Whose Side is God Really On?

by

Samuel Silver

Toward Tradition Chairman

During a recent interview Madeleine Albright chastises President Bush for “the certainty with which he talks about his relationship with God” and because, in her words, he “fully believes God is on our side.” Then she compares him negatively to Abraham Lincoln whom she quotes as saying, “we need to be on the side of God.”

However, President Bush never said this; it was implied by a New York Times reporter in a question to John Kerry during a Democrat primary debate, and the mainstream media and left wing blogosphere went wild with it.

It is the reporter’s assertion that President Bush has “made it quite clear in his speeches that he feels God is on America’s side,” but she did not and as far as I can tell has never produced the speeches in which he supposedly made this simplified, unconditional assertion. The statement she did attribute to the President, originally used in his address to the nation immediately after 9/11 that “Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them,” is not a claim that God is on America’s side regardless of America’s behavior, but that God is on the side of freedom and justice, which this President, along with almost every U.S. President before him, believes is part of America’s essence.

The Times reporter then turned to Senator Edwards for his response. He quoted Lincoln, also implying President Bush stated God is on America’s side no matter what. Senator Kerry then re-used the false assertion and quote in his acceptance speech at the Democrat convention, and now Ms. Albright parrots it almost verbatim in a mischaracterization of the President’s position. It is also an oversimplification and mischaracterization of President Lincoln’s position.

It is ALMOST an embarrassment to quote Lincoln in discussing our current crop of political leaders, but I think a thorough reading of Lincoln would place him closer to President Bush than Madeleine Albright might like:

The real quote came about when President Lincoln overheard someone remark that they hoped "the Lord was on the Union's side." Lincoln replied:

I am not at all concerned about that, for I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord's side.

Lincoln, as did all of the Founders, had a very strong belief in Divine Providence. He also shared the same rational doubts and questions of most religious people, excepting insane extremists such as the radical Islamists and secular fundamentalists attempting to destroy western civilization.

In 1863, President Lincoln issued a Proclamation appointing a National Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer:

Whereas, the Senate of the United States devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God in all the affairs of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for national prayer and humiliation;

and Whereas, it is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history: that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord;

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown.

But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.

Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.

Can you imagine the outrage if George W. Bush made such a proclamation!

In 1862, President Lincoln confided his desire for Divine Guidance:

We are indeed going through a great trial - a fiery trial. In the very responsible position in which I happen to be placed, being a humble instrument in the hands of our Heavenly Father, as I am, and as we all are, to work out His great purposes, I have desired that all my works and acts may be according to His will, and that it might be so, I have sought His aid.

On second thought, it is not ALMOST an embarrassment to quote Lincoln along with Albright, Edwards, and Kerry. It IS an embarrassment.

Editor's Note: Sam Silver, well known Jewish community leader is the national chairman of Toward Tradition and lives in Atlanta.