The Faiths of the Postwar Presidents: From Truman to Obama

George W. Bush

240 George W. Bush 1946–  president from 2001 to 2009 George W. Bush represents the one president since World War II who converted to evangelicalism from a background in mainline Protestant Christianity . His conversion, which occurred in the mid-1980s, became central not only to his life but also to his political outlook. Not since the year 1900 had Christianity played such a role in a presidential campaign as it did in 2000. In 1900, William McKinley—a Methodist of strong beliefs who espoused the duty of the United States to spread Christianity (which he interpreted as Protestantism) to other nations—ran against the leading fundamentalist spokesman and orator, William Jennings Bryan. In 2000, the presidential campaign featured two evangelicals, George W. Bush and Albert Gore Jr. George Walker Bush was born on July 6, 1946, in New Haven, Connecticut , where his father, George Herbert Walker Bush, was completing his bachelor’s degree at Yale. The younger Bush was raised in Midland and Houston, Texas. Despite his Connecticut birth,GeorgeW.—the name the Bushes used to distinguish him from his father—became viewed in his family as the child most closely attuned to Texas and its values. “His homage to his parents, his respect for his elders, his respect for tradition, his belief in religion, his opposition to abortion,” Midland resident Joe O’Neill mused, “that’s the philosophy he grew up with here.” If people“want to understand me,”Bush declared during his first presidential campaign,“[they] need to understand Midland and the attitude of Midland.” Dusty and segregated, Midland in the postwar years was an oil boomtown characterized by many churches and unlocked doors. In later years Bush and many of his classmates looked back on the town as an idyllic place in which to spend a childhood. Although George H. W. and Barbara Pierce Bush came from East Coast upper-class society, their eldest son was George W. Bush 241 raised more in the upper middle class.In his 2010 autobiography,GeorgeW. remembers Midland as a place where he“rode bikes with pals, went on Cub Scout trips . . . sold Life Savers door-to-door for charity . . . and . . . play[ed] baseball for hours.” These experiences gave Bush the“common touch” that became so apparent in his presidential debates with Al Gore. That common touch fostered not only much of his later political success but also his move to the evangelical form of Christianity.“He understands Bubba because there is more Bubba in him,” his chief political adviser, Karl Rove, once said. Bush had a close relationship with his parents. Although George H. W. Bush’s frequent business trips required that Barbara essentially raise the children herself, young George W. idolized his father. “What makes him tick?” asked an old friend of the Bush family about the son.“It’s daddy.” In Decision Points, Bush notes speculation about a negative relationship with his father, but he writes:“The simple truth is that I adore him. Throughout my life I have respected him, admired him, and been grateful for his love.” Slurs against African Americans were common in segregated Midland, but Bush’s parents refused to tolerate such language from their children.On one occasion Barbara washed George W.’s mouth with soap when he came home from school and said a prohibited word.“His family was probably the only one around that didn’t use racial slurs,”a childhood friend commented. The major trauma of Bush’s childhood was the death of his sister, Robin, after a seven-month battle with leukemia.Having been told only that she was sick and undergoing treatment in New York, the seven-year-old George W. rushed out when he saw the family car arrive at his elementary school one weekday in October 1953.Although he was certain that Robin was home for a visit to Midland, he was told in the car that she had died. On the short ride home, Bush saw his parents cry for the first time. Following Robin’s death,a pall hung over the Bush home for many years.George W. had nightmares about her death. In a sense, Robin’s death caused him to become an only child,because his other four siblings—Jeb,Neil,Marvin,and Dorothy—were considerably younger.Their presence turned the household, in Bush’s later description, into a“happy chaos.” During her illness, Bush’s father had prayed for Robin every morning in the First Presbyterian Church of Midland. Then a...