Customer Reviews

Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Kuo was a special assistant to the president from 2001 to 2003, deputy director of the White House office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Kuo writes with great clarity and sincerity.

Many will read this book for its "Gotchas" about the Bush adminstration, but it's also an excellent portrait of a life: a life devoted to serving Christ through serving fellow citizens, and attempting to serve them both through directly and through politics (yeah, yeah, render unto Caesar etc). Kuo lives his life in the question of how to best serve, and this book combines his history and his ruminations on the mixture of politics and Christianity.

I should point out that Kuo is not the first person to leave Bush's Office of Faith-Based Initiatives in disgust. That honor belongs to John J. DiIulio Jr., who described his tenure in the Whitehouse in a Jan. 2003 Esquire article famous for the phrase "It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis".

I have only skimmed this book so far, but I was struck by the passage where Kuo meets Hillary Clinton in a receiving line and takes the opportunity to apologize to her (earlier in the book, in order to grease the skids of fellowship, Kuo agrees with a rural sheriff that Hillary is "the AntiChrist"). he apologizes to her for his attacks: not for attacking her policies, but for "personal attacks." Hillary is taken aback, but manages to stutter out an "Okay, Okay, thank you," and later mentions Kuo's apology in a speech. Kuo is afraid his career in conservative politics is ruined, until he learns that Hillary didn't mention him by name.

Kuo started in politics working for William Bennett, and then moved to the senatorial offices of John Ashcroft. He writes his disenchantment with politics, of the damage to his first marriage during that time, and his resignation from Ashcroft's office to try to repair his marriage and spend time with his daughter. Eventually he re-enters politics for a second round, and works for Bush in the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

One of Kuo's biggest disenchantments in his second round of politics relates to Bush's "Compassion" speech. Kuo regards the speech as an $8 billion per year promise, and writes that they were $7,969,000,000 short on the promise, in the first year alone. He writes that that made him perhaps worse than the Democrats, because at least (in Kuo's eyes) the Democrats didn't raise false hopes.

All in all I recommend this book for its sincerity, fine writing, and its utterly truthful insider gotchas about the Bush administration.

This is one seriously interesting commentary that clearly demonstrates that politics and religion do not mix. More importantly, author Kuo alleges that the former White House Director of Political Affairs, Mr. Ken Mehlman, knowingly used his office and government funds to mount a religious voter movement in 20 political races on behalf of the Bush Administration. In essence, by using the White House's Office of Faith Based Initiatives, which President Bush used to assist the poor, as a central point to court and manipulate the religious-right's political machine, Kuo is openly stating that the Bush Administration misused its power and overstepped its authority while betraying one of their grass-root based supporters. Equally important is the shared commentary about how certain administration members viewed the courted far right, going on to label them as the `nuts'. Overall this is a worthwhile read that must be viewed with a certain sense of reader balance and understanding that writers, regardless of the short and narrow, have subjective views that guide objective reporting.

By David M. Kinchen
Huntington News Network Book Critic

Hinton, WV - In his eye-opening account of a pilgrim's progress - or rather a lack of it - inside the Beltway, David Kuo's "Tempting Faith" (Free Press, $25, 304 pages) confirms to me something that I believe is obvious: Politics and religion shouldn't be mixed.

In fact, at the end of the book, evangelical Christian Kuo seems to come to that conclusion, suggesting a two-year "fast" from engaging in politics for his fellow believers, who should instead support charities that help the poor and the sick. Fasting, he points out, is an integral part of Christianity, it's good for the soul and body and Jesus was a strong believer in fasting.

The book's subtitle - "An Inside Story of Political Seduction" - tells a lot about Kuo's experiences both before and after working for the George W. Bush administration. From 2001 to 2003, he was second in command - deputy director -- at the President's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, working closely with the director of the organization, John DiIulio, and with Dilulio's successor.

