Recently in Sojourners Category

Jim Wallis' sense of the locus of that adventure being in the church has been built out from an initial sense of outrage at racism and the injustices perpretated by the US in Vietnam. The church experience he initially received was that of accomodation to all that injustice, whch drove him away. HIs experiences of reading the gospel again with new eyes came through such people as Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King. He came back to the church, and Sojourners has emerged from the call to let some OTHER stories be told, and then to help those who wanted to do something about that express this in terms of church and misison (Inward and Outward).

This has had a HUGE impact upon a nation of people who have hirtherto dismissed the church as irrelevant and unsympathetic. To be sure, MORE needs to be done, and more churches need to recognize the boundaries between church and "the world", not only so that as Hauerwas says: "The world can know that it is the world", but so people in the church can learn what is the world, so they can go about being the church. Indeed, James KA Smith, an outspoken critic of Wallis, even acknowledges how Wallis "woke him out of his social slumber", but now it seems that Smith is all too happy to announce how he has advanced beyond and above that, and franlkly, it comes across as too judgemental to proclaim that Wallis , " whatever [his] earlier stance might have been, he's really just ended up as a humanist. " (from here). Such attitudes disturb me coming from obviously intelligent folks, deeply committed to the church as Smith is, and who also attributes much of their own "awakening" to the "social issues" and how they are relevant to the church to the activity and writing of Wallis. I don't understand why it seems to difficult for him to see such "awakening" and "bringing to light" as a calling and a role of value to the church in America. What makes that even stronger for me is that Sojourners and Call to Renewal have always been closely aligned and supported by ecclesia, and constantly erncourage its supporters to find a communal home in some local expression of church; in a people "called out" and called to discern together where they will join God's activity.

I almost think that this statement in Resident Aliens speaks to RO as well:

As we have said often, the fundamental challenge before us is ecclesial. Clever new theologies may keep seminary professors from being bored, but they will also distract them from their central mission as seminary professors and they will certainly not renew the church. The roller coaster of clever new theologies has subjected clergy to one fad after another and has misled pastors into thinking that their problem was intellectual rather than ecclesial

Resident Aliens (ebook) p.203

(even though RO claims to be centered on church, it becomes "intellectual" when so much of their criticism of "activists" seems highly "specialized"; which doesn't make it wrong or untruthful or even prove them wrong, but it takes a certain level of education and then, within that, a certain "strain" or brand of education, and a certain schoolng in liturgical traditons, to even occur to the majority of folks in the church. And it seems that sometimes the RO proponents blind-side the ones they accuse of stepping over the line. For me, with two Seminary degrees, these options really hadn't been explored in two very fine theological programs. For the RO folks to expect the Wallis's and the "peace and justice" people within Christendom to joyfully abandon their language and emphases as mistaken and misguided and ignorant of how far they had fallen into "statecraft" is not something that most would take too very kindly when confronted so matter-of-factly as some RO theologians seem inclined to do (even Hauerwas is often guilty of this, I think)

Enactment is truly the final test. This is why the most valuable theology I have ever read is that which is witnessed to by The Church of the Saviour. It is out of their life together and the sheer faitfuleness and amazing impact they have with such "small numbers" (this is the observation about them from a world of people who have been trained to see the largest churches as the most effective and "successful") that their theology gains currency, and makes me seek out the ways and means of formation they have followed. Their modus operandi of assuming that God has gifts to bestow upon the people, and that God calls them to mission, and that mission derives from and arises out of life together; from a people devoted toone another in love. And not just this "nice" "how are ya'?" and "nice to see you" we get Sunday after Sunday (although there's not neccessarily anything wrong with uttering those words, of course). But as Bonhoefer bemoaned the "thousand fold hullo" that is somehow seen as a substitute for discipleship and the demands of life together, it is not the extent of the kind of friendship we are called to embody. We are to act and live as if we truly belive that God has something very adventurous and demanding and something which will shake us to our very depths. It is with such a people, who show by their very structures of being church that there is something powerful and holy about what God is doing amongst us, and into which we are called to particpate on that Journey Inward, and Journey Outward.

I end with this further quote from the idea quoted above in Resident Aliens:

Larry reflects on God's Politics

Recovering Biblical Justice

When Christian faith gets too cozy with any culture, it is at risk of being diluted and losing its voice. Justice requires independence and integrity. All of this is to say that as I reflect on the need for the mainline church to find its voice, I believe Jim Wallis is pointing the way by pointing toward the Bible.

I think this is Wallis' greatest gift during this time of political turmoil and enmity. The vision of the prophets for a world as God meant, and the announcement of a Kingdom by Jesus. The "better way" as envisioned by the people of God, via Israel, and the church.

I have often defended Wallis lately , in spite of the use of some language that some find troubling, but yet I cannot help but feel that he has brought , in an accessible way, an awareness of the dangers of Constantinianism that is much more esoterically rendered by the adherents of Radical Orthodoxy. Even though I am delving ever more deeply into the writings and thought of Stanley Hauerwas, and have gained valuable illumination and insight from James K.A. Smith's account of Radical Orthodoxy and the history of theology from that perspective, I cannot but wonder that it might not be such a distortion to speak as Wallis does, if he is able to raise awareness to the extent that he has about the idolatries of nationalism that have set themselves up as rivals to the vision the Kingdom engenders.

I have serious doubts that the criticism is conducive to the accomplishment of a needed consciousness/spirituality centered in the church, and emanating from that center. I have often said lately that I owe a great deal of my "formation" that has allowed me to read and understand Radical Orthodoxy and what I like about it, to Wallis and Sojourners (and of course, in similar ways, to others such as Tony Campolo, Clarence Jordan, The Church of the Saviour, and others).

I would probably rank The Church of the Saviour as the most shaping of the list, but the length and breadth of the Sojourners conversation over these past 20+ years makes it difficult to pinpoint exact "credits" to the forming of this particular story of mine.

I think that all this would take would be some serious reflection (and conversation) on the goals of both these groups, and I would say that the visions of each for that "City of God" are highly similar. I think Smith's rhetoric obscures that more important aspect.

I just finished Hauerwas' chapter on Rauschenbusch in A Better Hope, and it showed me that in spite of obvious differences between Hauerwas' view of church and that of Rauschenbusch, Hauerwas was highly appreciative of the importance and eccesiology of Raschenbusch, and careful to make sure he paid due reverence to the depth and intent of Rauschenbusch's "Social Gospel". I don't think it's too much to ask of Radical Orthodoxy critics that the same dialogical and reconciliing stance be taken in regards to groups such as Sojourners, whose history of works of mercy are unmistakable and ongoing. The people who are actually doing such works, and collating forces aimed to enable the increase of such awareness; and yes, "build a movement", areindeed something of value. We all know this phrase is often secularized, but Clarence Jordan liked to translate "The Kingdom of God" in his Cotton Patch Gospels" as "The God Movement". Lets keep in mind that this is not "widdling down" the Kingdom of God to "secular levels" and "concepts", but an attempt to connect the concept and reality of "The Kingdom of God" to something which is active, moving, indwelling, pervasive, hopeful, eschatalogical, and ever present.

