Midland Ministers to the World tt shaped his character, now President Bush's hometown is shaping events in Sudan
Neumayr, George
Midland Ministers to the World Just as it shaped his character, President Bush's hometown is shaping events in far away Sudan, where Christians and Muslims may soon...
...the city of Midland certainly did...
...To move to a harsh climate like West Texas from $40 a barrel to as low as $10...
...They represent the best of effort to the president,'" he says...
...That America of street without looking...
...Shea heard later that Laura They recently sent the same message to Bush's mother Jenna Welch, who lives in Midland Garang: "If the SPLM leaves itself open to blame and knows members of the Midland Ministerial for the failure of the peace negotiations, our ability Alliance, had attended a speech an exiled Sudanese to ensure immediate invocation of the Sudan Peace bishop delivered in Midland...
...GQ's September story, which morphed Bush into Jesus Christ in a photo, fastened on the "Satan Is Defeated" sign...
...I wouldn't want to be you quite humble people," he says...
...They can reach Bush on a cultural level many the peace process Midlanders will cause political people can't...
...Its politics are conservative-Republicans get up to 80 percent of the vote ("This is probably the most conservative town in America" said one Midlander)-and Midlanders are justifiably wary of the liberal media...
...The sprawling mansions of • Houston and Dallas are nowhere to be seen...
...This is the sky-is-the-limit Christianity of Midland, preached from the deserts of West Texas and now Christianity in a oil town like Midland takes heard in the deserts of Sudan...
...first time this Jew had been in the The Midland group has also Midland has middle of a prayer session like influenced the State Department, that," he says...
...Hence the left's hostility to Midland...
...Shea says that at groups, we intend to forcefully press our elected a White House event last year she had an opporturepresentatives, including the President, to bring nity to encourage Bush to press hard for peace in the sanctions provisions of the Sudan Peace Act the Sudan...
...He was two years old when his parents moved to West Texas...
...When you pass Midlanders on the road, they actually wave...
...He my attention, and I never did it also believes they can influence Bush's again...
...14 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 2003/JANUARY 2004 I Ill GEORGE NEUMAYR I III The first successful oil well in Midland, which dates to the 1920s, was called Santa Rita No...
...Midland Ministers to the World Just as it shaped his character, President Bush's hometown is shaping events in far away Sudan, where Christians and Muslims may soon reconcile...
...The well became the gusher that spawned the oil industry in Midland...
...The hardheaded, optimistic, pioneering skills one needs in the oil business translates well to faith...
...The city offers teens education for free at Midland's community college if they perform charitable deeds for a number of hours...
...The Midlanders are "a power-"study in grass-roots faith-based diplomacy...
...The Boy Scouts of America--this also no doubt gets the Linds red-faced about Midland--have a strong presence in Midland...
...1. The name, say Midlanders, came from East Coast Catholic investors who gave money to Texas oil men after speaking to their priest about whether or not to invest in Texas oil...
...Nina Shea of Freedom House says that a drafts of the legislation were "discussed with "group of hundred people or so" met in Midland them" to see if "it was something they would suprecently to pray for her "at the exact moment I was port...
...Asked about the influence of the group, she acknowledges that its concerns are "forwarded to the top leaders in the Government of Sudan," but disclaims any influence on Bush...
...DECEMBER 2003/JANUARY 2004 AMERICAN SPECTATOR 15 MIDLAND MINISTERS TO THE WORLD Bush's return to religion, I was told, occurred well to faith...
...He says in fasting...
...In front of the Midland courthouse, for example, stands a memorial to the statue of liberty that the Boy Scouts built...
...The meeting was according to this source...
...They would be seen driving around town with the bumper sticker, "God, if you give us another oil boom, we won't piss this one away," says a Midlander...
...After he became governor of Texas, Bush placed on the wall of his office a painting he received from friends in Midland that captures the striving Christianity typical of it...
...He married, started his family, and renewed his Christian faith there...
...knows are demonstrating and Brownback recalls the maybe even getting arrested in looks like the evening...
...Act or to take other steps to hold the government of John Miller, the State Department's director of Sudan accountable or to cause the United States to the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in take the side of the SPLM in any resumed military Persons, traveled to Midland earlier this year...
...Another Midlander said the turbulent time convinced oil men that "there was more to life than the oil business...
...As she spoke to him, Laura Bush into full effect if no peace agreement is reached," entered the conversation, saying that Sudan was in they have written to the Sudanese government...
...It was the November...
...Miller recalls the group exiles, who are going to wake up and find the meeting with Senator Sam people of Midland coming en Brownback at the Monocle masse to Washington and the often note that restaurant in Washington, D.C...
...In downtown Midland "Satan Is Defeated" appears on the window of the House of Refuge Ministries building...
...The expansive land contributes to its expansive outlook...
...a "horrible" state...
...The terrain, mostly sand and shrubbery, is flat and empty save for oil pumps, derricks, wind mills, and homes as horizontal as the ground...
...Bush's "first memories" are of Midland, he writes in his autobiography A Charge to Keep...
...Bush returned to Midland as an oil entrepreneur in the 1970s...