As a matter of fact, Dilulio, quoted in a Dec. 4, 2002 Esquire magazine story by Ron Suskind gave more than a hint that the Bush White House was using believing Christians as part of a Karl Rove-designed scheme to secure the voting base of that group. In the article, according to Kuo (Page 219) Dilulio "critiqued the Bush White House for its lack of a serious policy apparatus. Policy wasn't made by philosophy, John said, but by politics. `There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus...'" Kuo said the article went on at "length detailing Karl Rove's perceived power."

The cat wasn't totally out of the bag, but its whiskers were showing in the Suskind article on "Bush's Brain," Karl Rove. Dilulio, whom Kuo describes as being a dead-ringer for the Newman character on "Seinfeld," resigned as director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiative in August 2001, after the six months he had promised to stay were up. He moved back to Philadelphia where he joined the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania. Kuo worked under Dilulio's successor, Jim Towey, before leaving in 2003. Towey was Mother Teresa's U.S. lawyer (I'm not making this up, it's right there on Page 197!).

"Tempting Faith" is a memoir of the son of a refugee from Communist China, born in 1922, and a devout Christian woman from the Deep South who hated the oppression of minorities of her region. Kuo tells of his brush with death when he discovered he had a brain tumor at the age of 34 - he's 38 now. It occurred while he and his second wife, Kim McGreery Kuo, were driving home from a party on Washington's scenic Rock Creek Parkway. Kim managed to avoid traffic and bring their SUV which Kuo was driving to a crashing halt which didn't harm her. David Kuo was diagnosed with a tumor and was told after surgery that it could reappear at any time.

Second wife for an evangelical Christian? Yes, Kuo says it happens to believing Christians, especially those in workaholic DC. He and his first wife Jerilyn drifted apart and amicably divorced in the late 1990s; but he's close to the two daughters from the marriage. This is a tell-all book about the cynicism of the staffers in the Bush Administration toward believing Christians, but it's also an engaging and readable look at Kuo's life, with only a little about his dot-com interlude (he wrote a book a few years ago called "Dot.Bomb" and is currently the Washington, DC editor of the Beliefnet web site) and his love of fishing, especially professional bass fishing.

He says his father more or less went along with his United Methodist religion, but his Georgia-raised mom was the major influence in making him a devout evangelical. His mother studied nursing at Atlanta's Emory University, where she grew to hate a profession that discriminated against blacks in the segregated South. She met Kuo's dad in California while attending college.

About the seduction of Washington, Kuo says (Pages 250-251) that it's "not just because of the perks, which are nice, but because of the raw power of the place hidden in a true desire to save the world. It is the ring of power from Tolkien's `Lord of the Rings.' The longer anyone holds the ring the more he loves it, the more he hates it, and the more desperate he is to hold onto it. It becomes the most precious thing in his life...The ring owns, it is not owned."

That's one of the most eloquent paragraphs I've ever encountered about the seduction of power and is a useful corollary to Lord Acton's oft-quoted aphorism about the corruption of power ("All power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.").

Before joining the White House, Kuo was shaped completely by a faith he rediscovered and completely accepted during his high school years. He tells of attending college and the the pregnancy of a college girlfriend that ended in abortion (didn't I say this is a tell-all book??!!). His acceptance of Jesus as a personal savior led him to the nexus of religion and politics, working with William Bennett, John Ashcroft, Jack Kemp, Bob and Elizabeth Dole and Ralph Reed, among others, as a speech writer and policy wonk.

Kuo met George W. Bush while the future president was governor of Texas and was impressed with Bush's acceptance - at the age of 40 when he was a down-and-out alcoholic -- of Christ. I get the impression that Kuo believes that Bush is not acting in his Christianity, that it is the fault of White House staffers who thought "evangelical leaders were people to be tolerated, not people who were truly welcomed. No group was more eye-rolling about Christians than the political affairs shop. (Page 229). Kuo adds that "Political Affairs was hardly alone. There wasn't a week that went by that I didn't hear someone in middle - to senior-levels making some comment or another about how annoying the Christians were or how tiresome they were...."