Harbinger and RoundTower talk Progressive Evangelicalism:

RoundTower: Conversing with Progressive Evangelicalism: Pt. 4 - A Response

Roundtower:

Jim Wallis, for example, decries the hyper-politicization of E and would identify that as a key reason he wanted to differentiate himself from E. That's why it's problematic if that problem shows up in PE.

Steve B.:

If you are selecting partisan politics as a crucial error in evangelicalism, the question is why is partisanship an error for evangelicals, given their other commitments? And if it is the case that partisanship is also a defining feature of PEs, why is that an error for them, given their other commitments? What is about partisan politics in principle that is theologically problematic? Those to me are the most substantive questions.

But fair enough, at the end of the day, you're right: it's an interesting question as to who is more invested in partisanship.

and
(from here

In my previous post, I mentioned that the statement issued by Sojourner’s this past November made some helpful points by outlining some general Christian concerns and priorities for thinking about politics. The statement highlighted general principles that, in my estimation, any Christian would have to take seriously in engaging politics. Where the statement went wrong, I argued, was in its unpacking those principle in ways that seemed partisan and constricted. But that a very broad spectrum of Christian could have endorsed that statement had it refrained from its not-so-subtle hidden message is a point well worth taking very seriously.

Roundtower (David) does a pretty impressive job of talking about some areas where "differences" are more policy/implementation differences than theological/telos differences. That is certainly true in SOME cases, but then Roundtower acknowledges what I would also offer:

At the same time, as Christian we must manifest a healthy suspicion for the ways in which the interests of such experts shape the conclusion they come to and the solutions they propose. We must be aware that investigators (like the rest of us) are often driven by their own sin-corrupted agendas and avoid for our own part falling into the trap of buying into one particular “conservative” or “liberal” vision.

So there ARE many many telological differences , based on real theological differences.

Then Roundtower says this, whcih resonates with me, especially in regards to the way in which I defend Jim Wallis against what I consider to be unwarranted association of his language with that of Constantianian interests.

In this way could a focus on shared ends open the door to a fruitful and faithful unity that refuses to allow the boundaries of the church to be defined by the shallowness of American politics. At the same time, together, Christian could undertake the task of evaluating just what policies would further the ends of the Kingdom without the freight of viewing the matter as a debate about the reality and meaning of that Kingdom itself.

I realize that someone can be "lured" into the trap of adopting the opposition's assumptions, and play into their hands, but I also have to balance that against how the hell to talk to people who eschew overly "theological/pietistic" language, or who are attracted to the terminology of liberal democracy (I even confess some tendency to want to "work with" some of those concepts such as "values" and "democracy" and "people of faith" , but with the intention of opening up these more abstract ideas into their "Kingdom envsioned counterpart/expression/incarnation.

Steve replies:

David, I think many PE's will find this appealing. I hope you will have opportunity to develop these thoughts further and apply them to more issues. For instance, how would this pertain to nominees for the Supreme Court? Or the war in Iraq? I'd also be interested to hear more about your thoughts on the relation between culture and politics, and what specifically you have in mind by affecting culture. Anyways, good stuff!

Really good stuff in this exchange, and so go and read on Harbinger and Roundtower, and read in comments too.

Charlie has put up his blog entry on Chapter 10 of God's Politics, "Blessed Are The Peacemakers"

I commented there, and gave a little on my take of what Wallis was saying. I agree with Charlie that it is on this subject where Wallis treads on the most precarious ground, teetering on the edge of succumbing to the use of "political" language in getting at distinctively Christian views. In fact, this is the crux of the issue of "ceding language to the state" that represents JKA Smith's crtique of Wallis. But I have maintained that there has to be some ground where we engage with "the world" and "opposing theologies" (including the "secular" , "political" arena which , as Radical Orthodoxy points out, has its own distinct "theology"). I have been reading Hauerwas' A Community of Character
, and Hauerwas hits on several angles of this issue as he pokes around the issues of the role of church in "the world".

My call is for Christians to exhibit confidence in the lordship of Yahweh as the both of our existence and in particular of our community. If we are so confident, we cannot help but serve our polity, for such confidence creates a society capable of engendering persons of virtue and trust. A people so formed are particularly important for the continued existence of a society like ours, as they can provide the experience and skills necessary for me to recognize the differences of my neighbor not as a threat but as essential for my very life.

(Emphasis mine) p.86 A Community of Character

"A people so formed" are important in order for there to be a clear alternative. It is not Jim Wallis that should be out there "advocating" for the non-violent contrasting ethic of the gospels, but the churches. But they have not, for the most part, been "so formed". The churches have NOT been the source of education and formation in recognizing "the ways of the world".

I have long considered Wallis and Sojourners as a kind of "curriculum" for the church in confronting the powers. There will always be critiques, but I simply do not see nearly enough "clear and distinct and uncompromising presentation of questioning the "realities" which the Bush administration (or other administrations) have presented to us for our approval, or justifications given for actions taken.

More from Haerwas

The challenge is always for the church to be a "contrast model" for all polities that knew not God. Unlike them, we know that the story of God is the truthful account of our existence and thus we can be a community formed on trust rather than distrust, The hallmark of such a community, unlike the power of the nation states, is its refusal to resort to violence to secure its own existence or to insure internal obedience. For as a community convinced of the truth, we refuse to trust any other power to compel than the truth itself.

pp.84-85 A Community of Character

Charlie blogs God's Politics (you can see the whole list of his chapter by chapter summaries at BookGarden.org

Interruptions: June 2005

In this chapter Wallis takes on US imperialism, or as some put it our ambition for empire. Not since Rome has a nation Lorded it over others as America does today. Add to this ambition language about God and we have a problem

Here is where I see JIm Wallis and RO in a lot of agreement and seeing the "theology" behind the "secularity" (thus, not a secularity but an idolatrous relationship to the world, one which sees ALL "others" as "collateral damage" to our "interests") ("our" referring to America)

Several days ago, Eric had emailed Jamie Smith (aka known as James K.A. Smith, author of Introducing Radical Orthodoxy (which I am reading) and told him about the discussions Eric and I had been having. Jamie offered to answer 2 or 3 questions if we wanted to pose some. So , the comments section of this post, we did so, and Eric sent them off. The reply came, and Eric posted it here, and several comments there have ensued (including me).

Jamie Smith also posted about it on his blog here

The dialogue on this has been great.

