Potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush answers a question from a reporter after speaking to the Greater Salem Chamber of Commerce in Salem, New Hampshire onMay 21, 2015. Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Brian Snyder *Editors: This photo may only be republished with RNS-BUSH-FAITH, originally transmitted on June 16, 2015.

Potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush answers a question from a reporter after speaking to the Greater Salem Chamber of Commerce in Salem, New Hampshire onMay 21, 2015. Photo courtesy of REUTERS/Brian Snyder
*Editors: This photo may only be republished with RNS-BUSH-FAITH, originally transmitted on June 16, 2015.


 This image is available for web and print publication. For questions, contact Sally Morrow.

UPDATED: OCT. 15

Religious liberty has become a go-to issue for GOP contender Jeb Bush on the campaign trail. Interviewed by a Southern Baptist leader in August — amid a furor over elected officials refusing to issue marriage licenses for same-sex couples — Bush called for “balance.”

He said, “We don’t want to create an environment that discriminates against people based on their sexual orientation, and we certainly don’t want to discriminate against people that believe that their faith drives their actions and the things that they consider to be important.”

Still, he cautioned, if the “foundational freedom” of religious liberty is taken away, “”it’s very easy to imagine other freedoms being taken away.”

Both he and rival Sen. Marco Rubio said they would keep religious liberty for private as well as public businesses and organizations in mind in choosing Supreme Court justices and in naming an attorney general.

Despite his outreach to evangelical voters, Bush chose not to speak at the Value Voters Conference in Washington, sponsored by the conservative Family Research Council. However, Bush, hoping to be the nation’s second Catholic president, did find his way to the capital to see Pope Francis celebrate the canonization Mass for St. Junipero Serra.

ORIGINAL POST:

(RNS) Like his Republican brethren, Catholic convert Jeb Bush, 62, is chasing the white evangelical vote in the pre-primary heats of the 2016 presidential race. Bush says he will officially announce his candidacy Monday (June 15). But with his sinking poll numbers — and plenty of Catholic and evangelical competition, too — he has a fight ahead.


READ: Jeb Bush preaches religious liberty at Southern Baptist event


Here are five faith facts about the third Bush to look toward the Oval Office. 

1. Like many Americans, he comes from a religiously mixed family.

His great-grandfather was a Catholic . His father, George H.W. Bush, was raised Episcopalian, and mother, Barbara, grew up Presbyterian. His brother George W. is an evangelical who drew voters with his narrative about giving up his partying ways after a talk with Billy Graham. Jeb Bush married his wife, Columba, a Catholic, at the University of Texas’ Catholic student center when he was just 21 years old in 1974.

He joined the Catholic Church in a ceremony at the Easter vigil in 1995, finding wisdom and solace in it a year after a brutal campaign and humbling defeat in his first run to be Florida’s governor, according to The Washington Post. This winter, Bush told a New York Times reporter, “I loved the absolute nature of the Catholic Church. It resonated with me.”

2. Faith infuses his governing choices.

Jeb Bush has long been more overt than his father or brother were about campaigning and governing on a religion-based moral agenda. “It’s not an imposition of faith. It’s who you are,” he told The Florida Catholic in 2007.

Whether he’s talking about the unborn or the terminally ill, Bush told Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family, his “deeply held belief” is that “the most vulnerable in our society need to be protected. They need to have legal rights. And as a society, we need to recognize their value and their worth.”

As Florida governor, he pushed laws to limit abortion and he offered state funding to crisis pregnancy centers that counseled against it, he told Daly in an April 13 radio interview. Bush tried unsuccessfully to block the effort by Terri Schiavo’s husband to disconnect the artificial food and hydration that kept his irreparably brain-damaged wife alive. Bush also opposes physician-assisted dying, now legal in five states.


READ: 11 faith facts about GOP candidates who debated on CNN


3. But he’s not 100 percent in line with Catholic teaching on all points.

Bush is in accord with the Catholic bishops on pushing for immigration reform, according to The New York Times, which tracked Bush to his Coral Gables, Fla., church one Sunday in March and photographed him passing the peace.

But he doesn’t heed Catholic teaching on one matter of life and death. Like 59 percent of white Catholics in a Pew Research Center survey,  he supports the death penalty. Florida executed 21 prisoners during his two terms as governor, 1999-2007, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

4) The ‘warp speed’ of social change mystifies Bush.

