Two of the mantras that my evangelicalism has taught me over the years are these:
1. Be True to Scripture 2. Avoid Politics
The heart for God's Word is not all that surprising, given the "Sola Scriptura" roots of Protestantism and the attempt to be faithful to the Bible that have been consistent earmarks of American Evangelicalism.
The second mantra might be a bit surprising, especially as Evangelicals have been branded as part of the Religious Right over the past several election cycles. Despite media portrayals, however, the vast majority of evangelical churches have not preached Republicanism. Rather, they have avoided politics altogether, leaving the partisan work to Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and the late Jerry Falwell.
The biggest reasons for avoiding politics? Well, some are justly concerned that the church can easily be co-opted by a political party and its witness stifled. Many are worried that engaging in politics will divert attention from the "simple Gospel." Others recognize that politics can be divisive and are concerned their churches might lose some valuable market share.
So instead of evangelical churches discussing political issues, we have in essence decided that our congregations would be better served getting their political bearings from Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Keith Olbermann or James Carville than be viewing political issues through the lens of scripture.
Unfortunately, the mantra of avoiding politics has trumped our commitment to be faithful to scripture!
In the model prayer that Jesus taught, he prayed that God's kingdom would come and God's will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Bottom line? Doing God's will on earth demands that Christians think about the big political issues of the day through the lens of scripture! As any reader of Sojourners knows, the Bible demonstrates God's deep and abiding love for the poor.
In 2008, poverty is out of control locally, nationally and globally. In my neck of the woods, in Cincinnati, more than one in four people live below the poverty line. If God's kingdom is to come in Cincinnati, something must be done about poverty.
So this fall, University Christian Church is hosting a Poverty Sunday as part of the Vote Out Poverty Campaign. On Poverty Sunday, we will encourage congregation members to personally get involved in working with and loving the poor in our community.
We will also encourage members of our congregation to evaluate political candidates based in part on their policies and plans for reducing poverty both nationally and globally.
We will not be partisan. We will not be asking Christ-followers to be single-issue voters. But, we will no longer give politics to Limbaugh, Hannity, Olbermann and Carville.
As Christians, we take up our crosses and follow Jesus, not political pundits. And where Jesus leads, we must follow, so we will be hosting a Poverty Sunday this fall. I pray your church will too.
For more information on Sojourners' Vote Out Poverty campaign and Poverty Sunday, visit www.voteoutpoverty.org
Troy Jackson is senior pastor of University Christian Church in Cincinnati, a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, and earned his Ph.D. in United States history from the University of Kentucky. He is author of Becoming King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Making of a National Leader and a participant in Sojourners' Windchangers grassroots organizing project in Ohio to work on the Vote Out Poverty Campaign.
The most direct self-referential command Jesus has given to those who would call themselves by his name is, "Follow me." That means that even before praising Jesus, we must follow him on his path of love. It is that path that led him to teach, to heal, to save, to sacrifice. Yet his path did not stop there. It also led him to fulfill the prophet's mandate to call to account the shepherds of his people who seemed to care more for power and wealth than for the welfare of the sheep they were vowed to serve.
What does this mean in the roiling realm of politics in America today? It means that we who purport to follow Jesus must issue our own prophetic call to the shepherds of our nation who seem to serve only themselves and the few they claim as their own.
We must call upon our officials and elected representatives to turn from the greed and imperial ambitions of Caesar to embrace Christ's call to care for those in need: the weakest, the neediest, those in the twilight of their days.
We must call upon the politicians of America to stop the crony capitalism that enriches the few and impoverishes the many.
We must call for all Americans to be provided with adequate health care, a livable minimum wage, and access to an education that can prepare them to be fruitful in the marketplace and to contribute to the common good of all.
We must call upon our political leaders to stop their cynical misuse of religion and "faith" to support exclusionary policies, exploitative policies, policies that deal in killing and death.
We must call upon all who claim to be politicians "of faith" to return integrity to America's political culture by embracing the same humility that moved the psalmist to pray, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting" (Psalm 139:23-24).
We must call upon all who claim the name of Christ to reclaim the holistic spirituality that Jesus taught, not the one-dimensional imitation of it that frees us from the responsibility to make justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Finally, we must call upon our politicians to end their ceaseless drive for power and to begin to sincerely serve the needs of those entrusted to their leadership. For the politics of Jesus seeks not to possess worldly power, but to serve the justice of God.
Whew. Take a breath, Christians! I just read all the comments to my post Friday on Barack Obama's historic acceptance speech of a major party's nomination to the highest office in the country -- the first African American to have achieved that American milestone. The post was about the historical significance of that event and speech, especially on the very day of the 45 anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s most remembered "I Have A Dream" speech at the 1963 March on Washington.
I didn't even comment on the content of the speech, except to say it allowed Obama to clearly and eloquently present himself and his policy ideas, so Americans could agree or disagree. But the heat of the comments to the post was amazing and alarming to me. So I think it is time to plead for some Christian civility in this election year.
Let me give an example of Christian civility from Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, which is a leading institution of the "Religious Right" and whom nobody would confuse with a Democratic or Obama supporter. On Friday, Perkins released a statement on "Obama's Historic Speech," which said:
Sen. Barack Obama's speech last night, accepting the Democratic nomination for President, was a historic moment. Coming on the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, the selection of the first African American to be the presidential nominee of a major party illustrates the progress America has made in fulfilling Dr. King's dream of racial equality. The "promise" of equal opportunity was in our nation's founding documents, but it has not always been fulfilled. Every American should fondly hope and fervently pray, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, for the time when this milestone, remarkable as it is, is a memory, and the mere fact of a person's skin color is not reason for political discussion or notice. That truly was the Founding Fathers' vision for our country, and they bequeathed us governing articles and a ruling philosophy - a firm belief that our rights are the gift of our Creator - capable of carrying us through many a "stormy present." By any measure - eloquence, organization, stagecraft, and motivation - the Democratic convention this week and the primary that preceded it were impressive. Yes, the smoke-filled rooms have given way to skies glowing with the haze of fireworks, but our nation is seeing once more that we have a vibrant republic and real choices before us.
I really respected that and agreed that Obama's speech had "eloquence" and offered the American people "real choices." Tony Perkins invited me to debate Richard Land at his own FRC Convention last fall, and to speak at his own book signing some weeks later, just as I had invited Richard Land to speak at the launch of God's Politics in 2005. Tomorrow morning Richard Land and I will be together again in a public forum on "the faith factor" in this election, at the Republican Convention in the Twin Cities. I will be there all week, just as I was at the Democratic Convention in Denver.
Here is a fact that might clearly upset the vitriolic partisans on both sides of the political divide: Richard Land and I call each other friends, and Tony Perkins and I are also enjoying our dialogue and frequent conversations. None of us endorse candidates, but I honestly suspect we will likely be voting differently in the fall election.
Since Friday, I have been asked by many journalists what I think of Sarah Palin as the choice for the Republican vice-presidential nomination. I've confessed to knowing little about the new Alaskan governor but have said that she seems to be an interesting, decent, and compelling person, and that her nomination is another milestone as the first woman on a Republican presidential ticket, as Geraldine Ferraro was on the Democratic ticket in 1984. Like the milestone candidacy of Barack Obama, she, too, will be evaluated by Christians on a whole range of moral values issues, including poverty, the environment, the sanctity of life, strong and healthy families, human rights, health care, the war in Iraq, and more. Christians, including evangelical Christians, are not monolithic and most Christians will not be single-issue voters in this election. Rather, we will evaluate both presidential tickets according to our moral compass and broad agenda. The Republican Convention, like the Democratic Convention, should offer the voters clear choices, and I suspect it will.
So maybe we should have some rules of civility for this election. Let me suggest "Five Rules of Christian Civility."
We Christians should be in the pocket of no political party, but should evaluate both candidates and parties by our biblically-based moral compass.
We don't vote on only one issue, but see biblical foundations for our concerns over many issues.
We advocate for a consistent ethic of life from womb to tomb, and one that challenges the selective moralities of both the left and the right.
We will respect the integrity of our Christian brothers and sisters in their sincere efforts to apply Christian commitments to the important decisions of this election, knowing that people of faith and conscience will be voting both ways in this election year.
We will not attack our fellow Christians as Democratic or Republican partisans, but rather will expect and respect the practice of putting our faith first in this election year, even if we reach different conclusions.
On Nov. 4, Christians will not be able to vote for the kingdom of God. It is not on the ballot. Yet there are very important choices to make that will significantly impact the common good and the health of this nation -- and of the world. So we urge our Christian brothers and sisters to exercise their crucial right to vote and to apply their Christian conscience to those decisions. And in the finite and imperfect political decisions of this and any election, we promise to respect the Christian political conscience of our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Somebody came up to me in Denver and said, "At the Democratic Convention of 2008, faith is cool!" That is indeed a big change from recent years. As I have been saying at the many "faith forums" in Denver, faith must have a different and better role than it has had in politics these last few decades.
And I have been encouraged by the more "prophetic" role that faith has played here, deeper than the partisan use of faith in recent memory. At one of those faith panels, Rev. Otis Moss Jr., one of the most respected pastors in the black church and a great leader from the civil rights movement, spoke eloquently and directly to the question of prophetic integrity in politics. He said we must "keep alive the prophetic tradition in our society," and went on to say that there will always be "a healthy tension between the faith-based mission and government enterprises, but tension doesn't mean hostility." In the deep and melodic voice of wisdom and authority that Otis Moss is so known for, this distinguished man invoked the framework that his friend Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. offered for the proper relationship between faith and politics. King said that the churches (or other faith communities) must never try to be "the master of the state." Nor should we be the "servant of the state." Rather the community of faith must be "the conscience of the state."
Rev. Moss said "if the state should lose its conscience, the state will become brutal," and if those of us in the community of faith lose our capacity to be the conscience, we will "be guilty of the sin of omission." He then paraphrased John Stuart Mill, who said that should the state "dwarf" or repress its citizens, it will soon find that with "dwarfed citizens" no great things will be accomplished. He then laid out what it would mean to "engage" government in the most prophetic way. It was a lesson in faithful citizenship, which received an extended standing ovation.
Yesterday, we saw the first nomination of a black man for president of the United States in our history. Today is the 45th anniversary of King's historic "I have a dream" speech on a steamy day in Washington, D.C., in 1963. Tonight, Barack Obama accepts the nomination of his party, addresses 70,000 people at Mile High Stadium, and lays out his vision to the country. All around Denver today, the emotional feeling is one of witnessing history.
I'm voting in this election, not with naivete but with sincere enthusiasm. Not with any messianic hopes, but with a deep sense of moral responsibility as a shareholder or steward of the richest, most dominant, and most well-armed nation in the world. I had another long talk with a friend a couple weeks back who, on religious grounds, is passionately against voting. He had read my earlier posts on the subject, but wasn't convinced to vote. Nor was I convinced by his counter-arguments to practice voting abstinence. But this piece posted on the emergent village site by Anthony Smith [a.k.a. Postmodern Negro] made me want to nudge my nonvoting friend once more. Anthony offers better reasons to vote than the ones I shared with my nonvoting friend -- who like me is a privileged white guy.
Responding to some thoughts posted by David Fitch, who in turn was responding to some statements by Stanley Hauerwas, Anthony said:
I live with a tragic history that remembers the failure of churches to be more determined by color than baptism. A reality we still wrestle with today. But a part of that tragic history is how fellow Christians, on this continent, refused to let people of color in on the conversation called America. What they didn't know was that we already had our own conversation, and we wanted them in on it. Even though we had our own conversation going since the beginning of sojourn, we still wanted to join in as fellow citizens and broaden the conversation. We wanted to bring our gifts to the table. We wanted equity along racial lines. A piece to the puzzle to achieving such equity was the practice of voting.
Voting, as it is oftentimes seen by historically marginalized groups, is a precious gift. It is not seen, within the language game of the prophetic black church, as a form of violence. That voting is seen as a means of violence can only come from Christians who don't know what it is like to be without the gift. This is why the loudest voices for political disengagement on Gospel grounds tend to be of lighter hue. It is another form of advantage to eschew voting. I profoundly agree with Christians engaging in anti-imperial practices or pro-kingdom activities that give sign to another world in our midst. But understand my suspicion. I am postmodern, after all.
Anthony makes an important point. Similarly, when I hear folks in the U.S. dissing voting as dirtying ourselves with the business of the empire, I keep wondering, "How would somebody in Zimbabwe respond to that kind of talk?" Or considering how few votes in Florida it would have taken for George Bush not to have been elected in 2000, I wonder how bereaved and maimed Iraqis -- and Americans -- would respond to Floridians who decided to make a religious statement by not voting? Anthony continues:
I have this habit of being suspicious whenever white Christians tell me what to do. I think it has something to do with history. Not sure. Pray for me. But the history doesn't look too good, for the most part. Yet I am a part of the emerging church postmodern conversation. Here I am, and I am hearing more and more voices say things that leave me in a state of tension. When I hear them say, "I am not voting because I am a Christian," I also hear the guttural cry of slaves in the cotton fields of Alabama praying for freedom from oppression. When I hear them say, "Voting is one more means to be about the business of Empire," I also hear the voice of an assassinated prophet say, "We must have our freedom now. We must have the right to vote. We must have equal protection of the law."
I hear something different than those who suggest voting is a mechanism of Empire. It may have something to do with the place from which I cast my ballot.
Voting isn't the only expression of our faith in public affairs, of course. But it's hard for me, even more so in light of Anthony's words, not to see it as an important first step, as an expression and solidarity with my neighbors in the U.S. and around the world, which is inherent to my faith in God and gospel.
Brian McLaren is an author and speaker and serves as Sojourners' board chair.
Evangelical women and minorities, it seems, exist on the muted margins of political discourse in America. If a justice revival is to sweep over America once more, from the suburban megachurch to the urban storefront church, then Christians must pursue a vision of the common good for all -- and not the common good of a few.
The public narratives of the media often chronicle the broadening social concerns of white evangelical males such as Rick Warren and Richard Cizik -- and rightfully so. Their story deserves to be told. But their story is not the only one.
As an African-American summer intern at Sojourners, I labored alongside two African-American women, two Asian women, and four white men and women -- all of whom persistently link spiritual renewal and social justice. To borrow an image from Gabriel Salguero, this technicolor portrait of evangelicals critiques the Alpine storyline, which is the subtle suggestion that only the broadening social concerns of progressive evangelical white males is newsworthy. Meanwhile, the stories of progressive evangelical minorities and women, the stories I heard at Sojourners, remain as invisible as the protagonist of Ralph Ellison's famous novel.
We stand at a critical moment in the socio-religious history of America. And before us lie two roads. One path pursues the common good of white evangelical men, while relying on the common labor of evangelical women and minorities. This path is marked by denominational positions that define minstry by gender and not gifting (shout-out to Dr. Mimi Haddad of Christians for Biblical Equality), theology that clarifies doctrine while obscuring the correlations of race and poverty, and well-intentioned civic disengagement that nevertheless stacks an already tilted deck of cards against the marginalized.
The other road, a glimpse of which I saw at Sojourners, relies upon the common labor of all evangelicals to pursue the common good of all. This pathway also has signposts: more women serving as bishops and pastors; theology that rhythmically alternates between digesting scripture and dismantling the poverty-race correlation; and wise engagement that represents the broad concerns of the evangelical constituency to the public and private sector. If we take creation care as a representative example, following this path would mean, amongst other things, advocating for green jobs as a response to structural inner-city unemployment.
For understandable and yet lamentable reasons, some evangelicals head down the first pathway; precious few are moving down the second. Of course this ''two roads'' dichotomy simplifies the complex phenomenon of American evangelicalism. Hopefully, however, it also underscores the urgency of now. Christians must toil for, and not just wish for, a technicolor justice revival that pursues the common good of all.
Andrew Wilkes is a policy and organizing intern at Sojourners. He is currently pursuing a Masters of Divinity degree at Princeton Theological Seminary. He offers reflections at Foursquare, a blog that encourages abstinence as a spiritual discipline with social consequences.
I am now in Denver for the Democratic National Convention, and I will be in the Twin Cities next week for the Republican National Convention. I am speaking at both about the moral issues the faith community believes are important -- among them poverty, the environment and climate change, a consistent ethic of life, strong families, pandemic diseases, human trafficking, war, and peace. The Democrats are, for the first time, having "faith forums" to discuss those issues, and I will be moderating two of those forums -- one on the meaning of "the common good," a central religious concept. There will also be issues forums at the Republican Convention on the connections between faith and politics, which I am looking forward to participating in next week. At both conventions, the media is showing great interest in the connection between religion and the election, and that's the other reason I will be at both places.
The proper relationship between faith and politics is a critical issue. In recent decades, religion has often been used, and even abused, by politics and politicians. There is now a legitimate backlash to the exploitation and "politicizing" of religion among many in the churches -- especially a new generation. But the backlash could also lead to a new form of the old private piety or a new communal piety -- that the only important relationship is the one between "me and God" or in the churches' "service" to their own communities (an improvement over mere personal piety, but far short of the biblical call to justice). See Brian McLaren's post yesterday on the dangers of the new piety.
Politics is important. Wilberforce could not have ended the slave trade in England without politics. And it would not have been enough for Christians to just not have slaves. Martin Luther King could not have achieved the victories of civil rights without politics. It would not have been enough for the churches to just disavow segregation. (In fact, as King reminded us, the most segregated hour in America was and still is 11 a.m. on Sunday mornings). Gandhi could not have freed India from colonialism, nor could Nelson Mandela have ended apartheid in South Africa without politics. Politics is supposed to be about the common good, about the moral values we want to guide our civic life, even though the practice of politics often makes many people cynical.
But politics is broken in America, as I have often said. And it will take social movements, with clear spiritual values, to change politics in America. That is what genuine revivals have always done -- changed hearts and changed society. And that is still my best hope.
There are many people of faith here at this convention in Denver, as there will also be in the Twin Cities. The important thing for us as people of faith at both conventions is to make sure that our "politics" are more "prophetic" than "partisan." As I have continually repeated, God is not a Republican or a Democrat, and people of faith belong in no party's political pocket. The danger at both conventions is that religion will be exploited -- again -- this time by both sides. So I will be reporting to you on how that goes, whether the people of faith who are here are able to offer that prophetic role that faithfulness requires, that would hold politics accountable to real moral values, and would offer the best hope of social change. Stay tuned.
One of the stories I first heard on my recent visit to Australia was about what helped swing the vote last November to Kevin Rudd, the new Labor prime minister. I read some new political data by veteran pollster and researcher John Black, who is respected across Australia's political spectrum. Black reported that the pivotal swing vote to Labor this time was among evangelicals and Pentecostals, especially in some key seats in the states of Queensland and South Australia.
