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The “Crusade” Against Evil: Bush's Fundamentalism
Author(s) -
Maddox Graham
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
australian journal of politics and history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.123
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1467-8497
pISSN - 0004-9522
DOI - 10.1111/1467-8497.00294
Subject(s) - legislation , fundamentalism , law , separation of church and state , political science , george (robot) , state (computer science) , politics , terrorism , faith , administration (probate law) , religiosity , religious studies , sociology , history , theology , philosophy , algorithm , computer science , art history
This paper deals with some of the religious elements in the responses to the terrorist attacks. It criticises some initial Christian responses (in America) as well as George Bush (Jnr)'s self‐asserted Christian credentials. The conjunction between business‐friendly forms of religion and the religious cloak over a right‐wing political stance is presented as an aspect of Bush's “crusade”. The paper surveys the history of the constitutional separation of church and state and the emergence of a republican tradition which had pretensions to displace the “moral haughtiness” and insolence of American religiosity. But the “faith‐based” legislation favoured by Bush has prevailed in the general judgementalism of the administration and in the “security measures” and pro‐corporate legislation enacted in 2001 and 2002.