Bush on Christianity:
The faith that you brought here, the faith that matured here, doesn’t give every answer to every question. Nor, of course, does it promise anyone a life spared from doubt or difficulty. But in the way of life’s advantages, each one of you already has the best there is – an awakened conscience. When you’ve got that going for you, there’s no end to the good you can do, or the wrongs you can help overcome, or the hope you can bring into the lives of others. This doesn’t always come as a welcome reminder in some quarters, but it is true all the same: Whatever the need, the affliction, or the injustice, there is no more powerful or liberating influence on this earth than the Christian conscience in action.
How strange, in our own time, to hear Christianity spoken of as some sort of backward and oppressive force. Outside these seven thousand acres of shared conviction, it’s a depressing fact that when some people think of Christianity and of Judeo-Christian values, they think of something static, narrow, and outdated. We can take this as unfair criticism, as it typically is, or we can take it as further challenge to show in our lives the most dynamic, inclusive, and joyful message that ever came into the world.
“These are the days,” as Chesterton remarked, "in which Christians are expected to praise every faith but their own." He never accepted that limitation, and neither should we, least of all in reply to criticism. One of the great things about this faith of ours is its daring, untamed quality, which is underrated.
As moral wisdom goes, for example, loving our neighbors seems kind of an easy call – especially if we already like them. But how about loving our enemies, too, as a bold challenge to leave our comfort zone and lift our sights to larger purposes?
As for the suggestion that Christianity is a static faith, that sure isn’t how it reads in the original. Offhand, I cannot think of any more subversive moral idea ever loosed on the world than “the last shall be first, and the first last.
Likewise, is it really just some time-worn, pre-modern idea that God’s favor is upon the gentle, the kind, and the poor in spirit? An awful lot of people in our time, including a few who command armies, still haven’t gotten the news. Violence, fear, and domination are their rules to live by, as many persecuted Christians in our time can attest. And no matter what faith is professed by cruel men, if we could imprint just a few lines of truth on their hearts, surely we would start with the words of the carpenter born in Bethlehem: ‘Blessed are the meek … Blessed are the merciful … Blessed are the peacemakers.’
It’s a voice like no other, whether it is captured on scrolls and paper, or in bits of data; seen in the example of Francis the saint, or of Francis the pope; affirmed by the witness of ancient martyrs, or by the witness of martyrs dying in His name today.
No place where the message reaches, no heart that it touches, is ever the same again. And across our own civilization, what a radically different story history would tell without it. Consider a whole alternative universe of power without restraint, conflict without reconciliation, oppression without deliverance, corruption without reformation, tragedy without renewal, achievement without grace, and it’s all just a glimpse of human experience without the Christian influence.
"No law in the world," said Martin Luther King, “could have produced such unalloyed compassion, such genuine love, such thorough altruism.” The Christian faith, as Dr. King proclaimed, "adjourns the assemblies of the hopeless, and brings new light into the dark chambers of pessimism."
So it is not only untrue, but also a little ungrateful, to dismiss the Christian faith as some obstacle to enlightened thought, some ancient, irrelevant creed wearing out its welcome in the modern world. Whether or not we acknowledge the source, Hebrew Scripture and the New Testament still provide the moral vocabulary we all use in America – and may it always be so.
Try to separate the ideals from the source, as C.S. Lewis observed, and it’s like "a rebellion of the branches against the tree." Justice, equality, the worth of every life, the dignity of every person, and rights that no authority can take away – these are founding moral ideals in America, and they didn’t come out of nowhere.
Every day in the life of this nation, uncounted people are comforting the lonely, aiding the ill and discouraged, serving the weak and innocent, giving hope to the prisoner, and in every way they know, loving mercy and living with integrity. And all of that doesn’t happen by chance either, or because anyone has ordered it, or because there’s a federal program for it. The endless work of Christian charity in America is what free people do when they have good news to share. It’s how free people live when they have a living faith.
Bush has this to say about religious liberty:
In all these causes, and others, your generation is fully engaged, acting by the light of conscience. If any spirit is to be gladly welcomed in a free society, you’d think that would be the one. At least, the Founding generation thought so when they wrote the First Amendment. But, of course, others have their own ideas. Fashionable opinion – which these days can be a religion all by itself – has got a problem with Christians and their right of conscience. That makes it our problem, and the proper response is a forthright defense of the first freedom in our Constitution.
It can be a touchy subject, and I am asked sometimes whether I would ever allow my decisions in government to be influenced by my Christian faith. Whenever I hear this, I know what they want me to say. The simple and safe reply is, ‘No. Never. Of course not.’ If the game is political correctness, that’s the answer that moves you to the next round. The endpoint is a certain kind of politician we’ve all heard before – the guy whose moral convictions are so private, so deeply personal, that he refuses even to impose them on himself.
The mistake is to confuse points of theology with moral principles that are knowable to reason as well as by faith. And this confusion is all part of a false narrative that casts religious Americans as intolerant scolds, running around trying to impose their views on everyone. The stories vary, year after year, but the storyline is getting familiar: The progressive political agenda is ready for its next great leap forward, and religious people or churches are getting in the way. Our friends on the Left like to view themselves as the agents of change and reform, and you and I are supposed to just get with the program.
There are consequences when you don’t genuflect to the latest secular dogmas. And those dogmas can be hard to keep up with. So we find officials in a major city demanding that pastors turn over copies of their sermons. Or federal judges mistaking themselves for elected legislators, and imposing restrictions and rights that do not exist in the Constitution.[*] Or an agency dictating to a Catholic charity, the Little Sisters of the Poor, what has to go in their health plan – and never mind objections of conscience.
I don’t know about you, but I’m betting that when it comes to doing the right and good thing, the Little Sisters of the Poor know better than the regulators at the Department of Health and Human Services. From the standpoint of religious freedom, you might even say it’s a choice between the Little Sisters and Big Brother – and I’m going with the Sisters.
Here are Bush's comments on the right to life:
You also understand that some moral standards are universal. They do not bend under the weight of cultural differences or elite opinion. Wherever there is a child waiting to be born, we say choose life, and we say it with love. Wherever women and girls in other countries are brutally exploited, or treated as possessions without rights and dignity, we Christians see that arrogance for what it is. Wherever Jews are subjected to the oldest bigotry, we reject that sin against our brothers and sisters, and we defend them.
You can watch Bush's full commencement address at Liberty University below:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzQyu5Sp2b8?wmode=opaque]
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