The same one* who posted the entry that I point to in the previous entry below, also posted this one ( Constantinianism of the Left?) which is yet another complaint lodged against the Jim Wallis "God's Politics" message, and again, they miss the mark, I believe. While this guy, Jamie, is obviously an articulate and peace-loving Christian, he is the one who "doesn't get" Wallis, for he is yet another, that, given his obvious wisdom, would know better if he had actually read much of Wallis over the years, that he is off the mark about Wallis when he says:

In Dan Bell's terms, he still believes in statecraft. What was most telling, I thought, was for all his talk about faith, and even "evangelicalism," last night, I don't know that he ever once mentioned _the Church_! Instead, he'll focus on "people of faith" getting out the vote, lobbying congress, and doing everything they can to marshall the political process to effect prophetic justice. But that kind of picture plays right into the hands not only of American liberal individualism, but also the deep anti-ecclesial individualism of evangelicalism. In contrast, I think the only hope for justice is a robust church, which requires an ecclesiological account of the formation of disciples. Wallis seems to think a good "moral" civics lesson is enough. Indeed, at the end of the day, he thinks that democracy trumps the Church, for as he put it (yes, this is a direct quote): "Religion must be disciplined by democracy."

Then he goes on to say:

I couldn't help but concluding that, whatever Wallis' earlier stance might have been, he's really just ended up as a humanist.

So you "conclude" based on "whatever"? That's sort of what it seems like, alright. "Whatever", or read as: "Whatever it SEEMS like", with no history of the movement Sojourners has been for the past 30 years (before Jamie was born, I expect), and one of not just radical TALK< but also radical obedience, the likes of which I doubt that more than a very small minority of Christians in this country have begun to approach.

Wallis seems to think a good "moral" civics lesson is enough.

Hogwash, Jamie. Who you describe is a straw-dog. You may be right about of the lessons or points you make as they stand on their own, but it seems to me the target is misplaced.

I'll continue to believe that our most important political action remains the act of discipleship through worship.

You see, now, I could jump all over that one and call you an escapist, withdrawalist , ivory-tower person, but then I don't know much about what happens in your life apart from and because of your worship. I think you ought to at least extend to Wallis the benefit of your ignorance of "the rest of his life and journey".

* see my previous post (below this one, or click here) for an interesting case of mistaken identity -- the post which I am critiquing is by James K.A. Smith himself, whose book I am just about to begin (Introducing Radical Orthodoxy) See the comment below, in this post) from Eric, and my response, above that. I think this might prove to be a fascinating intellectual journey for me here. I'll post on tnis when I get home later (after I've read some of J.K.A. Smith's book)

Another installment of the critiques of God's Politics, to which I have posted comments
Progressive Protestant » here (at Progressive Protestant) and here (Van's Blog")

Both these blogs are great conversation supporters, and both bloggers thoroughly engaged their commenters, including me. I have no desire to give any impression that I think these guys are to be "battled" in any way. I just think that this is an extremely worthy topic, being that it is between fellow "Progressive Christians" with different senses about Faith and Politics and how these interplay. Hauerwas and Stout have conversation going on similar issues.

A commenter on the first post raises some points about the critique of God's Politics that I would have had he not beat me to it:

I think the audience for Wallis’ message is fellow-Christians. For that audience, the secular policy arguments don’t hold water, hence his desire to replace bad theology with better theology. Yes, Christians disagree, but so do non-Christians. Does Pollitt not want politically progressive Christians to persuade conservative Christians to their view? If you take Wallis and other theologically orthodox politically progressive out of the picture, or if you take God out of our language, Christianity is ceded to the conservatives. Is that what Pollitt wants?

Another important point — Wallis says in God’s Politics that progressives should not be looking to gain political power, as the right has done. Instead, we should be looking to proclaim truth to power regardless of political party. She gets him wrong when she sees this as a political power play.

This Pollitt person sure does have a wieldly axe to grind. She almost froths at the mouth with what seems an awfully lot like disgust for what she interprets Wallis to be saying (and most of it she gets totally wrong). It seems as though she just "flipped through" the book, and picked out pieces of it to chewup and spit out. Anybody with much more than a passing familiarity with Wallis and Sojourners knows that Wallis has been anyting but politically opportunist. The book I just read about the beginnings of the Sojo movement would be some "information" on which to base a reasoned response to the Sojourners movement. But very few of the Wallis critics have the benefit of such familiarity with the journey these people have had, or their experiences of living WITH and FOR the poor in a multitude of ways.

The crux of Van's critique, I believe, is in this statement:

I don't think that Wallis sucks, or that he only cares about political issues. But I believe that he undersells the agency of the church (which I can really understand, because we have sucked at our job over the last 2000 years). The church has a different sort of agency than the rest of the world. If Christians want to get involved in "indirect" politics (ie, the agency of American politics), that isn't bad as long as they maintain their ecclesial agency (direct politics).

Again, that Wallis "undersells the agency of the church" is inaccurate, unless you want to judge Wallis' complete "theological works" by what one derives from reviews of

God's Politics

. Wallis audience IS a national audience for God's Politics. Although many INSIDE the Church are applauding and identifiying with what Wallis procalims in God's Politics, the real aim is at the national discourse, and how that translates into actual motivations to create policy and implementation and funding for addressing the problems revealed by that process.

A simple reading of Sojourners history, and Wallis' books themselves is enough to dispel the critique Van has offered. Just a simple knowledge of the history of the Sojourners community itself is enough to show how Wallis IN NO WAY undersells the agency of the church. But again, if you limit this matter to what snippets have been bantered about in whatever circles of debate one listens to, then one can often find a lot of discussion that does nbot explicitly invoke church. But what DOES make it out of the actual pages of the book and onto the media and public debate are those things which DO GET COVERED (and "selected" to share the limelight and get dissected). And these are going to be the things more accessible to the secular audeince and secualr media. Read some Christian responses like Cornel West, and you get an entirely different picture, and an assesment that comes from a theologically informed view. I say this , and direct it to Chris and Van because O know that they are explicitly Christian, Progressive, and care deeply about the SAME issues that Wallis does. The things that Wallis cares most about are not the "frame of the debate itself", but the things which can be tackled and addressed after we get "all the cards onto the table". There are many cards missing from the table, and I believe that Wallis would also say that not only have the "other" moral issues been missing from public discourse, but also missing from the conversations in the churches. This HAS to change. People of "Progressive" sensitivities need to be able to find church communities where they can feel that their deepest concerns can be an impetus for mission, and an invitation to them to share their passions and journeys with others, so that the entire body can be edified.

Although they work hard, and they have accomplished a great deal for the Kingdom, they certainly realize that they fizzle out quickly when not depending upon God, and "depending" WITH each other, keeping the gift of forgiveness available to bestow on one another. This reminded of me of several Hauerwas essays, where the miracle of forgiveness is seen as necessary to the whole enterprise; without it, we ultimately seek to control our world, and deny that we are creatures, dependent upon God. This is such a "what was that again?" reply to the "Faith alone" people who lose the balance of the Inward and Outward Journey; of "faith vs works", of grace and obedience; they have fallen prey to "cheap grace".

p. 151, Revive Us Again by Jim Wallis (1983, Abingdon)

Those who pursue radical discipleship, however, face another problem. It is the tendency to seek justification in our life-style, our work, our protest, our causes, our movements, our actions, our prophetic identity, and our radical self-image. It becomes an easy temptation to place our security in the things we stand for and in the things we do, instead of in what God has done. It is a temptation to depend on things other than God's grace.

