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Kelly Coleman, active in the Midland Ministerial Alliance, worked in the oil business then and recalls the town's religious revival . "It was an extraordinary time that God ordained," he says. "After the oil shakeup some of us became ministers or part-time ministers." Another Midlander said the turbulent time convinced oil men that "there was more to life than the oil business. Your hope was not in oil and gas but in the Lord."

Don Poage attended Community Bible Study classes with Bush. He remembers him as "just a regular guy" who asked "good questions." He also remembers oil executives once worth millions of dollars showing up to class with their bibles. "Look who is here," people in the class would turn around and remark, says Poage. Bill Holmes, another CBS student, says oil executives "and plumbers" would study the bible side by side.

During the oil downturn, Midlanders didn't lose their salty sense of humor. They would be seen driving around town with the bumper sticker, "God, if you give us another oil boom, we won't this piss one away," says a Midlander.

Christianity in a oil town like Midland takes on some of the industry's qualities, say Midlanders. The hardheaded, optimistic, pioneering skills one needs in the oil business translate well to faith. A boom-and-bust business breeds a character that combines risk-taking with reliance on God. To move to a harsh climate like West Texas with the expectation of success, they say, requires an independence from men but a dependence on God.

Chan Driscoll, who taught Bush's Sunday School class at First Presbyterian church, isn't surprised that Midland served as a stimulus to Bush's religious renewal. "West Texas prairie life gets you that way," she says. It is easier to become a "serious Christian in a place like this than in New York."

Its culture of prayer and fasting (as president, Bush reportedly fasted at times during the Iraq war), faith-based charities, Boy Scout moral clarity, and mixture of evangelical and ecumenical Christianity ("Catholics and Baptists don't usually work together," said a Midlander. "But they will here") helps to explain Bush.

After he became governor of Texas, Bush placed on the wall of his office a painting he received from friends in Midland that captures the striving Christianity typical of it. As he relates in A Charge to Keep, Bush sent a memo to his staff encouraging them to stop by his office and "take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us. What adds complete life to the painting for me is the message of Charles Wesley that we serve One greater than ourselves."

This is the sky-is-the-limit Christianity of Midland, preached from the deserts of West Texas and now heard in the deserts of Sudan.

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Education, Business, Religion, Military, Iraq, NATO, Alaska, Oil