Pierce Bush—the latest of the Bush dynasty to run for public office—is coming under fire for comments he made accusing the majority of practicing American Christians of being akin to Muslim terrorists.
In 2006, Pierce Bush—the grandson of George H.W. Bush, nephew of George W. Bush, and hopeful member of Congress for the 22nd Congressional District—penned a letter to the Houston Chronicle, decrying the Roman Catholic Church’s election of Pope Benedict XVI.
“With the election of Pope Benedict XVI, Christians around the world will most likely not be able to look forward to needed reforms within the Catholic Church. There are two major areas of reform that are needed to accommodate our progressive world society,” said Bush.
Pierce Bush is a Republican primary candidate for Texas’s 22nd Congressional District.
That’s right. Pierce Bush argued the Catholic Church must change in order to “accommodate our progressive world society.”
Apparently, the latest Bush princeling has not read Romans 12:2, which states: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
Or maybe he has, and there’s just no room for the Apostle Paul in the Bush family’s big tent of compassionate conservatism.
But back to what he actually wrote. According to his newspaper submission, Pierce Bush’s biggest beef with the Catholic Church is that it does not allow the ordination of women.
“In a religion that preaches equality among all people, the Catholic Church is locked into a stone-age mentality by not allowing women to be ordained as priests,” writes Bush. “Frankly, it is rather Talibanesque.”
But it’s not just the Catholic Church that prohibits the ordination of women. The majority of American Christians attend a church that prohibits that as well.
While Roman Catholics comprise the largest singular Christian denomination practiced in the United States, Southern Baptists, who compose the second-largest denomination, also oppose the ordination of women.
The Missouri Synod Lutherans, the vast majority of Churches of Christ, the Presbyterian Church in America, most bible churches, cowboy churches, and non-denominational churches do as well. Added together, the majority of American Christians attend a church that does not ordain women.
Does Bush the younger really believe they’re akin to the terrorists his uncle, President George W. Bush, sent thousands of American troops to Afghanistan to fight?
Bush’s other reform that is “needed to accommodate our progressive world society” is the end of priestly celibacy—a change conservative Catholics including Texas Right to Life’s Jim Graham have opposed for years.
“Texas and the conservative movement do not need a Bush in a position of power working toward the liberalization of the Catholic Church―or any faith, for that matter,” Graham told Church Militant, who first reported the story.
However, revelations of his disdain for the majority of American Christians’ faith are not the first comments that have gotten Pierce Bush’s campaign in hot water.
“No ban. No fear. Refugees are welcome here. #nationofimmigrants #diversityisourstrength,” he posted to Facebook.
So, to be clear, Pierce Bush thinks Muslim immigrants (who largely oppose the ordination of female imams) are “our strength,” but the majority of American Christians are “Talibanesque”?
It makes sense when you consider the history of the Bush family.
The first Bush elected to public office was Prescott Sheldon Bush, who served as the treasurer of the first nationwide campaign for Planned Parenthood in 1947 under the organization’s founder, Margaret Sanger. Prescott Sheldon Bush was later elected to the U.S. Senate in Connecticut. He is Pierce Bush’s great-grandfather.
His son, George Herbert Walker Bush, was elected to the U.S. Congress in Texas and served as the director of the CIA, ambassador to China, and President Ronald Reagan’s vice president. He was elected as the nation’s 41st president in 1988 under a famous pledge to not raise taxes—that he later violated. Running for re-election, he lost to Bill Clinton in 1992 and famously voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. He is Pierce Bush’s grandfather.
George H.W. Bush’s failson Neil Bush, who has never held political office but has managed to find himself involved in a bushel of scandals, is Pierce Bush’s father.
Based in Fort Bend County, Texas’ 22nd Congressional District—which Pierce Bush and more than a dozen other candidates are running to represent—is a strongly Republican district the GOP can expect to carry in November.
Early voting for the March 3 primary election begins on February 18.
