Does God Bless More than America

God Bless America is a beautiful song that brings tears to my eyes every time I hear its refrain. Having admitted that, I must also say that as a slogan plastered over every usable surface in this country these days, it has really begun to grate.President Bush ended his Labor Day speech to a Richfield, Ohio, labor union crowd much as he finishes all his public speeches: ''May God continue to bless America.'' Whether he intends that as a patriotic cliché or as a deeply anchored theological assertion, he needs to explain exactly what he means to say. Given the morass our world is in, does this slogan mean that God should bless America but smite Saddam loyalists in Iraq, North Korea's leaders and maybe even the French for their irritating warnings that we were about to get into a quagmire by invading Iraq? Or should God merely ignore our enemies?

Maybe I'm reading too much into a mere catchphrase that many people -- including other U.S. presidents -- have used for comfort in disquieting times. Or maybe, given that we are, after all, a pluralistic society, it's time to expand our palate of verbal comfort food. One possibility with a bit of poetic pizzazz might be: ''Allah Bless America,'' reminding us that Allah is the Arabic translation of the term that refers to the same God worshipped by adherents of all three of the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Let's also remember that millions of Americans belong to theological traditions that are not predicated on the worship of a god. Do they have a place at our table of patriotic sloganeering? U.S. military cemeteries, particularly on the West Coast or in Hawaii, have many gravestones inscribed with the Buddhist Wheel of Dharma. But I doubt that ''Buddha bless America'' would be an appropriate substitute for the overused Abrahamic benediction. The Buddha was a mere mortal; it is his teachings, referred to as ''the dharma,'' not the man, that Buddhists venerate.

For all his political adeptness, Bush sometimes seems to lack the capacity to perceive the world beyond his immediate cultural realm. The fact that he tags every speech with some variant of ''God bless America'' reinforces my unease. If our president is unable to acknowledge, or perhaps even understand, the divergence of religious traditions possessed by patriotic Americans, how can he then comprehend the complex world beyond our borders where he has now sent our sons and daughters to fight and die?
[September 5, 2003]