More on "Cheap Grace" and the power and deception of idols:

I've been reading Revive Us Again by Jim Wallis (1983), and realizing I didn't read much of this book when I got it about 20 years ago. I started subscribing to Sojourners in 1984 after I heard Wallis speak to the Lutheran Church in America's meetings of the Pacific synod , which were held at a church where I was the fulltime Youth minister. Wallis was returning from a trek to Tuscon, where the "Sanctuary Movement" trials had been held (there was a prominent Prebyterian minister , (or who became prominent because of his involvement) with providing "illegal" snactuary to refugees from Central America, fleeing the death squads that the US government said were not endangering them (the refugees). The US was denying these people legal refugee status, so "helping them avoid deportation back to El Salvador or Niaragua was against the law. And so this minister, John Fife, was in the limelight for doing so and speaking up about it. Of course, this was the topic of much discussion and coverage and advocacy on the part of Sojourners.

Revive Us Again has been amazing to read. It took me back (although Wallis is about 8 years older than me, judging by when we went to college), I always seemed to be anticipating my copy of Sojourners (this was all pre-Web, so the magazine was an ven more important conduit to read a perspective that was the RadOX of its day. From racism, to Vietnam, to Central America, to Nuclear disarmament (the era covered in Revive Us Again, and the Sojo community journey during that time), the book is an early example of Wallis' story telling prowess. I was especially touched by the parts of the story that directly mentioned one of the original Sojourners community, Bob Sabath, a friend whom I met via online connversing and spent a week with his family in 1995 when Ecunet had their 1995 conference in Baltimore. (I also did one of my visits to Church of the Saviour that trip).

Wallis' and Sojourners' message has not changed much at all (and why should it? It's a "chronic national sin" problem , this country of ours, imposing its interests globally (since its inception, with the virtual elimination of an entire continent's native population, and then importing a siginificant number of natives of another continent, Africa, and then as soon as worldwide travel became commonplace, no place was safe from the "business interests" of the American aristocracy) Wallis tells of his disillusionment with the Church over racism, and then the deceptions of Vietnam (and a close parallel in many ways to the present day occupation of Iraq (and yet again played as a "fight for freedom", while massive oppression and genocides take place alongside, but with somehow much less of a "sense of call to freedom" for the selective "causes" of the United States.

The book also tells several stories of the Sojourners community's living with the poor (literally--- sometimes at "their place" and sometimes having them over for extended stays and communal living, as children were tutored, housing battles fought for, and years of simply living amongst them, and working to alleviate whatever problems that arose; and the stories are filled with the experiences of the disappointments along with the renewed strength they found in the community that had not only within the Sojourners community, but also with those amongst whom they lived and organized to help them on several fronts (jobs, housing, childcare, etc.)

More in a bit.

After seeing Wallis this week, and after hearing, over the past 4 or 5 months the many variations and versions (communicated by Wallis) of the issues covered in God's Politics, I am now watchng Cornel West respond, at a meeting at Princeton University, April 26, 2005
RealVideo: 56k 350k
Windows Media 56k 350k

from the page:
Princeton University: WebMedia - Special Events

(Later...update.....953pm CST...just finished watching it after pausing a couple times for family interactions in the house.....and wow....great connversation. I have read and even used quotations from Cornel West before, but I am so impressed with the guy. Check out the video. The Real Video is good quality, and an hour and 44 minutes. Pure gold.

Charlie Pardue has been blogging God's Politics (you can follow the posts on this via RSS and other books by using Eric's bookgarden.org

Charlie's post:
Interruptions

Wallis asks the question, "How should faith influence your politics?" in the title of this chapter, and to many (myself included) this question is a red flag. As if faith is something that merely influences your politics. This is where some in the Radical Orthodoxy camp or self-professing Hauerwasians might think Wallis is edging far too close to liberalism, where your politics are something that you choose not unlike what soft-drink you order at a restaurant and faith merely informs that decision, not unlike the nostalgic memories of hot days working on the ranch when dad would offer me a Pepsi might inform what soft-drink I order. Rest assured this "informed consumerism" is not what Wallis means.

I "got into it" with a few bloggers who have recently been critical of Wallis (I might add, they seem pretty uninformed about Wallis or what he actually believes, but still proceed to post some warnings about "theocracy from the left", which also, is NOT what Wallis is aiming for). I believe that Wallis and Sojourners are simply proceeding to both model and to speak up on the issues which they feel the American church needs to recognize (going back to the earliest works , one of which I quote from in http://theoblogical.org/movtyp/archives/004146.html">this post. Sojo history has been all about this; this constant reminding of the American church of the dangers of confusing God and the preferences of particular politics, and Wallis has been particularly critical of the tendency and apparent desire and intention of the Religious Right to do just that, and "hijack the faith".

These liberal critics are asking "how is it any better to have a liberal theocracy than a fundamentalist one?" But this very question gets to the heart of this post from Charlie, I think. For the Christian, "politics" is not an "element" of our faith to be "influenced", but an EXPRESSION of our vision for what God's kingdom will look like; what it DOES look like wherever it is "on earth" ("as it is also in heaven"; or, as it should be).

I agree with Charlie in that this is not a "choice" (and Hauerwas himself has written essays on how Christian ethics is not an issue of "making right choices", but of expressing values one gains as part of Christian community.) Where our vision of what the Kingdom requires, and the realities of what we see in the relationship between our leaders and their actual implemention of their policies; THERE we are "doing politics". It is not a matter of "imposing our Christian theology" , for we are not interested in consensual assent, but in the justice and polis into which God's prescence calls us to participate. We might as well talk about me "imposing my beliefs about family" upon members of my family. We can no more avoid telling our story (which includes and is driven by our community's narrative) than we can avoid "being ourselves". If that's "imposing", then we are all guilty.

I'll end this post with a good line from Charlie's Chapter 5 post:

if our status as follower of Jesus Christ determines what we have to say about an amendment to the United States Constitution (not a Christian document), about the American definition of Marriage (not the Christian definition), but in no way determines and shapes what we have to say about bombing people based on lies... then it is not the Christian faith, but is rather the privatized faith of American Civil Religion that gets people to the polls, but never to protests.

This selection from Wallis' 1983 autobiography book, Revive Us Again: A Sojourner's Story, seemed to me to be a kind of portent to the present day dialogue, and the avenues for "flagpoles" to become noticed. This account recalls how Sojourners magazine, it's first few issues known as The Post American, brought about a "Meetup", or a discovering of kindred spirits across the nation of a theological movement fed up with the compromises and acceptance of nationalism into the Church's theology. The Post_American/Sojourners' story has been one of constant reminders of how easy it is to let our faith become "private" and neglect the call to justice and the kingdom Jesus proclaimed as having already entered into history.

We knew there had to be other people who were feeling the same things we were about the meaning of biblical faith in our time. in fact, that's why we decided to put out a publication: to articulate the new understanding of the gospel that was emerging among us and to Teach out to others who found themselves engaged in the same struggles.