He is uneasy as a Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage looms. He told Christian Broadcasting Network chief political correspondent David Brody he could not fathom the “warp speed” of changing public views on this. “Irrespective of the Supreme Court ruling … we need to be stalwart supporters of traditional marriage.”

5) He’s kissed the evangelical ring.

A radio host in Iowa told the Washington Examiner: Voters there are “not necessarily looking for the nice guy, or the guy who says ‘Jesus’ the most.” They want a conservative champion of religious freedom.”

And that’s the bell Bush rang in his commencement speech at Liberty University, the conservative college in Lynchburg, Va., founded by Jerry Falwell.

Bush accused liberals of seeking to undermine religious freedom. According to Reuters, he said “fashionable opinion” has a problem with Christians and the only proper response is “a forthright defense” of the constitutional right to freedom of religion.

“Federal authorities are demanding obedience, in complete disregard of religious conscience,” he said. “In a free society, the answer is no.”

LM/AMB END GROSSMAN

34 Comments

  1. Jeb Bush is opposed to gay marriage so therefore his liberal opponents would necessarily consider him to be a “bigot” especially when compared to Hillary who is totally committed to implementing gay marriage and advancing gay rights.

    Hillary does not bother explaining why gay sex is good and righteous because those who support her do not really care whether it is right or wrong, nor who gets hurt.

    • Why do you care how I make love? Why are you so obsessed with my bedroom, when I don’t give a damn how and for whom you perform marriage ceremonies in your church?

      Civil marriage is a set of legal rights equally available to all American couples who choose them. You are not entitled to special rights based on the gender of the person you personally happen to love.

      So, GTFU.

      • Ofcourse you can do what ever you want to serve your desire and satisfy your sexual appetite. But don’t force this country to be gay country, we are one under God. We don’t hate gay, we really open and acceptance to gay. Most gay guy are have a good humor sense and good friends with girls. There are soo many ways to express sexual desire, it is not easy but this is about self value and respect to others. For example: exercise, doing charity work: volunteer, and there are many churches willing to help you for guidance and protection. We love you guys, we accept you and willing to help you. We disagree with the sense of embracing human self indulgence.
        JLU

  2. “Irrespective of the Supreme Court ruling … we need to be stalwart supporters of traditional marriage.”

    Good grief.
    Why oh, Why are these self-described deeply religious people running for president of a country where 30% of the population has ZERO interest in their religious nonsense?

    Jeb obviously belongs in a quiet parish somewhere spending his nights reading Thomas Merton, studying picnic itineraries, attending church socials and balancing the books after Bingo nights.

    The executive branch of the United States needs someone forward thinking and progressive – Republican or Democrat doesn’t matter.

    But Religion? Good grief. Has it EVER BEEN CLEARER?
    The world is leaving these ridiculous superstitions far behind.

    “Hate them” – JESUS (Luke 14:26)

    Regressive, backward nonsense.

      • First of all, the directive to hate is coming from Jesus.
        Not me.

        Secondly, to dislike Golf is not to dislike Golfers.
        You dislike atheism – fine – but you go further, you hate Atheists.
        That makes you a bigot. I was only talking about Christianity. Not Christians.

        • Max,

          “. . . the directive to hate is coming from Jesus.
          Not me.”

          Only the most weird mind could attempt to paint Jesus Christ as spreading a hate message. But, seeing that atheism causes extreme depression and hopelessness in so many relativists, secularists and atheists, it is no surprise to me that you peddle that lunacy.

          Just keep taking your psychotropic meds and maybe you’ll make it a few more years. Obviously they more than probably won’t be happy ones, but there is hope for even you.

        • BB,

          “Only the most weird mind could attempt to paint Jesus Christ as spreading a hate message”

          Wrong.
          You have been lied to.

          Jesus promises to send the vast majority of people to Hell.
          “The way is narrow” – JESUS (Matthew 7:14)

          “I WILL BE SENDING JUST ABOUT EVERYONE TO HELL” – JESUS (Matt 7:14)

          It is impossible to love someone and send them to eternal torture.
          Jesus knows most of humanity has been created to be doomed.
          He has neither a heart nor a brain – like his creators, he is the figment of legends and a terrifying, nonsensical influence on our culture.

          Jeb Bush endangers American law by discussing the role of Jesus in his brainless politics.

