| Publication |
2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Having triumphantly forced Iraq from Kuwait only a few months before, President George H. W. Bush turned to address the faithful at the 1991 annual conference of the Southern Baptist Convention, America's largest Protestant denomination and a growing force in Republican politics. Bush's choice of venue revealed much about the power shift in the Republican party's religious and regional identity: here was a straight-laced Episcopalian, born and raised in the Northeast, paying homage to the largely evangelical Southern Baptists. "During the Gulf crisis, Barbara and I, and much of this nation . . . found guidance and comfort in prayer. For me, prayer has always been important but quite personal," he confessed to the increasingly political Southern Baptists. "You know us Episcopalians," he added wryly in a nod to their staid reputation, to the laughter of the Baptist delegates. "And like a lot of people," he continued,
I have worried a little bit about shedding tears in public, or the emotion of it. But as Barbara and I prayed at Camp David before the air war began, we were thinking about those young men and women overseas. And the tears started down my cheeks, and our minister smiled back, and I no longer worried how it looked to others.
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