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"FacebookPinterest\n\nIn the beginning, there was the call. George W. Bush sat in a straightbacked wooden pew in a private prayer service at a Methodist church in Austin on the day of his inauguration for a second term as governor of Texas.\n\nHis father was in the front row with him that winter day, and his mother and wife and daughters, all gathered to celebrate his election. The thought of the younger Bush ascending to the presidency was on everyone's mind. But he didn't plot his life or aim to fulfill ambitions for the highest office, Bush wrote in his 2000campaign autobiography, A Charge to Keep. He acted spontaneously, lived in the moment, seized opportunities. His faith gave him the freedom to make all kinds of difficult decisions without worrying about the consequences.\n\n\"I could not be governor if I did not believe in a divine plan that supersedes all human plans,\" the presidenttobe wrote.\n\nThe Reverend Mark Craig, from Highland Park United Methodist Church, in a wealthy suburb of Dallas, knew George W. Bush well. The pastor and the congregation\u2014as well as the whole state and most of the Republican Party\u2014knew that Bush was struggling with \"The Sacrifice Question,\" as the costs of running for president were called in Texas. In A Charge to Keep, Bush recalled the sermon from that day. The reverend told the story of Moses, who was asked by God to lead his people into the desert and unto the land of milk and honey. Moses was reluctant to take up leadership, the reverend said. Moses had sheep to tend, and he didn't want to make the sacrifice. \"The people won't believe me,\" the reverend described Moses as saying. \"I'm not a very good speaker. Oh, my Lord, send, I pray, some other person.\"\n\nGeorge W. Bush had listened to his share of sermons since he'd begun his walk of faith, but he told friends that this was the best he had heard in his life. If Bush was waiting for inspiration\u2014literally, the breath of God\u2014then this was the moment that would change him forever, he wrote, a moment of recognition so clear and vivid that everything afterward would seem different.\n\n\"People are starved for leadership,\" the reverend proclaimed. \"America needs leaders who have the moral courage to do what is right for the right reason.\"\n\nThe congregation rose to its feet cheering, a joyous noise reaching from the choir to the farthestback pews.\n\nBarbara Bush, the former first lady, said to her son, \"He was talking to you.\"\n\nIt was at this moment that George W. Bush was called to run for president.\n\n\"As I stood to take the oath of office and give my inaugural address,\" he wrote, \"the sun broke through the clouds.\"\n\nGeorge W. Bush is the most overtly and publicly religious leader of the United States in generations. He speaks constantly of faith and the power of prayer and America's special place in the purposes of God. Religion permeates his official speeches and informal talks. Jesus is his favorite philosopher, he said in a debate in Iowa during the 2000 presidential campaign. Modern evangelicalism is the predominant creed of his White House, speechwriter David Frum revealed in The Right Man The Surprise Presidency of George W. Bush. In encounters with foreign leaders, the matter of the Almighty is raised He looked into Vladimir Putin's eyes and saw a good man as the Russian leader spoke of the crucifix his mother gave him; he told Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of Turkey, that the two of them would make good partners because they both believe in \"the Almighty\"; he was caught on tape during a closeddoor session with Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas, talking about his \"divine mission\" to bring peace to the Middle East. Every morning, the president has let it be known, he wakes early, before first light, and spends quiet time reading the Bible or another work of religious inspiration before he turns his attention to the matters of this world.\n\nGeorge W. Bush is also the most privately religious leader of the United States in generations. President Clinton tucked his wellworn Bible under his arm every Sunday morning and made for church services in Washington, D.C., a ritual many Christians who didn't like him or his politics took as a sign of showy, insincere religion. For Bush, despite the constant presence of religion in his words, the most basic facts of his worship and beliefs are a mystery. He was raised in Presbyterian and Episcopal churches in Texas, but he has not chosen a church in Washington and rarely attends services in that city. He is a Methodist by marriage but disagrees with mainline church policies on everything from the death penalty and abortion to the war in Iraq. Every modern president has had spiritual advisers occupying a public role, but the question of who ministers to George W. Bush remains unanswered outside his innermost inner circle. Tony Blair is commonly regarded as the most religiousminded prime minister of Great Britain since William Gladstone in the late nineteenth century, but the suggestion that Bush and Blair prayed together while planning to wage war on Iraq is met with studied silence. Bush has written about closely studying the Gospel, but senior staffers claim not to know if the president currently has a Biblestudy group. He is often at Camp David, attending Sunday services in a chapel presided over by a navy chaplain, but the nature and shape of his worship are as guarded as a state secret.