That was especially surprising and significant in a very secular country. The Labor Party here, like parties of the left elsewhere, has not been known as "religion friendly," and the Liberal Party (the conservatives in Australia) has had much of the religious vote by tradition and default. But this time was different for a number of reasons.
First, Kevin Rudd was a new kind of Labor candidate who speaks openly and comfortably about his faith. Rudd -- a Catholic who attends an Anglican church -- is theologically articulate, and even likes to write articles about German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Even more important, the evangelical/Pentecostal swing vote was due to how the agenda is changing in those faith communities. In the past, as in the U.S., issues such as abortion, homosexuality, and cloning seemed to be the primary concerns among the religious. But now the “religious agenda” includes global poverty, climate change, and the rights of Aboriginal people, especially among a new generation of Australian believers.
Christian organizations, such as World Vision, are among the leading voices on poverty, the environment, and the trafficking of women and children in economic and sexual slavery. The university events at which I spoke last week were led by “Vision Generation,” a youth movement sparked by World Vision that is leading a campaign to challenge the chocolate industry's use of child workers in West Africa, where 70 percent of the world's cocoa is harvested. The venues were packed. And everywhere I went, the protection of the earth and the threat of global warming was front and center.
Rudd’s clear Christian faith and his embrace of the new agenda of social justice and environmental stewardship seemed to be the big reasons why the evangelical and Pentecostal vote shifted this time. And that swing made a crucial electoral difference.
As I reported in my last post, I met with Kevin Rudd over dinner one night and had a long conversation about all these issues. But I also met with the leading Independent senator, Nick Xenophon, who may represent the balance of power in the new political configuration. He is from the Greek Orthodox Church and is also an articulate Christian on social justice. And on my last day in the country, I was also able to chat briefly with the opposition conservative leader, Brendan Nelson, who told me he meets regularly with faith leaders in Australia, and has also read my books. All the media interviews I did during the week were eager to explore the issues of faith and politics, both in the U.S. and in Australia. For a "secular" country, the social and political impact of faith seems to have become a hot topic.
I like winning, but I've done a lot of losing in my life, especially when it comes to voting. I've got a pretty good track record of picking losers.
But recent history tells us that picking winners in presidential elections has its own dangers.
What happens if the presidential candidate you prefer wins this fall?
As a Christian and citizen, you owe the winning candidate -- whoever he is (we've only got "he's" left this time around) -- the gift of what my friend Jim Wallis calls "prophetic distance." That means two things.
First, you need to be near enough -- connected enough -- to fulfill the kinds of obligations you have as a citizen (suggested, for example, in 1 Timothy 2:1-2 or 1 Peter 2:13-17), and the kind of obligations you have as a follower of Jesus to every human being. Simply put, that means you need to do for the president what you would want others to do for you if you were in his shoes (or in his Pennsylvania Avenue address).
Practically, what does this mean? If you were president, you wouldn't want people to mock you or misrepresent you. You would want your words and actions to be interpreted intelligently and charitably -- not gullibly, but not cynically either. You would want others to tell the truth if they thought you were going wrong, just as you would want them to express their support if they thought you were doing good. You would want citizens to give you the support required to do your job well, which, while it doesn't require agreement, does require respect and civility.
Second, "prophetic distance" requires that you be not too near relationally, not too connected emotionally, not co-dependent or sycophantic -- distant enough to maintain the ability to speak the truth (as you see it) to power. If you lose that distance, you are in danger of becoming what some have called a "useful idiot" -- a yes-man/woman who has lost independence, objectivity, fairness, and the ability to differ.
So if you become a hostile adversary, lobbing verbal bombs from a tactical distance, it guarantees that you won't be listened to. And if you become a compliant yes-man, it guarantees you won't have anything to say that is worth listening to. In between those two extremes is the arena of prophetic distance.
This balance -- near enough, but not so near as to be co-opted; far enough, but not so far as to be ignored -- has eluded many. For example, I recently heard the great preacher/theologian/activist Ray Rivera retell the story of Amaziah, originally told in Amos 7:10. Amaziah was a priest who became the yes-man to King Jeroboam of Israel. The "patriotic" priest tried to pressure Amos to quiet down and join him in cozying up to the king, thus losing his prophetic distance, but Amos -- with characteristic flair -- refused. One also thinks of biblical heroes Nathan and Esther in this regard: Each (in vastly different ways) was close enough to the king to gain access and be heard, but each kept sufficient emotional distance to speak the truth (see 2 Samuel 12 and Esther 8).
Insecure and unwise leaders will seek to surround themselves with yes-men and yes-women. They will "cherry-pick intelligence" to tell them what they want to hear, and they'll marginalize all minority reports. In contrast, secure and wise leaders will always want independent voices around them -- voices who speak from a place of "prophetic distance" -- voices who have the courage to differ and whose loyalty to their nation and their president is always superseded by their loyalty to the truth. This is true of state and local leaders as well as national ones, and it's true of denominational and congregational leaders no less. May you and I be the kinds of leaders who listen to prophetic voices, and may we be the kind of prophetic voices to whom wise leaders can turn for wise input.
We will elect a president this fall. There will be a winner. But we will all be winners if that president is sure to have courageous and honest truth-speakers around him in the zone of prophetic distance.
Brian McLaren is an author and speaker and serves as Sojourners' board chair.
Last weekend in Australia, I had the opportunity to have a four-hour dinner conversation with Kevin Rudd, the new prime minister. I have written about Kevin as a new-style Labor political leader who talks openly about his faith in a secular country.
I asked him about the "apology" he made to the Aboriginal people of Australia as his first act of government. "It is the thing I am most proud of," he told me. Just days before, the newspapers all carried a front-page picture of Rudd and his cabinet ministers lined up on chairs in a meeting with Aboriginal elders at an Indigenous community in the Northern Territory (the heart of the Aboriginal homeland). They were there to discuss how to narrow the gap between the health and life expectancy, education, income, and a whole range of other key indicators between the white and Aboriginal populations of Australia.
During the day we met for dinner, Rudd had been on the Great Barrier Reef, inspecting the "bleaching" of the spectacular Australian treasure due to global warming. He told me that environmental protection and climate change were issues on which he wanted Australia to lead.
Rudd is a Catholic and the first time we had dinner a couple of years ago, he told me he had been a longtime reader of Sojourners and my books. He is indeed well-read theologically, and we had a very good discussion of Catholic social teaching, church history, spirituality, faith, and politics in both the U.S. and Australia, and the power of revival to spark social change -- the theme of my latest book.
He has a special fascination for and attraction to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who helped lead the "confessing churches'" resistance to Hitler. I must confess how unusual and enjoyable it is to discuss Bonhoeffer with a prime minister; he has even written about the theologian in one of Australia's leading magazines -- an article that could easily have been in Sojourners. What most draws Rudd to Bonhoeffer, he writes in the article, was his insistence that the vocation of the church is to be "a voice for the voiceless" and "to speak truth to power." I've always thought there was no better description of the role of the church in the world.
I encouraged the young prime minister not to underestimate the influence of middle-sized countries, like Australia, in providing global leadership on some of the most important issues of our time. I heard Rudd's assessment of his first G8 meeting this spring, of the U.S. image in the world, of our presidential candidates whom he is eager to get to know better. Rudd is very committed to addressing global poverty and climate change, and to making Australia a leader on both.
We sat for several hours at a lovely outdoor restaurant up in Cairns, the tropical northeast corner of the country. Security was certainly much lighter than a similar meeting with a U.S. president is, and I enjoyed how ordinary people would come up with their children to meet the prime minister. Every time, the Australian head of state would extend his hand and a warm smile to say "Hi, I'm Kevin." Very nice indeed.
As we pass the half-way point of our Jesus for President tour, we remember Jesus' admonition that we be "as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves." There is a lot of momentum around our little campaign of political misfits - from some of the mainstream media and from the dozen cities where we've had thousands of folks come together to plot goodness. And with the momentum comes temptation.
We've been courted by candidates who want an endorsement... or who at least would like us to be "advisers." At first I thought advising a candidate was a subtle euphemism for endorsing them, but I have come to think that there is an important distinction to make between "endorsing" and "advising." I want to be an adviser to every politico that asks, and an endorser of no one but Jesus. Chris and I just joked that he could become an official advisor for Obama, and I'd take McCain just to make sure folks know that we are not partisan. We do take seriously the opportunity to dialogue with political candidates, or anyone else for that matter, especially as many people seem to be rethinking politics as usual. As for the presidential candidates, we're not sure how our counsel will go over, since it may begin with advising those seeking office to melt down the weapons of our arsenal and transform them into things that bring life to the suffering masses of this planet--"beating swords into plows" as the prophets say. But we'll see if anyone takes us up on the offer.
Chris and I end the 2-hour JFP presentation with these words:
We will not be endorsing any candidates. Rather, we will invite them to endorse the political manifesto of our Commander-in-Chief and to join the peculiar upside-down Kingdom that blesses the poor and the peacemakers...
Our central allegience is to God's Kingdom, and we invite everything else in the world to align itself with the norms of that upside-down Kingdom. That is what we endorse, and we stand behind everything and everyone that moves us closer to that - the coming of God's Kingdom "on earth as it is in heaven." And we get in the way of everything that contradicts and works against God's Kingdom - interrupting injustice with grace.
In post-Religious Right America, we want to learn from the mistakes of the generation before us (so we don't repeat them) - one of which was telling Christians who to vote for. Rather than spoon-feeding people answers, we hope to stir up the right questions - and trust that the Spirit will lead us as we "work out our salvation with fear and trembling." One of the places the religious right went wrong was telling people what to do rather than inviting them to think for themselves, with the help of the Spirit of God (in fact, it even seems a real lack of faith to to coerce or convince people to do exactly what we want them to... as if the Spirit is not at work in them). That's where Jesus shines - he stirs up questions and tells stories that unveil truth, rather than drafting a careful declaration or endorsement that's going to solve everything wrong in the world.
Folks come out of our JFP shows with all kinds of ideas churning. Some have shared that they are inspired to start an adoption agency to try and decrease the number of abortions. U.S. soldiers have said they are becoming conscientious objectors or are seeking discharge. Some folks have said they are going to organize for one of the candidates, and others have said they are going to write in "Jesus" on Nov. 4. To all of it we say, "Yes!" Thank God the Spirit is at work, and is renewing minds and imaginations in the Church, so that we might follow the command of Romans: "Do not conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."
Reporters often ask folks leaving our presentations funny questions like: "Young evangelicals are the swing vote in this election... has this evening affected how you are going to vote in November?" I heard one person say beautifully, "That's the wrong question... the real question is how can we become the change we want to see in the world TODAY and not just hope that every four years we can elect politicians to change the world for us." May it be so. May we continue to become the change we want to see in the Church and in the world. Enough donkeys and elephants - Long live the Lamb.
Soccer moms, NASCAR dads, and now holy hipsters have been touted by political pundits and the mainstream media as the group du jour that political candidates must court in order to win the coveted presidential prize. Using select books and blogs, they conclude that these missional millennials have abandoned the political party of their parents and will be casting their ballots for Obama come November. However, as Jim Wallis wrote earlier this year, "This doesn't mean young evangelicals are automatically becoming Democrats (and I don't think they should). It does mean that their agenda is broader and deeper, no longer beholden to a single partisan ideology."
Once again, the Holy Spirit has a way of transcending conventional wisdom, thus shining forth the power of the risen Christ. For example, when CNN covered the Jesus for President tour, the reporter tried to draw the conclusion that this Christian crowd blesses Barack Obama. When I caught Shane Claiborne, Chris Haw, and friends in New York City, yes, some religious progressives present chose to dance to the beat of a Democratic drummer. But Shane & Co. preached and sang to a different tune, proclaiming, "No more donkeys. Long live the lamb." Claiborne notes, "This is not about going left or right, this is about going deeper and trying to understand together. Rather than endorse candidates, we ask them to endorse what is at the heart of Jesus, and that is the poor or the peacemakers. When we see that, then we'll get behind them."
Citing examples where both Democrats and Republicans used Jesus as a political pawn to advance their own agendas, Shane & Co. remind us that we are electing politicos, not prophets. My observations covering American Christianity echo these concerns. Whenever religious leaders choose to walk into any party's campaign headquarters, they risk ending up bowlegged with a bad case of the spiritual rickets.
The Jesus for President tour reminded us all that transformative change will be contingent not on who we vote for Nov. 4, but how we live our lives on Nov. 3 and 5.
This sentiment for a change that transcends partisan politics continues to be echoed by activists such as Tim Kumfer, who stated in a previous God's Politics blog post that, "Widespread social change will not come merely from the election of a 'change candidate,' but from the movements of nonconforming minorities, faith communities, and others, whose lives take the shape of servanthood and whose voices are joined with those on the opposite side of the power equation. This is our real work, to which we must be committed for more than one day in November."
When Diana Butler Bass spoke at the American Academy of Religion's 2007 annual meeting, she reflected that she finds "vitality in those churches who are tapping into a global spirit that infuses religion, politics, and the culture at large, transcending organizations and individuals" [emphasis added]. In The Great Emergence, Phyllis Tickle compares this period of massive upheaval to other reformations, such as the Great Reformation, the Great Schism, and the Great Transformation.
During this time of transformation, how do we avoid being seduced by media attention and power into serving an earthly king instead of our king in heaven? I cover Christian carnage for a living and it pains me when people who I know have good intentions end up advancing their own activist agenda instead of proclaiming the good news. In our quest to practice the radically inclusive politics of Jesus, Tickle keenly observes the need to navigate through these rocky religious waters, "prayerfully and carefully. As is true with any major social or political or religious upheaval, how we can or should navigate it all is not always clear on a day-to-day basis."
One small change that's become evident to me is the need for Christian gatherings to more accurately reflect the body of Christ. For example, I've lost track of the social justice events I've attended these past few years that bore a closer resemblance to Ivy League college reunions or a local Democratic party pow-wow than the kingdom of God.
What keeps us from including the person we see sleeping on the church steps or whom we serve at the soup kitchen? Why can't we create space for those who differ with our political beliefs? Jesus brought together tax collectors, zealots, prostitutes, and the occasional Jewish religious leader. Heck, he even converted the centurion who stood guard during his crucifixion. Now that's a Christian conference I'd like to cover. If we claim Jesus as our Lord, shouldn't our gatherings accurately reflect the ministry espoused by the radical rule-breaking, love-making Jesus? After all, he is our king and we are his kingdom here on earth.
Becky Garrison will be featured in the documentary The Ordinary Radicals. Also, her interview with Phyllis Tickle, which focuses on Tickle's forthcoming book The Great Emergence, will appear in the August 2008 issue of Sojourners.
In 2000 I was part of a small group of religious leaders invited to Austin, Texas, to discuss a new White House faith-based initiative with George W. Bush before he came to Washington, D.C., as president. I was an early supporter of the initiative because I believed that partnerships between the faith community and government in alleviating poverty were both necessary and appropriate within the framework of the Constitution. For two years I was in regular conversation with the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, under the leadership of John DiIulio and, later, Jim Towey, and Sojourners and Call to Renewal collaborated with the new office on a number of dialogues and initiatives. But my relationship with the White House ended after my public criticism of President Bush's path to war in Iraq. Yet I continued to support the idea and promise of the faith-based initiative.
But I was disappointed with the corresponding lack of policy commitment to reduce poverty by the Bush administration, and the eventual politicizing of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives along partisan lines. Instead of a partnership, this initiative became a substitute for necessary public policies attacking the causes and consequences of poverty within the United States. Despite this failure, my commitment to public-private partnership involving the faith community has never diminished.
I have hoped that both presidential candidates would re-commit the nation to this necessary and positive vision of partnership between the public sector and the faith community on the goals of poverty reduction. Today, Barack Obama outlined his plan to engage faith-based and community organizations from the White House in order to create "the foundation of a new project of American renewal." Obama affirmed the idea of a faith-based initiative on the solid foundations of both real partnership and the necessary commitment of government to sound public policy to reduce poverty. Prior to today, the danger was that Democrats might revert to old secular biases and end the faith-based program altogether, preferring only public sector approaches as the remedy to poverty instead of also forging vital partnerships with civil society that include the faith community. It was good to see that the failures of the Bush faith-based initiative have not deterred Obama from proposing a robust vision of his own.
The key to today's proposal is that it is based on public and faith-based partnership, and will not become another replacement for sound public policy. To truly be successful, this initiative must utilize the unique resources and identity of the faith community, while at the same time recognizing the indispensible role that government and public policy must play in tackling the root causes of poverty. Obama's proposals also contain necessary protections for religious liberty, pluralism, and constitutional safeguards.
This initiative has the potential to unite people across partisan lines. I truly hope that a recommitment to engaging the valuable role of faith-based organizations doesn't get mired in the endless political debates of the past while God's concerns for the weak and vulnerable get ignored.
James Dobson, of Focus on the Family Action, and his senior vice president of government and public policy, Tom Minnery, used their "Focus on the Family" radio show to criticize Barack Obama's understanding of Christian faith. In the show, they describe Obama as "deliberately distorting the Bible," "dragging biblical understanding through the gutter," "willfully trying to confuse people," and having a "fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution."
The clear purpose of the show was to attack Barack Obama. On the show, Dobson says of himself, "I'm not a reverend. I'm not a minister. I'm not a theologian. I'm not an evangelist. I'm a psychologist. I have a Ph.D. in child development." Child psychologists don't insert themselves into partisan politics in the regular way that James Dobson does and has over many years as one of the premier leaders of the Religious Right. He has spoken about how often he talked to Republican leaders -- Karl Rove, administration strategists, and even President Bush himself. This year he tried to influence the outcome of the Republican primary by saying he would never vote for John McCain or the Republicans if they nominated him, then reversed himself and said he would vote after all but didn't say for whom. But why should America care about how a child psychologist votes?
James Dobson is insinuating himself into this presidential campaign, and his attacks against his fellow Christian, Barack Obama, should be seriously scrutinized. And because the basis for his attack on Obama is the speech the Illinois senator gave at our Sojourners/Call to Renewal event in 2006 (for the record, we also had Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republicans Rick Santorum and Sam Brownback speak that year), I have decided to respond to Dobson's attacks. In most every case they are themselves clear distortions of what Obama said in that speech. I was there for the speech; Dobson was not.
I haven't endorsed a candidate, but I do defend them when they are attacked in disingenuous ways, and this is one of those cases. You can read Obama's two-year-old speech, [audio link] which was widely publicized at the time, and you can see that Dobson either didn't understand it or is deliberately distorting it. There are two major problems with Dobson's attack on Obama.
