February 3, 2003
President Draws on the Bible to Comfort a Grieving Nation
by Cathy Lynn Grossman
USA Today
Americans in countless houses of worship prayed for the Columbia astronauts -- Christian, Jewish and Hindu -- over the weekend. But for many, the most memorable words of comfort in the moment of crisis came from their president, not their preacher.
President Bush's speech Saturday resounded in biblical poetry, God images and an invitation to pray that ''all are safely home.'' It came into millions of homes like a homily from a national pulpit.
He drew on Isaiah 40:26, one of the most beautiful passages in the Hebrew scriptures: ''Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens. Who created all these? He who brings out the starry hosts one by one and calls them each by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.''
The choice likely reflected the hand of his lead speechwriter, Michael Gerson, who studied theology at evangelical Wheaton College in Illinois. Bush, a born-again Christian who became a Methodist when he married Laura, is at home with scripture in a way that Ronald Reagan, who rarely attended church, was not.
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