\n\n\"The president divorces policymaking from personal faith,\" Dan Bartlett, director of White House communications, told me. \"His personal faith and belief system give him the clarity of mind, personal comfort and freedom from risk in his decisions that allows him to be president. George W. Bush believes in a secular state and the tolerance of all religions,\" Bartlett said, \"even as he believes that faithbased organizations shouldn't be discriminated against when it comes to government money for social programs. I can tell you that George Bush is not making decisions based on his own personal faith.\"\n\nFor George Bush, thus, everything is dependent upon spirituality, and at the same time nothing is dependent upon spirituality. He is a master of politicizing religion, and he is a humble and Godfearing man who would never exploit faith for political gain. A walking contradiction, he is the subject of hope and fear the world over, and the central question of his presidency is this What does W. believe\n\nMidland, Texas, population 117,000, is where George W. Bush turned to God. The city lies on the plains of the western oil fields, on land turned brown from a tenyear drought. It calls itself the Tall City, and the town motto is \"The sky is the limit.\" In the center of Midland, in the home of the once thriving oil business, the streets are mostly empty, with a few office buildings deserted and slowly yielding to the desert, some with scenes from the Bible frescoed on their sides. The day I arrive, satan is defeated is painted in large letters on the door of a dilapidated lowrise on the main drag.\n\nThe suburbs are organized around a highway that circles the city and forms a daisy chain of Olive Gardens and Hampton Inns and WalMarts. Don Poage, a former oilman turned teacher and counselor, meets me in the Starbucks caf\u00E9 in the local Barnes Noble. Poage, in his early fifties, is tanned and dressed in a Hawaiian shirt; he looks like Huey Lewis, only with the beginnings of a ponytail. He has been friends with George W. Bush for most of his life, he says. He remembers seeing Bush for the first time as a Little League baseball player, when Poage was 7 years old, and how he was in awe of him; even then Bush had a way of carrying himself that was selfpossessed and attractive. \"I patterned myself after him,\" he says. Poage's youngest daughter grew up a friend of the Bush twins. His sister, Candy, was a high school pal and college roommate of Laura Bush's, and they have remained in contact.\n\nLong before it seemed that the younger George Bush had any prayer of being president of the United States, he gave Poage the nickname Pogus. Poage was an oilman in the early 1980s, as well as a drunk and a cokehead. Poage says Bush was a drinker, but he doesn't reckon he was an alcoholic. \"I don't think that George Bush was snorting cocaine despite all the rumors,\" Poage says. \"If he was, he would have done it with me.\"\n\nBush was a \"producer\" in the oil business, spending his days working the phone and raising money in order to get the wells drilled. He mostly found dusters and had little success, even compared to Poage. \"George was very confident, borderline cocky,\" Poage tells me. \"They say he's arrogant, but he ain't nothing for Midland. This town is the world capital of arrogance.\" Poage recalls the year 1984, when the oil industry was in free fall and the riches of Midland\u2014at one time home to more millionaires per capita than any city in the country\u2014began to disappear. A lot of widestriding, toughtalking Texas men were faced with failure for the first time.\n\nThat year, many Midland men sobered up and turned to another ambition saving their souls. Poage says he himself was born again, or \"radically saved,\" as he calls it, after a revival meeting in Midland at 2 a.m. on a Thursday morning in April 1984. A man named Arthur Blessitt, who was walking the world carrying a cross, came to Midland, and thousands turned up every night to hear him preach. It was Blessitt who got Poage to surrender his life to Jesus.