by Gwendolyn Mink

About the author: Gwendolyn Mink is a professor of politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Recalling a voluntarism reminiscent of Herbert Hoover, the first President Bush challenged Americans to shine “a thousand points of light” on the nation’s social problems. Bush’s “thousand points of light” marked a divide between public and private, church and state, for they substituted the power of individual good works for government action. The second President Bush, in contrast, erases the divide, as he espouses government sponsorship of faith-based solutions to social ills and government incentives to teach individuals “the power of faith.”

Recalling his father’s “thousand points of light,” the younger Bush has summoned...