I Cogitate

"...The first account is Bush's own. In his 1999 campaign autobiography, "A Charge to Keep," which helped introduce him to a national audience, he fondly recalled serving as a teenage altar boy at his parents' Episcopal church in Houston. But as a young oilman in Midland, Tex., he joined a Presbyterian congregation. When he and Laura Bush married in 1977, he switched to her denomination, the United Methodist Church.

Though he was always somewhat religious, Bush said, a turning point came in a private talk with the Rev. Billy Graham along the coast of Maine in 1985. Graham's words planted the "mustard seed in my soul" that eventually led to a decision to "recommit my heart to Jesus Christ," he wrote..."

"...The second account of Bush's conversion is contained in two new books about his faith. Both say that more than a year before the seaside chat with Graham, Bush requested a meeting with Arthur Blessitt, an eccentric evangelist known for dragging a 12-foot cross around the world.

David Aikman, author of "A Man of Faith," who confirmed his account with presidential adviser Karl Rove, said Bush and Blessitt sat at a table in the empty Holidome restaurant of a West Texas Holiday Inn. Blessitt's Web site says the following exchange took place:

"If you died this moment, do you have the assurance you would go to heaven?" Blessitt asked.

"No," Bush replied.

"Then let me explain to you how you can have that assurance and know for sure that you are saved," Blessitt said.

"I'd like that," Bush said.

That conversation, which Blessitt's Web site says ended with the two men holding hands and praying for Bush's salvation, sounds much more like a born-again experience than Bush's celebrated talk with Graham. But Bush made no mention of it in his autobiography, and has not discussed it since..."

"...While Bush does not say much about his own beliefs, he does talk a lot about faith, and some of that talk has made others nervous, particularly when he has suggested that he sees God's will at work in his presidency.

In "Plan of Attack," a book about Bush's decision to go to war by Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward, the president is quoted as saying that he prayed "for the strength to do the Lord's will" in Iraq. "I'm surely not going to justify the war based on God. . . . Nevertheless, in my case I pray I will be as good a messenger of his will as possible," Bush told Woodward..."

"...Earlier, Bush had told members of the clergy that he believed God called upon him to run for president. In his book "A Charge to Keep," Bush said he was moved to run by a sermon delivered by his friend Mark Craig, a Methodist minister, in 1999 during his second gubernatorial inauguration. "I believe God wants me to be president," the Rev. Richard Land, head of the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, quoted Bush as saying..."

•    We admitted we were powerless over alcohol--that our lives had become unmanageable.
•    Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
•    Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
•    Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
•    Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
•    Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
•    Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
•    Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
•    Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry     that out.
•   Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

• Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
• Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

"...But to me, it sounds like Bush is looking not for answers -- but for rationalizations for his behavior. There is no sign of genuine introspection, no sign of acknowledgment of mistakes, no sign of any significant change of course. In a pattern familiar to anyone who has ever had a drinking problem, Bush appears to be engaged in a furious effort to persuade onlookers that he's fine -- even if he isn't.

In fact, one could even argue that Bush's search for "answers" from a parade of easily cowed visitors allows him to avoid a hard look at the one place he is most likely to find an explanation for his predicament: Within himself..."

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