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On the day that George W. Bush was sworn into his second term as
governor of Texas, friend and adviser Dr. Richard Land recalls Bush
making an unexpected pronouncement.
"The day he was inaugurated there were several of us who met
with him at the governor's mansion," says Land, president of
the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty
Commission. "And among the things he said to us was, 'I believe
that God wants me to be president.'"
How George W. Bush became a born-again Christian -- and the impact
that decision has had on his political career -- is the focus of
FRONTLINE's report, "The Jesus Factor." Through interviews
with Bush family friends, advisers, political analysts, and observers
-- as well as excerpts from the president's speeches, interviews,
and debates -- this one-hour documentary chronicles George W. Bush's
personal religious journey while also examining the growing political
influence of the nation's more than 70 million evangelical Christians.
"President Bush has been called the most openly religious president
in modern history," says producer Raney Aronson. "The
documentary explores what that means for George Bush, both as a
person and as president of the United States."
"The Jesus Factor" recounts how George Bush -- struggling
with business failures and a drinking problem -- made a life-altering
decision in the 1980s after spending a weekend with longtime family
friend Billy Graham: "It was the beginning of a new walk where
I would recommit my heart to Jesus Christ," Bush later wrote.
The change that decision produced in his life, friends say, was
both remarkable and genuine.
"It wasn't just a flash in the pan," says Mark Leaverton,
co-founder of the Midland, Texas, Community Bible Study -- a group
to which Bush became a devoted attendee. "It wasn't just a
temporary experience for him. He'd changed and all of a sudden studying
the Bible was important."
Bush's newfound faith would prove politically important during his
father's 1988 presidential campaign, when the elder Bush -- an Episcopalian
-- found himself struggling to connect with a group that had recently
gained political clout: evangelical Christians. Evangelicals had
helped elect Ronald Reagan, the Bush campaign knew, and observers
credit George W. Bush with playing a key role in cementing this
group's support for his father in 1988.
"If it wasn't for the son, George Bush the father wouldn't
have received as much support as he did in the evangelical community,"
says Wayne Slater, Austin bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News
and author of Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential.
"George W. Bush reached out to some key evangelical ministers,
reassuring them about the values of his father in a way his father,
an Episcopalian, never could."
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The younger Bush's evangelical credentials would later help him
in his campaign for governor of Texas. After a failed run for Congress
in the 1970 -- during which he was portrayed as a partying, rich-boy
outsider -- Bush's newfound faith enabled him to connect with Texans
in a whole new way, observers say.
"I saw George Bush in church settings -- and he was a master,"
Slater says. "He was marvelously successful in talking their
language, reinforcing their values, and appealing successfully to
the kinds of people who not only would vote for him, but would tell
the neighbors to vote for him. Not only organize phone banks for
him, but would call prayer lines and talk about George Bush as a
campaigner."
"The Jesus Factor" chronicles Bush's efforts in Texas
to allow faith-based groups to access state funding for social service
programs -- a policy he would later advance following his election
to the White House. And once again, the support of evangelical Christians
proved critical to Bush's razor-thin victory.
"The single most reliable predictor of how a person voted in
the 2000 election was whether they went to church or to synagogue
or mosque at least once a week," says the Southern Baptist
Convention's Richard Land. "If [they did], two-thirds of them
voted for George Bush."
In "The Jesus Factor," viewers hear from numerous evangelical
Christians who say President Bush understands the "heart and
soul" of their beliefs and that his post-9/11 speeches comforted
a grieving nation. FRONTLINE also speaks to those who feel the president
has taken his rhetoric -- and his religion -- too far.
"If we turn religion into a tool for advancing political strategy,
we treat it as anything other than a sacred part of life from which
we draw values and strength," says Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy,
president of The Interfaith Alliance. "Any time that religion
has identified itself with a particular political movement or a
particular government, religion has been harmed by that."
"The Jesus Factor" concludes by assessing the importance
of the evangelical vote to George W. Bush's reelection campaign
strategy. "Evangelical Protestants are an absolutely critical
part of the Republican base," says Dr. John Green, director
of the University of Akron's Bliss Institute of Applied Politics
and author of Religion and the Culture Wars. "The first stone
in building the wall of re-election are evangelical Protestants."
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