First, Dobson and Minnery's language is simply inappropriate for religious leaders to use in an already divisive political campaign. We can agree or disagree on both biblical and political viewpoints, but our language should be respectful and civil, not attacking motives and beliefs.
Second, and perhaps most important, is the role of religion in politics. Dobson alleges that Obama is saying:
I [Dobson] can't seek to pass legislation, for example, that bans partial-birth abortion because there are people in the culture who don't see that as a moral issue. And if I can't get everyone to agree with me, it is undemocratic to try to pass legislation that I find offensive to the Scripture. ... What he's trying to say here is unless everybody agrees, we have no right to fight for what we believe.
Contrary to Dobson's charge, Obama strongly defended the right and necessity of people of faith in bringing their moral agenda to the public square, and he was specifically critical of many on the left and in his own Democratic Party for being uncomfortable with religion in politics.
Obama said that religion is and always has been a fundamental and absolutely essential source of morality for the nation, but he also said that "religion has no monopoly on morality," which is a point I often make. The United States is not the Christian theocracy that people like James Dobson seem to think it should be. Political appeals, even if rooted in religious convictions, must be argued on moral grounds rather than as sectarian religious demands -- so that the people (citizens), whether religious or not, may have the capacity to hear and respond. Religious convictions must be translated into moral arguments, which must win the political debate if they are to be implemented. Religious people don't get to win just because they are religious. They, like any other citizens, have to convince their fellow citizens that what they propose is best for the common good -- for all of us, not just for the religious.
Instead of saying that Christians must accept the "the lowest common denominator of morality," as Dobson accused Obama of suggesting, or that people of faith shouldn't advocate for the things their convictions suggest, Obama was saying the exact opposite -- that Christians should offer their best moral compass to the nation but then engage in the kind of democratic dialogue that religious pluralism demands. Martin Luther King Jr. perhaps did this best, with his Bible in one hand and the Constitution in the other.
One more note. I personally disagree with how both the Democrats and Republicans have treated the moral issue of abortion and am hopeful that the movement toward a serious commitment for dramatic abortion reduction will re-shape both parties' language and positions. But that is the only "bloody notion" that Dobson mentions. What about the horrible bloody war in Iraq that Dobson apparently supports, or the 30,000 children who die each day globally of poverty and disease that Dobson never mentions, or the genocides in Darfur and other places? In making abortion the single life issue in politics and elections, leaders from the Religious Right like Dobson have violated the "consistent ethic of life" that we find, for example, in Catholic social teaching.
<p>Dobson has also fought unsuccessfully to keep the issue of the environment and climate change, which many also now regard as a "life issue," off the evangelical agenda. Older Religious Right leaders are now being passed by a new generation of young evangelicals who believe that poverty, "creation care" of the environment, human trafficking, human rights, pandemic diseases such as HIV/AIDS, and the fundamental issues of war and peace are also "religious" and "moral" issues and now a part of a much wider and deeper agenda. That new evangelical agenda is a deep threat to Dobson and the power wielded by the Religious Right for so long. It puts many evangelical votes in play this election year, especially among a new generation who are no longer captive to the Religious Right. Perhaps that is the real reason for Dobson's attack on Barack Obama.
It is no secret that young evangelicals are opting out of the 'religious right' in ever-larger numbers, and are becoming more (what for lack of a better term we'll call) progressive. With the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other, many young evangelicals are asking tough questions and beginning to make connections.
Our politics are coming out differently, but it is not that we reject everything our parents believe. Rather, we take seriously something beneath the rhetoric. We are pro-life, but realize this doesn't end with the womb. The U.S. War on Terror, the death penalty, genocide in Darfur, the AIDS crisis, and global warming also violate the sanctity of human life. We are pro-family, but realize that gays and lesbians are being used as a scapegoat by the Right. The commodification of sex, housing and healthcare costs, mass imprisonment, and raids on immigrant communities are all forces tearing families apart.
Many of these crises are perceived as 'liberal' issues. Polls show that young evangelicals are voting increasingly for Democrats is all but a given. The temptation I pray we will avoid is hopping in bed with the Democrats like previous generations did with the Republicans. It is my hope, that instead of becoming more liberal, we would become more biblical. We need to be more realistic about partisan politics, both its capacity to exploit and use the church and its limits in creating large-scale social change.
In Matthew's Gospel, when the mother of James and John asked for positions of power for her sons in what she thought would be Jesus' revolutionary government, he replied: "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant..." Essentially, Jesus was saying the practice of government is domineering and self-serving; disciples are to understand and exercise power in a different way.
We should not place our hopes solely on our representatives, senators, or presidents to enact our values for us. Rather, we should learn how personal the political truly is, by living out the changes we want to see take place in the wider world. Then, the political choices we make will flow naturally out of the work we're already doing as part of being the church. What I mean is, part of the faith community's vocation is feeding the hungry, providing shelter for those who have none, caring for single mothers, working for peace, and so forth. Casting a ballot should simply be an extension of that prior service--not an excuse for noninvolvement with the marginalized--but a chance to further the work we should already be doing.
Widespread social change will not come merely from the election of a "change candidate," but from the movements of nonconforming minorities, faith communities, and others, whose lives take the shape of servanthood and whose voices are joined with those on the opposite side of the power equation. This is our real work, to which we must be committed for more than one day in November.
Your post is difficult to respond to. I am not interested in trying to debunk your caricature of me and my ideas point-by-point. It appears to be mostly one-liners and sweeping generalizations about whole groups of people without much substance. For example, there are those you would call liberals who have a very strong ethic of personal responsibility and family, and those you would call conservatives who do not. And, of course, vice versa. Real life often defies easy stereotypes.
David, it is possible to call for personal moral responsibility and social responsibility at the same time, moving beyond the old paradigms of liberal and conservative.
Both are important. I believe that a common good agenda, rooted in the moral center, could unite diverse people on the really big issues. It is possible to "find common ground by moving to higher ground" and actually make some progress on the most important questions of our time.
If you know anything at all about me and my books, you know that what you're attacking is neither what I say nor what I believe. If you want to debate someone who is pro-abortion and who is willing to defend what you call a "socialist-activist role for government", find someone else. It's not me.
So, let's go back to the big picture. I'm glad that you think I've done "an amazing service in helping to legitimize the idea ... that spiritual values deserve a role in shaping political values." It's what I have been saying and writing for more than thirty-five years. I'm very happy that the idea has now become a mainstream idea, with many voices saying what we've been saying for a long time.
But you say that we should have a "litmus test for whether a candidate really feels God should have a say in the ordering of our laws." There is a very large difference between grounding political ideas in spiritual values and thinking God should write our legislation, or that we can clearly know what God would write.
I have great respect for Judaism and the witness of the Hebrew Bible. I have written that the place to begin to understand the politics of God is with the prophets, the ancient moral articulators in the Scriptures who claimed to speak in "the name of the Lord." Their topics were quite secular--land, labor, capital, wages, debt, taxes, equity, fairness, courts, prisons, immigrants, other races and peoples, economic divisions, social justice, war, and peace--the stuff of politics.
They usually spoke to rulers, kings, judges, employers, landlords, owners of property and wealth, and even religious leaders. They spoke to "the nations," and it was the powerful who were most often the prophets' target audience; those in charge of things were the ones called to greatest accountability. And whom were the prophets usually speaking for? Most often, the dispossessed, widows and orphans (read: poor single moms), the hungry, the homeless, the helpless, the least, last, and lost. Is God into class warfare? No, God wants the "common good," but speaking for the common good can get one accused of calling for class warfare--usually by the elites who control the political discussion and do not want too much conversation about what God thinks of our political priorities. But, you probably think the prophets believed in a "socialist-activist role for government."
As a Christian, my worldview is also shaped by the call of Jesus to a new order and a new community - an alternative community living a new way of life, visibly demonstrating the values of Jesus and the Kingdom of God. That is my starting point for faithful political witness. And with that as the vision, concrete political priorities and policies can be judged by whether they bring us closer to it or farther away from it.
I have written that on many of the critical issues of the day, I believe that there is common ground to be found. And I believe that the prospect of real social change can be animated by the testimony and action of faith. But I also believe that political appeals, even if rooted in religious convictions, must be argued on moral grounds rather than as religious demands--so that the people (citizens), whether religious or not, may have the capacity to hear and respond. Religion has no monopoly on morality, it must be disciplined by democracy and contribute to a better and more moral public discourse. Religious convictions must therefore be translated into moral arguments, which must win the political debate if they are to be implemented. We don't get to win just because we are religious. Like any other citizens, we have to convince our fellow citizens that what we propose is best for the common good-- for all of us and not just for the religious. We must make our appeals in moral language; secular people should not fear that such appeals will lead to theocracy.
We have to get beyond the caricature of people and groups and talk about real substance, real ideas, and real policy issues. Can you do that, David? I never did get a response to whether you think that your share of our more than 500 billion tax dollars (so far) have been well spent on the war in Iraq.
Recently I served on a panel at BookExpo America that explored evangelicals' changing attitudes toward politics. As each co-panelist spoke, I mentally applauded his assessment of how evangelicals are responding to, and changing, the current political climate. While there were some areas of disagreement, there was a much greater area of common ground among the four of us.
Except when it came to identifying and labeling political factions, that is. Who, exactly, comprises the evangelical left? How about progressives? Who are they? Or the "evangelical centrists" that David Gushee, a panelist, so effectively defined in The Future of Faith in American Politics? His use of a term he popularized was actually called into question, as was the panelists' use of the word evangelical --- even though the title of the forum was "Evolving Evangelicals."
Green rightly began by attempting to clarify just who the Religious Left is. Those of us who have been around for a while recall that even before the Religious Right inserted itself into American politics, all we had to do was utter the phrase "social justice" to be labeled a liberal; the "Religious Left" seemed to include anyone who cared about, or merely expressed interest in, those issues that fell outside the theological focus on bringing people to Christ.
But then the political Religious Right came to prominence, and the rift between the right and left was defined more clearly in political rather than theological terms (though it was assumed that your politics defined your theology and vice versa). There was little or no room for moderates until recently, as many evangelicals became disenchanted with and embarrassed by the Religious Right.
Certain labels came into more widespread use; evangelicals who were previously reluctant to use the term "progressive," for example, began feeling comfortable with that definition. Little did they know that the label identified them as theological liberals as well as political liberals, at least according to Green; many people who consider themselves to be evangelical progressives are also theologically conservative. The labels muddied rather than clarified who they were politically and theologically.
I don't know. I'm often referred to as a progressive (Green places me somewhere along the progressive-Religious Left continuum), but any more I'm not sure what I am. After reading Green's comments and his detailed, head-spinning definitions of political sub-groups (he identifies "progressive centrists" as political moderates who are theologically liberal, for instance), I'm more confused than ever about where I fit in along the religious-political spectrum.
Whatever labels people use to define us, one thing is certain: the likes of Jim Wallis, Ron Sider, Tony Campolo, and countless others who served in the trenches for decades have paved the way for liberals, the left, progressives, moderates, centrists -- and any other left-of-right category -- to emerge as a force to be reckoned with. But I agree with Green; even as others are heralding the demise of the Religious Right, Green says this:
If one means that the religious right no longer plays the dominant role in American faith-based politics, these analyses are probably correct. The new prominence of the religious left is one important reason why this may be so. But one would want to be cautious about assuming that the religious right's organizations, leaders and voters have left politics. They have not.
Yes, the influence of the Religious Right has waned, and I would add that in particular the influence of the right's leadership has waned. But firmly entrenched and heavily invested beliefs die hard, and it's likely that even those conservative evangelicals who have been feeling skittish about the right's political entanglements will revert to old habits come November.
Even so, given Green's estimate that the population of religious progressives -- broadly and imperfectly defined as I've just discussed -- just about equals that of the Religious Right, this newly recognized category could very well be a formidable political factor.
What's at issue in the SBC, and in the larger evangelical community (and, we could add, in the mainline and Roman Catholic communities as well), isn't whether faith is political. Nobody (or almost nobody) is arguing for dropping the second half of the great commandment -- so that "loving God" is about faith and is central, but "loving neighbor" is about politics and is therefore marginal. Nobody is trying to divide the world into a spiritual realm that is personal and private and about faith, versus a secular realm that is social and public and about politics. Nobody is trying to say that faith has nothing to say about how people organize and govern themselves - how they seek justice, how they express kindness, how they walk humbly with God and in harmony with themselves, their neighbors, their enemies, and God's creation as a whole.
On both sides of these tensions -- this is worth emphasizing once more, to the point of redundancy -- we're agreed that faith relates to all of life, that faith is, as Jim Wallis wisely and repeatedly reminds us, both personal and social, both private and public. Nobody (or almost nobody) disagrees on this anymore -- thanks be to God.
The problem comes when "politics" comes to mean "dirty politics" or "partisan politics" or "narrow, wedge-issue, litmus-test, culture-wars politics." So when people suggest that caring for the environment is not a political issue, what they really mean (I think) is that it shouldn't be a partisan issue, a wedge issue, a left-right issue. Rather, they're saying that as followers of Christ, we shouldn't begin with the question, "What would Karl Rove (or James Carville) do?" We should ask the more obvious and Christian question. We should start with faith in our Creator and then move to politics in a spirit of justice, kindness, and humility -- not start with partisan politics and use faith to buttress it on the one hand, and not reduce faith to the private, personal realm so it has nothing to do with politics on the other.
So, perhaps when we read articles and hear discussions on faith and politics, we should develop the habit of raising this question, "Before we go any further, what do you mean by politics?"
A recent New York Times story, "Taking Their Faith, but Not Their Politics, to the People," highlights the challenge faced by followers of Christ who seek to integrate their faith with all aspects of life, including political life in a democracy. The article suggests to me a question that we should raise more frequently when people address "faith and politics," or "faith versus politics," namely: "What do you mean by politics?"
The article begins and ends by recounting a mini-culture war going on in Missouri. It may be no surprise that the conflict involves Southern Baptists, who are known for their willingness to plunge headlong into battle for what they believe is right (in both senses of the word). What's surprising, though, is that the battle isn't between Baptists and secular-humanist-postmodernist-liberal-heathens outside, but rather with fellow Baptists.
It turns out that some members of a SBC-affiliated new congregation called the Journey gather on occasion to discuss theology and life with their unchurched friends in (gasp) a pub. Some fellow Baptists see this as the first step on a slippery slope that may lead to alcoholism, drug addiction, fornication, and (I'm partially joking here) maybe even Democratic and Obama-voting tendencies, so they have agreed not to fund new churches like the Journey in the future.
The article mentions another fissure in the SBC structure. This one pits a 25-year-old graduate of Liberty University - and son of a former SBC president - against Richard Land, SBC giant in public affairs. This David-Goliath conflict concerns not beer but the environment, and whether Southern Baptists have been too timid in addressing environmental issues. Jonathan Merritt, starring as David, took a stand on behalf of the planet and has drawn about 250 others (and counting) to stand with him. Land, seemingly convinced that environmental regulations are presently a greater threat to humanity than environmental degradation, has criticized Merritt and friends, and has in fact persuaded some of the original signors to un-sign.
Dean Inserra, 27-year-old pastor of the Well in Tallahassee, Florida - another SBC church more in the tradition of David than Goliath - offers his assessment of the tension: "There is so much resistance to the environmental initiative because it is a threat to the right-wing agenda that has crept into the Southern Baptist Convention." Then he raises this question: "How is taking care of God's creation a political issue? Since I am pro-life, I am pro-environment."
Inserra's comment, along with others in the Times article, shows how the word "political" is used in different ways. The article's description of "a new generation that refuses to put politics at the center of its faith and rejects identification with the religious right" similarly shows the ambiguity of the word "politics." Consider the previous statement in light of what follows:
They say they are tired of the culture wars. They say they do not want the test of their faith to be the fight against gay rights. They say they want to broaden the traditional evangelical anti-abortion agenda to include care for the poor, the environment, immigrants and people with H.I.V., according to experts on younger evangelicals and the young people themselves.
In this light, "politics" means culture wars, litmus tests, anti-gay rights, narrow agendas. Is that a good definition? If we define politics more intentionally - as how groups of people organize and govern themselves - then the NYT article is mistitled and its repeated pitting of faith versus politics obscures the issue.
First of all, let me say thanks. I’m so grateful for the honest questioning of a convert to Christianity who seems to intuit Jesus’ radical politics. Your story is such good news to me. I grew up among good Christian people who put our hope in Ronald Reagan while we prayed for the souls of atheists like you. It’s so refreshing to know that God opened your eyes to the kingdom movement despite our wayward piety.
Second, let me try to correct a misunderstanding that was probably the result of my poor communication. I did not mean to say, “No, I think we’ll stay local now” when I wrote that the authenticity of our public witness, which must be transnational, depends on our faith that God has already given us a new way of life in local, everyday practices. I only wanted to say that I’ve learned we can’t really say much to the state house or the White House if we’re not repenting of the evil in our own house. Jesus said it like this: Before you try to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye, take the log out of your own.
Realists and radical democrats have criticized the “resident alienation” of intentional communities that separate themselves from society to maintain their own purity apart from the world. I think they’re right, and I pray that new monasticism will never fall into this temptation. We cannot get away from this world’s systems to carve out a utopia. But God has interrupted history to make a new creation possible right in the midst of the old. We’re called to interrupt the world with signs of a new humanity right where we are.
You are right to say that the gospel has leavened society to some degree by democratizing it. This is a result of radical Christian witness. Though it has not ushered in the kingdom, democracy is better than its alternatives. But we are always susceptible to self-deception. And we can easily confuse the pursuit of happiness with the desire for God’s beloved community.
This is, I’m afraid, the failure of the success of the civil rights movement. A movement that was inspired by a vision of beloved community where all people have dignity because they are children of God was “democratized” into a civil rights movement that promised the American Dream to the "talented tenth" of the black community. This meant that most of those who could leave black communities did, leaving neighborhoods without the resources of educated and professional people. Without any connection to the local community, the young men and women who gained access through the movement achieved some political power but effected little change.
People like John Perkins of the Christian Community Development Association have helped me to see that the political hope of the God movement is both more radical and more effective when it stays committed to the grassroots and to the practice of entrusting everyday people with the tactics of Jesus. You’re right: We ought not let the empire hold our imaginations captive by believing that the gospel is only personal. But neither should we imagine that we can jump to good national and global policy without being transformed ourselves. The call to conversion is total. We desperately need new imaginations as well as a whole new world. The good news is that God has already made all of this possible in Jesus. I hope we can struggle to live into it together.
Peace to you,
Jonathan
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is the author of New Monasticism: What It Has to Say to Today's Church (Baker).