Bush doesn't completely get off the hook, to use a fishing image that Kuo might appreciate as he sits on his bass boat. He says (also Page 229) that "George W. Bush loves Jesus. He is a good man. But he is a politician; a very smart and shrewd politician....if the faith-based initiative was teaching me anything, it was the President's capacity to care about perception more than reality. He wanted it to look good. He cared less about it being good."

This combination of staffer cynicism and Bush's wanting "it to look good" led to the activities of the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives being blatantly used to elect Republicans in both the mid-term 2002 elections and the 2004 campaign, Kuo charges.

Reviewer disclosure: Like many, if not most journalists, I'm a thoroughgoing secularist, a person who believes religion and politics don't mix. I approached "Tempting Faith" with an open mind, but the information Kuo supplies confirms my view: Religion and politics not only don't mix, they shouldn't.

"Tempting Faith" is an important book for religious true believers and secularists alike.

Publisher's web site: www.simonsays.com (Free Press is a division of Simon & Schuster).

Kuo's web site: www.beliefnet.com

Reviewer disclosure:

A review by a who/what? Five stars? Yes, and an explanation is in order. I don't ordinarily read, much less, review current conservative authors. Like everyone else, I see the daily barrage of political scandal, deceit, hypocrisy, ad infinitum- ad nauseam on the daily news and the patterns are clear: the faith-based amongst us are constantly being prevailed upon to support whatever political schemes and candidates the GOP is promoting. The platitudes and biblical one-liners/phrases are tossed around like candy to attract favor in the single-minded effort to get that precious vote. So blather the "wolves in sheep's clothing", me thinks and gag me with spoon.

So how could so many good God-loving, faith-based, well intentioned people be taken-in in light of these obvious blatant scams, nonsense and unfulfilled promises? What's the psychology here? Are the faith-based blind, naive? You know: lights on, but nobody is home. I really wanted to know just exactly what goes on in the noggin of the average faith-based that would have them routinely casting their vote for the GOP/Corporate ticket.

So when I first heard that David Kuo's book "Temping Faith" was reportedly suggesting that the Bush admin and the GOP in general was taking advantage of the faith-based for their votes while not following through with promises, my interest was piqued. This "revelation", while an obvious no-brainer to anyone even partly paying attention to politics, is potentially huge. And to boot, this from a Bush admin insider! Hmmm.

My first reaction was Hallelujah! A good standing member of the flock finally wakes up and gets it! Considering what the conservative vote has inadvertently wrought on this country and the world: the GOP blessed de-regulating of polluting/predator corporations, war, poverty, a trashed economy (except for the rich and Wall Street), denial of global warming- again, ad infinitum- ad nauseam- well, I just had to find out what David Kuo has to say.

The Book

David Kuo`s "Tempting Faith" is for the most part, autobiographical: his upbringing, coming to the Christian faith, family, education, trials and tribulations, aspirations, politics, etc.

I found his writing style flowing, informing and at times, heart wrenching- he has been through some rough rows in life- the kind that would test anyone's faith. Overall, I was left with the impression that he is candid, honest, decent and sincere, albeit, somewhat naive or at least overly trusting. Although many of his political views differ from mine, he seems like the kind of person who could easily take part in a civil, non-confrontational political debate.

His political "insider" experiences include working for Ted Kennedy, being a policy advisor to John Ashcroft, speechwriter for amongst others, Ralf Reed, Pat Robertson, and Bob Dole, et al. Kuo eventually became second-in-command in the Bush admin's Faith-Based and Community Initiatives committee.

It was in this role that he was exposed to the cynical, back stabbing treatment that pervaded in the White House towards the Evangelical Christian leaders who were looking to the Bush admin to fulfill election promises in exchange for encouraging their flocks to vote republican, yet getting almost nothing but derision for thanks- the vote was all that they were interested in.

