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http://www.washtimes.com/national/20050119-123016-1785r.htm

On Inaugural Day, Faith of Our Fathers

Decisiveness is the quality everyone demands in the president, but it's the ability of the man in the Oval Office to speak his mind, not retreat in the face of confrontation, and act on what he says that usually lands presidents in controversy. George W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States, is one of our most decisive presidents, and he knows controversy.

He will need his decisiveness, born as it is of immense self-confidence, as he embarks on his second term. "I will move on an agenda," he told a group of editors and reporters of this newspaper in a conversation in the Oval Office on the eve of inaugural week. "It's going to be hard. But you know something? I'm asking people to do new things."

One of the most decisive "old things" about this president is his reprise of one of the most consistent impulses of American presidents, the invocation of God's blessings on the nation. It's one of the greater ironies of our time that this should be one of the more controversial aspects of the 43rd presidency.

On the eve of his second inaugural, one of Mr. Bush's 290 million constituents objects to clergymen praying at the inaugural. Others have objected to the president placing his hand on the Bible, taking the oath of office. Naturally, somebody threatens to sue somebody. "First of all," the president says in dismissive retort, "I will place my hand on the Bible."

The president's born-again Methodist faith, his emphatic testimony to the faith in Jesus Christ that rescued him from the youthful indulgences that threatened to ruin his life, has subjected him to particularly spiteful scorn of the embittered skeptics of a skeptical age. He is decisively unapologetic; this enrages the skeptics all the more. "I don't see how you can be president without a relationship with the Lord," he says.

With this remark, the president stands with his predecessors, from George Washington, who said at his first inaugural that "... it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe," down through the history of the republic to Bill Clinton, who in the midst of the colorful scandals that stand as the mark of his two terms publicly enlisted a team of clergymen to help him reconstruct his spiritual life.

William J. Smith, a distinguished Arkansas lawyer and one-time state Supreme Court justice, collected the invocations of the presidents in their inaugural addresses, and the result is a booklet ("God in Our Government," Pioneer Press, Little Rock) that stands as remarkable testimony to the "belief in and reliance on God [that] permeates government at all levels."

The devout John Adams cited God as the "Patron of Order, the Fountain of Justice, and the Protector in all ages." Thomas Jefferson, not so devout, nevertheless acknowledged "an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter." James Monroe said that "with a firm reliance on the protection of Almighty God, I shall forthwith commence the duties of the high trust to which you have called me." On the eve of the war that would sunder the nation, Abraham Lincoln reassured a frightened nation that "intelligence, patriotism, Christianity and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty." Franklin D. Roosevelt, the patron saint of many of the Bush-bashing critics, said on the eve of another great war: "As Americans, we go forward in the service of our country, by the will of God."

George W. Bush must choose his words with far greater caution in our own present difficulty, but he understands the burdens that, in Lincoln's words, drive presidents to their knees when they realize there is nowhere else to go.
"The president's job," he told us, "is not to pick religion. The president's job is not to say, 'You've got to be religious.' The president's job is to say that each is free to choose. It's important that that be clear today, given the world in which we live. If you're a Sikh or a Muslim or a Methodist or anybody else, it's an important message.

"I cannot tell you how inspired and sustained and comforted I am by the fact that millions of people, many of whom I will never see, are praying for me. It's one of the most unique aspects of the presidency. I don't know any other world leaders who can say that about the people of their country, which speaks volumes about America. Yes, it does."

-- Wesley Pruden Editor in chief of The Times