Last week, I wrote about the new Evangelical Manifesto, of which I was a signatory. It's been interesting to see the news coverage that followed its release.
On the one hand,CNN implied that the statement was pro-Democratic:
For Democrats, the timing is good. The party has been pushing to overcome the "faith gap," that many feel has hurt them with church-going voters. ... Evangelicals are now leading public support for many issues dear to Democrats: global campaigns against AIDS, hunger and poverty.
The Manifesto itself, while arguing that "evangelical" must be defined first and foremost as a theological term, not a political one, went on to say:
Called by Jesus to be "in" the world but "not of" the world, we are fully engaged in public affairs, but never completely equated with any party, partisan ideology, economic system, class, tribe, or national identity. ...
Called to an allegiance higher than party, ideology, and nationality, we Evangelicals see it as our duty to engage with politics, but our equal duty never to be completely equated with any party, partisan ideology, economic system, or nationality. In our scales, spiritual, moral, and social power are as important as political power,
It's a point I have made many times: "God is not a Republican or a Democrat," and that is a good thing. There should be no religious litmus tests for politics - committed Christians will, and should be, on both sides of the political aisle. Indeed, people of faith should never be in any party's or candidate's political pocket and should, ideally, be the ultimate swing vote because of their moral independence from partisan politics.
But the media just can't help themselves and always want to squeeze everything into their old framework of left and right, Democrat and Republican. But "left" and "right" are not religious categories, and people of faith should define their political involvement in moral terms, not partisan predictability, and that's exactly what the Manifesto said. Even the media coverage of the Manifesto shows how much the statement is needed.
Let me make a prediction. In the future, we will see new alliances and campaigns led by people of faith on a wide range of moral issues - such as poverty, the environment, pandemic diseases, torture, and human rights, and a much wider and deeper focus on the dignity and sanctity of life, including war and peace and even the death penalty along with unborn children - that will involve people of faith across the political spectrum and will shake up politics. The social movements that really change politics are precisely that - public engagement defined by religious and moral commitment that defies normal political categories. Eventually, even the media will finally get it. Stay tuned.
The church has a serious image problem. A recent book, unChristian, by Barna pollster David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons reveals much about how Millennials, the emerging generation - both those inside and around the church - view Christianity. The results weren't good. An overwhelming majority of young people view Christians as hypocritical, too judgmental, too focused on the afterlife, and too political in the worst sense of the word. And that image is often particularly true of evangelicals. That's a lot of baggage we're carrying around.
But other studies show that when you ask people what they think about Jesus, you get answers like: compassionate, loving, caring, hung out with sinners and poor people, for peace. We have a serious image problem. People think that we should stand for the same things as Jesus did. So it's time to change the image.
A substantial group of evangelical leaders are trying to do just that. This morning, a new statement, An Evangelical Manifesto: A Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment, was released in Washington, D.C. The statement has two purposes - to address the confusion about who evangelicals are and to clarify a view on evangelicals in public life.
On the first point, the manifesto says:
Our first task is to reaffirm who we are. Evangelicals are Christians who define themselves, their faith, and their lives according to the Good News of Jesus of Nazareth. (Evangelical comes from the Greek word for good news, or gospel.) Believing that the Gospel of Jesus is God's good news for the whole world, we affirm with the Apostle Paul that we are "not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation." Contrary to widespread misunderstanding today, we Evangelicals should be defined theologically, and not politically, socially, or culturally.
It then goes on to identify seven "beliefs that we consider to be at the heart of the message of Jesus and therefore foundational for us." They are primarily theological affirmations, including:
We believe that being disciples of Jesus means serving him as Lord in every sphere of our lives, secular as well as spiritual, public as well as private, in deeds as well as words, and in every moment of our days on earth, always reaching out as he did to those who are lost as well as to the poor, the sick, the hungry, the oppressed, the socially despised, and being faithful stewards of creation and our fellow creatures.
On the question of public life, the manifesto recognizes that the political categories of left and right simply don't fit religion, and it is a big mistake to try to fit religion into them. The people I meet across the country are yearning for a moral center to our public life and political discourse, with a fundamental emphasis on the common good. They want to understand better the moral choices and challenges that lie beneath our political debates. More and more people want to see a common-good politics replace the politics of individual gain and special interests.
The manifesto affirms that:
We must find a new understanding of our place in public life. We affirm that to be Evangelical and to carry the name of Christ is to seek to be faithful to the freedom, justice, peace, and well-being that are at the heart of the kingdom of God, to bring these gifts into public life as a service to all, and to work with all who share these ideals and care for the common good. Citizens of the City of God, we are resident aliens in the EarthlyCity. Called by Jesus to be "in" the world but "not of" the world, we are fully engaged in public affairs, but never completely equated with any party, partisan ideology, economic system, class, tribe, or national identity.
I very much affirm the views expressed in the manifesto and was happy to accept an invitation to be one of the charter signatories. Click here to read the statement, a helpful study guide, and to see who the charter signatories are.
During the New York City leg of Brian McLaren's empowering Everything Must Change tour, Jay Bakker and I were asked to give a short reflection based on Brian's talk on "Which Jesus?" When I saw Brian's insightful slideshow presentation that contrasted the empire of Caesar with the kingdom of God, I had a sudden flashback to my Jan. 2007 trip to Israel.
In an ironic twist of fate, when I arrived in Jerusalem I learned that Condoleezza Rice, her entourage, and I would be staying at the same hotel. For the next three days, a slew of black SUVs headed off to the West Bank while I toured the sacred spots in Jerusalem and nearby Bethlehem. By now, I had gotten accustomed to armed soldiers parading around the sacred spots of Israel. Still, every time I saw guns in the hotel lobby or had to pass through a rather intense security check just so I could go to my hotel room, the clash of empires hit me in the gut.
Lest anyone think such actions are a thing of the past, several documentaries I just saw at the Tribeca Film Festival serve as visceral reminders of the ensuing carnage that still happens when the church becomes too closely aligned with the state. I sat through Milosevic on Trial, transfixed as the trial and excerpts from the graphic video and photographs that were introduced as evidence unfolded before my eyes. One montage I cannot get out of my mind involved snippets from a ceremony in which an Orthodox priest blesses the Scorpions, followed by a brutal sequence of atrocities committed by this Serbian paramilitary group. Also, in Standard Operating Procedure, Errol Morris highlights the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse through interviews and gripping photographs. While I'm aware that Morris has come under some criticism for paying for his interviews, the intensity of seeing this array of photos almost brought me to tears.
However, I found a glimmer of gospel hope in Pray the Devil Back to Hell. This documentary tells a compelling story of how Christian and Muslim women of Liberia joined forces to combat the violent warlords and the corrupt Charles Taylor regime. During a press conference, I learned from Leymah Gbowee, the leader of this movement, that Roman Catholic bishop and former president of the Liberian Council of Churches Michael K. Francis became her spiritual rock. The behind-the-scenes prophetic presence of Francis and other religious leaders gave these women the faith fuel they needed to walk the walk.
Armed with white T-shirts, the power of prayer, and their Bibles and Qurans, these women won a long-awaited peace that led to the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa's first elected female head of state and Liberia's first elected female president. In one scene that had the audience cheering, these women barricaded the site of the stalled peace talks in Ghana. The men could not leave the room even to eat until they drafted a workable peace plan. When the guards tried to arrest these women, they evoked the most powerful nonviolent weapon in their arsenal by threatening to remove their clothes. This strategy worked, as the guards chose not to bring shame upon themselves by forcing the women to expose their naked bodies. The women kept their clothes on but they also kept their promise that if need be, "they'll be back."
When I saw the trailer for Jamie Moffett's documentary The Ordinary Radicals, I caught other glimpses of the kingdom of heaven here on earth. I know that the radical words of Jesus can empower ordinary citizens here in the U.S. to transform their own communities because I've seen it in action. The Everything Must Change weekend with Brian made me realize the urgency of the global need for us to set aside our denominational differences and work together as the body of Christ to bring forth God's kingdom into the world. That's why I'm joining forces with Shane Claiborne, Chris Haw, and others to support Jesus for President.
Tomorrow, Indiana residents will play a significant role in the Democratic presidential race. It has been a long time – at least 40 years – since voices in this great state in the country's heartland have had such influence and were so valued.
As a Christian liberal arts college in northern Indiana that is rooted in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition of peacemaking, global citizenship, and servant leadership, we at Goshen College have been much more apt to be skeptical and cynical about partisan politics. But I am seeing an enthusiasm on our college campus for this election like never before, and even a sense of awe that our voice is desired to be heard. We have just launched a Web site (www.goshen.edu/election2008) focused on faith and politics, with various perspectives from members of our campus community.
Recently, CNN even visited to interview a group of our students, all first-time voters, about how their faith impacts how they may vote (to air tomorrow, May 6, between 6-9 a.m.). One of our students, Sheldon C. Good, a junior from Pennsylvania, later expressed in his blog, "I have a unique worldview to offer, and politics can be an avenue to voice such a perspective. … In fact, I've never in my life felt like my thoughts mattered and were valued so much before." Each of the students articulated a commitment to the college's core values, particularly what it means to have a Christ-centered view of the world. Each expressed excitement about voting in these elections.
Such an enthusiasm for voting hasn't always been the case among Mennonites who have often lagged behind other citizens at the voting booth, reluctance partly due to a history of persecution by governments, opposition to warfare and military service, and a commitment to Christ over country. Ours has always been a conscience and values-based approach – one we believe, now more than ever, has value for the world.
Voting our conscience is a privilege rooted in Christian scripture. The Apostle Paul, a Roman citizen, outlined this principle in 1 Corinthians 14:29-30: "Let two or three prophets speak; and let the others weigh what is said. If a revelation is made to someone sitting nearby (in the gathered congregation), let the first person be silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged."
In this passage lies one of the central principles of the Protestant Reformation: the right to dissent, the right to express one's opinion, the right for a community to decide for themselves, and in this case, how to relate to the medieval theocratic church-state establishment.
A small group of Christian university students called Anabaptists/Mennonites used these principles to demand the freedom of individuals to assemble voluntarily and decide together what the will of the community was to be. Roman Catholic leaders and most Protestant Reformers couldn't accept such radical notions of "free choice" in worship and life, even the absolute right not to believe, and the total separation of church and state.
I pause every time I hear politicians and others claiming that our God-given right to vote freely has been "won" by soldiers on the battlefield fighting and killing others for these freedoms. I pause because 480 years ago, it was these nonviolent Christ-followers who believed that in order for complete freedom of expression to be truly free, those opinions had to be formed in an environment without coercion. Some 250 years before it came to be enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and accepted by nearly every Western democracy since, the idea of separation of church and state and freely voicing one's conscience was defended through martyrdom by these early Mennonites. These early Christ-followers refused to kill for a right that they believed was given to them by God as stated in scripture.
I will vote my conscience in the May 6 primary and in the Nov. 4 general election, not because my vote may ultimately matter, though it might. I will vote my conscience, not because that vote has been secured by violence. Rather, I will vote based on Goshen College's Christ-centered core values of compassionate peacemaking, passionate learning, global citizenship, and servant leadership. And I will vote my conscience in solidarity with my Anabaptist/Mennonite foreparents who thought such a freely expressed vote of conscience was in keeping with biblical precedent and died defending that God-inspired principle.
As U.S. citizens, we may not always be sure whether to vote Democratic or Republican, but we should in every case vote our conscience. And in this election, I believe those who do will help create a better world.
Dr. James E. Brenneman is an Old Testament scholar and the president of Goshen College, a Mennonite college in Indiana. Brenneman, who has a Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University, spent 25 years in Los Angeles as a pastor with an interest in ecumenical conversations before returning to Goshen College as president in 2006.
No two events in this political season stand in starker contrast than last night's ABC Democratic debate and last Sunday's CNN Compassion Forum.
Rather unbelievably, ABC anchors used 50 minutes of airtime attacking Democratic candidates on tabloid issues, including a line of questioning from George Stephanopoulos lifted from right-wing pundit Sean Hannity. Almost as an afterthought, the final questions turned toward actual issues including the economy and war. The ABC Web site was flooded with complaints from viewers—both Clinton and Obama supporters—calling the debate "awful" and "asinine," and the live audience heckled and booed the moderators. In Philadelphia's Constitution Center, ABC devolved into sensationalist TV, making for an embarrassing irony between inane content and an impressive setting.
Just four days ago, hundreds of religious leaders gathered at Messiah College in Pennsylvania for the Compassion Forum aired by CNN and sponsored by Faith and Public Life. At that event (I was in the audience), both the moderators and audience members addressed the Democratic candidates with serious questions ranging from personal beliefs to theological concerns - such as the problem of evil and moral issues of poverty, torture, AIDS in Africa, abortion, and global warming. The Forum was intelligent, offering each of the candidates 40 minutes to discuss genuine issues that have an impact on people's lives and the human future. Those in attendance appreciated the thoughtfulness and depth of both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, as demonstrated by warm applause and enthusiasm for the opinions and policies outlined by the candidates.
At the end of the forum, I was talking with a friend, Professor Shaun Casey of Wesley Theological Seminary. I asked him what, in his professional opinion, was the most striking aspect of the discussion. Without hesitating, he replied, "The political maturation of the evangelical community. They asked sophisticated, serious questions and demonstrated a genuine political coming-of-age."
The evangelical leaders were, of course, not alone in political maturity. The Forum audience comprised evangelical and mainline Protestants, Roman Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists. This diverse group—representing a broad range of faithful Americans in congregations and communities across the nation—really cared about compassion issues and how the candidates would provide leadership around these concerns. Their questions were not the only mark of spiritual maturity—their ability to gather together around shared concerns for the common good signaled a religious "coming-of-age" in a pluralistic nation as well.
If American religious leaders—evangelical, mainline, Jewish, Catholic, Buddhist, and Muslim—could gather respectfully and ask probing, important questions, why can't ABC News? It may well be time for some soul-searching over at their network. I suggest they ask themselves a question: “What Would Peter Jennings Do?”
Diana Butler Bass holds a doctorate in American religion from Duke University. She is the author of six books, including Christianity for the Rest of Us (HarperOne, 2006).
Last evening, I was privileged to be one of the religious leaders asked to participate in the Compassion Forum, sponsored by Faith in Public Life and broadcast by CNN from Messiah College. Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama participated; Sen. John McCain declined.
The religious leaders asked questions of real substance, focusing on difficult and important policy choices. We are not so much interested in the personal testimonies of candidates - important as those are - but rather how their faith beliefs would shape their leadership and decisions. It is also worth noting that the majority of the questions of substance and depth about critical policy issues came from the religious leaders last night, and the more personal questions about the religion came from the stage moderators for CNN—just as was the case at the Sojourners/CNN Forum on "Faith, Values, and Poverty" last June.
Here are a few examples:
Lisa Sharon Harper of New York Faith and Justice asked Sen. Clinton:
Senator Clinton, underdeveloped nations and regions lack widespread access to education and basic resources like water, and they tend to be some of the most unstable and dangerous regions of the world. Places like Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan. Our national security is at stake, but our military is stretched. As president, would you consider committing U.S. troops to a purely humanitarian mission under the leadership of a foreign flag?
Clinton responded:
I believe we should demonstrate our commitment to people who are poor, disenfranchised, disempowered before we talk about putting troops anywhere. The United States has to be seen again as a peacekeeper, and we have lost that standing in these last seven years. Therefore, I want us to have a partnership, government to government, government with the private sector, government with our NGOS and our faith community to show the best of what America has to offer. … Before we get to what we might do hypothetically, let's see what we will do realistically to rebuild America's moral authority and demonstrate our commitment to compassionate humanitarianism.
The moderator called on me to ask a question of Sen. Obama:
As you reminded us a week or two ago, when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed 40 years ago, he wasn't just speaking about civil rights. He was fighting for economic justice, was about to launch a poor people's campaign. Yet, four decades after the anniversary of his death, the poverty rate in America is virtually unchanged, and one in six of our children are poor in the richest nation in the world. So in the faith community, we are wanting a new commitment around a measurable goal, something like cutting poverty in half in 10 years. Would you commit - would you at this historic compassion forum, commit to such a goal tonight, and, if elected, tell us how you'd mobilize the nation, mobilize us, to achieve that goal?
Obama's response:
I absolutely will make that commitment. Understand that when I make that commitment, I do so with great humility because it is a very ambitious goal. And we're going to have to mobilize our society, not just to cut poverty, but to prevent more people from slipping into poverty. … [After a series of specific policy proposals] And many of these, by the way, can be part of a faith community. And so, you know, just to go back to our theme here tonight, people sometimes ask me, what do I think about faith-based initiatives? I want to keep the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives open, but I want to make sure that its mission is clear … the faith-based initiatives should be targeted specifically at the issue of poverty and how to lift people up.
Getting such a commitment on the public record is important - both for changing the political conversation and helping to put an issue like poverty on the agenda, and also to hold whoever wins an election accountable. So I was pleased with Barack Obama's response and also that Hillary Clinton has made a similar commitment to lead to cut domestic poverty in half in the next ten years. Those commitments should further encourage the emerging faith-inspired movement to overcome poverty and give us some concrete benchmarks to work for.
Read the transcript for the rest of the excellent questions posed by the religious leaders last night, and the candidates' responses.
Kudos go to Katie Barge, the primary organizer of the Compassion Forum for Faith and Public Life, for helping to continue the national conversation on the critical relationship between faith and politics.
Following is an excerpt from an interview with Bob Abernethy that will appear in a forthcoming issue ofThe Wittenburg Door.
GARRISON: When you reflect over your years of doing Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, how would you assess the role of religion in America?
ABERENETHY: I think one of other things that is going to be more and more interesting and important is figuring out how the three major Abrahamic religions can live together peacefully and respectfully. Efforts to figure out how Christianity and Islam can coexist in respectful ways will be a good long running story. I hope to do some things on that. Also, I would hope that after a generation of declining numbers and aging membership that the Protestant mainline would pick itself up and develop a little confidence in its tradition. I'd like to see them get on with the business of being a church and helping everybody around it.
ABERNETHY: What Bill Boyle and I have done is take the transcripts of those interviews that were done originally for Religion and Ethics & Newsweekly, but were used only in the smallest part in the program or on our website. We edited 60-some interviews into little essays. They run the gamut from the spiritual but not religious over to the most traditional and conservative faith traditions. As with the program, there's no preaching just these wonderful ideas that are there for the taking
GARRISON: How does your own faith influence the overall ethos of the program and the book?
ABERNETHY: First of all, it supported my interest in the subject. Also, it helped make all of us who do these interviews more sensitive to the spiritual experience of others and respectful of that experience. Maybe people sensed that and therefore, they felt free to speak really beautifully about the things that mattered to them.
