It Has the Feel of a Revival

Note: Watching the RNC reminds me of my childhood and going to a Southern Baptist revival in town...twenty miles from my local Church...but further than that in my perception. Forty years later I still remember hearing the stories of faith, healing, and witness that weekend. Ordinary folks who had experienced the power of the Lord in answering their prayers spoke openly of their faith.

In my memory there were no Elizabeth Dole flavored stories: nothing was said then about the sanctity of every life, nothing was said about protecting marriage from an unspecified threat, nothing was said blaming some entity for affronts to our religious traditions. Then it was only the stories of people, and how God had changed their lives.

During parts of the RNC, I felt the revival feeling welling up again...but it had a distinct edge to it that I did not feel comfortable with. GW Bush was presented by the speakers as an almost mythic figure, possessed of extra-ordinary abilities, faith, and personal characteristics. The most frequently used, or misused descriptive word was "leader", but the projection was that he was the One, not simply the preferred candidate for CEO of the United States; but rather a person with semi-divine powers.

GW Bush has been primarily a politician for twenty five years at least...not a rancher, not a businessman, not a missionary...a politician. One who has demonstrated his ease with character assasinations against politial rivals, with alliances of convenience with those who promote positions diametrically opposite to his stated positions, and with a tendency to favor select sections of American society at the expense of disenfranchisement of other segments.

As the playright wrote: "He's just a man, like so many men...". Let's not make GW Bush into something he is not. Judge his performance as America's CEO these past four years and decide if he deserves another term; but please lose the Appointed One bombast. American needs a talented CEO to guide us through the next several years...we do not need to worship a Hero, nor devolve into slavishly favoring a convenient messenger to the exclusion of the important messages.