          These Jesus legends aren’t real and they aren’t good.
          When a politician mentions Jesus the atheists must object loudly.
          Keep this baloney out of our laws.

          • Max,

            I was once an atheist. I read things for myself and rejected materialism as extremely unreasonable.

            You have not just been lied to, but you have been mind-controlled lied to. I pity you as I do every other godless person that screams for attention, power and control. Your meanness truly defines the worth of the standard atheist.

            Zippo.

          • “I was once an atheist. I read things for myself and rejected materialism as extremely unreasonable.”

            Why did you reject the material that God made? Not good enough for you?

            why does your god encourage you to hate his creation?

          • Hi Max,
            I think that you are an atheist and I am wondering why can you understand the words of Jesus in the gospel like that. What did Jesus said in the book of Matthew chapter 7. The way to heaven is narrow, it is true, because the heaven is for those who love God and keep his commandments,…. Jesus said the gate to the hell is big and the way is broad, because people like the broad way, the way of sins, the way of living away from God. So how can we get to the heaven if we still doing the bad things? That’s why Jesus taught us to go in the narrow way, it is narrow, but it directs us to heaven.
            Sincerely,

        • www.GotQuestions.org

          Question: “What did Jesus mean when He instructed us hate our father and mother (Luke 14:26)?”

          Answer: First, we must take this verse in the context of the chapter. Jesus is teaching His disciples, and like any good teacher, He begins with a truth statement that is hard to understand in order to get His students thinking. Then, He clarifies the difficult truth statement with a metaphor. The truth statement is the confusing verse 26, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple.” So, if we don’t hate our family and our own lives, we can’t be His disciple. But does He mean we are to have real hatred for our parents?

          Next, Jesus relates a metaphor about a man who builds a house without counting the cost and finds that he cannot follow through with what he set out to do. He leaves the house unfinished because he cannot pay what is…

    • Atheist Max, your citation “Hate them” is terribly misleading and that is because you have pulled two words out of a larger passage. An intelligent reading of that passage in the Gospel of Luke would come to an entirely different conviction and conclusion that the one at which you have arrived. Further, in the Gospel of John, Jesus prescribes a commandment, “Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Jn 13:34-35. Jesus, unequivocally, is The Messenger of Love. Any other conclusion drawn from the Gospels needs to be immediately set right. I encourage you to revisit the Gospels if you intend to use them in citation. You might like what you find, even if religion or theism is not for you.

      • @Cesar,

        “Jesus, unequivocally, is The Messenger of Love. Any other conclusion drawn from the Gospels needs to be immediately set right.”

        There are much better examples of love than this character. Jesus punishes with eternal torture – that is not love.

        The writers of these Jesus legends were not in agreement with you.
        Jesus is a breathtakingly contradictory character because his words were written by hundreds of different people.

        I was once a Catholic – but I changed my mind about these stories.
        There is no evidence that a real Jesus said any of the things attributed to him.
        “Execute them in front of me” – JESUS (Luke 19:27)

        Jeb Bush has made the error of using a fictional character as an example for his life.

      • Yes, evidently he has not read the full chapter. This type of single verse usage shows a complete like of understanding what he has read. There will come a time for people who Hate God’s word will face tribulation and then the judgement. They will still be asking why?

    • Jesus is not saying to hate people, but to be prepared to abandon everything for Him if the situation occurs.
      You have to understand the language of the time.
      Please do not hate others. We must love and respect everyone. It is hard, I know, when people have such odd ideals from our own; but we must try to understand their beliefs. Then we will see we are all so similar.

  3. Here’s a responsible, moral man I’d like to see in the White House. The scandal-ridden, power hungry Clinton can’t be what America wants.

    • Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton is EXACTLY what today’s America wants on its current 100-yard-dash towards catastrophic divine judgment.

      Bush is a good candidate and has a biblical faith, but today’s America is openly rejecting the God of the Bible, so Bush has no chance to win.

      • Doc,

        I beg to differ. The Bush family is not what America needs now, or ever did. Neither Clinton or a Bush should represent this country going forward. It’s far past time to get a average man in the White House and leave the goofballs where they belong.

