Nearly eight years ago I wrote an essay called "The Protestant Deformation"¹Orbis (Spring 1998). arguing that a certain Protestant heresy, in a secular form, had considerable explanatory power for then-current U.S. foreign policy. That was before George W. Bush was anywhere near the presidency. This essay updates and extends that argument, showing that religion, of a sort, has played an important role in U.S. foreign policy since September 11, 2001 — but not in the way many observers have claimed. Evangelicals and born-again high officials ought not to be the object of our attention, but, rather, the same Protestant Deformation that was at work well before 9/11.

The Ways of Faith

The Bush Administration, it seems to many, has imposed a great transformation upon the traditional conduct of American foreign policy. Its major initiatives — the "Bush Doctrine" of unilateral diplomacy and preemptive military action promulgated in the National Security Strategy of September 2002, the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, and especially the grand project to bring democracy and freedom to the Middle East — have created great resentment toward the United States in other countries. This, in turn, has led to a search within America itself for the causes of this transformation, a search that has intensified with the deepening U.S. troubles in Iraq. What can explain this radical departure in American foreign policy? And more pointedly, who is responsible for the Iraq debacle?

Several culprits have been nominated: neoconservatives, represented in the Bush Administration by former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and several of his immediate subordinates; "oil interests", represented by Vice President Dick Cheney; and hypernationalists, represented by the above figures but especially by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

But of course it is the Bush Administration we are talking about, and the most obvious place to begin the explanation is with George W. Bush himself. And here the focus has been upon what many consider to be the most distinct-and most peculiar-feature of this President: his strong Protestant religious faith and convictions. The President has often spoken of freedom as God's gift to America and to mankind, and of America's calling to bring freedom to all peoples. Moreover, his strongest electoral support has come from Evangelical Protestants. These are the people that the liberal media call "the religious Right" (although by that logic the media themselves should be called the "secular Left")....