We shouldn't be too quick to jump to this explanation either. The appeal to the ready availability of languages of faith conflicts with the notion that September <sub>11</sub> changed everything. The latter idea presupposes an underlying secularization or falling away from faith, a loss of faith to which the day's events awakened us, not its prominence and ready availability as a language of moral condemnation.12 So there is an incompatibility between the two explanations.
More important, however, is the rich variation among and within American religious discourse. Religious language inhabits the political register in multiple, changing, and inconsistent ways. There is not a single or constant discourse of religion in American history: evil isn't and never has been "one thing" in American life. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, for example, drew on a language of faith, beginning his first inaugural address with a prayer. Yet his use of "evil" difers significantly from Bush�s. Indeed, religious controversy and disagreement is far more prevalent in U.S. history and politics than anything like a unified Christian doctrine. There is even fragmentation and disagreement on the so�called religious right. One of the hardest-hitting critiques of the "evils of Fundamentalism" comes from John F. Baugh, a mainstream Southern Baptist who anchors his arguments firmly in the Bible:13
To be sure, that "evil"· in the <sub>2002</sub> State of the Umori address grew out of a language of faith is uncontroversial. Former Bush speechwriter David Frum reports that "axis of hatred" in the original draft of the speech was changed to "axis of evil" because it resonated better with the theological language Bush ha�l been using since 9 I 11.14 To call this theological language "religion;' however, consolidates multiple stories, tropes, ethics, and imaginaries. Bush's own salvation experience, his personal religious wall<:, does not stand for "religion" in the singular. In fact, his relation to scripture and experience of conversion are not tied to mainstream denominational religion. Rather, they emerged out of a small-group program of focused reading and discussion called Community Bible Study. The diference between Bush's "faith walk" and his father's Episcopalian upbringing enabled the younger Bush to serve as the liaison to the religious right for the 1988 presidential campaign.15
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