\n\nIn the fall of 1985, Bush and Poage were part of a group of men\u2014their number soon grew to 150\u2014who began to gather every Monday night at First Presbyterian Church, forswearing the weekly football game on television. Community Bible Study, as the national organization is called, is strictly nondenominational, open to Protestants and Catholics alike. It was also mainly a women's organization at the time; the men in Midland were breaking the mold. The night would start with singing a few songs, perhaps a hymn or a rendition of Hank Williams's \"I Saw the Light,\" and then the men would break into groups of ten or so to discuss the lesson of the week. \"We studied Acts and the Book of Luke, which is the only Gospel with the story of Jesus told in chronological order,\" Poage says. \"It was orderly and made sense in a way that fit George W. Bush.\" The homework they were supposed to complete took a couple of hours each week and required answers to questions such as these, from Lesson 21, on the Gospel of Luke\n\nUsing a dictionary, define kingdom as it related to the kingdom of God.\n\nWhat does Jesus mean when He says, \"The kingdom of God is within you\"\n\nWhat has to happen before we can enter the kingdom of God\n\n\"Our group was very close, with a mutually created trust,\" Poage says. \"It was 'Show me yours and I'll show you mine.' \" He says Bush did his homework and had good answers and even better questions; he was by turns quick, sharp, flippant and deep. \"He had searched the Bible for answers,\" Poage explains. \"Some guys would take the Scriptures and just quote it back as a way of staying safe. George wasn't trying to score points with his faith or appear to be devout when the men in the group knew his true situation at home. He was genuinely searching. We talked about the lesson and what was going on in our lives. Nobody would've thought he would be president. He was just a guy.\"\n\nAs Poage and I talk, friends and neighbors stop by our table in a steady stream of shared greetings. The conversation is entirely about church Which service are you going to on Sunday First United Methodist First Baptist Church of Christ Poage tells me, however, that the spirituality of Midland transcends matters of church and doctrine; the point is a personal relationship with Christ.\n\nThe media tend to mock prayer, Poage says, and consequently it is impossible for the president to fully describe his beliefs and the ways he worships and seeks God's counsel. \"I feel like he has passed me in his walk with Christ in the past two years. He has been driven to his knees more and more by the job he has been given. I think he was deep in prayer before Iraq. I think he was searching God every day for what to do next. But the last thing that needs to come out of his mouth is 'I prayed on this, and it's the right thing to do.' That's part of the wisdom George has got from up there. If he said that, the press would immediately say, 'It's a holy war.' \"\n\nThe faith of the president hides in broad daylight, there to be seen but designed to avoid the ridicule that Poage and every evangelical I met anticipates. Mark Leaverton, an oilandgas lawyer who was also a member of the Community Bible Study group in Midland at the same time as Bush, told me that many people are afraid to talk to journalists about their faith. \"You can tell reporters who understand and those who don't,\" he said. \"You need to understand the centrality of religion in people's lives and respect it.\"\n\nThe term born again entered the lexicon in Jimmy Carter's 1976 presidential campaign, during which he told Playboy magazine he had been born again\u2014and the term soon became the subject of ridicule during the scandals involving televangelists during the 1980s. Leaverton said that there are many ways to describe the moment when, in the eyes of Christ, you pass from death to life accepting Christ into your life; surrendering to Christ; being born again; asking Christ into your heart; believing in Christ. \"Many Baptists and Pentecostals will tell everyone they meet how and where and when they were born again, but Bush avoids that term for good reasons,\" Leaverton told me. \"If you're from the South, in the Bible Belt, you understand the language, but a lot of northerners don't.\" Bush is an evangelist in the way it is commonly understood, Leaverton said He has an intimate relationship with the creator of the universe. \"If you asked George Bush facetoface what he believes, he would tell you, but it can come off sounding kind of severe because it's not an easy thing. Do you believe Christianity is the only way to God Well, Christ was very clear about that. He didn't allow much wiggle room.\"\n\nInstead of chancing such direct revelation, the term preferred by the president to describe his faith is the walk. \"It's made my walk clearer,\" Bush told Beliefnet, an Internet site dedicated to religion, when asked if it is harder for a secular person to lead a moral life. \"To me, faith is a long walk,\" he told Charisma, a Christian magazine. \"It's not a moment. It's a walk.