(RNS) President Bush says he prays in the Oval Office and his faith has changed his life but he can’t say if God chose him to be president, ABC News reports.
“I just, I can’t go there,” Bush said in an interview that aired Monday (Dec. 
on “Nightline.” “I’m not that confident in knowing, you know, the Almighty, to be able to say, `Yeah, God wanted me of all the other people.”‘
Speaking at length about his beliefs, the president said he’s “not a literalist” when reading the Bible and he “would have been a pretty selfish person” without his faith. He also thinks belief in God and evolution are not mutually exclusive.
“I happen to believe that evolution doesn’t fully explain the mystery of life,” he said.
The president said he thinks he prays to the same God as others with different faiths, but that doesn’t include terrorists.
“I think anyone who murders to achieve their religious objective is not a religious person,” he said. “They may think they’re religious, and they play like they’re religious, but I don’t think they’re religious.
They are not praying to the God I pray to … the God of peace and love.”
He also said that going to war in Iraq “was not a religious decision.”
Bush hopes President-elect Barack Obama will continue aspects of his White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives.
“I think he knows that in certain communities, in order to help achieve a national objective there needs to be something more powerful than government, and you can find that there’s something more powerful than government on nearly every street corner, in a house of worship,”
he said.
As he looks beyond the presidency, he said he would strive to stay on the Christian walk, endeavoring to continue to learn about his faith.
“I’ve come to this conclusion — maybe I’m wrong, I don’t know — that the full understanding of Christianity is going to take a full lifetime of study,” he said.
By Adelle M. Banks
Religion News Service
Copyright 2008 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.
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posted December 9, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Thank you Mr. President. This side of you is one the media did not give us the opportunity to see more of. Though I did not vote for you, I will not judge you on false witness and doubt the sincerity of your faith. While I do not agree with some of what you siad in the interview, and definately did not agree with all of your decisions as President, it is hertfelt faith and unpresuming comments like these that I will miss about your Presidency. I don’t agree that Christians pray to the same God as all other faiths, and I wonder if you were just trying to be PC (something that as Christians we must avoid the temptation of doing out of respect of truth and love for the souls of all.)
A very humble and inciteful closing statement as well. God Bless you sir, and may he in time justify and protect your name and decisions, as he is the ultimate judge of Truth and righteousness.
posted December 9, 2008 at 8:29 pm
There are times when I wish the Christian religion is true and that there is a hell — a really nasty, sulfurous, smoky, painful hell… this is one of those times.
posted December 9, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Sorry you feel that way, no name. I’m strongly confirmed in my faith and am glad that there’s a heaven, but awfully sorry so many souls choose to go to hell, whether they be ex-presidents, mass murderers, hit men, child molesters, or what have you.
posted December 9, 2008 at 9:39 pm
If there is a god, she/ he would have known that “W” wasn’t the person for the job.
posted December 10, 2008 at 10:32 am
Some of us believe we all meet the same fate at death. One person’s heaven is another person’s Hell. Imagine the look on either the righteous’s or the condemned’s face when they see who is next to them on the ferry across the Styx.
I think it would be interesting to recruit Scarecro-W as a Sunday School teacher. I have learned that you never recognize your own beliefs as much as when you are trying to explain them to a class of 7th graders (they ARE most powerful people in a church – everyone is afraid of them). The students do not suffer fools well, and will challenge a careless teacher without hesitation. Neither Congress nor terrorists are any match for a seventh grade class the has picked up the scent of fear, confusion, or simple inconsistency in a teacher.
posted December 10, 2008 at 11:10 am
I have great admiration and rewspect for thsoe that have chosen to give their life to Goad by following Him and not the “World.” It is not an easy journey; one that is ever ridiculed by those that have not personally experienced God’s love. It’s always easy to be a critic, though, isn’t it? So now we have a president about to leave office after 8 years of public service that proclaims he is a Christian. I believe him. And I say, good for him because when he, as with all of us, when we take our final breath, the power of his presidency won’t matter, but the power of the love in his heart will. God looks at the love we carry around in us, the compassion, and also the ugly and the hateful that we’ve read in some of these responses. We should be careful not to ridicule or decry another’s faith or their relogious practices, except those practices of the terrorists, of course who use religion as an excuse. A person’s true and honest religious business is really their business and not ours. Isn’t that what the Constitution talks about – freedom of religion?
posted December 10, 2008 at 11:34 am
Quote from Pres. Bush: Speaking at length about his beliefs, the President said he is not a “literalist” in reading the Bible and he would have been a pretty selfish person without his faith. He also thinks that belief in God and evolution are not mutually exclusive.
If he had addressed this before being voted in by the fundamentalist right, they wouldn’t have voted for him. In fact this is the first time I remember him talking about himself so freely. Of course it’s safe now to do this.
posted December 10, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Of COURSE God wanted W to be Prez. God LOVES irony. There were thousands and thousands of gay marriages created under his reign, and millions of jobs lost.
Sort of divine justice/retribution for Bush’s smear that gay people de-sanctify marriage. Too bad about the job losses under the worst, most incompetent “president” EVER! Too bad aboutt the billions lost on a war based on lies. Too bad about the loss of civil liberties.
What a pile of …