I was amazed to learn that Kuo still holds George W. Bush in fairly high regard and this is due to his opinion that the shortcomings and betrayals of the Bush admin are mostly with the advisors such as Karl Rove, et al. Naive? I should think so. To suggest that Bush is not aware of what's going on in that regard is hard to swallow, but who's to argue that point with such a nice, decent guy like Kuo? One gets the feeling he actually believes this.

Kuo's bottom line message in this autobiography/political expose' is that American politics is in serious need of a cleansing- gee, ya think? Kuo's line: "The politically untainted can help wash those of us grown dirty with the filth of politics." and that Christians need to take a "temporary step back from politics" for a "...reexamination of political involvement."-- leaves one with a bad taste if they subscribe to the notion of separation of church and state like our wise forefathers tried to carve in stone for us.

This book is a sobering read for those of faith, the secular and everybody in between- one might not agree with Kuo's politics, but all will surely agree on his honesty and courage to speak out, especially about how the GOP has been taking the faith-based for a major ride! The index is extensive and allows for good reference. Well done David Kuo, 5 stars!

"Tempting Faith" begins with Kuo's early life, his accepting Christianity, and gaining credibility through working for Bill Bennett, Ralph Reed, John Ashcroft, Bob Dole, and Pat Robertson.

Ultimately Kuo was also impressed by George Bush, and had the opportunity to work in the White House under John DiIulio. Kuo was particularly motivated by the opportunity to participate in Bush's promised $8 billion per year in aid for faith-based organizations (1999 speech in Indianapolis), with $6 billion coming from tax credits for donating money to groups helping the poor.

Unfortunately, the $6 billion did not materialize - it was left out of the House's $1.7 trillion tax cut bill, put into the Senate's version by Senator Grassley (assumed its omission was an error), and then removed by Conference Committee participants at the direction of Bush's Legislative Affairs Assistant.

The logic was that it was so popular it would stand on its own, and didn't want it adding to the cost of the first tax cut; besides Bush needed room later on for his next $100 billion estate tax cut, that actually ended up cutting charitable giving by an estimated $5 billion/year. Unfortunately, key Christian conservative lobbying groups focused instead on judges, abortion, stem cell research, and gay rights - not the poor. Soon Kuo realized he had become a Christian in politics looking for ways to recruit others to get their votes, not trying to serve God through politics.

Kuo and his boss then came up with the idea of assisting local threatened Republican candidates in having meetings of faith-based and community leaders regarding how best to help the poor in the area. Supposedly non-partisan; regardless, 19 of the 20 so targeted won in 2002.

Of the $8 billion/year Bush had promised, only $30 million had materialized by 12/02. A peer-review process was utilized to parcel this out - Kuo and his associates quickly realized the ratings were a farce because well-regarded and established groups ended up with low scores vs. "new ventures." (This was confirmed when one reviewer confided having given a non-Christian group a 0 score, based on that fact alone - was supposed to be available to all faiths.)

On at least three occasions (one was after the uproar that followed DiIulio's' statements trashing Bush's faith-based efforts), Bush advisors hurried to find monies to hand out. In '01 Bush announced $3 billion for drug treatment initiatives, but $0 had been given out by 12/03. Then there was $100 million to prevent teen violence - but it actually was pulled from another poverty-help program and thus not "new" money. Another time he claimed $8 billion in new funds for faith-based groups - actually was money they had been getting for years, only now the process was made somewhat easier.

Kuo eventually wore himself out in his futile pursuit and left. Was he right - '06 faith-based funding actually fell.

