Messages From God

Soon after I was ordained to the priesthood the chaplain at the large mental hospital near my parish asked whether I could cover Sunday services for him while he took his month’s holiday. This chaplain was given to saying that if he weren’t chaplain to the institution he would certainly be one of its patients. He kindly warned me in advance of some of the more unusual features of celebrating mass in the secure unit. This included loud applause when I processed to the altar as if the mass was some kind of theatrical performance, which in a sense of course it is. It’s just that not many priests get applauded for their role in it. Then there was the young man who served as the altar boy. Having been trained to hold on to a corner of the celebrant’s chasuble and follow him everywhere, he did precisely that, even standing beside me clutching my chasuble as I delivered the homily from the lectern. I later learnt that this young man, barely into his twenties, had killed his entire family because he had received direct instructions from God to do so.

This experience taught me to be very wary of people who claim to be acting upon messages that God has given them. Many such people, particularly when they commit violent acts on the basis of heavenly inspired instructions, are deemed by society to have lost their grip on reality and are placed for their good and ours in institutions. Of course we have to be careful in reaching judgements about such cases. I well recall the psychiatrist R.D. Laing whose views on anti-psychiatry became very popular in the 1960’s arguing that in general those who are in touch with reality are locked up in asylums, while the rest of us, who have totally lost touch with reality are permitted to wander around freely. That’s a sobering thought.

Despite this, I was initially amused, but on reflection concerned to learn this week that President George W Bush claims as did my altar boy, to be in receipt of messages from God. It seems that in an interview with the Palestinian politician Nabil Shaath soon to be broadcast on BBC television, the politician claims “President Bush said to all of us: ‘I am driven with a mission from God’. God would tell me, ‘George, go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan’. And I did. And then God would tell me ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq’. And I did. And now, again, I feel God’s word coming to me, ‘Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East’. And, by God, I’m, gonna do it.”

George Bush was born again as an evangelical Christian in 1985 with the assistance of Billy Graham who is alleged to have warned him, ‘Never play God’. Throughout his political career he has claimed divine guidance for practically every action he has taken. He ran for President because ‘God wants me to do it’ and last year claimed in a meeting with Amish folk in Pennsylvania ‘I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job’. Moreover he believes that the USA is God’s instrument for the salvation of the world. ‘The liberty we prize is not America’s gift to the world’, he says, ‘It is God’s gift to humanity’. White House staff are expected to attend regular prayer meetings and in terms of the delivery of social welfare, the President has set aside billions of dollars for ‘faith-based groups’ because he believes these to be more effective instruments of poverty alleviation than government agencies.

Of course this religious rhetoric and faith-based welfare delivery have enormous appeal for the millions of Americans who constitute the Christian Right and whose votes are essential for maintaining Bush in power. Thus US General William Boykin, responsible for leading the hunt for Osama bin Laden told Christian groups in 2003 that the War on Terror is a war against Satan and said of the President ‘The majority of Americans did not vote for him. He’s in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this’. The General was subsequently promoted to the post of deputy under secretary for defence. Of course many Americans consider the Christian Right’s captivity of the presidency outrageous, and Bush’s critics accuse him of increasingly blurring the long held constitutional separation between Church and State.

Another product of Bush’s religious convictions, shared with the Christian Right, is his Islamophobia. Although following the attack on the World Trade Centre, his use of the term ‘crusade’ in framing his response was quickly removed from his public vocabulary, there is little doubt that this is what he privately believes. This week in revealing that the US and its partners had foiled 10 al-Qaida plots since September 11 he claimed ‘We are facing a radical ideology with unalterable objectives: to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world’ which is paradoxically of course precisely the way many poor nations have viewed US economic and foreign policy over the past fifty years, and in a heightened way during the Bush Presidency.

I think that Bush’s religious mania constitutes a threat to us all, particularly when he employs it to justify violence and war. The US and its Coalition partners provide no public figures of either troop or civilian casualties resulting from God having ordered the President to invade these countries. Figures compiled by agencies which do keep an eye on these things claim on the basis of the lowest estimates that in Afghanistan there have been to date 3,485 civilian deaths with a further 6,237 seriously injured, and in Iraq there have been 24,770 civilian deaths with 44,586 seriously injured.

For killing four innocent people because God told him to, my altar boy expected to spend a lifetime behind bars. For his divinely inspired role in the killing of nearly 30,000 innocent people President Bush not only remains free, but is applauded by members of the Christian Right.