Wonder Working Power

Here's what I don't understand. (Well, okay, one of the countless things that I don't understand):

Much has been made of President Bush's expert use of evangelical "in-speak." He uses words and phrases, well-known and suggestive of particular meanings to evangelical Christians and somewhat obscure or invisible to the rest of us. A prime example of this is when Bush used the phrase "wonder-working power," recalling a hymn entitled Power in the Blood, and its refrain:

There is pow'r, pow'r,
wonder working pow'r
In the precious
blood of the Lamb.

Many evangelicals, apparently, love him for those sorts of references. But did President Bush actually say, in a political speech, that there was "wonder working power" in the precious blook of the Lamb? Well, no...he said: "There is power – wonder-working power – in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people" [my italics].

Why is that important? Because it strikes me that evangelical Christians, rather than falling all over themselves in their rush to join the Bush fan club after this statement, should be outraged, scandalized, up in arms. Theologically speaking, it is a hell of a long way between saying "the precious blood of the Lamb" holds wonder working power and saying "the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people" holds wonder working power. It is the distance, one might say, between fundamentalist Christianity which holds that our salvation lies completely in the bloody sacrifice of the crucified Son of God, and either a more humanistic philosophy that says humans have the capability to choose what is good and right, or a nasty nationalistic philosophy that affirms that wonder working power would actually choose to reside exclusively in the American people. (For my money, it would be a stretch to imagine Bush as an enlightened humanist.)

But what did he say? To change the location of just precisely where this "wonder working power" of hymn-fame resides seems like a huge theological shift that should have at least been noted by one or another of the Religious Right fans of Bush. Did they hear what he actually said?

It's not unlike saying, "A mighty fortress is this great country of ours." Now people may enthuse over the fact that I used a line from Martin Luther's well-known hymn, but doesn't it matter that I replaced our God in the line with this great country of ours, just as President Bush replaced the precious blood of the Lamb with the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people?

Or maybe we're all just speaking in code in this country, saying things that actually bear little resemblance to what it appears that we're saying but give tacit support or veiled criticism to one group or another. Maybe we can't tell what the hell each other is talking about so we just go with whatever sounds good, which is why Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" has become a 4th of July favorite and Carly Simon's "That's the Way I've Always Heard it Should Be" is sung at weddings. (Does anyone listen to what these songs are saying?)

I would like to put forth the proposition, before it's too late for all of us, that words can actually be used to articulate ideas, thoughts, experience and emotions. Rather than just being "symbols" of one side or another, words can promote understanding. Just a thought.