GARRISON: How can one practice their faith while remaining an objective journalist when covering controversial religious stories?
ABERNETHY: I've been around a while and I grew up in the business thinking there should be a clear separation between news reporting and editorializing. When you're editorializing, you should label it as such. I think that's sometimes not honored as strictly as it should be. My advice would be if you're going to editorialize, don't be shy about identifying it as such.
GARRISON: Any thoughts about the rise of a progressive left that seems poised to do battle with the Religious Right?
ABERNETHY: All religion whether it's left, right or center has to be very, very wary of getting too close to power. People have been burned by that for centuries. It's a big, big danger. I think some people on the Religious Right have discovered this in their own case. And I would hope if any other religious group is trying to have political influence that they would be very careful about that. The spate of books about atheism has probably been encouraged by their authors' feeling that the religious right was too powerful and having too much of an influence in politics.
GARRISON: As we approach the 2008 election, we see both Republican and Democratic presidential candidates playing the faith card.
ABERNETHY: I think it's fair to ask candidates for president of the United States questions about their deepest beliefs. Seems to me that in understanding what a candidate is like, it's important to understand where they're coming from, what they think are bedrock truths, what they care the most about. And if they're religious folks, that's something the voters should know about. If they have deep religious convictions, presumably those convictions have an influence on how they live their lives and the decisions they make.
Publishers Weekly cited Becky Garrison as one of "four evangelicals with fresh views" alongside Jim Wallis, Shane Claiborne and Ron Sider.
In writing my new book, Founding Faith, I was struck by two things of possible importance to today’s religious progressives.
First, the 18th century evangelicals had a very different approach to religious freedom than many of their 21st century descendents. They were crucial advocates for separation of church and state. This ought to be a challenge to both modern liberal secularists who assume that evangelicals are awlays on the side of tyranny, and for religious conservatives who have disowned the arguments of their ancestors. If not for evangelicals, we wouldn’t have religious freedom.
Second, the Founders mostly assess religion through the prism of one question: does it promote good behavior? Though each of the Founders I studied in Founding Faith (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, and Madison) started at different religious places, they ended up at the end of their lives whittling their creeds down to a few simple items:
Benjamin Franklin: "That the most acceptable service we can render to [God], is doing good to his other children."
John Adams: "I have learned nothing of importance to me, for they have made no change in my moral or religious creed, which has for 50 or 60 years been contained in four short words: 'Be just and good.'"
Thomas Jefferson: "1) That there is one only God, and he all-perfect. 2) That there is a future state of rewards and punishments. 3) That to love God with all thy heart and they neighbor as theyself, is the sum of religion." (Click here for an online version of the Jefferson Bible that shows how he cut out the miracles from the Bible, and highlighted the moral teachings.)
George Washington: "In politics, as in religion, my tenets are few and simple; the leading one of which, and indeed that which embraces most others, is to be honest and just ourselves, and to exact it from others; meddling as little as possible in their affairs where our own are not involved. If this maxim was generally adopted, wars would cease and our swords would soon be converted into reap-hooks and our harvests be more peaceful, abundant and happy." (Washington letter to James Anderson, December 25, 1795, as quoted in Chadwick, p. 487.)
It’s not accurate to say these men were not religious. I don’t believe it’s even accurate to say they were Deists, since most of them believed in a God that intervened in history and in their lives. But it is clear that they judged the success of religion by whether it inculcated good behavior, and created good citizens.
Jim Wallis talks with Tony Perkins (Family Research Council), Harry Jackson (High Impact Leadership), and Sammy Rodriguez (National Hispanic Leadership Conference) about the broadening evangelical agenda. Watch it:
A few weeks ago, as I was reading David Kinnaman's book unChristian—a look at the way late teens to 30-year-olds perceive Christianity—I found myself nodding in agreement. Not only did I fully understand this younger generation's negative attitudes, I've also harbored many of those same opinions over the years. And today, in no arena of life is this more evident than in the political sphere, where partisanship in the church has repelled younger people and compelled me to leave more than one faith community.
I am so far outside the book's demographic, and that of a recent Pew Research Center poll on younger evangelicals, that I might be tempted to feel like a loner, an isolated, older evangelical and the bane of every partisan politician—an independent voter. But I know better. I am not isolated. I am not alone. There are plenty of evangelicals in nearly every age group who cannot in good conscience embrace either major party, and for that reason they have become independents. And their numbers are growing.
I know this because I have spent the last 18 months researching and writing about independent voters, including those whose faith informs their politics. I had been a closet independent in a semi-evangelical world, and once I went public, I became something of a magnet for evangelicals who felt they couldn't admit to their independent status in their GOP-saturated congregations (and the stray mainliners who felt the same way in Democratic churches). There were more of us than I realized. From early conversations with independent evangelicals that prompted the research, to personal encounters at independent voter events and phone interviews with political activists, to e-mails and comments on my independent voter blog, I've found a great many kindred spirits.
It's difficult to find accurate data on the percentage of Christians, evangelical or otherwise, who are independent; although last year a Barna Group survey indicated that born-again Christians represent one-third of all independent voters. Therefore, depending on which statistics you believe—estimates of the number of independent voters nationwide range from 32 to 43 percent—born-again independents make up roughly 10 to 14 percent of the electorate.
Given those percentages, it's clear that it's not just young people who have abandoned partisan politics. Many of us who are over 30, and way beyond, have done the same. Going independent is a matter of conscience—not age.
Marcia Ford, author of We the Purple: Faith, Politics, and the Independent Voter, maintains an independent voter blog at marciaford.blogspot.com.
What about the mosaic revival is comforting? As a Latino evangelical leader, one of the things I am asking is moving beyond polarization. In this mosaic revival, we know that though politics is not the whole solution, it will be a vital part. We need the nexus of clergy, good government, activists, entrepreneurs, moms and dads, educators, etc. As a Christian who is part of the mosaic revival, I cling to one thing: my commitment is to Christ and the gospel first, not to any political party. As a citizen who values justice, my commitment is to justice first and not any political party. In the mosaic revival, we reserve the right to criticize any party that violates and oppresses the least of these. That list is a long one (not exhaustive):
· people oppressed by poverty all over the world, · the educationally deprived, · unborn babies, · mothers who are left without quality care for newborns, · victims in Darfur, Rwanda, · those who are impacted by AIDS/HIV, · a planet with ecological challenges, · abused woman and children, · victims of violence in urban centers and college campuses, · indigenous and immigrant groups that are displaced or marginalized.
The mosaic revival says this is beyond the Republicans, Democrats, or Independents. The kaleidoscope convention says, "How can we respond in ethical and nuanced ways to these global crises?"
Before I was a pastor, I was a Pentecostal evangelist that spoke to thousands of young people in revivals across the U.S. and Latin America. I think I hear them more clearly now than I ever did before. They're saying what I heard Jim Wallis say a month ago in New York: "How do we speak to two great hungers, spiritual revival and social justice?" The mosaic revival, or "awakening" as Jim may say it, says we understand Wilberforce, Charles Finney, Mother Teresa and Marting Luther King Jr., just to name a few heroes. Our commitment is to speak pastorally and prophetically to our nation and the world. We also recognize, as Christians, that we cannot do it alone. There is a deep mystical and spiritual element to this work.
On Tuesday, Feb. 12, Bishop John Gimenez left to be with the Lord. He was the pastor of the Rock Church in Virginia and a respected leader in the Latino evangelical community. Like my father, he was a former heroin junkie who had a radical conversion experience. I met Bishop John several years ago in New York at Bishop Luciano Padilla Jr.'s church. Although ideologically we were not always in 100 percent agreement, the bishop said to me something I'll never forget: "Believe the gospel can transform and let God work through it and you to change the world."
So when I'm asked, "What gives you the right to speak as a Latino evangelical? My response is, "The gospel mandate and the call of Jesus in Luke 4 as he quoted from the prophet Isaiah." The mosaic revival is not about blue or red states or liberal or conservative. It is, in the words of Gandhi, "Being the change you want to see in the world." Miguel de Unamuno, the Spanish poet said it best, "If not you, who? If not now, when?" The mosaic revival says always put the gospel (as a Christian) and your fundamental commitments to justice (as a citizen, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, secular, etc.,) ahead of partisanship.
Rev. Gabriel Salguero is the pastor of the Lamb’s Church of the Nazarene in New York City, a Ph.D. candidate at Union Theological Seminary, and the director of the Hispanic Leadership Program at Princeton Theological Seminary. He is also a Sojourners board member.
This afternoon's top news is Mitt Romney's announcement that he is ending his run for the presidency. Romney's candidacy raised the issue of whether a Mormon could be elected president. The media stories were about evangelicals who didn't like him because they thought Mormonism was an un-Christian sect.
I was born and raised in Michigan. My governor in the late 1960s was George Romney, Mitt's father. He was a moderate Republican, a good governor, and ran for president himself. I never remember his Mormonism being a factor or even an issue of discussion, and his candidacy failed for other reasons.
I also don't believe that Mitt Romney's campaign failed because of his Mormon religion. I have frequently said that no candidate's theology or doctrine should be a factor in voting, but rather the focus should be on their moral compass – what shapes their political values, leadership, and policies. Romney failed by not demonstrating a consistent moral compass, and many didn't believe he had one.
He often changed his positions, depending on whose votes he was trying to get. He was a liberal Republican who was pro-choice and pro-gay rights when he ran for governor of Massachusetts, and then shifted dramatically to being a very conservative Republican with the opposite views when trying to court the conservative Republican base in his run for the presidency. He became the most virulent attacker of undocumented people when he realized the political advantage of that position in the primaries. He became an outside populist against insider Washington when he sensed after the early primaries that change was in the air, and then he became a competent businessman when recession became a leading issue.
Romney's problem was not that he was a Mormon, but that he was a Mormon sitting on top of a weather vane changing his positions every time the wind blew in a different direction. He showed no moral compass people could trust, and his candidacy was doomed.
At last week's New Baptist Unity Conference in Atlanta, an estimated 20,000 Baptists spanning the moderate to progressive spectrum gathered for three days of worship, fellowship, and training. Even though Southern Baptists were conspicuously missing, the conference united members of denominations from the American Baptist Convention, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, National Baptist Convention USA, and the Progressive National Baptist Convention, among others, to collectively represent over 17 million U.S. Christians.
As the core convener and patron of the event, the longstanding Baptist Bible study leader and former President Jimmy Carter opened the conference with a challenge that strikes at the heart of division within the Baptist and Christian church at large. Carter named the wedge issues that have fragmented the church - from the ordination of women to homosexuality, abortion, capital punishment, etc. - and then asked the participants whether a shared belief in the saving grace of God through Jesus Christ and a commitment to spreading the gospel was more important than all these divisions combined. Carter compared these divisions to the ones that Paul addressed in his letters to the early church in Corinth. According to Carter, "these animosities have become a cancer that is metastasizing in the body of Christ."
The conference provided ample testimony to the ways in which Baptists are uniting across theology, ideology, geography, and race. It placed a particular emphasis on the themes of diversity, good news to the poor, and welcoming the stranger. Speakers included Rev.Tony Campolo, Marian Wright Edelman, Dr. William Shaw, Senator Charles Grassley, and Bill Clinton. While many in the media and conservative circles cynically accused the conference as an attempt to baptize the Democratic Party, the event upheld a staunch commitment to nonpartisanship and offered a prophetic challenge to both Democrats and Republicans. As an associate minister at a church that's a member of both the American Baptist Church and the Progressive National Baptist Convention, I straddle the historic black and predominantly white Baptist worlds. It was significant that this gathering took place in the seat of the South and demonstrated a genuine commitment to uniting across the racial divide. An entire worship service focused on the theme of welcoming the stranger and dealt head-on with the polemical issue of immigration - emphasizing the need for a biblically-based response characterized by compassion, mercy, and justice.
Historically, Baptists have been reluctant to engage in politics, due in part to an abiding belief in the separation between church and state. It was a Baptist minister that played an instrumental role in convincing the founding fathers that this separation represented the best way to protect religion from the interference of the state and the best way to safeguard the state from the interference of religion. Throughout the plenary sessions and workshops, I sensed a growing recognition that this separation should not lead to a fast from politics. Baptists' voices are expressing a growing desire to address the great moral issues of our time, including poverty, climate change, religious freedom, and HIV/AIDS. While real disagreements still exist, particularly around the differences between charity and justice or systemic change and personal transformation, momentum is growing favoring deeper and broader political engagement. Perhaps one of the greatest and most hopeful signs of this nascent tidal wave was on display at a luncheon featuring former Vice President Al Gore. In contrast to the Southern Baptists, who spurned Gore's advocacy to open eyes around the intensifying crisis of global warming, thousands of conference participants gave a rousing standing ovation to his now famous hour-long Power Point presentation, as Baptist leaders listened to ways in which we have shown contempt for God's creation.
The conference recognized the difficulties that lie ahead in sustaining this movement. Organizers seem committed to avoiding the creation of a new organization or reinventing the wheel. I have been struck by the degree to which Baptist denominations lack a substantial staff presence in Washington, D.C., working to influence public policy and advocate around Baptist concerns. While most mainline churches have full-time policy staff and Washington-based offices, Baptists are often under-represented. This is not to equate a presence in Washington with policy change, yet a more mobilized constituency of 17 million Baptists would have a profound degree of influence. One concrete outcome of this New Covenant Baptist movement would be to combine efforts and resources across these Baptist denominations to establish a joint advocacy presence to better represent the voices of progressive and moderate Baptists across the country. A Baptist constituency united around shared biblical values and a focused agenda on common ground issues like ending poverty would represent good news for the church and our nation.
Adam Taylor is director of campaigns and organizing for Sojourners.
Interesting exit poll results from five southern "Bible-belt" states. Of those who identify as "Born-again or evangelical Christians," Mike Huckabee won their votes. In all but one, John McCain came in second, and Mitt Romney third. Here are the numbers:
GA – 64% of R voters 43% - Huckabee 29% - Romney 24% - McCain
AL– 78% of R voters 48 – Huckabee 31 – McCain 16 – Romney
TN – 73% of R voters 41 – Huckabee 26 – McCain 19 – Romney
OK – 73& of R voters 39 – Huckabee 29 – McCain 25 – Romney
ARK– 73% of R voters 63 – Huckabee 19 – McCain 11 – Romney (of course, this is Huckabee's home state)
The conclusion? Despite no support from established Religious Right leaders, Huckabee is winning the evangelical vote. And despite active opposition by James Dobson and others, McCain is coming in second among those voters.
I am deeply disappointed the Republican Party seems poised to select a nominee who did not support a Constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage, voted for embryonic stem-cell research to kill nascent human beings, opposed tax cuts that ended the marriage penalty, has little regard for freedom of speech, organized the Gang of 14 to preserve filibusters in judicial hearings, and has a legendary temper and often uses foul and obscene language. ...
But what a sad and melancholy decision this is for me and many other conservatives. Should Sen. McCain capture the nomination as many assume, I believe this general election will offer the worst choices for president in my lifetime. I certainly can't vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama based on their virulently anti-family policy positions. If these are the nominees in November, I simply will not cast a ballot for president for the first time in my life. These decisions are my personal views and do not represent the organization with which I am affiliated. They do reflect my deeply held convictions about the institution of the family, about moral and spiritual beliefs, and about the welfare of our country.
While Dobson maintains that he is endorsing no candidate, Focus and friends have certainly warmed to Romney while criticizing Huckabee. Was Huckabee's social conservatism just not enough to win their support for his economic populism? Reading the list of issues cited above, one wonders if electability had more to do with the Religious Right's support for Romney over Huckabee--since from my understanding neither of them use "foul or obscene language." With results so far seeming to favor McCain over Romney, are there any regrets among these erstwhile kingmakers? At this point, as Dobson threatens a boycott of the presidential vote, one wonders if he wishes he'd been more vocal in his support of Huckabee--who's winning southern states where conservative evangelicals are a strong segment of the electorate.
There's something in the air: Super Tuesday. I haven't seen as much interest around a primary election in a long time. Despite the experiences of defeat around issues so important to my low-income community - the fear of recession, the dragged out Iraq war and the billions of dollars diverted for war that we need spent on improving the health and future of our youth - there is an tangible sense of hope and possibilities. As Caroline Kennedy told of her own experience, youth are speaking out to their parents about the future, about the candidates, and getting involved. There will be change in whoever becomes president, and that gives us hope for a new direction for the country, especially in how we spend our money. Remember the "budget are moral documents" efforts?
Having a sense of future is so important, especially in a low-income community. Children's Defense Fund documents that the single most influential factor in reducing teenage pregnancy is youth having a sense of future. A sense of possibilities other than the one-way train to prison is so critical for the young men hanging out of our street corners. But we can't afford to dash the hope and sense of future with false promises. It will be difficult for any president to turn around our war-mongering, our selfish claims to tax relief when others are left out, and our inadequate public education. There are forces that will push the other direction. But, as the saying goes, "Now is the time, and we are the ones we've been waiting for." We have a chance to make a difference.
Cornell West spoke last night, reminding us that we must work hard for our candidate, celebrate victories without rancor, and then take up the task of prophets of old, holding presidents and others accountable to God's justice.
Mary Nelson is president emeritus of Bethel New Life, a faith-based community development corporation on the west side of Chicago. She is also a board member of Sojourners.
On this Super Tuesday, there will no doubt be a lot of discussion (again) about the role of religion – and especially evangelical religion - in the election cycle. I wish more of them had the intelligence of a recent piece by NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof.
Speaking of evangelicals, Kristoff said:
Liberals believe deeply in tolerance and over the last century have led the battles against prejudices of all kinds, but we have a blind spot about Christian evangelicals. They constitute one of the few minorities that, on the American coasts or university campuses, it remains fashionable to mock. ... Bleeding-heart liberals could accomplish far more if they reached out to build common cause with bleeding-heart conservatives.
Kristof quotes The Great Awakening, where Jim Wallis says, "Evangelicals are going to vote this year in part on climate change, on Darfur, on poverty." Kristof then adds that, according to a CBS News poll, this year white evangelicals consider the fight against poverty to be the top moral issue, displacing abortion to a distant second.
I could see this shift in action a few weeks ago in Davos at the World Economic Forum. I got to see Rick Warren in action, motivating business and political leaders to put poverty, disease, and peace-making higher on their agenda. Kristof tells a story about Warren, who for many years didn't pay much attention to these issues of social justice and compassion. Then, during a 2003 visit to Africa, Rick came into a ramshackle tent where a little church was caring for 25 AIDS orphans.
