Former aide says Southern Baptists had clout in Bush White House

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (ABP) – Leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention
wielded significant influence on the White House during the presidency
of George W. Bush, according to a former White House aide promoting a
new memoir.

“The Bush administration had a superb relationship with the Southern
Baptist Convention, and in fact, it was important to President Bush that
we were a regular presence at all the summer conventions while he was
in the White House,” Timothy Goeglein, who worked as deputy director of
the White House Office of Public Liasion until he resigned in a
plagiarism scandal in 2008, told the SBC news service Baptist Press.

Discussing his new book The Man in the Middle
from B&H Publishing Group, a division of LifeWay Christian
Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention, Goeglein said during his
eight years as the president’s point man for evangelical relations that
he came to know well Southern Baptist leaders including James Merritt,
Jack Graham, Bobby Welch and Frank Page, four men who served as SBC
president during Bush’s two terms in office. Page, now president and CEO
of the SBC Executive Committee, went on to serve in the White House
Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships under President
Obama.