The Secrets of the Kingdom: Spiritual Discourse and Material Interests in the Bush Administration

Religious conviction informs virtually every aspect of his presidency, from his domestic Faith-based Initiative to his equally faith-based foreign policy announced in a "crusade" against the "Axis of Evil" and a promise to bring freedom as a "gift from the Almighty" to benighted regions of the world like Iraq. Bush's powerful and repeated rhetoric of "freedom" as the gift of the Almighty and the "goal of history" reflects not only a kind of messianic faith in God's plan for humankind; it also hints strongly at the aggressive foreign policy of neoconservative theorists such as Irving Kristol, William Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz and think-tanks such as the Project for the New American Century.