January 15, 2025

George W. Bush's America

I searched very hard for religion throughout my childhood and into my early twenties. I searched so desperately for a faith to find relief from my own internal morality. I believe many suffer from the same affliction. I see most decisions as moral ones. I know when I am transgressing my own internal rules and often fall short of my own standards. Each year, my goal is live a life more in line with my values than the year before it. This is a fact of myself.

I searched for a religion.

Religion would allow me a break. It would let me put the responsibility for my morality on someone or something else. I would no longer have to weigh decisions against my own soul, but against a rule book. This external force, this institution, would keep my morality for me.

For some, inclusion into a religious group is morality enough.

As we tumble back into George W. Bush’s America, this strange function of religion—and, more specifically, the Puritanical Protestantism from which America bloomed—plays out in front of our eyes. I watched clips of Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing mediated through comedy shows or talk radio. It was all I could handle.

Tim Kaine, a Catholic, framed Hegseth’s failings as conservatives claim to see them. He did not speak about Hegseth’s alleged sexual assault of a woman as assault, but as infidelity. (Conservatives do not care about autonomy and consent, but the bonds of matrimony they claim sacrosanct.) Hegseth, when asked if he had taken an oath to be faithful to the wives on whom he cheated, burst out with what felt like a non-sequitur: “I have failed in things in life and, thankfully, I am redeemed by my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

This brand of Protestantism, currently en vogue, is a sort of neo-Calvinism. When I speak of neo-Calvinism, I speak of a New World, old style Protestantism wherein there is no separation between secular and sacred life. There is a mandate to recreate the culture. There is redemption through faith alone. You will be redeemed (or not) as God sees fit, but there is no work to do, outside of belief.

Hegseth, in his outburst, claimed the mantle of morality, in spite of his actions, due to his purported belief in God. Evangelicalism is well-correlated with Trump, both in vote tallies and theological shifts. But, to my eyes, this current mode of Christianity feels as if it is religion sans morality. Or, perhaps more accurately, religion in place of morality.

As I said, we’re back in George W. Bush’s America. George W. Bush claimed to be our most religious president (whatever that means), even as he used the levers of power to lie, to cheat, to steal, to kill. He was religious, perhaps, but not moral. And so we see the same.

Democrats—led by a man allegedly steeped in Catholicism—have, of course, ceded the moral high ground by supporting a genocide. I cede nothing at all. The existence of religion, or one’s inclusion into a religious group, does not morality make. The news media, running double time, will try to conflate them, but I draw them out, separate them in this moment, for myself.

With flared jeans in my closet, I am attempting to prepare for the cultural shifts that will vitiate everyday existence. And so I need to relearn the lessons I spent my tweenhood teaching myself. Morality is an internal rubric, upon which one is forced to judge their own life. Morality cannot be given to you, it cannot be prescribed.

For many—perhaps most—religion does not offer morality but rather an escape from its requirements. There is no need to better oneself if an unknown force will provide redemption, will decide if you’ve had a life well lived.