Jeb Bush: Culture Warrior

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signs autographs from a food truck in Miami after formally announcing his candidacy for president. (Photo: Wilfredo Lee/AP)

There wasn’t one syllable in Jeb Bush’s 2,219-word announcement speech Monday in Miami that wasn’t scrutinized closely by the candidate and his closest aides before he took the stage.

So it was telling that in his lean remarks — which had fewer than half the words of Hillary Clinton’s announcement speech — Bush chose to bring up a topic that many other leading Republican presidential candidates have discussed less wilfully on the trail: religious freedom.

“These have been rough years for religious charities and their right of conscience,” Bush said. He accused Clinton of threatening religious Americans whose beliefs run afoul of “the progressive agenda.” And he pointed to what he said was “the most galling example” of religious beliefs being violated by the government: the Little Sisters of the Poor, who are fighting the contraception mandate in President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care law.

“It comes down to a choice between the Little Sisters and Big Brother, and I’m going with the Sisters,” Bush said to applause.

The next day, at a town hall meeting in Derry, N.H., Bush shed some light on what he was up to during that section of his announcement speech.

Lead counsel Mark Rienzi, representing the Little Sisters of the Poor, who are challenging a provision of federal health care law mandating coverage for birth control. (Photo: Brennan Linsley/AP)

A young man who said his name was Jonah Abraham asked Bush about the controversy in April over Indiana Gov. Mike Pence’s signing of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was seen as discriminatory by gay rights groups. Bush told Abraham that he finds it “deeply troubling … that we’re moving at warp speed away from one of the first freedoms of our country, which is not just the right to have a view based on your faith, but the right to act on your views.”

Bush went on to again make reference to Clinton’s remark in April that some religious views “have to be changed,” though without mentioning her name or exact words.

“It’s very troubling when a candidate running for the presidency says that people with religious views are just gonna have to get over it if they come in conflict with emerging societal norms,” Bush said. “And that’s where we’re moving.”

“It is important, I think, for people in public life to push back against that,” he said.

And that’s just what Bush did in his announcement speech: He pushed back.

He used one of his biggest moments as a candidate to highlight “rights of conscience” and to go on offense against Clinton, arguing that she is in favor of using government powers to coerce Americans into violating their religious beliefs.

He did so deftly, too, avoiding any mention of gay rights or of hot-button political phrases such as “religious freedom,” which has come to be seen as code for discrimination, as in the debate of the Indiana law. And Bush held up an example that puts his ideological opponents at a disadvantage, simply because of who the plaintiffs are: nuns.

Bush has done the most work, by far, of any 2016 Republican presidential candidate to lay out an intellectual framework from which to argue that a compromise can be reached between the LGBT community and religious conservatives. “I think we’re a big enough country and a tolerant enough country to allow for both to exist. I don’t believe we should discriminate against people,” Bush said in New Hampshire. “But I certainly don’t think we should push aside the big and caring hearts that people — when they act on their faith — to be able to make a difference in the lives of people.”

“I think we can protect religious freedom and not create a society that is, you know, that is intolerant,” he said.

Opponents of Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act march past the Statehouse in Indianapolis in April to push for a state law that specifically bars discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. (Photo: Doug McSchooler/AO)

Bush spoke at length on the topic of religious freedom on May 9 in his commencement address at Liberty University. He devoted about a third of his speech — which was a few hundred words longer than his announcement speech — to the topic.

“How strange, in our own time, to hear Christianity spoken of as some sort of backward and oppressive force,” Bush said.

He quoted C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton. He made the case that deeply held Christian faith is a “daring, untamed” force that has prompted many to act to alleviate poverty, hunger and suffering and to fight against injustice around the world. And he elevated the importance of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures.

“Whether or not we acknowledge the source, Hebrew Scripture and the New Testament still provide the moral vocabulary we all use in America — and may it always be so,” he said. “Justice, equality, the worth of every life, the dignity of every person and rights that no authority can take away — these are founding moral ideals in America, and they didn’t come out of nowhere.”

Bush made a forceful case for standing firm against “secular dogmas.”

“Fashionable opinion — which these days can be a religion all by itself — has got a problem with Christians and their right of conscience. That makes it our problem, and the proper response is a forthright defense of the first freedom in our Constitution,” he said.

“What should be easy calls, in favor of religious freedom, have instead become an aggressive stance against it. 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 — and in a free society, the answer is no,” he said.

On the question of gay marriage, Bush has said he personally believes marriage is between a man and a woman and that he does not think gay marriage is a constitutional right. But he also said this week that he would have no problem attending a gay wedding. Bush’s communications director is openly gay, and some of his closest aides are supporters of gay marriage.

For these and other reasons, Christian conservatives have so far tended to be lukewarm about Bush. But if he continues to make a robust defense of their point of view in the debate over religious freedom, that could change, especially if other Republicans steer clear of the issue except when it’s the focus of controversy and they’re put on the spot.

Jeb Bush speaking at a town hall event in Derry, N.H. (Photo: Darren McCollester/Getty Images)

In New Hampshire, Bush — who offered a muddled response to the Indiana case back in April — made it clear where he stands on the issue of how conflict between religious beliefs and gay rights should be resolved when it comes to public accommodations.

“The answer to this is, if someone walks into a flower shop and says, ‘I’d like to buy flowers,’ you shouldn’t be able to discriminate against them because they are gay. But if you’re asking someone to participate in a religious ceremony or a marriage, they should have the right of conscience to be able to say, ‘I love you, but I can’t do it because it goes against my religious teachings,’” Bush said. “Does that make sense? There’s a big difference.”