\" In A Charge to Keep, he wrote that Billy Graham \"led me to a path, and I began walking.\"\n\nLeaverton told me he was absolutely certain Bush had been born again. Leaverton was at a communitytheater production one night in the spring of 1986, and it happened that he and his wife sat next to George and Laura Bush. Leaverton leaned over and asked Bush how he was enjoying the Community Bible Study sessions. Bush tilted forward, his eyes afire, and said, \"You know when we read that story about Jesus and Nicodemus meeting and Jesus saying, 'You must be born again' It has changed my life.\"\n\nLeaverton smiled at me.\n\n\"Now, George didn't take it farther, but he was saying that he had been born again,\" he said. \"I could see he had been lit up.\"\n\nThe rise of modern evangelicalism, from the margins of American politics to the center of power, coincides precisely with the rise of George W. Bush. Evangelicalism, from the Greek word for \"gospel,\" or \"good news,\" can be defined in countless ways. It transcends denomination, in the same way that Bush's faith does, and its core principles have remained the same for centuries being born again in Christ, Biblebased worship and saving souls. Depending on how the question is worded, some 45 percent of Americans describe themselves as \"born again.\" In other words, more than 100 million Americans are evangelical Christians. James Guth, a professor at Furman University in South Carolina and the leading political scientist tracking the ways that evangelicalism impacts the politics of the country, said that the faith of the president was perfect for a politician trying to court the white evangelical vote. \"Not to be cynical, but he couldn't have done it better, even if he had tried,\" said Guth. \"I think he has genuine faith, but virtue and political opportunity can run in the same direction.\"\n\nLike much of the country, the story of faith in the Bush family is one of movement to the south and the west and the right. Whereas his father was reticent and reserved in matters of religion, the \"vision thing\" was precisely what the son chased hardest. He followed closely in his father's footsteps in every way, if only as a less brilliant imitation of the elder's feats as a baseball player and fighter pilot and oilman. But in the matter of faith, and insight into its political powers, the son has far exceeded the father.\n\nThe genius of George W. Bush for dealing with the conservative clergy first became apparent in 1987, when he moved to Washington to help with his father's run for the White House. Bush became the point man on wooing the evangelical vote. Doug Wead, a political adviser to the elder President Bush at the time, had been writing a series of memorandums on the best ways to communicate with evangelical Christians. Wead told me that the younger Bush understood the ways of evangelicals intuitively, viscerally, and that he was able to reassure them directly about his father's beliefs. In his new publicly devout role, Bush quit smoking cigarettes cold turkey and set out to try to control the rages he was prone to flying into\u2014\"feisting out,\" as he called it. He met with Jerry Falwell and James Dobson and was charged with the task of outmaneuvering the campaign of televangelist Pat Robertson.\n\nWead, who now works as a motivational speaker, came to know the younger Bush well in the years Bush was first learning the code for communicating with evangelicals. \"George would read my memos, and he would be licking his lips saying, 'I can use this to win in Texas,' \" Wead told me. \"Signal early and signal often\" was Wead's motto. He offered, by way of example, the time he and the younger Bush suggested that the elder Bush attend a Billy Graham revival \"I was friendly with the guy who produced Billy Graham's television shows, and I suggested that we could have a camera isolated on the vice president, and he would be carefully following Graham's words, and at the right moment he would wipe away a tear. It was the only time I recall the older Bush getting angry with me. He didn't want political use made of it, but it happened anyway. They got shots of him, and they used them on their show.\"\n\nThere are ways for the president to communicate with evangelical voters, Wead said, without directly speaking about religion. He can associate with evangelical athletes and celebrities; secular fans don't necessarily know about the faith of the famous, but Christians know them all. Bush's daily devotional reading also sends a message \"There is nothing more thrilling for an evangelical than to believe their president is reading the Bible,\" Wead said. \"Evangelicals believe the Bible is the inspired word of God, so he's hearing the word of God.