Bending the president's ear. (signs of the times).

When Jean Bethke Elshtain, a professor of political ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School, was invited to the White House for a meeting only days after the September terrorist attacks, she was not quite sure why she was on the list. "I can by no means be described as a leader of a particular religious community," Elshtain wrote in the online newsletter Sightings, of President George W. Bush's meeting with representatives of Christian denominations and the Jewish, Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist, and Muslim faiths hours before he addressed Congress on September 20. "My hunch is that someone on the White House staff decided that they needed a representative from one of America's leading divinity schools and chose me because I have in the past addressed the ethics of war and war-making."

What she experienced was "an afternoon I will not soon forget," an opportunity to "join a group of my fellow citizens and members of our diverse religious communities for an extraordinary discussion with the president of the United States."

The president opened the meeting by recalling the events of September 11 "as he experienced them, doing what so many Americans are doing in trying to come to grips with what happened." Bush also told the religious leaders he would oppose singling out Muslims and Arabs for retaliation; Islam, he said, is a "religion that preaches peace," and those who used it to murder over 5,000 people did not represent Islam.

Bush then opened the floor for the thoughts and concerns of the group. "Deciding," Elshtain writes, "this might be my only opportunity to offer advice to a president of the United States, I ... said that a president's role as `civic educator' has never been more important, that he must explain things to the American people, teach patience to an impatient people, the need to sacrifice to a people unused to sacrifice. The president indicated he was aware of this important responsibility, and it was clear that he had already given the civic education role some thought."

Though the participants did face the inevitable cameras on the White House lawn after the meeting, Elshtain observes, "If the president had simply wanted a public relations event, we would have had a few well-timed and choreographed minutes. None of that happened. It was clear that the president wanted counsel, that he sought prayer, that he also hoped to reassure us that he understood the issues involved."

On the lawn, Elshtain "stood next to my Sikh colleague and found myself gently patting him on the shoulder. I said, `I hope you don't mind my doing that.' He said, `No, of course not. Please. I find it reassuring, very reassuring.'"