips said the Bush administration has let the religious right hold sway on everything from abortion to stem-cell research to economics. He said a Newsweek poll indicated that 70 percent of fundamentalists and evangelical Christians believe the end of the world is approaching, and world events such as Jewish resettlement of the Holy Land, tsunamis and plagues have bolstered their beliefs.

The success of books such as the "Left Behind" series of novels, which focus on imminent apocalypse, shows those beliefs are widespread, Phillips said.

But Janice Shaw Crouse, a senior fellow of the Beverly LaHaye Institute, a conservative think tank founded by the wife of "Left Behind" series co-author Tim LaHaye, said "there is no belief that Iraq is part of the apocalypse" and that the series' readers clearly view the books as fiction.

"It is very far-fetched that the president would develop foreign policy based on some kind of apocalyptic scheme," Crouse said.

She called Phillips' claims "another attempt of the left to disparage the right, and to particularly put down the religious right as though the Bush administration is beholden to us in an unhealthy way, or that we are the driving force between all the negative things that are happening, in their opinion, in this administration."