Source: The New York Times
On January 14, 2001, The New York Times reported on the importance of faith to John Ashcroft, President-elect George W. Bush's choice for United States attorney general. He denies that he will use this position to impose his religious beliefs on others. "However, Mr. Ashcroft has said it is the role of government to 'legislate morality.' To judge morality, he has said he relies on God, Scriptures and his faith. He has opposed homosexuality, abortion, pornography, needle exchanges for drug addicts, the National Endowment for the Arts and the United Nations." Mr. Ashcroft is a Pentecostal. Pentecostalism emphasizes "direct personal experience of the Holy Spirit through ecstatic worship, miraculous healings and speaking in tongues...Mr. Ashcroft is a member of the Assemblies of God, the largest predominantly white Pentecostal denomination, with 2.5 million members and 12,000 churches in the United States...Critics of his selection say he will be incapable of disentangling his religious beliefs from his constitutional responsibilities." But Mr. Ashcroft's close friend, the Rev. George O. Wood, pointed out that "'as governor [Ashcroft] had to set up a mechanism to administer a program [the lottery] that he didn't believe in, and he did it very effectively.' After Mr. Ashcroft became a senator in 1995, his voting record earned him a 100 percent rating on the scorecards put out by the Christian Coalition...He was the architect of the charitable-choice provision of the 1996 welfare overhaul bill, which channeled increased government money to religious groups and congregations to help the needy...He supports school prayer and vouchers for religious schools...When President Clinton was accused of having an affair with a White House intern, Mr. Ashcroft was the first Republican in Congress to demand his resignation. Mr. Ashcroft has said he opposes needle exchanges for drug addicts for the same reason he is against making birth control accessible to teenagers in school. Both are 'accommodating the culture at its lowest denominator.'...He sees the United Nations as a threat to American sovereignty, and said in a 1998 fund-raising letter that the United Nations Treaty on the Rights of the Child was 'an unconscionable surrender of parental rights' because it would 'make spanking a crime.'" Mr. Ashcroft has said that the judiciary has "taken the wall of separation designed to protect the church and they have made it a wall of religious oppression."