While several Republican 2016 candidates courted voters at the South Carolina Freedom Summit Saturday, Jeb Bush took a different path to a similar constituency by speaking at Liberty University in Virginia. An important stop on the road to the GOP nomination, Liberty is the country’s largest Christian university. Bush used his commencement address to explore the relationship of faith and politics.
Bush made the case not only for religious freedom exemptions to some government edicts, but also for public officials using religious faith as a guide in their approach to governing.
On religious freedom, Bush praised efforts by the Little Sisters of the Poor to win an exemption from the Obamacare contraceptives mandate. The federal government tried to hound the charity group into complying, Bush suggested: “Somebody here is being small-minded and intolerant, and it sure isn’t the nuns, ministers, and laymen and women who ask only to live and practice their faith.”
“Federal authorities are demanding obedience, in complete disregard of religious conscience,” Bush continued. “And in a free society, the answer is No.”
Bush, born into an old Protestant family and a convert to Catholicism, also made clear he believes elected officials should be influenced by their faith. Bush never mentioned running for president — he is carefully maintaining the legal fiction that he has not made a decision — but suggested that faith would continue to guide him should be find himself in office again.
There’s no doubt that some portion of Bush’s intended audience will never be persuaded to support him — not because they disagree with a word he said in the speech but because they believe he is a RINO (Republican in Name Only) who will never be a true conservative. But Bush’s visit to Liberty University was another step in a systematic effort to lay out the tenets of his conservatism. There will be more.