Though we were hopeful about the response, we were thoroughly unprepared for the amount of mail we received. subscriptions began to pour in, and soon the shoebox we had set aside for the purpose of our record-keeping couldn't contain all the names of the new subscribers and friends we were finding around the country. We received phone calls, visits, and invitations. The post-American had sparked something.

I have sometimes likened the publication of the Past-American to the raising of a flag up a flagpole. Many people on the ground, at the grass room, were longing for an alternative to the narrow versions of Christian faith they were experiencing in their churches, but they didn't know one another. Many Of the earliest letters to us expressed people's long-held feelings of being alone in their beliefs, wondering if any other Christian like them existed. people from many places saw the Rag and met one another around the flagpole. From its first days, the magazine created an, ecumenical spirit among people, bringing together those who had never before been in relationship.

The "flagpole" has matured and grown more effective and participatory. From a print magazine to an interactive dialogue where people can "blog" God's Politics books and converse around issues. The Progressive Christian Blogring has been of inestimable worth to me in my period of estrangement from the institutional church. The blogosphere has been that "flagpole" to keep me in touch with the people who seem all too rare around here (even though I realize that there may be and most likely are others , even nearby, who perhaps will hook up with me, or I might find them, through this medium which often has allowed me to discover people (with whom I already had become acquainted) were also on a common journey with me, but we had , in this age of individualistic and isolated and "non-communal" church, were unaware of each other's journey. This is a travesty of neglect amongst churches in America, and especially among "Progressive" churches who should know better; who should know the absolute necessity of the church existing as a people on a journey; all with stories to share, and to draw upon as a source of strength and meshing of gifts and callings. Without this attention to the accountability structures, where we operate under the assumption that others want to know and even depend upon our story in order to more fully realize theirs, we are operating under the assumptions of political ideology rather than the polis of the church.

Wallis never suggests that it is enough to "gather round the flagpole", and go back home "encouraged" (although this is a necessary first step)...but the Sojourners community itself , and many other communities like it, with similar theologies and callings, recognize that the initial call to be part of God's Kingdom is to be called into a community of participants, who depend upon their commitment to this community to shape their very lives and involvements in the activity of God in the world.

Jim Wallis came to Nashville this week....I had purchased two tickets to go (Tuesday night), May 24th. I went to a little reception in the late afternoon (which is where I took the above picture), Janet met me right afterward, and we walked to the theater where Wallis was to speak, stopping for supper along the way on 21st Avenue. Wallis told of his "first conversion" , and he said his later, bigger one was "a different story for a different time". Well, it seems that Revive Us Again is that story - and so I read a couple of chapters over the past couple of nights. ("Journeys in Faith" Series edited by Robert Raines. This series featured auto-biographies of several prominent theologians. This one was Revive Us Again; A Sojourner's Story, by Jim Wallis

The Venue:

I still can't figure it out

Kingdom and Principalities: April 2005

Whether he likes it or not (or whether he's trying to or not), he's creating the atmosphere in the political arena for the reinvention of the Democratic party and the rise of a religious left.

Now, regardless of the widely agreed upon fact that neither a "religious left" or a "religious right" are gauranteed solutions, or even good solutions, I would choose a "left" over a "right" anyday. There simply IS no talk of "imposition" of faith upon the country in a religious left. To speak of a "religious ANYTHING" does not automatically imply that this group would seek "theocracy" as it has been described.

Whether he likes it or not, lots of the people who identify themselves as Sojourners were Democrats to begin with, and aren't going to stop being Democrats.

So? What's that got to with anything?

Whether he likes it or not, many evangelicals will swing to the other side of the aisle, instead of trying to dismantle the aisle as he says he is trying to do. Whether he likes it or not, his efforts will help reinvent the Democratic party in much the same way the Republican party was reinvented in the early '80s.

There he goes again. Why "in much the same way"? No. Religious conservatives who fantasize about theocracy have something in mind that I would consider somewhat equated with the Taliban. And The Crusades. Liberals , or the "Left" , at least STUDY and promote dialogue about the Jesus who challened the status quo. Conservatives (the kind leaning toward or firmly into fundamentalism) fit Jesus into a status quo box that they wrap up in religious garb.

Now if obedience is not the result of any in this "religious left", then they are no more Christian than the disobedient ones from the oppostie end of the pole. Wallis has ALWAYS affirmed and stressed the role of the Church, and the preaching of a Kingdom that Jesus spoke of as "among us", and not some vaccuous notion of some "remade Democratic party". These critics have no historical knowledge of what Sojourners has done over the past 30 plus years, and they make the mistake of lumping Wallis and Sojourners into categories which is one of the very things Wallis is trying to debunk. But they haven't read as much as half of God's Politics, much less very many if any of the articles and writings out of that community and from Wallis himself.

I've been to seminary twice. I've read plenty of books, left, right , and moderate (and maybe some "Biblical" ones that fit neatly into NONE of those categories). And I can find no sign whatsoever of some misguided effort to create a "New Democrat". That's not Jim Wallis. That's Howard Dean (and by the way, that's a job I am pulling for him and the Dems, even though I'd much rather see the rise of altenatives with a legitmate shot of overcoming this stale, marketed, two-party system we have now).

Seems many who count themselves among the "apolitical" Christians (which , to their credit, do so under the assumption that the Kingdoms of this world are not synonomous with the Kingdom of God. I affirm that). But to take this stance to the extreme of criticizing ones who DO gain a voice and a hearing among people in power, and assuming that they do this as a purely political animal is also questionable.

Chris B. from Kingdom and Principalities (a good name), has very little positive to say about Wallis, and in my estimation, soundly misunderstands him (and apparently does so without much real familiarity with him or his history)

Kingdom and Principalities: More on Jim Wallis and Public Policy

My first thought was, "Well, Jim, if you're really interested in helping, why don't you babysit her kids?" And that is the crux of what bothers me about Jim Wallis and his movement. They are so myopic that they have replaced the biblical mandate of Christian love and service with public policy. It seems that the greatest good one can do is to change laws to effect a woman like this on a macro-level. Let me say emphatically that I don't deny the potential value of public policy. To those fellow brothers and sisters in Christ who plan to make a career of it, I say, more power to you. Do what God is calling you to do. But I am desperately pleading with anyone who is involved in the Sojo movement, don't reduce Christian politics to public policy, voting, and the democratic process. If that is the primary way we bring about the kingdom of God, I think we serve a tyrranical God

I respond to this post (which includes more than what I have quoted here, but the same general tone) in the comments, and in similar conversations here, with Van and here, with Christ T., both of whom respond , not agreeing, but engagingly.

Over on this blog by Van I have taken to defending JIm Wallis again, against some more broad, and inaccurate perceptions of him.

Van has at least a couple Hauerwas books on his list, and so I don't believe he could really approve of the post that accused Wallis of "politicking" over and in spite of the "biblical mandate of Christian love and service with public policy.". I don't see the neccessary exclusion of those two.