In his first presidential campaign George W. Bush promised to spend $8 billion per year in new money to help the poor through faith-based initiatives. As an earnest and talented evangelical Christian, David Kuo was euphoric, and in 2001 he joined the White House staff as a Special Assistant to Bush to help manage the new effort. At long last, he thought, he had found a way to use political means to further Gospel ends. Much to his credit, two years later he resigned when he realized that the Bush administration had done "less than nothing" to fulfill their promises. It was all "a farce, a brazen deception, smear tactics, a mirage." The grant application process was a sham and probably illegal and unconstitutional. Worst of all, he saw how instead of using politics to further the Gospel, his Bush colleagues played right wing evangelicals like a cheap violin to further their political ends, and in private derided them as dupes, nuts, and crazies. Evangelicals, Kuo discovered, were used and abused as an incredibly gullible gold mine of voters (over 80% of them voted for Bush), nothing more and nothing less. "We were good people," he concluded, "forced to run a sad charade, to provide political cover to a White House that needed compassion and religion as political tools."

Kuo has been hammered by Dobson, Colson and other conservative ideologues who cannot bear to admit what he has documented based upon extensive personal experience. I found him evenhanded in his treatment. He calls a spade a spade, gives people the benefit of the doubt, and tends not to judge their motives. He does a good job, for example, showing the flagrant disregard, derision, and breathtaking ignorance on the part of Democrats for people of faith and their concerns (all to their political loss, of course). Talk about out of touch--is it really possible that Terry McAuliffe, former head of the DNC, had no idea who Rick Warren was when he met him at a National Prayer Breakfast (p. 256: "Was it any wonder evangelicals preferred hanging out with Republicans?"). Kuo is hardest on himself. "I let the passion of politics distract me from what matters most in life." In fact, most of his book is a personal memoir about his own awakening to the corrosive environment of political power in which manipulation, fragile egos, broken marriages, propagandistic lies, and partisan ideology are the order of the day. Principled purists with a genuine conscience will pay a heavy price to play this game of pragmatists. For Kuo, a divorce, disillusionment, remarriage, and surgery for a massive brain tumor at the age of thirty-four changed all that, as did his growing realization that for Christians the Gospel should subvert political power, and not vice versa.

As a Republican, turned Democrat, turned Republican, turned "Liberal" Democrat, who was rescued by and began following Jesus at age 42, I bought this book to gloat(shame on me) about the exposed hypocrisy of the right wing fundamentalists and to find more detail of how they were used by the right wing Republicans to further an agenda promoting American expansion into Oil Country. What I found was much different. I found a serious Christian who had worked hard to serve his Lord by serving other serious, if naive, Christians by helping to get them in office and into a position to change the American social system. The problem he discovered was that it could not be done (at this time) by politics; the best intentions to serve the poor and improve society could not change the already built in need for funds for military and entitlements nor compete with the promised tax cuts needed to get elected in the first place. I came away however, not only with a great respect for the effort made, but also a little compassionate understanding of Bush and even of Karl Rove (replacing disgust, bordering on hate(shame on me again)). No one has all the answers. One of the most helpful parts for me was the Afterword, where Kuo (who is in a remission with incurable brain cancer, and thereby is in no position to take things lightly)suggests that Christians (true followers of Jesus) have a "fast" from politics and try to take it to a higher plain, recognizing that God is in control, and try to see what He wants us to do with our time - probably accomplishing our social agenda by loving others and Spiritual assistance rather than by politics.

Rating-wise, I would have given Kuo, whom I greatly now admire, a 5. However, although he generaly writes very well, - his profession- there were sections where he lost me and I missed the point - most likely my fault, but anyway -1 star. Well worth reading for anyone interested in the relationship of religion, social welfare, and politics in today's world.

Kuo writes as a conservative evangelical who was deputy director of GWB's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives from 2001-2003, with a longstanding interest in the politics of compassion/caring for the poor. His pedigree as a compassionate conservative is both unusual and impressive - he writes of growing up Methodist, having a born-again experience in high school; being spurred into Christian political engagement, as a liberal Democrat, by Chuck Colson; working on the Dukakis '88 presidential campaign and interning with Ted Kennedy, before becoming pro-life after his girlfriend's abortion. He joined the Natl Right to Life Committee in 1990, then worked for Bill Bennett, wrote speeches for Ralph Reed and Bob Dole, and drafted Charitable Choice legislation for Sen. Ashcroft as the religious/social conservatives were taking over Congress. Bush asked him to become his speechwriter during the 2000 campaign, and then brought him into his administration in the Faith-Based Initiatives Office. If you think he has interesting stories to tell in this book, you are correct.