\"\n\nIn the rare moments when he is left to his own devices, unscripted and apparently just speaking his mind, George W. Bush has a long record of causing himself political woe. \"Heaven is open only to those who accept Jesus Christ,\" he said in 1993 during his Texas gubernatorial campaign, earning a rebuke from Billy Graham. (Bush was right, according to the New Testament, Graham said; it was just that he shouldn't play God by deciding who does and does not get into heaven.) Famously, a few days after the attacks of September 11, Bush called the war on terrorism a \"crusade,\" a misstatement\u2014or a revelation of true intentions\u2014of biblical proportions.\n\nBut in his formal public speeches, guided by chief speechwriter and fellow evangelical Mike Gerson (or \"the Scribe,\" as Bush calls him), Bush uses extreme precision in communicating with his Christian constituency. A person steeped in the language of faith can recognize the voice of someone who shares his beliefs, and in this way the younger Bush is pitchperfect. \"Yet there is power, wonderworking power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people,\" the president said in his last State of the Union address. The reference is instantly recognizable to evangelicals as coming from the hymn written by Lewis E. Jones at the turn of the last century Would you over evil a victory win the jaunty singalong Sundaychurchhouse tune goes. There is power, power, wonderworking power / In the blood of the Lamb.\n\nThe danger Bush faces, Wead said, is to speak too much to his evangelical constituency and to risk alienating other possible voters\u2014which is why Bush has become such a master at signaling. Mentioning \"the Christ word,\" as Doug Wead called it, runs counter to the tradition of presidents talking about religion in an ecumenical way, but Bush works it in anywhere he can. During the war in Iraq, the president spoke at the White House Correspondents Dinner. NBC news correspondent David Bloom, a committed Christian, had died of a pulmonary embolism during the conflict. Bush read aloud from Bloom's last email home to his wife \"Here I am, supposedly at the peak of professional success, and I could frankly care less. Yes, I am proud of the good job we have all been doing, but in the scheme of things, it matters little compared to my relationship with you, the girls and Jesus.\"\n\nThe ecutive branch of government under George W. Bush is the most religious in generations. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, the daughter and granddaughter of Presbyterian ministers, is a deeply devout Christian who often goes to Camp David on weekends and shares in private worship with the president. Secretary of Commerce Don Evans, from Texas, first gave Bush The One Year Bible, containing selected verses for each day of the year. Attorney General John Ashcroft, son and grandson of Assembly of God ministers, is a member of Washington's National Community Church. Karl Rove, the president's top political adviser, keeps his faith quiet and out of public sight. Rove has said that the strategy for Bush's 2000 campaign was inspired in large measure by William McKinley, president at the turn of the last century and the last Methodist to sit in the White House. (McKinley was famously devout. His last words, as he died after being struck by an assassin's bullet, were \"It's God's will. His will, not ours, be done. Nearer my God to Thee. Nearer to Thee.\") Rove now coordinates relations with evangelical leaders such as Charles Colson and Franklin Graham, Billy's son. When these figures have condemned Islam as \"evil\" and a religion of war, the president has publicly disagreed and described Islam as a faith of peace. Nevertheless, the private relations continue without pause.\n\nRichard Land, president and CEO of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, is an adviser to the White House on the intersection of politics and religion. A graduate of Princeton and Oord, he had a sharp ear for any hint of \"secular bias\" in my questions. Land met the younger Bush during his father's campaign of 1988 and was the 2001 presidential appointee to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. He said his presidential nickname is Ricardo.\n\n\"George Bush is an evangelical Christian, there is no doubt about that,\" Land told me. \"The president's evangelicalism means he believes in the truth of the Bible, with a capital T the virgin birth, the death of Christ on the cross for our sins, the physical resurrection and, most important, a personal relationship with Jesus.\" Land said he trusted the younger Bush even more than he trusted Ronald Reagan \"Bush is traditional and religious, and now there is no 'Nancy factor'\u2014no need to go through a Nancy Reagantype figure to get to the president.