God intervened to re-elect President Bush; George W. Bush and evangelicals; divine intervention in elections — Beliefnet.com
Did God Intervene?
Evangelicals are crediting God with securing re-election victory for George W. Bush. By Deborah Caldwell
The Almighty intervened in the U.S. election, these evangelicals believe, to allow Bush to remain president. They say God has “blessed” America with Bush–and had Sen. John Kerry been elected, God would have “cursed” the U.S. By allowing Bush to be re-elected, God has given America “more time” to stop its slide into evil. …
“This was Providence,” evangelical leader and presidential adviser Charles Colson told Beliefnet [Charles Colson was chief counsel for President Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1973…. Known as President Nixon’s hatchet man, Colson could be counted on to break the china – do whatever was necessary – to achieve the desired political ends of his boss.]. “Anybody looking at the 2000 election would have to say it was…a miraculous deliverance, and I think people felt it again this year.” By allowing Bush to stay in office, Colson said, God is “giving us a chance to repent and to restore some moral sanity to American life.” …
Meanwhile, Paul Weyrich, founder of the Free Congress Foundation and one of the original engineers of the conservative Christian political revolution, wrote an essay claiming that “God gave this President and this President’s Party one more chance…God heard the fervent prayers of millions of values voters to keep His hand on America one more time despite our national sins of denying the right to life, despite ignoring the Biblical injunction against acts which are ‘an abomination unto the Lord’ and despite the blatant attempt to remove God from the public square.”
Jim Rogers of the group Mission America sent out an email the day after the election saying, “Yesterday America cried out and He heard from heaven and answered our prayers. PRAISE GOD!!” …
Now that God has given America extra time from which to be spared his wrath, evangelicals feel some urgency to buckle down to God’s business. …
Many evangelicals think America is secular and decadent and in cultural decline. Their role, they believe, is to stem that tide and renew the culture. Many of these Christians seem to believe that God will be angry with them—and with the entire nation—if they don’t make big legislative changes. And so, they put themselves on a short leash with God, and they hope to convince other Americans to do likewise.
“God is not going to tolerate a nation that thumbs its nose at Him,” Colson says. …
It seems clear that the president himself believes that God is orchestrating American history. At the 2003 National Prayer Breakfast, for instance, Bush said, “we can be confident in the ways of Providence… Behind all of life and all of history, there’s a dedication and purpose, set by the hand of a just and faithful God.” …
The Puritans believed they were establishing the New Israel and that their enterprise was guided by God–that they were God’s chosen people headed for the Promised Land. But that metaphorical idea, that America was a beacon, began to mutate by the early 19th Century into the belief that America was the literal instrument to lead a world transformation to Christian democracy. …
“When God’s people were idolatrous and rebellious he sent justice–sometimes evil kings and sometimes foreign conquerors,” he says. “I’ve said on numerous occasions, that if God would allow his chosen people to be taken off into captivity, don’t think he won’t judge the United States.”