With God On Our Side
First shown on Channel 4 in October 2004
US president and born-again Christian George Bush believes that both he and his country have a special relationship with God, and he’s taken his faith straight into the White House. His cabinet meetings commence with prayers, there are regular bible study sessions in the House, and his straight-talking speeches are peppered with 'good v evil' mantras. How did the US, a country which supposedly cherishes the separation between church and state, acquire a president who has openly breached that divide but at the same time built a wall between Christians and those of other religions or none?
Channel 4's two-part programme, With God On Our Side, investigates the revival of the evangelical movement and the journey that led it to the White House. Galvanised into politics 50 years ago by communism abroad and the election of Roman Catholic president JFK at home, then by liberal policies that attacked its traditional moral values, the religious right consciously decided to ‘do everything to get involved in the political process’.
After years of unsuccessfully trying to curry favour with the presidents of the time – initially welcoming born-again Jimmy Carter, for example, until they realised his politics were more liberal than his personal faith – the movement set out to populate the grassroots of the Republican Party with pro-family Christians.
Since the presidential campaign in 1980, the religious right – mainly through the Christian lobbying group the Moral Majority (whose line was ‘get them saved, get them baptised and get them registered’) and then later through the Christian Coalition – has been providing crucial organisational, financial and motivational support for the Republicans in exchange for influence in Washington.
Although they are only a small minority of the party, members have used the movement’s power to mobilise Christians through the churches with ‘get out the vote’ drives, voter guides and fundraisers. Meanwhile, the movement’s leaders have gone after the local apparatus of the Republican Party ‘precinct by precinct, community by community and state by state’ to gain formal access to the party’s policymaking processes. In 2000 they were rewarded with the ‘real deal’: George W Bush, ‘the first president to become the movement’s de facto leader’.