\" He said that the president didn't change after September 11 but that the world changed \"The president believes America has a purpose in the world, and that purpose is to fan the flame and light the candle of freedom. I believe that he believes\u2014as do I and many evangelicals\u2014that we have a responsibility to help people experience the freedom that is their Godgiven right.\"\n\nLand said that people fear George W. Bush because they don't understand his faith. \"They don't understand that kind of moral certainty. They live in a world of shades of gray. Their ethics are situational It's not right or wrong; it depends on the situation. But some things are always right, and some things are always wrong.\"\n\nLand apologized and put me on hold for a moment. He had to get off the phone, he said. He had a conference call with the White House on the other line.\n\nThe official story of George W. Bush's personal salvation involves Bible study and quitting drinking. In A Charge to Keep, Bush wrote that another key moment came in the summer of 1985. Visiting his parents in Kennebunkport, Maine, he sat by the fireside and listened to Billy Graham talk about faith. \"And what he said sparked a change in my heart,\" Bush wrote. \"Reverend Graham planted a mustard seed in my soul, a seed that grew over the next year.\"\n\nThere is one moment of salvation, however, that did not make it into the autobiography and has not been told before. Arthur Blessitt, the man who brought Don Poage to Jesus in Midland in April 1984, had an encounter with Bush at the same time\u2014one Blessitt told me he could recall in vivid detail. Blessitt came to Midland as part of his mission to walk the world carrying a twelvefootlong cross, which, he said, God had told him to use to spread the message of Christ. (At this point, his trek has spanned 300 countries, territories and island groups and more than 36,000 miles, a feat recorded in Guinness World Records as \"the world's longest walk.\") In Midland, one of Blessitt's friends told him that the son of the vice president of the United States had heard him on the radio talking about Jesus and wanted to arrange for a private meeting. It was an extraordinary time in that city, Blessitt said. The oil business was in a terrible way and many fortunes were suddenly lost, but this downturn led to a religious awakening in the town. \"It was an awesome move of the Holy Spirit,\" he said. \"A very great evangelistic harvest.\"\n\nBlessitt and Bush met privately in a room at the Holiday Inn, praying and talking together for an hour and a half. Bush was uncommonly direct and to the point, Blessitt said. \"I talk to countless men about Jesus, but it was one of the few times I've had a man look me directly in the eyes and ask me a question like that 'I want to know how to know and follow Jesus Christ.' \"\n\n\"What is your relationship with Jesus\" Blessitt asked.\n\n\"I'm not sure,\" Bush said.\n\n\"The call of Jesus is for us to repent and believe!\" Blessitt said. \"The choice is like this Would you rather live with Jesus in your life or without Him\"\n\n \"With Him,\" Bush said.\n\n\"I want to pray with you now,\" Blessitt said.\n\n\"I'd like that,\" Bush said.\n\nThey held hands and prayed aloud. The younger Bush had a firm but tender grip, and it tightened as they recited, one line at a time, \"Have mercy on me as a sinner.... Cleanse me from my sins and come into my life.... I love you, Lord. Take control of my life.\" Blessitt then said, \"There is rejoicing in heaven now! You are saved!\" Blessitt told me he recalled that Bush insisted on giving him a check for $1,000, even though Blessitt refused donations. Don Poage corroborated this story. \"George told me he tried to give Blessitt a check, but the preacher refused it, so he gave it to the preacher's wife,\" Poage said. \"Even though George is tight as the bark on a tree, he wouldn't take no for an answer.\"\n\nBlessitt told me he believed Bush was totally sincere. \"When he left that room, he confessed that he felt he had received Jesus Christ as his personal savior. I asked him, 'If you died right now, would you go to heaven' And he said, 'Yes.' \" In his diary, Blessitt recorded the event. \"April 3, 1984 A good and powerful day. Led Vice President Bush's son to Jesus today. George Bush Jr.! This is great! Glory to God.\"\n\nDuring Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, Blessitt went to a breakfast fundraiser at a large house on the Caloosahatchee River in Fort Myers, Florida, to meet Bush again. \"I actually parted with $1,000 to get in,\" Blessitt said. The house was full, and Blessitt was afraid he wouldn't get the chance to say hello to Bush, but he prayed on it and decided to position himself near a door\u2014and sure enough, the candidate came through that door and Blessitt was the third person to shake his hand.