...Reporters can stumble out of bed, walk a few steps, see "Satan Is Defeated," then use it to insinuate that Midlanders are unbalanced Christians...
...with churches, synagogues and human rights And perhaps Laura Bush too...
...Pictured on the front page of the Midland Reporter-Telegram on the second day of my visit was a boy scout awarding the Distinguished Citizen Award to Tommy Franks...
...Bill Holmes, another CBS student, says oil executives "and plumbers" would study the bible side by side...
...Don Poage attended Community Bible Study classes with Bush...
...certain oil investors who descended on Midland during the last centuryavenue names include Dartmouth, Harvard, and Princeton-but for the most part it is a Bible Belt city...
...Few people move away from Midland, I was told, and those who do often return after longing for its strong community life...
...It is easier to become a "serious Christian in a place like this than in New York...
...Author Michael Lind calls Midland one of the most "reactionary" cities in America...
...Midland's Christianity seems like Bush's, at once direct and affable, evangelical and ecumenical, salt-of-the-earth and perhaps a bit salty--not surprising given its frontier atmosphere through which "roughnecks," "wildcatters," and bombardiers" (Midland Army Air Field was the center for the largest bombardier training base of World War Ii) have passed...
...Everyone's parents watched out for everyone else's kids...
...When you pass Midlanders on the road, they actually wave...
...Park and pray" signs appear alongside roads overlooking oil fields...
...No one locked their doors because you could trust your friends and neighbors...
...Asked Every day in Midland what specific role they played in Christians gather to pray for "Midland's Rising the Sudan Peace Act he spearheaded in the Senate, Son," President Bush...
...We just have each other and our churches...
...What adds complete life to the painting for me is the message of Charles Wesley that we serve One greater than ourselves...
...DECEMBER 2003/JANUARY 2004 AMERICAN SPECTATOR 13 MIDLAND MINISTERS TO THE WORLD Deborah Fikes, a self-described "housewife" and "rancher's daughter," serves as the publicity director for the Midland Ministerial Alliance...
...The values Midland holds near to its heart are the same ones I hold near to my heart....The slogan 'The Sky's The Limit' was meant for everyone, not just a select few...
...President will scratch his head for so long Miller had to call it a wanting to know why people he West Texas night...
...keeping President Bush personally engaged in "Along with millions of Americans associated this...
...But they will here") helps to explain Bush...
...Visitors to Midland will see the inevitable Starbucks and the usual American food and clothing chains...
...A Boy Scout spirit of helpfulness and friendliness pervades the •town...
...Its culture of prayer and fasting (as president, Bush reportedly fasted at times during the Iraq war), faith-based charities, Boy Scout moral clarity, and mixture of evangelical and ecumenical Christianity ("Catholics and Baptists don't usually work together," said a Midlander...
...I am trying to go down and meet with them meeting with Bush" to discuss Sudanese and in the next few months," he says, calling them a human rights issues...
...The priest told them to make the investment, provided the oil well was dedicated to St...
...They also speak of duty...
...To a crowd in "high cotton,' the paper reported, Franks said, "It's just a durned hoot to be here...I always get a warm glow when I return to Midland America...
...I think they played a key role in fallout for them in the U.S...
...Midland was a place where other people's mothers felt it was not only to talk to people from his village," Midland is still their right, but also their duty, to because "I would say that their lecture you when you did some relationship with Bush would not the small town thing wrong, just as your own be a political one but a religious mother did," he writes...
...And there's good reason to believe them: From this 10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 2003/JANUARY 2004 GEORGE NEUMAYR leader John Garang at critical moments in the ful addition to our human rights coalition," she peace talks, telling both sides that if they abandon says...
...Texas columnist Molly Ivins quotes approvingly Larry L. King's description of Midland as a city of "oillionaires and Neanderthal Republicans with low, sloping foreheads...
...Bush, at the encouragement of Don Evans, joined a Community Bible Study class where he studied the Gospels and New Testament intensely...
...A boom-andbust business breeds a character that combines risk-taking with reliance on God...
...Look who is here," people in the class would turn around and remark, says Poage...
...The churches in town seem to represent the traditional branches of their respective denominations...
...He believes they connect Christian remembered a friend's mom with Bush on a deeper level than "running out of her house to yell most groups, sharing the same at me for running out into the roots and faith with him...
...But they will also see the marks of open Christianity that have long been erased from most American towns...
...Franks told the crowd that he belonged to Boy Scout Troop 158 in Midland where he learned "what leadership is about...
...We don't have mountains and trees," said one...
...More than one Midlander told me that they arrived in this "dust bowl of a city" thinking they could never live in such a bleak place and now think they could never leave it...
...As he relates in A Charge to Keep, Bush sent a memo to his staff encouraging them to stop by his office and "take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail...
...In a sense, yes," he says...
...He conflict will be enormously, per-spoke before friends and mem haps impossibly compromised...
...American moral interest...
...on some of the industry's qualities, say Midlanders...
...you treat Sudan as just another for Sudanese "The Midland Ministerial piece of business, if there is any-Alliance is picking up where they thing wanting in your effort, you left off...
...IT STANDS TO REASON that the Midland Ministerial Alliance can influence Bush...