This, via Jesus Politics, lauds Wallis for being one of the few willing to speak the truth to power:

THAT OLD-TIME RELIGION - Los Angeles CityBeat

Jim Wallis, the left-wing evangelical preacher and peace activist, diagnosed it recently: “The Republicans virtually claim to own religion. And the Democrats still don’t seem to know how to take back the faith.” Wallis, curiously, has turned into something of a darling for the Democrats because he finds ways to articulate positions – on poverty, on the environment, on the very question of political activism – that many of them wish they had the courage to advocate themselves. And he does it in exquisitely moral terms, which makes them think he must be on to something. Wallis has been packing audiences into churches and secular auditoriums as he tours the country promoting his best-selling book God’s Politics. On the L.A. leg of his tour, a few weeks ago, he had the hardcore anti-Bush crowd – essentially, punks, civil rights activists and Pacifica radio listeners – not only sitting through a church service at All Saint’s in Beverly Hills, but lapping up his every word. What may have been troubling to the Pacifica crowd, and to many others on the secular left, is that Wallis believes religion is the key to a progressive revival in this country. What troubled them that night in Beverly Hills was not that they thought Wallis was wrong, but rather that they suspected he was entirely right. Wallis’s great hero and role model is Martin Luther King Jr., whose leadership of the civil rights movement would have been inconceivable without the support of black churches and his own sense of a religious mission. Likewise, the backbone of opposition to the Vietnam War came from radical priests who argued against the war in specifically moral terms. That’s the kind of religious politics to which Wallis wants to return.

I am so pleased to see Jim getting the recognition and garnering the support and the leadership role he has long deserved. And at this moment in political/international history, when the powers that be on this earth are in perilous hands, it is all the more crucial.

I just got back about an hour ago from Atlanta, and greeted and hugged and talked to everybody at home, and now I'm winding down and getting ready to head to bed before getting back to work in the morning.

I had been in Atlanta with my Dad and two brothers at our yearly tradition of seeing the SEC Men's Basketball Tourney. We're all Kentucky fans, and they lost their first championship game since 1996 today (a couple of times they got bounced in the first round, and every other time , until this year, they go on and win the semi final game and the tournament championship game. Today Florida got 'em, and bounced them out of a number one seed. They may meet Cincinnati in round two, assuming they don't lose to Eastern Kentucky (coached by former star Travis Ford) or Cincy doesn't lose to Iowa.

The game Saturday was a barn-burner, overtime, with Chuck Hayes scoring the game winner with 7 seconds left.

What was most memorable for me, this weekend, though, was finishing up my reading of Jim Wallis' God's Politics. I carried it with me to all the games to read during boring tourney games, halftimes, pregames, and awaiting Marta rides to and from the hotel.

I have many stirrings within me about what constructive thing I can be, or should be doing. As I read and found inspiration by the stories Jim told (many of which I've read in other of Jim's writings), I was especially reflective and confronted with the short piece on vocation and career; which I heard him speak on in a couple other places this past week. It's about how vocation is finding that place where your gifts and some great need meet. I wrote a bit about this last weekend and recalled some of Elizabeth O'Connor's wrting about this as she wrote of the experiences of the journey of the Church of the Saviour. There very likely will be more to come on this, but tonight I need to be getting ready for bed and talking with Janet a bit after being gone for 4 days.

I had started a post (the previous one) on this, and begun by referring to the video I watched last night, and got sidetracked into a technical issue, so here I take up the original subject, Vocation and Gifts. Jim Wallis, in the aforementioned video, said:

Vocation is where you discern your gifts and see where those gifts match and meet the needs of the world.

( I found this on Jordon Cooper's blog)

This matches up with what The Church of the Saviour has been proclaiming since their beginnings in 1947.

I have taken Elizabeth O' Connor's Journey Inward, Journey Outward down from the shelf and was looking at the chapter on "The Calling Forth Of Gifts", and found myself scanning entire two page spreads because there is this quote or that quote that I simply must blog about, and end up finding one paragraph leading to another on the next page, and ended up scanning the whole chapter.

A sample:

Just as we are committed to being on an inward journey for all of time, so are we committed to being on an outward journey, so that the inner and the outer become related to one mother and one has meaning for the other and helps to make the other possible. If this does not happen, then those who are critical of the contemplative man are rightly so. If engagement with ourselves does not push back horizons so that we see neighbors we did not see before, then we need to examine the appointment kept with self. If prayer does not drive us out into some concrete involvement at a point of the world's need, then we must question prayer. If the community of our Christian brothers does not deliver us from false securities and safe opinions and known ways, then we must cry out against that community, for it betrays.

Faith results in works. So many in the Christian Right want to scream "works rigtheousness"!, as if this ended the matter (and , conveneiently, keeps the discussion from getting into matters of just what it is that God has for them as a mission; or what it takes to be in a community that truly dedicates itself , life by life, to the priority of finding that call of God for this people at this time in this place.)

All the while I say this, I am frustrated constantly these days by the fact that I am not finding the starting place; the OTHERS with whom I share this, and with whom I am a particpant and a fellow sojourner. There seems to be a total lack of awareness that a Christian community is truly "what it's all about". The things called Churches today have none of this sense of importance and urgency, nor does it command the dedication of energies, time, personal involvement, and confrontation with the culture.

At times, which seem to be on the increase these days, I wonder how there may be things about me that drive people away. I considered myself pretty popular in college, and in Seminary, and really felt I was a solid part of a student community. After college and seminary, the relationships outside of the home and marriage have seemed to steadily decline, and I wonder what's happened to me.

The inner life is not nurtured in order to hug to oneself some secret gain. It is not important in the end that in the quiet of a morning hour we find in ourselves a dwelling place, unless in the midst of the commerce and affairs of men we can get back to it, and what is spoken there and what we become for being there comes to have its influence on the world outside ourselves.

(p.29)

I know that the onus lays with me to keep looking, and to take advantage of what opportunities I do have. But I am finding it increasingly difficult to take Churches seriously when I see such a glaring inattention to the real world, and to real struggles amongs many people of faith to come to terms with that; it's like the "class warfare" that is talked about in political debate has infected the Church, and the people who can't separate politics from faith, or have chosen the road unpopular amongst mainstream Christians, are simply "malcontents" or dedicated to "opposition for its own sake" (at least this is the sense one gets from those who keep most of real life out of Church--- like the very real issues in politics or the the very real dangers of increasing war brought on by an increasingly shallow and arrogant and militant nationalism).

I want to get beyond that, and into an involved community; a community that is involved on both side of the Journey (The INward and the Outward, and fully appreciate the support that one gives the other; that maintain that balance between nurture and movement.

It is true that the structures of the Church have little to do with the need of the world. That is half the problem. The other half is that they so often have little to do with the need of those within a church. They do not help us to realize our essential selves to follow Christ, who saves us from being other than who we are. The Church has too often told us what to do and failed to help us become who we can be. The new forms of the Church will be shaped by the need of every man to become the person he can become. It is our common humanity that we affirm, our need of one "other, and above all our sonship we are joint heirs with Christ. It is the glorious freedom of the sons of God to which all in= are called that our structures are to proclaim.

