Faith, Feeling and the GOP

With the GOP convention wrapping up tonight, Matt Malone, S.J., and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend continue their discussion of E. J. Dionne’s Souled Out,</i> and the broader issue of religion and politics. In his latest post, Matt writes:

Dionne argues in his book that the religiosity of the Bush presidency was, in many ways, no more or less dramatic than that of other presidents, at least from Carter to Clinton. What was different and problematic about Bush, according to Dionne, was that his style of faith conveyed the sense that "religion was primarily about feeling" and could and should not be subjected to any kind of intellectual or moral inquiry. This meant that Bush never felt the need to "express personal religious views in a way that is accessible to believers and non-believers alike," which, according to Dionne, he should be expected to do in a secular society.