I am super grateful that quite a range of news outlets have covered this friendship story in our polarized U.S. world right now. USA Today, Fox News, LGBTQ Nation, Washington Examiner, BET, Business Insider, and GayTimes are among the outlets sharing this story. That's quite a spectrum!!
I love her leadership here. I am saying that while honestly expressing my own personal ambivalence toward Bush. His leadership after 2001 was one of the major reasons why I turned from voting for a Republican president for twenty plus years to vote for a Democrat. I had fierce issues with not only Bush's aggressive posture toward using war/violence to solve conflicts but also giving the green light to torture prisoners. The latter especially was repulsive to me.
So, in my mind, I personally would find it challenging to befriend the former President.
Here now, is Michelle Obama, a woman I have come to greatly admire over the last 13 years defending her friendship with George Bush. Of course, critics from the political left and right will find reasons to dismiss her, to continue to polarize our contemporary political issues claiming ideological purity is at stake here.
Her defense of friendship with Bush certainly goes far and above anything I have seen in the progressive-evangelical Christian world. Where are the theologians, the pastors or the authors with huge platforms showing us this kind of friendship? This goes far beyond David Fitch's recent book that suggests an ambivalent "peaceful" church-huddle (not a lot of progressives are excited about that book) as well as Dan White's book. (published by Moody). But she also pushes a lot of buttons on the progressive side or those who either favor the marginalized or who are marginalized.
Michelle's defense here certainly challenges me. And this is what is so powerfully provocative about Christian friendship. I have met many friendship skeptics who quickly dispose friendship to a private realm with no public impact. I have also met many friendship tribalists who ascribe to the theory that you can't really show deep affection and warmth to someone who is not of your ideological tribe. Michelle compels us to dig a little deeper in friendship. She models Christ to us in a way that shows the power of Christian friendship unlike the privatists and the tribalists. May her tribe increase. May we all know the power of Christian friendship.
