c. 2000 Religion News Service

PHILADELPHIA _ Now that George W. Bush has the Republican nomination in hand and his eye on the fall campaign against Al Gore, voters can expect to hear even more about the “compassionate conservatism” that has been a staple of his stump speeches.

But more than just a campaign tactic or a device to draw in voters with a sunny slogan, this theme of compassionate conservatism draws on a deep vein of personal religiosity in Bush that could have an impact on all Americans if he is elected come November.

For Bush, faith and politics are intertwined, and favorite phrases like “armies of compassion” are rooted in a Christian lexicon that comes easily to a man who talks more openly and fervently about his Christian faith than any other recent presidential nominee since Jimmy Carter.

This “compassionate conservatism” that Bush repeats like a mantra is a catch-all phrase that is as much an attitude of governing as it is a detailed program.

In brief, it is a philosophy that encourages volunteerism and private charity while providing direct government aid to “faith-based” organizations, mainly churches, to carry out social welfare programs that would be relinquished by state and federal governments.

While many people find this talk appealing, if vague, others find compassionate conservatism disturbingly tied to a single sectarian viewpoint _ namely, a conservative evangelical vision that many other Christians, as well as believers of other faiths, consider alien to their interpretations of the Bible.

Certainly all presidential candidates publicly espouse faith in God _ the born-again Al Gore is no exception _ and want to be seen as caring toward the less fortunate. But Bush is unique in his willingness to embrace a very particular religious philosophy that he got almost in toto from a University of Texas professor, Marvin Olasky.

Olasky is an idiosyncratic thinker who was raised as a Jew, once agitated as a communist, and then 15 years ago rejected atheism and Judaism to become a conservative born-again Christian and one of the most influential GOP intellectuals of the last five years _ as well as a close Bush adviser.

“Compassionate conservatism is clearly tied to one particular faith, indeed, to one specific vision of God,” said the Rev. Welton C. Gaddy, a Baptist and head of the Interfaith Alliance, which promotes religious participation in the public square but which is leery of Bush’s approach.

“The language and ideas of compassionate conservatism as defined by Marvin Olasky up through George W. Bush come out of the evangelical Christian tradition, with some hints of fundamentalism,” he said.

Olasky himself disagrees, and in an interview argued that in spite of compassionate conservatism’s grounding in his own born-again experience, its principles are shared by all faiths.

“Whether it is Judaism, Christianity or Islam, all have an emphasis on compassion,” said Olasky, who first expounded his ideas in his 1992 book, “The Tragedy of American Compassion.”

“It certainly goes beyond evangelicals. When I started researching this, I looked at what Catholics and Jews have done, and they are very similar to my ideas,” he said.

Not everyone in those communities agrees.

“I would certainly not see much of a reflection of Catholic social principles in there,” said the Rev. Thomas Bokenkotter, a Cincinnati priest and author who is one of the nation’s leading authorities on the Catholic social justice tradition.

Bokenkotter said Olasky’s and the GOP’s stress on individualism, their antagonism to unions and a reliance on market forces to correct social inequities “are almost a religion for Republicans” and tend to contradict Catholic beliefs.

Many Muslims are also leery of compassionate conservatism because of its clear sectarian resonance in a predominantly Christian country.

While she says she admires Olasky’s earnest faith, Azizah Y. Al-Hibri, a Muslim scholar at the University of Richmond, said his philosophy “comes from his own beliefs without recognizing the consequences.”

Jewish critics also note that when Olasky talks about his debt to Jewish thought, he cites passages selectively, like his frequent mention of the eight levels of charity as defined by the 13th century Jewish sage Maimonides, who called personal involvement the highest level.

Under such a constrained interpretation, they say, almost any faith tradition can be made to conform to the traditional evangelical Christian notion of changing society by transforming individuals through individual effort _ a retread, critics argue, of the “thousand points of light” that Bush’s father promoted as president.

Skeptics within the mainline Protestant tradition also say compassionate conservatism relies far too heavily on a stern, Calvinist view of God _ what Bush has called “severe mercy”_ which stresses punishment and reward rather than unconditional love and grace.

Or, as the motto of one faith-based anti-poverty program has it, “You don’t work, you don’t eat.”

That is a religious view, said Gaddy, “that recognizes prosperity as a sign of good character and poverty as a sign of wrongdoing.”

Perhaps the most contentious aspect of Bush’s religious philosophy is its acceptance of capital punishment. While most American believers support the death penalty, the main religious traditions increasingly oppose it, from liberal Protestants to conservative Catholics.

As governor, on the other hand, Bush has allowed 138 executions in Texas, including the execution of Karla Faye Tucker, a repentant evangelical Christian whose case drew futile pleas of clemency from religious right leaders like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.

African-American Christians are particularly disturbed by Bush’s death penalty philosophy because they see implementation of the death penalty as racially biased.

“From my point of view the governor is trying to have it both ways,” said the Rev. Samuel K. Atchison, the chaplain at Trenton State Prison in New Jersey and a columnist for Religion News Service who participated in a discussion during convention week on the role of religion in politics.

“One the one hand, he is very innovative in applying faith-based programs. On the other hand, you have 138 people who have died in the execution chamber in Texas.

“As the Bible says, we have blessings and curses out of the same mouth,” he said. “At the very least, we are going to have to see more from the Bush campaign to see how they reconcile these two things, if at all.”

If Bush does triumph this fall, Olasky cautions that the victory of the top exponent of compassionate conservatism will not guarantee a sudden, clamorous conversion of American society.

“There’s a certain amount you can do through policy by reversing obstacles to religion. But you can’t mandate it (compassion),” Olasky said. “This is going to be a process that goes on for a long time.”

DEA END GIBSON