\n\n\"I am Arthur Blessitt,\" he said. \"We met in Midland.\"\n\nBush instantly recognized him. He pulled Blessitt to him and offered a hug. Blessitt quietly told Bush how proud he was of Bush's testimony for Christ, and he asked if they could pray together again. \"May the peace of God fill you even in the face of your adversary,\" Blessitt recited, reading from a prayer he had composed for the occasion. \"May Jesus show you His way, His truth and His life.\"\n\nI asked him why he thought Bush hadn't told of the Midland experience in A Charge to Keep, and Blessitt said he didn't know the answer. \"It is a phenomenon inside the evangelical world for people not to talk about Jesus to outsiders,\" he said. \"When you're in politics, you have to watch everything you say. Not me. I have nothing to hide. I am open and clear about my personal relationship with Jesus Christ.\"\n\nAfter I had tried for weeks, by phone and email, to get an interview with the president or anyone intimate with the ways that faith works in the White House, Dan Bartlett finally returned my call. He is in charge of every aspect of media relations for the government and has served Bush for more than a decade. Bartlett told me he knew little about the president's personal faith. It was reported, in Time magazine, that after September 11 the president privately said he had been chosen by the grace of God to lead the country at that moment. \"The president had never said he thinks he is the chosen one, selected by God to be the leader in this time,\" Bartlett told me. \"He has never said that, and he doesn't think it. I have never heard him describe the broader context of our times in biblical terms\u2014not even in the Middle East, not in public and not inside the walls of the West Wing of the White House.\"\n\nI asked what role prayer plays in the president's decisionmaking, such as in going to war.\n\n\"I think you'll find that as with prior administrations, much of what happened only comes out after the presidency is over,\" Bartlett said.\n\nI told him that every one of the pastors I approached had declined to talk. One Houston minister had agreed happily, on the condition that he check with the White House first; he called back and said someone in Karl Rove's office had told him not to speak with me. When I phoned that office, an aide explained that people were afraid to talk about the president's faith, without saying whom or what they were afraid of. Bartlett told me, \"It's not inconsistent or odd that somebody would want to be private about their own personal belief system and at the same time be able to talk about faith in our country.\"\n\n\"Do you know any pastors or a spiritual adviser who might talk to me\" I asked.\n\n\"Have you prayed on it\" he asked.\n\nSunday morning in Midland, the faithful sit quietly in the pews of First Presbyterian Church, a large brick building with stainedglass windows depicting scenes from the Old and New Testaments, from the creation to Christ as king. It was here, in this church, that the younger Bush first worshipped, and it was here that he first studied the Bible with the men of Midland. All over the city, the driveways are empty, the pews are full. The flock in First Pres is entirely white, as far as I can see, men in khakis and blazers, women in modest dresses and sensible shoes. Pastor Steve Wilkins begins by thanking God for the rains of the night before; the land has been parched, the drought seeming to never end, but the thunder and the lightning and the rain have finally come, and now the land and the people have been nourished again. The pastor offers a prayer for American soldiers in foreign lands, and he tells the story of David Bloom and his faith in Christianity, and he reads the same quote the president recited; the tale has been moving through evangelical circles.\n\n\"What does it mean that Jesus ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty\" the pastor asks.\n\nThe church is silent.\n\n\"If you want to know Jesus, you need to look to the Scripture,\" the pastor says. \"If you want to know the will of God, you need to look to the Scripture.\" .\n\nFor evangelical Christians, for the president of the United States, it is the Gospel that matters, not the church or its interpretation of the word of God. And the Bible is a story of the struggle between good and evil, God and the Devil. It is the divine plan as revealed in the heart of the saved.\n\nThe pastor then asks the question that faces George W. Bush and, through him, all of us.\n\n\"When people look at you, what do they see the hands of Christ doing\"\n\nGuy Lawson is a GQ writeratlarge."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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