Current Affairs: A 'spunky' Irish journalist explores the religious soul of 'the real America', from the evangelists to the Mormons, writes Joe Carroll
Foreign correspondents posted to the US are always guiltily aware that they spend too much time in "the Washington bubble", as the author calls it, and not enough finding out about "the real America". But there is little chance that news desks back home will allow their correspondents to stray from Washington for long and risk missing a big, breaking story.
When the Monica Lewinsky story broke early in 1998, all the American media heavyweights were in Cuba covering the visit of Pope John Paul II to Fidel Castro's communist state. They were immediately recalled for what was seen as an even bigger story, even though there was plenty of back-up staff available at their headquarters.
As her term as RTÉ correspondent ended, Carole Coleman decided it was time to explore, without the pressures of a deadline, an aspect of the US that had intrigued her, namely the country's religious soul. The inspiration for her quest seems to have come from an answer President George W Bush gave her in the now-famous interview.
She had asked him if, as a man of "great faith", he believed the hand of God was guiding him in his war on terror. Bush closed his eyes and tried to find the right response. He turned to "the good Lord for guidance" and for "forgiveness", he said haltingly, but then he switched to his "very personal relationship" with God, from which he gets "great sustenance".
So the question of whether he believes there is divine inspiration behind his crusade against terror that has led to the invasion of Iraq was not directly answered. But it is not a question that will go away.
It was revived at the end of last month in a BBC documentary on the search for peace in the Middle East. The Palestinian foreign minister who participated in the summit between Bush and Yasser Arafat at Aqaba in 2003 told the programme-makers that "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God'." He went on to say that God told him: "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq. And I did."
Carole Coleman would have written an even more interesting book if she had persisted in digging into the role of the now politically powerful evangelical churches in Bush's US. He was raised in the Presbyterian faith of his parents but in later life went through a born again religious conversion in which Billy Graham, the famous preacher and a friend of the Bushes, played a role. Whether Bush is "fundamentalist" and adhering to a literal interpretation of the Bible is unlikely, but it would be enlightening to know how much his beliefs influence his policies.
In the book, the evangelicals get one chapter and there is also an account of Billy Graham's most recent crusade, which may be his last, as he is 86. A visit to Midland, the oil-prospecting town in Texas where Bush spent the formative years of his life, gives some insight into his post-conversion period as described by close friends, when the partying was replaced by Bible study nights.
The author stitches together some of her reportage during her time as a correspondent with her later travels. Thus we get chapters dealing with the Amish, the Mormons, a "Pope Michael" who lives with his mother in Kansas, a lesbian marriage and a visit to the Grand Canyon which is entitled "The End of the World". This is lively reporting.
A visit to Guantanamo Bay prison at the US naval base is also described with a sharp reporter's eye. She later visits a mosque in Baltimore and grapples with the difficult situation for Muslims in post-9/11 US. Coleman, incidentally, reveals that because of her Jewish great-great-grandfather, who came from Latvia, she would be regarded by some Jews to be 100 per cent Jewish - an intriguing discovery, she observes, for a Co Leitrim woman educated in a Catholic convent.
She takes advantage of her temporary sojourn in Annapolis, Maryland, to attend the leaving ceremony for the graduates at the naval academy and the swearing in of new cadets. She quizzed some of them and their families about Bush and what they thought of the situation in Iraq but was courteously rebuffed. She was tougher on their president when she had him face-to-face.
The book opens with a detailed account of that interview with the interruptions on the eve of his visit to Ireland in June 2004. As she and the president were being wired up for the interview he was observing her and remarked to no one in particular, "I think we have a spunky one here." Little did he know how spunky.
Joe Carroll was Washington correspondent for The Irish Times from 1996 to 2000
Alleluia America! An Irish Journalist in Bush Country. By Carole Coleman The Liffey Press, 222pp. €14.95