Rick said, "I realized they were doing more for the poor than my entire megachurch. ... It was like a knife in the heart." Kristof recounts how Rick turned this heartbreak into action: mobilizing his church to constructive action in 68 countries, recruiting 7,500 members to pay their own way to serve poor people around the world – experiencing a transformation in their own values and priorities in the process.
Kristoff quotes CARE's Helene Gayle about evangelicals' work against global poverty: they "have made some incredible contributions … We don't give them credit for the changes they've made." Similarly, Environmental Defense president Fred Krupp said, "Many evangelical leaders have been key to taking the climate issue across the cultural divide."
Kristof concludes, "In parts of Africa where bandits and warlords shoot or rape anything that moves, you often find that the only groups still operating are Doctors Without Borders and religious aid workers: crazy doctors and crazy Christians."
As an evangelical, I occasionally watch late-night religious broadcasting and the word "crazy" comes to mind in a different way. But thankfully, Kristoff is right: there's a new kind of craziness spreading among evangelicals. It's the belief that the impossible can happen – that yes, we can stop global warming, yes, we can redirect the economy to benefit the poor majority, and yes, we can build bridges of peace instead of razor-wire-topped walls of distrust.
It will be interesting to see how that craziness manifests itself in today's elections.
A common question from over the last few years has been for proof that the movement I describe has a real and measurable constituency. "Give us a sign," they say. The headline from the latest Barna Group report is another such sign: Born Again Voters No Longer Favor Republican Candidates. (Barna defines "born again Christians" this way: "people who said they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today and who also indicated they believe that when they die they will go to heaven because they had confessed their sins and had accepted Jesus Christ as their savior.") In the report's words:
One of the most reliable constituencies of the Republican Party in recent years has been born again Christians. A new national survey of likely voters conducted by The Barna Group, however, shows that the Republicans have lost the allegiance of many born again voters. The November election is truly up for grabs - and if the election were held today, most born again voters would select the Democratic Party nominee for president, whoever that might be. … The new Barna study shows that if the election were to be held today, 40 percent of all born again adults who are likely to vote in November would choose the Democratic candidate and just 29 percent would choose the Republican candidate. The remaining 28 percent are currently not sure whom they would choose ...
Barna also polls what they call "A subset of the born again population – evangelicals …," (defined by Barna as the most theologically conservative), who they say "remained firmly committed to conservative ideals and, to a lesser extent, to the Republican Party." Yet here too is an amazing shift:
If the election were held today, only 45 percent of evangelicals say they would support the Republican nominee for president, and 11 percent would support the Democratic representative. Most significant is that a whopping 40 percent of evangelicals are undecided. This is extraordinary, given that 62 percent of evangelicals voted for the Republican candidate in 1992, 67 percent did so in 1996, along with 67 percent in 2000 and 85 percent in 2004.
Now, let me be clear that this shift does not by itself necessarily equal a movement for social justice - such a movement must never be the property of any political party. But this poll does demonstrate seismic shifts in the issues most important to this critical constituency. The old litmus tests no longer apply, and a broader set of issues now compel their votes. Who the candidates are and their position on a broad range of issues will matter. As Barna concludes (emphasis added):
Today we have a greater proportion of faith-driven voters who are concerned about issues that are often thought of as 'liberal' social policy concerns, such as poverty and health care. Abortion and family protection remain significant issues to the faith constituency, but they are not the only issues that matter to the group - or even the driving issues. Relying upon traditional stereotypes of born again or evangelical voters will not serve candidates well this year.
A comment thread from Jim's "Moral State of the Union" post frustrated me a bit until I was encouraged later in the week by a sermon mp3 by N.T. Wright. (I like to listen to sermon podcasts during my morning hikes in the park.) Here's an initial comment on Monday's post:
"Together, we can end the moral scandal of poverty, the degradation of God's creation, the cultural assault on our families and children, and seeing war as the only way to confront evil." --This statement sums up well the problem with contemporary liberalism, which refuses to acknowledge the fallenness of man and creation. You can no more "end" these things than you can eradicate sin.
Here's a representative response:
You know, just because you don't think you can eradicate war, poverty, or environmental degradation, it doesn't mean you shouldn't try. And it certainly doesn't mean you should decry other people who make an effort. If you live your life with a foundation of hopelessness and inevitability, your time on this earth will be complacent. Why discourage people who live with a sense of purpose and redemption for the here and now?
These two general perspectives (though not necessarily these two commenters) then proceed to nuance, clarify, and occasionally insult each other as usual. (BTW, comment moderators have been making a list and checking it twice, and the first round of warnings before blocking abusive commenters is nigh—REPENT! BE NICE!)
But even if the original commenter didn't mean that because sin is inevitable we shouldn't even try to fight social injustice, I agree with the comment that such objections to messages of hope and challenge is counterproductive. It reminds me of when I mentioned Ron Sider's Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger to one of my college Christian fellowship leaders and he asked if I'd heard of a counterpoint book: Prosperous Christians in an Age of Guilt-Mongering. (I kid you not.) As if there was such an epidemic of guilt-ridden Christians giving so much of their money away to the poor in sacrificial generosity that a book-length response was imperative. As opposed to a real epidemic of global hunger and starvation in the face of which much of the church was indifferent (especially Evangelicals in 1978 when Rich Christians first came out and was accused of being communist—ah, remember Cold War fundamentalism?)
Much has changed to awaken the church's conscience since then, but back to that N.T. Wright sermon that puts this debate in some helpful perspective (really, you should click here for an audio excerpt with additional context, and here for the full talk):
If somebody came to you and said, "Look, I have real difficulty with battling with sin. I find that I'm tripped up with temptation and I sin a whole lot. And I don't seem to be able to help it. But the good news is that after all, God is going to redeem me one day and I'm going to be with him in heaven or in the new earth or whatever, and so I really don't need to bother about it now, do I?"
Now, if somebody said that to you, I hope you would hit them with a fairly strong dose of inaugurated eschatology. You mightn't call it that. You would want to say: Precisely because God's going to do that for you in the future, you need to get to work on that now in the power of the Spirit. Now, supposing we were to run the same about the way the world is right now. ...
We won't build the Kingdom of God by our own efforts in the present. It remains God's gift, by his grace and by his power. But we can produce signs of the kingdom: In love and justice and beauty and healing and fresh community work of all sorts—internationally, locally, all over the place.
That last point, which some of the detractors on the blog claimed was their original point, is precisely the core of The Great Awakening as I read it. Here's a direct quote from the book:
It may be that only a revival of faith can spark the necessary changes in public opinion and political will on the really big issues, and that a spiritual transformation is necessary for social change. It's about changing hearts and minds on many of the biggest moral issues of public life that fundamentally challenge who we are and what we believe. Revival is always about what God can do through us, and is now doing afresh. ...
Far from advancing a "politics only" solution, because evil and sin are real, and because they are manifest in our worst social problems, it takes a work of the Spirit to really change things. So is the thread that sparked this post an argument merely about emphasis? If both sides affirm the basic Christian concepts that: a) creation—including humanity—can only be fully restored by God at the eschaton, and b) the church is called to promote that restoration in every sphere of influence in the meantime? If so, then get over it—and get to work!
Ryan Rodrick Beiler is the Web editor for Sojourners.
Learn more about The Great Awakening at www.sojo.net/greatawakening. There you'll find more videos, book excerpts, a free study guide, screensavers, and other downloads - including mp3s from Derek Webb. Plus, book tour dates and the opportunity to create or join book groups in your community.
Tonight, President Bush delivers his 7th State of the Union address. We are certain to hear about the President's plan for stimulating the economy.
Yet, for many people of faith, there is a hunger for a new vision of our life together where bold changes are enacted to address the most pressing moral issues of our time. I’ve written about this hunger for change in my latest book, The Great Awakening , in which I talk about how spiritually-based movements for social change have transformed our nation. The abolition movement to end slavery, the fight to end child labor, the civil rights movement – all of these were movements led by people of faith who hungered for a better way.
I believe we’re at another important moment in history. Together, we can end the moral scandal of poverty, the degradation of God's creation, the cultural assault on our families and children, and seeing war as the only way to confront evil. You can watch my reflections on "The Moral State of the Union" here, click here for the complete prepared text, or download the complete audio as an mp3.
I'm Jim Wallis, of Sojourners and author of The Great Awakening. As the President prepares to deliver his State of the Union message to the country, I want to share some of my reflections on the Moral State of the Union.
Everyday there seems to be some new outrageous charge leveled at Barack Obama. One of the most pernicious is that he is a Muslim who is dishonestly masquerading as a Christian. This charge is so malicious - and so untrue - that it is time to set the record straight.
Barack Obama has never been a Muslim. He has never attended a Muslim school. From about age eight to age nine Obama lived in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country on earth, with more Muslim schools than one can count, yet his parents chose to enroll him in a secular, non-religious school comprised of teachers and students of all faiths. Nor can it be said that during his brief sojourn in Indonesia that his worldview was tainted by Islamic extremism; when Obama lived there, the practice of Islam in Indonesia was still among the world's most moderate.
Another false charge is that rather than using a Bible to be sworn into his elected office, Senator Obama instead used the Qur'an, the holy book of the Muslim faith. That is also a falsehood. The most cursory check of the facts shows that it was not Barack Obama who was sworn in with a Qur'an. It was Keith Ellison, the proudly Muslim congressman from Minnesota.
But by far the ugliest charge is that Barack Obama is lying about his Christian faith. The truth is that for years now, Barack Obama has been a baptized, fully confessed and practicing Christian, not only with his lips inside a church but, more importantly, with his limbs out in the community - striving to help the neediest and the most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters of all creeds and colors.
It is correct that Obama was not born into the Christian faith. Rather, Barack Obama made a conscious decision as a mature adult to become part of the body of Christ. One measure of the seriousness of his faith is that he has been an active and faithful churchgoer since he embraced the gospel of Jesus Christ as his own.
Dr. Jeremiah Wright - his pastor - a wise, sensitive Christian freedom-fighter (in the very best sense of the word), and a man deeply committed to his faith in Christ, whole-heartedly attests to this, as does every fellow parishioner who has encountered Obama in his home church - the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. (By the way, the United Church of Christ is a predominately white mainstream Christian denomination.)
But what is also troubling about all the false information being spread about Obama is its obsession with doctrines and creeds to the apparent detriment of any sense of the spirituality of service. This tragically flawed understanding of Christian faith is apparently more concerned with the fleeting testimony of one's mouth than with the abiding testimony of one's walk in the world. If this was not so, if what was really the concern of those seeking to discredit Obama was that one be a Christian rather than simply bearing the name, then why do they not attack the people "of faith" who tell every listening ear that they are Christians, yet everyday spit on the very tenets that Jesus taught by making greed, self-aggrandizement and treating poor people as children of a lesser God their de facto religion? Why not equally publicly indict the rapacious "prosperity preachers" and fake healers who appear in pulpits and on television weekly to steal from the poor so they themselves can live in imperial luxury like the Roman Caesar, the same Caesar whose empire tortured Jesus to death? According to the teachings of Jesus, transgressions like these are what believers should be exposing and denouncing. Indeed, in Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus makes it clear that betrayal of the poor and the vulnerable is among the worst sins possible. Moreover, there Jesus reveals that if nothing else will get one banished to Hell, hurting - even ignoring - those he calls "the least of these" surely will.
Also in that Matthew 25 passage, Jesus teaches that if we are to judge each other at all, it must be by the standard of whether we are trying to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and shelter the homeless. That is the gospel's paramount measure of faith, not how much one shouts Jesus' name or how often and how loudly one can recite doctrine and creeds. Jesus taught - and modeled - that what is most important for those who follow him is to spend their time and treasure in this world, engaging in loving, self-sacrificial actions with the express purpose of manifesting God's love and justice on earth as in heaven.
For me, that is the standard by which all those who seek to lead or govern us must be judged.
On Wednesday, Sojourners and Beliefnet, in collaboration with the National Association of Evangelicals Christian Student Leadership Conference, hosted a panel discussion on "Choosing a president: What do evangelicals really want?" I joined Steve Waldman and David Kuo of Beliefnet, Rich Cizik of the NAE, Bishop Harry Jackson of Hope Christian Church and the High Impact Leadership Coalition, Lynne Hybels of the Willow Creek Community Church, Rev. Joel Hunter of Northland Church and former president of the Christian Coalition, Rev. Sam Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Leadership Conference, and Rev. Cheryl Sanders of the Third Street Church of God and Howard University School of Divinity in a 90-minute conversation.
I was honored to be part of the group, and found the discussion informative and inspiring. I encourage you to listen to the entire conversation, but here are my favorite quotes from each of the panelists:
Rich Cizik: "An historic shift is occurring, it's equivalent to an earthquake in slow motion, but people aren't sensing it, the national media hasn't picked up on it … We are no longer single issue voters, and we're not going to blindly follow prominent leaders in the Religious Right, or otherwise, who are telling us what we have to believe."
Harry Jackson: "It's impossible, though, to be a conscience to the entire nation and be partisan as well. So, at some point we've lost our ability to be an impartial conscience to the entire nation."
Lynne Hybels: "It took a very unlikely prophet named Bono to shake me up. It really was a challenge from him that sent me to Africa and really turned my life upside down. It's a shame that it took an Irish rock star to call the church to task on this, but I'm really glad he did. … [In] many of the great global issues like poverty, AIDS, and refugees, women are disproportionately impacted by all these great social global tragedies, and I would like to see women become disproportionately engaged on the solution side. Personally, that is my call to evangelical women – to pay attention to what's going on in the world and get involved."
Joel Hunter: "There is now a maturing of the movement. Any movement starts out with a negative, you're against something. It's kind of like the middle-school years. You define yourself by what you hate, what you're not. And as you grow up, you have to start defining yourself by who you are and what you want to build. That's where we are right now."
Sam Rodriguez: "The major difference between Latino evangelicals and white evangelicals is that many white evangelicals take their marching orders from Bishop Rush Limbaugh, Prophet Sean Hannity, and Apostle Lou Dobbs; and Latino evangelicals still listen to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John."
Cheryl Sanders: "Martin Luther King made this point in his writing and his speeches – he was a Christian, he was a gospel-preaching Christian – and he brought that evangelical message – the social gospel, if we want to call it that – to bear on civil rights, his center of concern, but it included economic justice, health care, and so many of the other things we're concerned about today. … In the history of African Americans and the church, there hasn't really been a time when it was detached from the social and political message."
I am now beginning a 20-city tour to talk about my new book, The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in A Post-Religious Right America. The conversation at every stop will be about how real and deep change could happen in this country and around the world—and is already beginning to. And that change begins with our own lives, our congregations and communities, and the kind of social movements that finally move politics. I invite you to come to one of our events, here is detailed city-by-city information on the tour. I'm looking forward to meeting people all around the country to talk about the "revival" that is already occurring and could bring the change and the hope that so many people are clearly longing for in this critical election year and beyond.
This early primary election season has clearly demonstrated the limits of the pollster's predictions, the pundit's prognostications, and the ability of politics to really address our deepest problems.
The polls have gotten it wrong several times now. And the political commentators have wrongly told us what was going or not going to happen so many times that many have just stopped listening. Obama would never catch up to Clinton's inevitability - then he won Iowa. The Clinton dynasty was finished and Obama was about to march to the nomination on pure momentum and inspiration - then Clinton won New Hampshire. Edwards would be strong in the early primaries - quickly it was a two-person race between Obama and Clinton. McCain was pronounced dead this summer by all the political talking heads - now his staff calls him "Lazarus," with comeback victories in New Hampshire and Florida. Romney was finished after investing so much in Iowa and New Hampshire and losing - then he won the next two contests. Huckabee wasn't worth covering until two months ago - then he shocked the establishment by winning Iowa. But then he failed to win South Carolina, where his evangelical base is the strongest. Thompson was the re-incarnation of Ronald Reagan - until he "fizzled." Giuliani was the early frontrunner - until he wasn't anymore, but may be again if he wins Florida, or not.
Iraq was to be a big campaign issue, and then it faded. Health care was big early on but isn't so much now. Race and gender bickering recently broke out between the potential first woman and first black president. Now the fear of recession is the big issue and "It's the economy, stupid," all over again. Change beat experience early on but experience and competence have made a comeback. And ALL the pundits said the early front-loaded primary season would produce clear nominees by early February. Now they talk about what fun it would be for journalists to have nominations go all the way to the conventions. Maybe this is all about their fun.
But have the following issues been primary in this primary election season: the shameful scandal of global poverty and the embarrassment of a growing number of poor families in America; the increasingly urgent threat of global warming; the horrendous costs of the war in Iraq and the consequences of a foreign policy that relies exclusively on war to fight evil; the gross violations of human life in places like Darfur, the Congo, and Kenya; the need for a bi-partisan effort to dramatically reduce abortion rates; the corruption of the popular culture and its daily assault upon our families and children? Nope.
All this points again to the fact that real change will never begin in Washington nor be simply a top-down process. I live in the nation's capital and, believe me, this will be the last place change comes. But it has always been like that. Change will grow from social movements, from grassroots efforts that rush up, not trickle down, and from critical culture and values shifts that ultimately will affect politics. Awakening the faith community, for example, to the biblical vision of social justice and the moral imperatives to address poverty, creation care, human rights, culture renewal, and a better way to combat evil in the world will more likely lead to deeper change than mere lobbying on Capitol Hill.
That's why I am excited to begin a 20-city tour to talk about my new book, The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in A Post-Religious Right America. The conversation at every stop will be about how real and deep change could happen in this country and around the world—and is already beginning to. And that change begins with our own lives, our congregations and communities, and the kind of social movements that do finally move politics. The book lays out not a laundry list of "issues" but rather a set of seven commitments that could lead to a "tipping point" on the greatest moral challenges of our time. Each of those seven chapters ends with "The Commitment" which describes what individuals and families can do, how congregations and community groups must lead, and then how changes in public policy must be the result.
It's a hopeful book, because I am very encouraged about what I see happening all over the country, despite the limits of politics already apparent in this early primary season. The Great Awakening describes the "revival" that is already occurring and could bring the change and the hope that so many people are clearly longing for in this critical election year and beyond. I hope this book gives you as much hope in reading it as I found in researching and writing it. It's the story of change from the bottom up—change that is a matter of faith.
Faith and politics continues to be a major storyline in the election campaigning. Beliefnet is interested in what you think about the mix of religion and politics in this year's election. Click here and check out the survey on Religion and Politics.
In two weeks, you will have your first chance to read Jim Wallis' latest book, The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America. You'll soon hear about the upcoming book tour, a new website featuring the book and a slate of other activities planned around the launch.