A lot of noise has been made about Kuo's description of epithets and derogatory references to evangelicals and the faith-based initiative by Rove, Card and the White House staff at-large ("the nuts," "ridiculous," "out of control," and my personal favorite, "the f***ing faith-based initiative"), but that's relatively peripheral. Kuo's thesis is that conservative evangelicals have been coopted by the Republican party (similarly, as an aside, to how the NAACP - once a powerful force for social and political change - has been coopted by the Democratic party) - have become identified with / defined by a particular political agenda, and are so captive to the owners of that agenda as to have lost real influence, or even an appropriate sense of themselves. He calls for a two-year "fast" from conservative religious political activism, as a time to get back to basics with God, to reorient our priorities, and to wean ourselves from the patronage of our Republican overlords.

He describes how enamored he was of Bush, as a Republican who talked freely about social and economic justice and compassion for the poor, promising $8 billion a year in compassion funding - $6 billion in tax credits for charitable donations to encourage giving, and $2 billion in new funding for specific poverty programs, and $500 million annually for the Compassion Capital Fund, to help small, local, faith-based and community organizations. He makes clear that, to this day, he respects and admires GWB the man as a person of sincere faith and unquestionable compassion, but GWB the president did not have the political will to actually implement the initiatives. After the first year and a half of the Bush administration, the heart and soul of compassionate conservatism - viz., the charitable giving tax credit - had been replaced by the estate tax cut, and only $30 million of compassion funding had actually made it into the budget - one-quarter of one percent of the promised funding at the time. He goes on to describe how politically useful it was for Bush to make these promises, and how politically unnecessary to deliver on them. Christians trust Bush because he is an evangelical, he loves Jesus; if he says he's gonna do something, he'll do it - and if not, well, he must have had a good reason. So energy and political capital were spent on politically useful issues, ones that would continue to galvanize votes and dollars, wedge issues like gay marriage and strict constructionist judges, rather than caring for the poor. (Because faith-based, compassion-for-the-poor efforts are functionally irrelevant to Republican fund-raising, as Kuo illustrates with a sad anecdote about Dan Quayle's donor pool on pp. 98-100.) Church leaders like Dobson/Ted Haggard (NAE)/Richard Land (SBC)/Ken Connor (FRC)/etc. are treated to weekly conference calls with the White House, summarizing what Bush would be talking about that week, soliciting their input, and giving them a list of talking points - which they take back to their people. Which is how you end up with a religious right apparently far more concerned with gay marriage than with loving the poor (a prioritization that is difficult to jive with Scripture).

The saddest thing in Kuo's book, and one I've not seen any conservative/religious commentators respond to (they've focused on questioning his motives, dismissing his "fast" idea as silly, and making ad hominem attacks - in fact, the conservative blogosphere response to Kuo's book argues rather eloquently for his thesis), is that the poor, who have no clout or lobby, were supposed to have two advocates during this administration - the church, and this president. And they were let down by both. They were let down by the political process, in which liberals raised a church-and-state hue over once-bipartisan faith-based initiatives which were essentially identical to those touted by Gore during his own 2000 campaign; and in which Republican legislators (he mentions DeLay and Hastert) were interested not in actually getting compassion legislation passed, but in making it as aggressively partisan as possible (e.g. federal funding of expressly evangelistic organizations), and then using Democratic opposition to paint them as "the anti-God party."