        • It is time to avoid people such as yourself. By this I simply mean that you do not cast your wisdom and good judgment to a person that has no insight of morals or scruples. Judgement is coming sir like it or not. If someone does not reach you with the word of God it isn’t going to be good. Ready or not here come the antichrist, and if you think following God is hard then the best is yet to come for you. I pray there will be some mercy and Grace for you. When you can take a simple Bible verse and twist it into a meaning such as this! Well all I can say is the antichrist is going to have fun with you, and the end will be Death! By the way the verse meaning is this: it does not matter if your family, or anyone else in your life chooses not to live for God that you should take a stand and live for him anyway. READ & STUDY THE WHOLE CHAPTER!

      • Supporting the death penalty is what Christians and Jesus would want?? I don’t think so.
        So many woman choose abortion because they are not properly educated about it and their bodies, and because affordable child care is so hard to find. We need to change this. At least Hillary is willing to do this. How many woman will actually choose to keep their babies’ after this? We need to pray for them, not treat them as if they don’t matter.

    • JR,

      “Scandal-ridden and power hungry?” That sounds like the majority of the Democrat Party that’ll vote for the scandal-ridden power hungry Mrs. Clinton. These zombie-bubbleheads have no clue about right or wrong. It’s like watching a glimpse of the Sodomites at Lot’s doorway.

  4. Betty Clermont

    Jeb has learned how to run a campaign from the pope. During an interview, Bush stated the pontiff’s “attitude” could “help Catholics in public life.” “In politics, we really need to focus on language that cuts through…the divide,” Bush said. “I think about …how I can improve how I express my views,” he admitted. “Pope Francis’s lesson may just be, Bush suggests, ‘Where you say it, how you say it, is important,’” because “in the case of Francis the media, in search of sound bites, may have glossed over some of the pope’s more inconvenient underlying beliefs.” http://www.nationalreview.com/article/416550/20th-anniversary-his-conversion-jeb-bush-talks-pope-francis-and-how-win-social-issues

  5. Deacon John M. Bresnahan

    There is a glaring mistake in this column. In Catholic teaching there is a big difference between capital punishment and abortion issues. Capital punishment is to protect society.
    I find it interesting that when there is a sensational shooting the media fills with anti-gun rhetoric. But two savage murderers in jail for life escape and dead silence on the cap punishment issue. Yet life sentences are the anti cap punishment answer usually promoted as a solution.
    Tell that to the terrorized citizens of NY, Vermont and border Canada, But if these men had been convicted in many states other than NY they would never have become a threat to others again.

    • Indeed good Deacon. The change to the Church’s outlook on capital punishment was mostly due to the increased security of the prison system. In other words, if they can’t get out to perform evil deeds in society, then it is best keep them alive in order to give these criminals a reasonable chance at salvation before the end comes. But this most recent break out shows that our system is not all that secure.

      • I agree. The death penalty is our way of acting as God and denying our brothers and sisters a chance for repentance. It seems like those people in favor of the death penalty are rejecting the power of repentance. We must help these people towards salvation, not kill them because we are afraid. We should fear nothing because we have The Lord.
        Forgiveness.
        It breaks my heart to read comments from “Catholics” who speak so harshly towards their brothers and sisters.
        We are all equal in God’s eyes.

  6. Tawnee,

    Remember, to many liberals that call themselves “Christian,” reading the Bible elicits the same response from them as did the demoniacs that listened to Jesus talk to them.

    Just keep yourself and yours in the faith and stay clear of the liberals, progressives, atheists and garden-variety secularists et al.

  7. Ka_rla Tawne_ei Mich_elle

    Repent! I’m Karla Tawneei Michelle or whatever my name is now the repentbot and you must Repent!!! or god will whup your big behind and burn you in HELL!

    Repent! Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead! Repent! Or just don’t bother. There’s no god, stupid.

  8. Speaking of Catholicism, It’s good to see Pope Francis saying a tiny little soundbite to mildly encourage Rome’s Christians to stand up against the gay activists. It’s better than nothing, I suppose.

    But the U.S. Supreme Court is about to legalize gay marriage from coast-to-coast, and Pope Francis hasn’t said ANYTHING — not even a tiny little soundbite — to help out American Christians at all.

    We need his help against the Gay Goliath, and time is clearly running out. WHERE IS HE?

    • Maybe it’s because there are other issues in the world. As catholics we should serve others. We should show our love towards others, as Jesus wants us to do. This is how we show people what Catholicism is all about. We should not want to bring down anyone, but to rise up as children of God. Then they will see if their actions are sins.