The outward journey is determined in part by the gifts discovered in the inward journey. The story of the buried intents is the story of how seriously God considers the matter of unused gifts. This is what psychiatry calls "unlived" life, which takes its terrible toll even that which you have will be taken away." There are a thousand warnings, however, to the man who walks away from himself and his own destiny. Restlessness, sleepless nights, discontent, anger, meaninglessness, boredom these are the cries of the violated self. Through our suffering we are called back to our own truth: to turn and be healed. We can walk, however, beyond the hearing of the voice that calls, into a land of apathy, complacency, not cuing there is a place beyond the point of safe return. "You will hear and hear, but never understand; you will look and look, but never see" (Matt. 13:14, NEB).

(note: the above was written in 1968, and I would bet that now people in the COS community point to how Elizabeth O'Connor herself was still using the terms "sons of God" and "every man" at that point, and that you don't hear that much in that community anymore (since we have become more sensitive to inclusive language); on the other hand, when you get caught up in what is being said here, and realize the almost 40 year time lapse, and timelessness of the concept, you can easily forgive and overlook that. I thin k that Elizabeth herself probably noticed that herself not too long after she wrote it, and probably before many of us woudl have.)

I watched Jim Wallis do a talk from a video link provided on sojo.net (my Firefox setup would not launch Media Player from that link, but you can play it streamed from your Windows Media Player by opening Media Player, and doing file/OpenURL, and pasting in http://www.sanc.info/video_2005/02_27_05sanctuary_300k.wmv.

There's probably a way to provide a link that does this automatically (IE handles the link, which goes to a page that has this:

<ASX version="3.0">

<Entry>

<ref HREF="http://www.sanc.info/video_2005/02_27_05sanctuary_300k.wmv"/>

</Entry>

</ASX>
but Firefox simply stops there.

There's probably a way to provide the correct URL to fire off the steps I listed above to manually open Media Player with the .wmv URL, but I haven't found it by doing an intial Google search, but it's probably out there somewhere.

The Christian view of human nature and of sin suggests that we are fallible creatures and thus not good at empire. We cannot be trusted with domination, becoming too easily corrupted by its power and too often succumbing to repression in defending it

This is Jim Wallis, from his book God's Politics. Not only are human beings not good at Empire, the Church doesn't exactly have a good record when they give it a crack (ie. The Crusades, various "conquests" giving God the credit (Columbus vs the Natives of the New World).

In fact, the Church is often instructed to resist empire altoghether, and instead, side with the victims of those empires (and their leaders who invoke The Almighty in their cause).

Mike James offers up a list of why NO, the event of Iraqis getting to vote was unequivocally NOT WORTH IT:

Maikimo.net › Weblog › Twenty-nine pieces of silver
The one which stuck with me was the last one on the list of 12:

not only not cared for our own poor, widows, and orphans, but instead enthusiastically created more elsewhere

Someone told me they thought the Iraqi vote was "complete and utter vindication" of Bush. To that I say, Blasphemer! It is a vindication of NOTHING , except that bad things happen to good people, and bad people get the spoils (but only for a while, and then they will know and their sin will be exposed as death.) Justice will ultimately prevail, and the ones who have deceived many, and have followed the path of greed and pride will fall. Count on it. The creator of the universe has proclaimed it.

MIke James posted this during last week:

Maikimo.net › Reading › Bible considered harmful (to conservative views)

Zeke L observes in a comment to advisorjim — and expands on the idea elsewhere — that

The bible is one of the worst offenders in terms of turning people liberal.

My experience is similar.

Jesus Politics points to a Robert Parham piece on a "Separation-Fundamentalist", Bary Lynn, lumping Jim Wallis with James Dobson, as if both constitute an equal threat to the public discourse. I think not.

Welcome to Ethics Daily.com!

Lynn said, “Elected officials should make decisions based on the public good, not private religious belief.”

After a slight tip of his hat to the role of religious debate in the public square, Lynn said, “Our nation’s laws must be rooted in constitutional values and reasoned analysis, not someone’s personal take on Scripture.”

While both Dobson, a religious-right leader, and Wallis, a religious-left leader, do take their faith into the public square, that’s where their similarities end. In fact, they differ at two distinct points.

First, Wallis reads a big Bible that speaks to him about both personal morality and social issues. Dobson has a small Bible that serves as a proof-text to speak mostly against gays and abortion.

Second, Wallis gives a Christian witness in the public square to values and directions that shape public policy. Dobson seeks control of the Republican Party in order to run the state and implement his theocratic goals. The former wants to influence; the latter wants to control.

Lumping Wallis and Dobson together is misleading.

The Republican "morality police" hold forth a personal preference Bible, that makes very little , if ANY demands on the authors. Wallis holds forth a prophetic Bible which lets noone off the hook. It is equally confrontive to people in power of either major party, or any other party.

This review by Elizabeth A. Castelli
on Slate has a much better grasp of what Wallis is about. Her criticism is that Wallis is too "Christian" oriented, to which I say "How else would he express this? From what underlying belief about life does Wallis even care to write such a book? From the perpective of an evangelical Christian who does not like seeing his faith distorted and compromised by nationalism, greed, and deceit.

The Morals of the Story - Does Jim Wallis' leftist, Bible-based book get it right? By Elizabeth A.?Castelli

The best summary of Castelli's admirable grasp of Wallis' view is summed up in this:

Wallis presents "God's politics" as a politically nonaligned and non-ideological third way.

Where Castelli finds fault is expressed here:

God's Politics consistently engages in rhetorical slippages that will certainly be troubling to people outside of Wallis' Christian frame. "Religion," "spirituality," and "faith" are used throughout the book generically, but also synonymously with "gospel faith," "prophetic religion," and "Christianity." There are occasional token references to Jews (specifically Abraham Joshua Heschel, Sen. Joe Lieberman, and Michael Lerner), Islam (whose adherents are sometimes "Moslems" and sometimes "Muslims"), and a vague confraternity of "religious seekers."

And here I say, again, WHY NOT? This is, after all, Wallis' framework. His audience is, in fact, a Christian audience (he couldn't get this book published in very many "Christian" publishers, and the ones that would do not have the impact of a Harper. I also feel that there are "seekers" and "people sympathetic to an authentically compassionate activism that this book would do a good job of articulating a more accurate "Biblical Christianity".

Casteli continues to complain about Wallis "tendency" to couch social justice and activism in terms of Christian language:

Wallis states again and again his overarching perspective: "The real question is not whether religious faith should influence a society and its politics, but how." Religious faith is no generic category here; it means biblical religion.

Well, yeah. He does. And yeah, it DOES mean Biblical religion. And the left or even non-Christians have nothing to fear from "Biblical religion" as Wallis articulates it (and LIVES it, a nd expresses it politically). Castelli seems to be slipping into that trap of associating "Biblical" with the smug, arrogant, narrow, authoritarian fundamentalism that so many loud voices in the Chrsitian Right have expressed. But this one of Wallis's major purposes for the book; to provide a sound apologetic for "Biblical Faith", and he does not attack the argument about other faiths, and how they relate to this "Christian stream of consciousness" concerning social justice. I happen to believe there are many common threads of similar nature across all religions which make a case for integration into life, and dialogue with the culture.