I loved this book. I love how fair-minded he is, despite the above criticisms; he is not shrill, and he refuses to demonize anybody (I like Barack Obama's new book for the same reason.) He takes pains to describe Bush, Rove et al. as well-intentioned men who are operating in a certain political reality. I enjoyed the story of his interracial heritage, of how Justice O'Connor manhandled him while teaching him how to flyfish; of what it was like being in the White House on the morning of 9/11, the glimpses into GWB and John Ashcroft as people, and especially the narrative of his own journey of faith, as he moved in and out of wedding his faith to politics.

David Kuo worked at the White House in the Faith based charities office. This book details what can happen to a spiritual person who allows politics to take first place in his life. Kuo, who is a born-again Christian, found himself not serving Christ but serving politics using the name of Christ.

I am a former fundamentalist Christian and a former Republican. My libertarian streak caused me to leave both. Good old Republican values of small government, keeping the government's nose out of our private business and fiscal restraint have gone out the door. When I was a Christian I belonged to a church which disdained groups such as the Moral Majority as being too worldly. This combination of religion and politics only struck me as very scary not as a means for improving the human condition in America.

Kuo was raised in the social gospel tradition of the United Methodist Church as I was. So my question to my former fundamentalist church was "What are you doing for the poor other than denouncing welfare queens?" Kuo naively joined the White House taking President Bush's words about Compassionate Conservatism seriously. He genuinely sought to help the poor and needy amongst us. Instead it was used to help the election prospects of Republicans. In fact, your taxes were being used to promote a particular type of Christianity with no money going to "liberal" or non-Christian charities.

I do think the book is sincere. It also is a good warning to others both left and right about being used by the political parties. Kuo was well armed to learn these lessons. Some of his mentors and admired writers warned against submitting their faith to politics. He still fell to the temptation of power. He compares it to the Ring of Power in the Tolkien books. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were Christians and both wrote books about the temptations of power. So the warning was there but he did not heed it.

The book also describes the boorishness of some of the ministers who are powerful in the Christian Right. I had noticed that their behavior was not any sort of witness to the love of Christ but Kuo confirms it. Dobson is a hard-nosed bully. Falwell is a shallow dimwit who does not seem to understand how to behave in public. He exonerates some I thought were not very good or nice people. Karl Rove is described as a sweet good-hearted man, for example. I could not figure out President Bush from Kuo's descriptions. Is he sincere or isn't he? Read the book and decide for yourself.

There is a telling quote in the introduction to the book that all should take to heart. I see the Christian Right from the outside and fear for my freedom. After reading this book, I actually have some more respect for supporters of the Christian Right as individuals but I still feel somewhat as Kuo describes in his introduction. "When I talk to neighbors or strangers and tell them that I try my best to follow Jesus, many look at me queerly. I've come to learn that their first thoughts about me are political ones--they figure I don't care about the environment, I support the war in Iraq, I oppose abortion, I am ambivalent about the poor, I want public schools to evangelize students, and I must hate gays and lesbians." Now think about Jesus. I don't think any of those things when I think about him.

This is a book warning Christians about losing their witness and a good book for non-Christians to learn that not all conservative Christians are lock-step with the Republicans.

Kuo writes an interesting critique of the Bush administration, but, in the end, he remains just one more partisan player. As a non-Christian Democrat, I purchased the book hoping to see some ethical realism at work in Kuo's analysis of the Bush administration. To some degree, my hopes were realized. Nevertheless, I kept feeling that Kuo's soul still operates on a strictly partisan "us/them" level, and his afterward proves the point. In talking about a Christian "fast" from politics, he writes: "If we take a two-year (and just a two-year) break from politics, will America go to pot? Of course it won't. The brilliance of our Founders is that they created a system where change is very slow and very gradual. Bill Clinton's problems couldn't sink us, nearly four decades of Democratic congressional control didn't sink us, and two years of Christians retreating from politics won't sink us."

Of course, one might argue that his entire book is an indictment of the Bush administration, but I think it might better be termed a call for Christian extremists to look elsewhere for their revolution.

Frankly, I find Jim Wallis' book, God's Politics, a more fulfilling read.