Reading notes

President George W. Bush has made his Christian faith and “compassionate conservatism” central to his presidency and campaign for re-election. But just how “Christian” are the assumptions underlying current US domestic and foreign policy?

In a book to be published in June by Continuum, retired Atlanta Bishop Bennett Sims provides a penetrating critique of the religious and political assumptions of the Bush presidency. He sets out contrasting versions of Christianity, both of which may be drawn from the Hebrew-Christian scriptures. …

Bishop Sims juxtaposes the violent, confrontational concept of power presented by George W. Bush with the enduring power of compassion, justice, and nonviolence exemplified by the Hebrew prophets and Jesus of Nazareth. He rejects the fierce Fundamentalism that expects an imminent and violent end to history and celebrates the movement of prophetic power from the shadows of history to the foreground of political action.

Thank heaven for another authoritative voice speaking truth to power. I find Bush’s interpretation of Christianity almost completely divorced from the Jesus I know, the whole arc of scripture I know, the full sweep of church history I know. I don’t mean I know the “whole arc” and “full sweep” in full; I mean only that I know enough of the whole to recognize — corroborated by my own experience of the numinous — that compassion, justice, and nonviolence are where God’s heart is, where God’s primary thrust throughout history is.

[via JaBitB]