I had the chance to read the manuscript a few months ago, and I feel real excitement about what this book can mean to our personal lives as sojourners, to our faith communities seeking justice and peace, and to our nation and world that stand at a real crossroads.
Three years ago, when God's Politics first came out, it took everyone by surprise. God's Politics struck a nerve – it diagnosed a nation that was polarized and a faith that had been hijacked. No one expected it to make the bestsellers lists. But because so many of us read the book with enthusiasm and encouraged others to do so, a new national conversation about faith and politics opened up. Sojourners' message and visibility reached a new level as many of us said, "At last someone is speaking up for the kind of faith I actually believe in. At last there's a Christian leader articulating a message that isn't an embarrassment to me." God's Politics proclaimed a faith that can and should change the big things – like poverty and war. As Jim was featured on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The O'Reilly Factor,Meet the Press, CNN, NPR, and other high-profile places, we saw a new kind of Christianity become part of the national dialogue. As Jim often says, the monologue of a polarizing, combative, and narrow version of Christian faith was over, and a new dialogue had begun.
Now it's time for the next chapter. When The Great Awakening arrives in bookstores on Jan. 22, the conversation will get more practical as Jim explains how we can turn this new dialogue into action. Thousands of us will be reading stories of how spiritually-driven movements have led the charge for change in the past and why we're on the cusp of another such awakening right now. It's a book meant to equip everyday Christians with ways to talk about our deepest values and highest hopes for a better world, and then to translate our values and hopes into action.
We'll need your help, again. Our hope is that like God's Politics, this book will inspire another wave of commitment, and the tide of justice will continue to rise. We'll soon be inviting you to check out the book and to tell others about it, too. As an author and an avid reader, I have a feeling for how important a book release can be. On behalf of the whole Sojourners board and staff, I want to thank you for your support, prayers, and involvement around the release of The Great Awakening.
You can't be a rational person six days a week … and on one day of the week, go to a building, and think you're drinking the blood of a two-thousand-year-old space god.
If you polled the audience, my hunch is the majority would normally prefer Maher over Mass. But not this time. Even Catholic Conan was at a loss for words. Looks like Maher might have been on a mission to eradicate religion but he ended up shooting unbiblical blanks.
In all my years as a practicing Christian and a religious journalist, I have never encountered anyone who thought they were actually committing cannibalism as part of their Sunday ritual.With all the faith follies transpiring these days, surely an accomplished comedian such as Bill Maher can find ample fodder without resorting to bad theology. In an ironic twist, these are the same folks who chide Christians (and rightly so) for employing shoddy science and spouting "Jesus said it, I believe it, that settles it"-rhetoric.
While I'm tempted to throw the complete works of Henri Nouwen, Phyllis Tickle, and N.T. Wright at both strident secularists and their religious counterparts whenever they spout such nefarious nonsense, there is that whole turn the other cheek biz. Besides, as I've learned over the years, one cannot reason with the unreasonable.
Here's where the court jester or the satirist enters the scene. Just as there have always been those who misuse and misinterpret religion for their own personal and financial gain, there have a few of us crazy enough to take on the ungodly giants. As a religious satirist, I seek to deconstruct everything and anyone that tries to keep people away from the love of God. Whenever men try to create God in their own image or eradicate God from the face of the earth, I'm right behind them kicking down their prized creations. (Yes, sometimes I can kick a bit too hard, and for that I apologize.) Right after I've smashed these fallen idols to smithereens, for a few brief moments, a calm comes over me. I can see very tiny bits of God shining through the cracks.
It's these glimpses of God that keep me from cracking up.
Now that the people of Iowa have chosen Republican Mike Huckabee and Democrat Barack Obama as their nominees for president, pundits will spend much of the next few days (until New Hampshire at least) analyzing the results. Many will note religion as an important factor—especially as evangelicals turned out largely for Huckabee.
But evangelicals are not the only religion story from Iowa. Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama represent something much more profound in American politics and religion. With Huckabee as a Southern Baptist and Obama as a member of the United Church of Christ, the two men symbolize the poles of Protestantism, the divided soul of America's majority religion.
In the late 19th century, American Protestantism divided into fundamentalist and modernist camps. In the political realm, fundamentalists believed that personal conversion was the foundation of politics. If Jesus changed individuals, individuals might change society if God so called them. But they more typically shied away from politics as sinful, defining it as an essentially hopeless enterprise. They eschewed social change in favor of a kind of feisty Jesus-centered ethics of personal responsibility, private prayer, and morality. They bemoaned the possibility of political change without being born again.
Modernist Protestants argued that politics existed as part of larger social structures—economic, social, and class systems. These structures were corrupted by sin and injustice. Yet, they could be transformed through human goodness and God's justice. Instead of emphasizing individual morality, modernist Protestants extolled a political theology of the common good regardless of personal faith. As a result, they stressed hope, change, and the future in their politics—and its communal emphasis tended to resonate with African-American Protestants.
During the last century, these two visions have gone through several historical permutations. However, they continue to shape American Protestantism. As a Southern Baptist, Huckabee emphasizes Christian conversion, personal morality, and individual character. Obama, as part of a liberal denomination, articulates the communal vision of progressive Protestantism, appealing to human goodness, optimism, and social justice. Whereas Huckabee speaks of the "zeal" of individuals to "do the right thing" and act heroically, Obama preaches on "building a coalition" to transform the nation through innovation and creating a new global community. They are replaying, in dynamic new voices, an old disagreement in American religion.
The Iowa winners represent the two major traditions of Protestant political theology. If Huckabee and Obama wind up as presidential nominees, it would be the first time since the Great Protestant Divide that candidates so clearly articulated these two versions of religion and politics—and so clearly have the opportunity to reshape an old argument. Although it is far too early to make such predictions, the next election could be a referendum on the Protestant political soul.
This evening, the presidential election of 2008 officially begins with the Iowa caucuses—intense political contests taking place in every county of that Midwestern state. The national campaign, of course, has already been going on for many months (with the earliest start in the history of presidential politics), but now the endless polling will be replaced by actual election results in state caucuses and primaries. Iowa is the starting gun in the political battle that leads to the party nominations, the fall campaign, and a November election that many believe to be the most important in years.
I believe the religious landscape of the 2008 political year will be dramatically different than it was in the 2004 election. And it's quite amazing how much the issue of faith and politics has changed in such a short time. There are two fundamental shifts which have occurred and, taken together, they constitute a real sea change in American politics.
First, in what TIME magazine has called "a leveling of the praying field" the Democrats now speak as much about faith and values as the Republicans do. For example, it has been the Democratic presidential candidates who have devoted the most time in outreach to faith communities in the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina - not the Republicans. We have seen top level faith outreach operations as central to the Democratic candidates' campaign strategies and decision-making, their "faith forums" in primary states, newsletters on family and values, and even gospel music tours. All three Democratic front-runners have spoken quite comfortably about their personal faith and its relationship to public life in national forums and debates, at religious institutions and congregations, and in media interviews. Hillary Clinton and John Edwards frequently speak of their history as committed lay persons in their denomination and know the religious community as their own; and Barack Obama sometimes sounds like a public theologian. All three, as well as other Democratic candidates, have explicitly connected their faith to a broad range of issues from poverty to health care, criminal justice, HIV/AIDS, human rights, and to war and peace.
In a striking contrast this year, the Republican Party, which has so associated itself with religion and "values voters" in recent years, has had a serious "God and marriage problem," as many have pointed out. Several of the Republican frontrunners like John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, and Fred Thompson have often seemed uncomfortable and awkward when the language of faith comes up, and, as many have noted, the only one among the early Republican frontrunners with a history of just one wife was the Mormon, Mitt Romney, whose minority religion is suspect among many conservative evangelicals. The candidate with the strongest Christian identity, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, couldn't get the backing of the key leaders of Religious Right and finally surged to the top tier by appealing on his own to the grassroots religious base of the party in places like Iowa and South Carolina. The contrast from 2004, when many in the GOP were describing theirs as "God's own party," is quite stunning.
It is now much clearer that "God is not a Republican or a Democrat," as our bumper sticker from the last campaign read; and that is a good thing. There should be no religious litmus tests for politics - committed Christians will, and should be, on both sides of the political aisle. Indeed, people of faith should never be in any party's or candidate's political pocket and should, ideally, be the ultimate swing vote because of their moral independence from partisan politics. Let's all try to remember that this political year.
Martin Luther once said that he would rather be governed by a competent Turk than by an incompetent Christian, which is a good piece of wisdom to keep in mind this or any election year. What a candidate's moral compass is should be more important than his/her theology or the doctrines of his/her religious tradition. What kind of leader will a candidate be, what are his/her guiding personal and social values, and what is his/her strength of character? These are all key questions.
Second, and even more important than the religious identities of the candidates on either side, is how the agenda of faith communities has undergone a very significant shift. Very clearly, abortion and gay marriage are not the only overriding "moral issues" for many people of faith now, though the sanctity of life (more consistently applied) and healthy families (without scapegoats) are still critical concerns. But now other key moral and religious issues have taken on great importance in the agendas of faith communities. These issues include both global and domestic poverty, pandemic diseases which ravage the developing world, the extreme violations of human rights in places like Darfur, the alarming threats of climate change and the imperatives of "creation care" of the environment, and the need for a more ethical response to the genuine threats of terrorism and a foreign policy more consistent with our best moral values.
Many recent polls show that the votes of millions in the faith community are "in play" this election season, and whichever candidate - Democrat or Republican - speaks the language of moral values and seriously addresses the wider and deeper religious agenda will find resonance this year among the faithful. And for many in the faith community, both character and competence really both matter in choosing the next president. I hear strong positive responses among people of faith when they see the qualities of moral leadership in presidential candidates.
On the Democratic side, I hear great appreciation for John Edwards' passionate and persistent commitment to make poor people a political priority and his challenging the control of the wealthy and powerful over our political process. I hear great attraction, especially among a younger generation, to Barack Obama's call for change to a new kind of politics, beyond left and right, which actually finds solutions to our most pressing problems; and for the first African American President. And I see a real appeal, especially among women, for Hillary Clinton's persistent commitment to issues like children and health care, along with her experience and readiness that says a woman could be the president of the U.S. for the very first time. All three have been willing to challenge the secular rejection of religion and values talk which still exists in their party, and, in the general election, whoever secures the Democratic nomination will be watched carefully by the religious community to see if they will also take on other party orthodoxies on issues like abortion.
One of the highpoints for me of the campaign thus far came in a Republican debate where both Mike Huckabee and John McCain defended the humanity of undocumented people in the midst of an extended attack on "illegal aliens" by other candidates. In the face of some of the most heated rhetoric, John McCain asked his colleagues to remember that the people they were all talking about were "also the children of God." And in defending his inclusion of the children of the undocumented in his state's scholarship programs, Mike Huckabee stood his ground and said the U.S. was not the kind of country that punished children for the mistakes of their parents. Both have been willing to challenge their party on other issues too - McCain supports both comprehensive immigration and campaign finance reform; and Huckabee was recently accused of being a "Christian socialist" by a leading economic conservative because of how he spent money on poor people in Arkansas. One political commentator on the Republican side told me he thought McCain and Huckabee have been rising in the polls because of the "character" they have shown in these debates. On the other hand, despite Rudy Giuliani's popularity in the Republican polls, conservative evangelical leaders like Richard Land insist that their constituency will not vote for him, not merely because of his stances on abortion and gay marriage, but because of his own marital behavior and history. And the evangelical concerns I hear about Mitt Romney are less about his Mormon religion than whether his changes on key moral issues for them are ultimately trustworthy.
All of that suggests that moral values will indeed be a key criteria for religious and "values voters" this election season; but that the definition and range of those moral values will be much wider and deeper than ever before. This time, more than any election in many years, the votes of many in the faith community are still undecided and will be influenced by whoever can win their support with a genuine moral discourse on politics and an agenda of both social and political transformation.
The year of 1968 was very significant in my life, and a decisive one for the nation. It was the year when the hopes borne by the social movements of the 1950's and 60's were dashed by the assassinations of, first, Martin Luther King Jr., and then Robert F. Kennedy.
If Robert Kennedy had lived to become president on the inside (as he surely would have) and Martin Luther King Jr. had lived to lead a movement from the outside, the U.S. and the world might be very different today. But the most hopeful political leader of his time and the most important movement leader of the century were both struck down, and 1968 was the turning point when everything began to go wrong in America. I remember my feelings at the time vividly. King had been the leader of the movements that had captured my imagination and commitment as a young activist; and Kennedy was the only politician who won my political trust. I was getting ready to take a break from college to work on his presidential campaign when he was killed.
Ever since 1968, the door has been closed to real social change in the U.S. Since 1968, we have been wandering in the wilderness. The coming New Year - 2008 - marks 40 years of that wandering, a passage of time I have been pondering as we enter into it.
I taught my last class for the fall semester at Harvard this week. The title of the course was "Faith and Politics: Should They Mix and How?" In the midst of a final class discussion of the central role faith is playing in this election season, a student abruptly asked me a personal question: "How many times have you been arrested?" I thought for a moment and replied, "Twenty two times." I told them that's what happens when social movements confront closed political doors. I said I was willing to do civil disobedience again, if it was called for, but that I was now hoping there might be a significant paradigm shift about to occur. I explained how social change seems to most readily occur when social movements push against open doors. Real social progress seems to require that combination - strong social movements and open political doors.
I believe we may be approaching just such a time. I have written before that we now have open political doors to the fundamental issues of social justice both in London, with the election of Gordon Brown, and in Australia, with the recent election of Kevin Rudd. Both understand the power of social movements and seem to be inviting them to push against the reluctance of political power to make real changes. In the U.S.'s election season this time, the operative word is now "change." The Democratic frontrunners are now mostly debating how real change can best occur, not whether it should. And the Republicans are distancing themselves from their own president, who has led the nation to a place that both alienates and embarrasses most U.S. citizens of both parties. The wrong direction didn't begin with George W. Bush, but he has certainly demonstrated how absolutely wrong the direction of the U.S. now is.
The people of the U.S. are very unhappy with the direction our nation has taken, and the polling about that is consistent. There will definitely be a snap back after the extreme and disastrous policies of the Bush administration. The Democrats hope the snap back will result in their victory; the Republicans hope they can still retain power by offering a change in direction themselves. But we must hope and work for a snap back that goes much further than either a Democratic or Republican victory. Indeed, whoever your favorite candidate is, he or she will not be able to really change the biggest and most significant issues at stake in the U.S. and the world without a social movement that pushes them to make those changes. Remember that Lyndon Johnson did not become a civil rights leader until Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks made him one. It was a social movement pressing on an open door.
That will be the vision and strategy of Sojourners in this crucial year of 2008 and beyond. We are in the business of building movments, not winning elections. This election is vitally important and we will be working hard to put the most important issues on the agenda. But we are already looking past the election to the kind of organizing and movement building that will have to be done. And the good news is that we see that movement already growing, more that I ever have since the fateful year of 1968.
Everywhere I go, something is happening. My new book, out on Jan. 22, profiles an emerging spiritual movement with a social agenda. It's called The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America. The book charts how "great awakenings" in the past have featured a "revival" of faith that also changes society. It describes how we may well be on the verge of another such movement to make dramatic change on issues like poverty, pandemic diseases, climate change, human rights, and war and peace.
During my work on the book this year, the writing, praying, and vocational discernment got all nicely tangled up together. The "book tour," which will take us to many cities in early 2008, may feel more like a series of mini-revivals, and, this spring, we will begin a series of "justice revivals" that will last for many days in cities around the country over the next few years.
The dramatic changes occurring in many of our faith communities and constituencies, the energy and commitment of a new generation, and the openness of politics for change may indicate the beginning of a new and more hopeful period in the life of this country and the world. It may even be that after 40 years, we might finally be ready to come out of the wilderness. That is my hope and prayer as we enter the New Year of 2008. But it is a hope and prayer that will require, from all of us, the work of faith.
Jim wrote a piece a few weeks back about the new Bonhoeffer-quoting Aussie PM Kevin Rudd. Well, another fun fact is that he has appointed Peter Garrett, rock star turned environmental activist turned Member of Parliament, his new Minister for Environment. That's the Aussie version of putting Bono in charge of the foreign aid budget. Sort of.
If any of our non-Aussie readers know Garrett, it's likely as the singer for Midnight Oil, whose best known album was Diesel and Dust, with the hit single "Beds Are Burning" in 1988. They made many great albums since then, finally breaking up in 2002 when Garret chose to focus on politics. Knowing his music work much better than his political career—having seen the Oils live numerous times over the years—I'm curious if any readers from Down Under have comments on how his political role has changed his activism.
Either way, I'll continue to remember him as the lanky, frenzied, six-foot-six screaming skeleton whose music helped to inspire my own activism. Also, he's a church-going Christian, which doesn't necessarily make him a better politician, though I do think it made him a better rock star, as his faith-infused lyrics—which railed against environmental degradation, militarism, and consumerism—were an early and unlikely witness to my budding integration of faith and politics.
Though I discovered them while a freshman in high school in the early 90s, the first Midnight Oil album I bought was their 1985 release, Red Sails in the Sunset, which I found in the used rack at my local music store. This snippet from "Who Can Stand in the Way" is a great one for the Christmas season:
Now choppers strafe the supermaket sky and people wonder why chopping down tons of trees got seas of print not a soul can read say Why do I drown you build brick boxes one by one now they block my sun But it's metal on metal it's the dance of T.V. If Christ were here he'd camera check he'd cry so loud the planes would stop He'd cry so loud the earth would shake and men would fall in tinsel town There's just one thing, yes there's just one thing Who can stand in they way when there's a dollar to be made
Ryan Rodrick Beiler is the Web editor for Sojourners.
Last week, a Liberty University student asked Gov. Mike Huckabee to account for his recent surge in the polls. "There's only one explanation for it, and it is not a human one," Huckabee claimed, "It is the same power that helped a little boy with two fishes and five loaves feed a crowd of 5,000 people. And that's the only way our campaign could be doing what it is doing." In other words, God apparently wants Mike Huckabee to be president—or, at the very least, win the Iowa caucuses. And, evidently, Mike Huckabee wants evangelical Christians to think that God has uniquely chosen him for office, as many believed God chose George W. Bush.
There is good reason for Christians to take theological offense at these claims—and that would be upon the basis the doctrine of providence. Very generally, providence is the idea that God orders human events that enacts God's will for the universe. In popular American religion, as Gov. Huckabee articulated, providence often becomes God's direct intervention in specific historical acts. I once heard George Marsden, the eminent evangelical historian with whom I studied in graduate school, refer to this version of providence as "the finger of God" directing human events.