...During the oil downturn, Midlanders didn't lose their salty sense of humor...
...It was in the 1980s after oil plunged on God...
...I would say people—if they want to understand me—need to understand Midland, and the attitude of Midland," he told reporters before he became president...
...He remembers him as "just a regular guy" who asked "good questions...
...Rita, the saint of the impossible...
...The largest bank in town, Chan Driscoll, who taught Bush's Sunday which had lent money on the assumption oil prices School class at First Presbyterian church, isn't sur would remain high, folded...
...After the oil shakeup some of us became ministers or part-time ministers...
...Faith-based charities also thrive in Midland...
...Midland was a small town, with small-town values...
...Midlanders mention miracles and prayer in conversation...
...Bush one...
...That ethic of hard work and outlook of optimism has stayed with me my whole life...
...other Christian organizations with Midland is still the small whom they are in contact, both memory...
...They call Midland the "land of the high sky" and the "tall city...
...We simply mirror the President's passion and determination to use our influence and empowerment to help those being persecuted and victimized around the world," she says...
...The town's motto is, "The sky is the limit...
...The vast oil deposits in Midland's Permian Basin—the second largest oil reservoir in America after Alaska's Prudhoe Bay—come from the fossils of sea animals and ancient marine life...
...Geologists describe the Midland region as a dead sea...
...Painted on the curb outside of Bush's modest boyhood home is a cross and dove of the Holy Spirit...
...Your hope was not in oil and gas but in the Lord...
...The Midlanders level of commitment has allowed are the "spiritual descendants of me to say to people at the State the Church abolitionists of the stopping place Department: 'Listen you guys if nineteenth century," he says...
...One Midlander said that to measure the friendliness of the town's citizens all one would need to do is drive to the side of the road and open up the hood...
...West Texas prairie life gets you that way," she says...
...But does Sudan's Ambassador Ahmed feel like he is speaking to the president through this group...
...Midlanders believed if you work hard and believe it will happen, anything can happen...
...16 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 2093/JANUARY 2004...
...If peace is achieved in the Sudan, the group could play a role in the reconciliation and reconstruction of the country, he says...
...We went to church," he writes...
...It helps remembers playing with his sister Robin who died of leukemia...
...One Midlander hoped that I wouldn't portray them as "dumb asses in the desert...
...A boom-and-bust business breeds a at a time when many other oil men in Midland character that combines risk-taking with reliance turned to God...
...Over millions of years the sea receded and became a desert...
...LIKE BUSH, the city wears its wealth lightly...
...He also remembers oil executives once worth millions of dollars showing up to class with their bibles...
...This is us...
...I saw at least three Christian high schools, a significant number for such a small town...
...prised that Midland served as a stimulus to Bush's religious renewal...
...It was in Midland that he memory...
...Their become a "exhilarating...
...The town had with the expectation of success, they say, requires been riding high—there was even talk that it might an independence from men but a dependence on become the next San Antonio—but OPEC politics God...
...trying to explain your failure of Sudan...
...Midland's Episcopalians, for example, are considering a break from the American Episcopalian church that recently ordained a homosexual bishop...
...With few trees (Notrees, Texas, is not far from Midland) and no mountains to obstruct a view of it, the sky dominates the desert—and the mindset of Midlanders...
...The city betrays a few traces of the Ivy League A Boy Scout spirit of helpfulness and friendliness pervades the town...
...He attended Sam Houston elementary school and San Jacinto junior high in Midland—he recalls having to "brush a fine coating of sand off the desks every morning...
...The town's leading citizens worked hard to attract the best teachers to our schools...
...These are beautiful and protest...
...We learned to respect our elders, to do what they said, and to be good neighbors...
...town Christian America of Bush's domestically and in Sudan...
...Though it once was home to more millionaires per capita than any other city in America, its downtown buildings and neighborhoods are unpretentious...
...The hardheaded, optimistic, pioneer-George Neumayr is managing editor of The ing skills one needs in the oil business translate American Spectator...
...Over the last bers of the Ministerial Alliance of (Garang was scheduled to visit Midland at the downtown Midland and meet with the Petroleum Club and attended one two years, Midland Ministerial Alliance in of its prayer services...
...caused it to stumble...
...I would be surprised if three peopk passed you without stopping," she said...
...Kelly Coleman, active in the Midland Ministerial Alliance, worked in the oil business then and recalls the town's religious revival...
...The setting is important to understanding Midland's culture, say locals...
...BY GEORGE NEUMAYR HE CITY OF MIDLAND—once the mid-point between El Paso and Fort Worth on the Texas & Pacific Railroad—sits on the oil-rich plains of West Texas...
...They also frequently engage he said, "They were consulted on that...
...Midlands wealth is similar to the land--the riches are hidden below the surface...
...She got "gives them an edge," he says...
...The sign is close enough to the downtown Hilton where reporters stay that it has appeared in stories...
...Homeschooling is popular with parents here, as are Christian schools...
...It was an extraordinary time that God ordained," he says...
...Surviving and succeeding in desolation worthy of a biblical city, they say, produces a culture of can-do Christianity...
Vol. 36 • December 2003 • No. 7
