The Crusade Against Evil: Bush's Fundamentalism

Abstract

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.