The feeling returned during Bush's inauguration when he again wandered, either carelessly or purposefully, into the dangerous ground between church and state.

Inaugurations traditionally mention God in the context of a higher power recognized by most of the world's religions. But Bush's hand-picked pastors mentioned Jesus in both the invocation and prayer. One pastor punctuated the point with the unequivocal proclamation, "Jesus the Christ (is) the name that's above all other names."

Now comes news that Bush wants to disburse billions in public funds to religious groups that provide social services. The groups would compete for the money, and Bush's new "Office of Faith-Based and Community-Based Initiatives" would choose the recipients. All religions would be eligible, Bush said.

Everyone who believes that certain religious groups will be getting significantly more of this money than others, say, "Amen."

Bush has already shown that he won't fund groups that don't adhere to his particular set of moral beliefs. In his first full workday as president, he announced he was yanking funds to overseas organizations that use their own money to provide abortions or abortion counseling. These organizations were not breaking the laws of their countries or of ours. Bush's decision was based solely on his own particular brand of morality.

And Bush's call for a review of the FDA's approval of the abortion pill, RU- 486, was not based on science or health but, again, his own brand of morality.

This is the problem with blurring the line between church and state, as Bush is doing. We begin to create a de facto national religion based on the values of those in power. These values might be perfectly respectable ones. They might even have the power to transform lives, as Bush's religious program in a Texas prison has. (Compared to non-participating inmates, inmates in the two-year indoctrination in biblical teachings and Christian behavior have shown a drastically lower recidivism rate once released from prison.)

It's difficult to argue that the world wouldn't be a better place if everyone adhered to so-called Christian values.

But who should interpret how those values will be applied to public policy? Ralph Reed? Jesse Jackson? The pope? All adhere to the same Bible, but each man's vision of government based on the book's teachings would be vastly different -- and would feel like a tyranny to those who disagreed.

The infusion of religion into government is at the very heart of the revolution that created America. The colonists rebelled not only against the Church of England but also against the Puritanism and Calvinism that forced the citizenry to conform to particular religious views or face the government's wrath.

What Bush risks doing is establishing the legitimacy of one religion over all others, and this is just what our founding fathers didn't want. Yet there hasn't been much of an outcry. Perhaps people figure it's better to have a president who thinks he's the national deacon than one who thought he was the national Don Juan.

All would agree that the president should be guided by high morals. And one would hope that, if he is deeply religious, he could harness the power of his faith for the public good. But when Bush laid his hand on the Bible two Sundays ago, he didn't promise to uphold the teachings of Jesus.

He promised to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

©2001 San Francisco Chronicle

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