Richard Land, in the NYTimes article yesterday, said that Wallis "conflates" efforts to alleviating poverty with "democratic" ways. NO, he DOESN'T. Wallis has the SAME MESSAGE for Presidents and administrations of BOTH and ALL Parties, and has so for 30 plus years since Sojoutners began. Land assumes that "Republican" efforts (specifically this administration, which moves everything in the opposite direction and calls it "the best for everybody". That's convenient, since it lets them TOTALLY off the hook from having to DO ANYTHING, other than what their chosen "moral" party has convinced them is the case.

BOth parties certainly have their corporate loyalties and political compromises; but no administration in this century has been so anabashed at kissing the butts of big money; and so propaganda-centered in their approach. It seems as if the real activity is the funnneling of money as quickly as possible in as many as possible ways to the top, and then cover it all in sugar and talk of "freedom and liberty", while somehow pulling off an image of being "common folks". Seeing this administration at work has sensitized me to histories such as Zinn's A People's History (in which I have reached page 250). Great book, and VERY educational. But of course, there are those who think it blasphemy against this great nation of ours (note the religious language and reverence used to defend nationalism, and how it is equated with some sort of theological blasphemy; as if God and country are the same.)

The New York Times > Washington > Democrats Turn to Leader of Religious Left

He argued that Mr. Wallis misunderstood conservative evangelical voters because he conflated the moral issue of alleviating poverty with the practical issue of whether Democratic policies are the way to do it.

Sorry for all the "windbag-ed-ness", but people like Land and MOhler just irk me to no end.

Richard Land, president of the ethics and religious liberty commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, says Wallis is essentially a compromise that the Democrats turn to.

The New York Times > Washington > Democrats Turn to Leader of Religious Left

But Dr. Richard Land, president of the ethics and religious liberty commission of the 16-million-member Southern Baptist Convention, called Mr. Wallis "a left-wing evangelical" ill-qualified to instruct Democrats on conservative Christian values. "The Democrats are turning to the guy they can find that is least scary to them," Dr. Land said. He argued that Mr. Wallis misunderstood conservative evangelical voters because he conflated the moral issue of alleviating poverty with the practical issue of whether Democratic policies are the way to do it. "I don't know anybody who is in favor of poverty," Dr. Land said. "He doesn't seem to have adequately comprehended that the debate is over, based on the 30-year experiment, about whether big government or free markets work better at producing wealth for everybody."

They find him "least scary" because he makes sense, unlike the arrogant, dogmatic, holier-than-thou types the Southern Baptists apparently ike to parade in front of the media as their official spokesmen. Wallis' theological sophistication makes mincemeat out of the irrelevant, individualistic, cultural-compromising theology that is rampant in the Southern Baptist Church.

I have no idea what Land is referring to when he says "the debate is over, based on the 30-year experiment, about whether big government or free markets work better at producing wealth for everybody". What? Is he implying that Republicans create more wealth for everybody? The opposite is true. "Trickle down" feeds the media, not the bank accounts of the majority of Americans. The wealth becomes more and more concentrated, especially as the more extreme neo-conservatives unabashedly siphon National Revenue toward the top. Land is out of his mind. But that's par for the course for a Church that is sold out to right-wing ideology, and an ideology with no Christ; but an opiate-of-the-people that calls his name but cares not for the least of these.

Read your Bible, Mr. Ethics Commission man. (I wonder why they combine Ethics with "Religious Liberty"? Interesting.) But READ your Bible. Jim Wallis acts and speaks and advocates and ministers as if he has, while the Southern Baptists "read in" to it the distortions and cultural "accomodations" that make the faith more "palatable" and tone down its more socialist, radical community, revolution of values emphasis and exchange it for a chameleon faith (except for their litmus issues, to which they more of ten than not limit themselves).

Below in the quote is the start of an email I recieved from SojoMail today. When I looked just now at the link below (Amazon's Best Seller List) , they had moved up to number 2. Great!

Amazon.com: Top Sellers

Earlier this week, we asked our loyal SojoMail readers to take a different kind of action - to help make Jim Wallis' new book, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, a national best seller. The response has been amazing, and thousands of our readers have already ordered copies.

In fact, God's Politics was listed as #3 on Amazon.com when this e-mail was distributed! If this incredible response continues, we could even reach The New York Times best-seller list!

So many theological/political arguments pose a false dichotomy: that it is not the job of Government to care for the poor, to seek justice, to provide safety nets. Curiously, many of the same people who suggest this are also involved with Churches who do none of this either. So who is left to provide the care; the safety nets, the justice? They say the market will take care of itself. The market will set everything right. This is idolatrous; and it is naive; and it ignores a basic Biblical warning: "The Love of Money is the Root of all evil". To leave these calls to "the least of these" to "market forces" ignores the fact that whenever "trickle down economics is employed and given a chance to work during Republican administrations, the gap between the rich and poor grows, unemployment rises, and the population sees a rise in the poverty level. Trickle down seems to be the unsubstantiated dream of the powerful (and I would sugest they don't really care; that this is but an argument they use to get elected, and then the numbers are ignored as their strategies are unfurled.

No, it's not to be left to "market forces", but is the responsibility of any "citizen" of any community, and , byu inference, by its elected representatives, who are elected to help fashion a just society in its details and implementation. Many government programs are checks and balances against the abuse of power. The neoconservatives want to strip government, excdept for its responsibility of defense (which, conveniently benefits many of those neoconservatives and their alliances with forces which see America as the world's most worthy reperentative of righteousness. "Compassionate Conservatism" rings hollow in the face of actual policy implementation in this administration. And the actual numbers needed to falsify or buttress are misrepresented, distorted, avoided, and covered in a media blitz of secular equivalents of pious platitudes.

Social justice is also not the sole province of faith communities (especially when an alarming proportion of these do nothing in these areas), but a calling of any who would profess to care about fairness in a society. Wallis declares that social justice is not only the call of God to his people, to live out in the lives of their Churches, but also the civic responsibility in a secular politic whose responsibility it is to implement just structures, and work for the common good. There are certainly many points of collaboration that could be found. John DiUlio found that Bush's Faith-based initiatives to be far from priority; indeed, even a target of scorn by a administration insiders who frequently ridiculed DiUlio's role (ie "Pick a faith-based initiaitive; any initiative" was heard more than once in the White House, chiding DiUlio).

God's Politics: A Better Option, Sojourners Magazine/February 2005

Prophetic politics would not be an endless argument between personal and social responsibility, but a weaving of the two together in search of the common good. The current options are deadlocked. Prophetic politics wouldn’t assign all the answers to the government, the market, or the churches and charities; but rather patiently and creatively forge new civic partnerships where everyone does their share and everybody does what they do best. Prophetic politics wouldn’t debate whether our strategies should be cultural, political, or economic; but show how they must be all three, led by a moral compass.