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If the three great arenas of Christian temptation are money, sex, and power, J. David Kuo has now written compelling books about two of the three. His first book, Dot.Bomb, was a memoir of greed and fear as an executive at a doomed Internet company, ValueAmerica. His latest book, Tempting Faith, recounts the story of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. It has turned heads with Kuo's claim that the office courted and exploited evangelicals and ethnic minority Christians while delivering very little of its original agenda for "compassionate conservatism," and with Kuo's call for Christians to take a two-year fast from political action (though not from voting). Amy Black reviewed Kuo's book for Christianity Today sister publication Books & Culture; here CT contributing editor Andy Crouch talks with Kuo about faith, power, and tell-all memoirs.

Let's begin by talking about the response so far to Tempting Faith.

Well, one MSNBC reporter got an early copy of the book, and his piece defined the coverage. Every single piece, every column, every comment for the first several days after the book was released was based on a very few passages he pulled out, saying that people in the White House called religious leaders "goofballs."

I never expected that would be the thing that would end up defining media coverage, because frankly anybody who is honest and has done Republican politics inside Washington for the last 20 years knows that social conservatives and evangelicals are mocked. This is much like expressing shock over gravity. But that's the stuff that got picked up.

Honestly, when I read the book, none of that struck me as particularly surprising at all. But there is a sense that it was surprising to you. Is it too strong to say that you come across as somewhat naïve?

If I'm naïve, I'm probably the only person who's worked for the CIA, Bill Bennett, and John Ashcroft who's naïve. Perhaps I come across as a naïf. I've heard that accusation, but whether I was naive or not does not undercut the central argument that I am trying to make: Believers have been sold on this idea of George W. Bush as Pastor-in-Chief.

But initially it seems like you, too, related to him as Pastor-in-Chief and were very taken with his personal piety. You talk about sitting in the waiting room to the West Wing and imagining what important things people are doing behind the doors—there's something wide-eyed about that.

You know what? I am honestly relating how every single person feels the moment they enter the White House. If I come across as naïve, perhaps it's because everybody else paints themselves as more sophisticated than they are.

What could the church—the Christian communities you were part of at various stages of this story—have done better to prepare you for your time in the White House? There is a Christian tradition of political reflection, drawing especially on Augustine's ideas of original sin and a human City that always will be compromised. But it seems like the formation you had as a Christian helped you love Jesus, but gave you no formation in how to be part of political structures.

It's a profound point. Show me the church that talks about the City of God and the City of Man. I don't know very many churches right now that are preaching Niebuhr over Max Lucado. And listen, I love Max Lucado's stories, don't get me wrong. But they are easily digestible.

They're sentimental, right? And it seems like you went in with a kind of sentimentality about what devotion could do, what sincerity could do. It would have served you better, and would have served evangelicals in America better, if we had a more chastened view of what human beings can accomplish when they're embedded in these kind of structures.

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November (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50