But finger-of-God explanations are dangerous in relation to politics. If God is the power behind a candidate, then, if that candidate wins, he or she is both beyond reproach and immune to criticism—because, of course, that person is seen as divinely appointed or anointed. The politician's actions are synonymous with God's will. This opens the door for political silliness (God desires tax cuts) or hubris (God favors our political party)—as well as making God responsible for a host of reprehensible or potentially evil acts in the forms of injustice, oppression, or war.
Of course, western Christians once believed in finger-of-God politics—during the Middle Ages in the doctrinal form of the divine right of kings. This doctrine was eventually challenged from within Christian theology itself, when the Puritans argued that divine right had to be balanced with reason and responsibility within the body politic. Although the Puritans did not always practice what they preached, their tradition—as articulated by John Locke—undermined supernatural pretensions to rule. Locke's rejection of the divine right of kings was one pillar of the revolutionary republican politics upon which the U.S. was founded.
But rejecting "finger of God" theories of providence does not necessarily make one a secularist. It is possible to recognize providence in politics, while leaving room for nuance, humility, and mystery. Instead of seeing God as causing specific actions, it seems preferable to understand providence as the unfolding of God's story through time—a tale of sin, reconciliation, justice, and peace from creation to the end of history, of which God shares with us the narrative trajectories, not the specific twists of plot.
In this story, God does not control human actions as a divine puppet master. Rather, as human beings encounter the story, we change and our actions begin to conform to God's narrative of shalom. In this way, God's intentions unfold as we practice faith in humble gratitude that God has invited us into the story. Providence is not divine Mapquest or supernatural tom-tom. Rather, providence is a pilgrimage of God's people in time as they seek to live in mercy, kindness, and grace—and that is where God's will is made known. Not God's finger, providence is the breath of God, the spirit enlivening human beings to do justice.
Any number of the current candidates, Republican and Democrat, offer visions of how they understand their lives in relationship to an unfolding story of God's justice. But no one candidate should or can claim God's anointing on his or her campaign. If nothing else, American Christians might look at the last eight years as an example of the folly of finger-of-God politics.
In what may be the defining moment of his campaign, Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and a Mormon, addressed the issue of faith and its bearing on his pursuit of the presidency. Pundits inevitably compared Romney's speech in College Station, Texas, with the speech that John F. Kennedy gave just down the road at the Rice Hotel, Houston, on September 12, 1960.
The parallels are unmistakable. Both men felt compelled to address what was openly discussed as the "religious issue" in 1960. Both men were reared in a tradition different from Protestantism, which claims the allegiance of at least a plurality (if not a majority) of Americans.
But the parallels end there. Unlike Mormonism, Roman Catholicism was well known to most Americans in 1960, although many Protestants had a jaundiced view of the Roman Catholic Church. Many Americans, by contrast, know little about Mormonism, officially named the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Many Americans see Mormons as strange and secretive; their temples, for instance, are closed to "gentiles" (non-Mormons). The Mormon notion of God as both male and female, baptism for the dead, and even the practice of wearing Mormon underwear (thought by many to have protective powers) strike many as unorthodox, if not downright bizarre.
For evangelicals, some tenets of Mormonism are particularly troubling. Mormons accept the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and the New Testament as divinely inspired, but they believe that the Book of Mormon, discovered by Joseph Smith in Palmyra, New York, in 1827, is similarly inspired. And Mormons believe that the president of the Latter-day Saints is the conduit for continuing inspiration. Evangelicals, on the other hand, view the Bible (Old and New Testaments), as the "word of God" and their sole religious authority. For another religious group to add to the canon of scripture strikes most evangelicals as utter blasphemy.
These suspicions do not augur well for Romney. Politically conservative evangelical voters are a core constituency for the Republican Party. In order to win the Republican nomination, Romney needs the support of conservative evangelicals, especially in Iowa.
Throughout the early months of the campaign, Romney sought to downplay his faith, protesting that he was not a spokesman for Mormonism. But many voters, evangelicals especially, have not been mollified – which led him to the dais of the George Bush Library in Texas this morning to deliver his "JFK speech."
Two of the most compelling arguments central to Kennedy's speech in 1960, however, are not available to Romney. Kennedy unequivocally affirmed his "absolute" support for the separation of church and state, and he also foreswore government support for religious schools. Romney cannot echo those positions. Leaders in the Religious Right preach that the First Amendment separation of church and state is a "myth," and seek taxpayer support for church-related schools.
So in the end, Romney was reduced to bromides about religious liberty and "family values." (Mormons are good at "family values.")
Ironically, Romney missed the opportunity to make his best case for a Mormon to be president. Mormons believe that America's charter documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, are actually divinely inspired. After seven years of an administration that views the Constitution as a nuisance, many Americans, I suspect, would welcome a president who sought to defend the integrity of the Constitution rather than subvert it.
I couldn't help but be struck by a bizarre similarity in two back-to-back events this week: the YouTube/CNN Republican forum and the swearing in of Pakistan's President Musharaf broadcast by NPR. Although worlds apart, both demonstrated what happens when religion and politics mix in a less-than-productive way—the insistence on religious tests for holding office.
In the case of President Musharaf, he took the oath of office to a country with Islam as the state religion by swearing that he is a Muslim, upholding the oneness of God, and pledging allegiance to Allah. If we had formal religious tests for office holders in the U.S., this would be akin to being inaugurated as president by proclaiming one's Christianity, stating belief in the doctrine of the Trinity, and dedicating oneself to Jesus—essentially a doctrinal test for politicians.
Americans know that the second scenario is not likely to occur. Although the new president lays his (or her) hand on the Bible and references God, these ceremonial acts are interpreted according to individual conscience and imply no specific doctrinal content. Indeed, the Constitution the president swears to protect and defend outlawed religious tests for federal officials, and, during the early 1800s, individual states slowly ended local practice of religious requirements for public office. However, this formal Constitutional principle didn't stop the forum questioners from insisting upon some sort of informal religious test for their candidates. Several people asked about the theological beliefs (not even the more generic religious beliefs) of candidates on a wide range of issues and pointedly quizzed them on their views of the Bible.
Several years ago, I taught theology at a Christian college—a task that I disliked because the class almost always devolved into a sort of checklist of right opinion to get into heaven. The Republican forum reminded me of that experience. The candidates were required, down to specifically quoting scriptures, to "check off" the right religious answers in order to secure their party's bid for the nation's highest office. It is almost as if a politician will utter the magic words - "Jesus is my Savior" or "the Bible is true in all that it affirms" - millions of people will cast their vote for that candidate. While I do not doubt the sincerity of (most of) the answers, the whole exercise struck me as politically dubious.
Americans need to understand that the relationship between religion and politics is a malleable one - there are few clear-cut rules regarding their interplay. The U.S. is neither a "Christian Nation" in the way it is popularly interpreted, nor is it ruled by a rigid separation of church and state. Neither cultural war stereotype is entirely true or entirely false. Rather, when it comes to religion and politics, we live in a perpetual state of creative tension. Throughout our history, faith and politics have created an often nuanced interplay of fine and sometimes conflicting lines—an interplay that requires discernment on the part of politicians, courts, and voters.
As a serious Christian, it matters to me that the president of the U.S. is a moral person with a mature conscience, and that he or she brings broadly shared ethical insights (along with other insights) to political issues. It does not, however, matter by what tradition that moral conscience has been formed as long as the office holder supports the Constitution. In the U.S., broadly shared political ethics generally include such things as respect for all human persons, a commitment to national and global justice, and developing national capacities of happiness, freedom, and liberty for all citizens. This is not a religious creed or a Bible verse. These are commonly held values that we have struggled for throughout our history. In our context, these values arose originally from diverse Christian traditions, but today numerous American faith traditions can assent to them. Although the founders never imagined the variety of religions in the contemporary U.S., they nevertheless opened the door for a creative political pluralism in the 21st century. We should not be electing a theologian-in-chief. We need to elect a good president.
As a Christian, I also know that getting the answers right on a doctrinal test are no guarantee of a person's moral disposition or fitness for leadership. Indeed, one's orthodoxy can bear little relationship to one's practice of faith. Experience, vision, compassion, good leadership, and an ability to govern well are the only tests upon which Christians—or other religious folks—should vote.
Of course, voters have the right to ask about candidates' religious views, and politicians have the right to talk about those views. But when such rights verge on becoming a faith test, then we begin to sacrifice the wisdom of our political system in favor of a testimony that more rightly belongs in church. And a big part of that wisdom is that our president does not make theological affirmations that exclude millions of Americans on Inauguration Day.
Here's some of Krista Tippet's introduction to her interview with Jim:
I've resisted interviewing Wallis as he's risen to a new kind of fame, in part because he has had so much exposure in major media - from Hardball to Fresh Air. But now I've come to see in Jim Wallis' rise not just a story of an individual activist becoming a leader, but of the world changing around us.
...
There is plentiful evidence that younger people, including younger evangelical Christians, share Jim Wallis's concern for the poor and the dispossessed, for inequities in global economy and ecology. Half of his audiences across the country these days, as he tells it, are under 30. He does not claim to represent a majority of American evangelicals in his views and positions, but he does draw packed crowds of young evangelicals at Christian colleges. He urges them to emulate the 19th-century evangelicals who inspire him, some of whom founded today's Christian colleges — abolitionists and social reformers who took their Bibles and their God with the utmost seriousness.
After the rise of the Religious Right in the early 1980s, and again after the 2000 and 2004 elections, some prophesied that the U.S. was headed for "theocracy" — a takeover by conservative religious ruling elites. What is happening instead is what Time magazine has called the leveling of "the praying field." Conservative Christianity hasn't disappeared, but it is increasingly met, and measured, by progressive and liberal religious voices in politics and beyond.
There are also conservative evangelicals with a broadened political and social agenda and a willingness to form coalitions with diverse religious and secular others to combat urgent human crises.
In the news you might have missed over the Thanksgiving weekend, Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd decisively defeated Prime Minister John Howard in an important Australian election. Howard has long been one of the strongest supporters of President Bush's policies. Rudd, on the other hand, has already made it clear that he has different priorities. In his first news conference, he committed to making climate change a priority, promising to sign the Kyoto Protocol. Rudd also announced he will withdraw Australia's troops from Iraq.
But deeper than specific issues are the principles that guide Kevin Rudd's politics. On my most recent trip to Australia, I had dinner and a long conversation with Rudd, in which I learned he is a committed Catholic Christian in a secular country and a longtime friend of Sojourners. We discussed at some length how to apply Catholic social teaching to public policy. We had a subsequent conversation in Washington, D.C., on faith and politics; and in the fall of 2006, he wrote an essay, titled "Faith in Politics," for an Australian magazine, The Monthly. He began by saying,
[Dietrich] Bonhoeffer is, without doubt, the man I admire most in the history of the twentieth century. …This essay seeks both to honour Bonhoeffer and to examine what his life, example and writings might have to say to us, 60 years after his death, on the proper relationship between Christianity and politics in the modern world.
Rudd pointed to the core principle that,
Bonhoeffer's political theology is therefore one of a dissenting church that speaks truth to the state, and does so by giving voice to the voiceless. Its domain is the village, not the interior life of the chapel. Its core principle is to stand in defence of the defenceless or, in Bonhoeffer's terms, of those who are "below". … Christianity, consistent with Bonhoeffer's critique in the '30s, must always take the side of the marginalised, the vulnerable and the oppressed.
It is unusual for a prime minister to cite Bonhoeffer as his model, but it is that principle that Rudd will bring to his new position as prime minister. Along with British prime minister Gordon Brown, he is a new kind of political leader who seeks to practice moral politics.
In many pulpits during this Thanksgiving season, love of our country and pride in our citizenship will be pronounced in the same breath - and often with the same intensity - as declarations of love for our God. But we must be careful, for patriotism can be destructive as well as constructive. Worse, it can become idolatrous.
Constructive patriotism, or what James Forbes, pastor emeritus of the Riverside Church in New York City calls "prophetic patriotism," is the willingness to strive in word and deed to ensure that this nation is healthy, whole, secure, and conducting its affairs at home and abroad according to the political doctrines we claim to hold dear.
Destructive patriotism, however, is primarily focused on discrediting or destroying those it perceives as opponents of America. The purview of destructive patriotism is "us" against "them" - "them" being not only foreigners, but also any American who openly disagrees with the official actions of the leaders of the United States, no matter if their policies contradict our Constitution, harm the public good, or violate the most basic ethics of the biblical faith they claim to hold dear.
If we who call ourselves patriots are to be true to our faith, our patriotism must ever be constructive, because constructive criticism of governmental policies and practices is squarely in the tradition of the biblical prophets and the gospel of Jesus. It is not only concerned with political affairs - it is also concerned with the spiritual and moral health of America. Constructive prophetic oversight is the highest and healthiest form of patriotism because it seeks to help the nation become its best and most righteous self,.
That is why true patriots will welcome prophetic critiques of our government - because they can help America become its most righteous and most just self. Conversely, the true patriot will reject uncritical abdications of our prophetic responsibility to make our nation its best self that are expressed in such slogans as "America - love it or leave it" and "Criticism of our government equals support for our enemies." To the degree that patriotism causes division and enmity between God's children, it is in opposition to the gospel, pure and simple. But when patriotism seeks to silence prophetic criticism, it is more than oppositional; it is idolatrous, because by following its own beliefs, judgments, and interests rather than the prophetic mandate, it makes an idol of them. This blind, idolatrous brand of patriotism is blasphemous because it values the welfare and even the humanity of some of God's children - that is, Americans, and not all of those, either - over the welfare and humanity of all others, particularly those who look, speak, and worship differently. In contrast, a God-centered patriotism will confess, like the apostle Peter, "I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God" (Acts 10:34-35).
Therefore, if we are to be true patriots and true followers of the biblical imperative of justice on earth as in heaven, then each day before we pledge allegiance to the flag and the republic for which it stands, we must first recommit our allegiance to the gospel of Jesus, the justice of God, and the love of our neighbors it commands. We must never forget that the flag does not supercede the cross.
Thus, if it is the gospel that is truly the object of our faith and our allegiance, this Thanksgiving let us give thanks to God for the faithful voices that, despite the derision and even the personal physical harm they risk and sometimes suffer, nonetheless continue to speak out against every action, policy, and pronouncement of our leaders and our government that distances us from the liberating gospel of Jesus and the kingdom of God.
At its board meeting last month, the National Association of Evangelicals formally named Leith Anderson as its president. Anderson is senior pastor of Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and has been serving as interim president of the NAE for the past year.
I've had the opportunity to spend some time with Leith Anderson. I believe he is the kind of leader most needed these days, both for the NAE and for the wider evangelical community. He has both the heart of a pastor and the passion of a prophet, and he finds ways to be true to his convictions and be committed to bridge-building.
There is no shortage of evangelicals that have passion about every topic in contemporary life. The challenge here is not to find people who are interested. There are plenty of people who are interested. It's, How do we unite evangelicals in understanding what the issues are and having a moral perspective in how we approach them?
And, in developing that moral perspective, he noted
We have a document that is called "For the Health of the Nation." They are seven priorities that the NAE organizes around in terms of being a public voice.
[The document] relates to religious freedom, sanctity of human life, human rights, and creation care. It was first issued in 2003 and then reaffirmed by the NAE in March of this year. What we're doing is organizing many of the activities of the Washington office and the association around each one. These are big topics like justice and compassion for the poor and the vulnerable.
On immigration reform, one of the most controversial issues in America today, Anderson said,
I'm hoping that in the future we are also going to be able to engage more on the issue of immigration in America. It's a pressing issue that the country needs to unite around. We need to have a biblical voice. We need to recognize this is a high concern for the Hispanic community, which has a large numbers of evangelicals within it. Hispanic churches are the fastest growing in the nation and immigration is a top priority. Up to this point, NAE has not made any formal statements on it. I just anticipate this will be a growing priority and concern which fits under the topic of justice.
I congratulate Leigh Anderson on his new position, and look forward to working with him.
As an addendum to Jim's post on Mike Gerson and his new book, I thought I'd share Monday night's Daily Show interview with Gerson, who held his own quite well. If he hadn't provided the speechwriting for Bush's rush to war, I might really really like him, instead of just liking him. But for now I'll leave the skewering to Jon Stewart:
Mike: I'm sometimes disappointed with the Republican Party, which was a difficult audience for a lot of these ideas. Fact of the matter is, the Republican Party, if they don't adopt these themes: environment, global warming, AIDS - they're going to lose and they're going to deserve to lose.
Jon: ... Here's what that sounds like to me. What you're describing is the Democratic Party.
Ryan Rodrick Beiler is the web editor for Sojourners.
Due to our common interest in overcoming poverty, I knew Mike Gerson before he became George Bush's speechwriter. I recently had lunch with him to reconnect since he's left the White House, and heard some of the stories he's now written about in his new book, Heroic Conservatism.
For Michael Gerson, the pattern became discouragingly familiar. A proposal to help the poor or sick would be presented at a White House meeting, but Vice President Cheney's office or the budget team or some other skeptical officials would shoot it down. Too expensive. Wrong priority.
By the time he left the White House as President Bush's senior adviser last year, Gerson by his own account had grown weary of the battle, becoming an irritable colleague disillusioned by the conventions of a political party and a government that seemed indifferent to the plight of the downtrodden.
The article quotes from Gerson's book
"Traditional conservatism has a piece missing - a piece that is shaped like a conscience," he notes in Heroic Conservatism. His ambition, he says, is to help "save conservatism from its worst instincts" and build "a conservatism elevated by a radical concern for human rights and dignity."
Now an op-ed writer for The Post, he has a column today making the same point. He says there are two competing belief systems in the Republican Party – libertarianism and Catholic social teaching, and writes,
The difference between these visions is considerable. Various forms of libertarianism and anti-government conservatism share a belief that justice is defined by the imposition of impartial rules - free markets and the rule of law. If everyone is treated fairly and equally, the state has done its job. But Catholic social thought takes a large step beyond that view. While it affirms the principle of limited government - asserting the existence of a world of families, congregations and community institutions where government should rarely tread - it also asserts that the justice of society is measured by its treatment of the helpless and poor. And this creates a positive obligation to order society in a way that protects and benefits the powerless and suffering.
Gerson is right – how any society treats "the least of these" is God's measure. And by that measure, our society is sorely lacking.
The cover story of yesterday's New York Times Magazine is a long feature by reporter David Kirkpatrick on The Evangelical Crackup. It's a comprehensive look at how the evangelical landscape is changing – theologically and politically. He begins by noting:
Just three years ago, the leaders of the conservative Christian political movement could almost see the Promised Land. White evangelical Protestants looked like perhaps the most potent voting bloc in America. They turned out for President George W. Bush in record numbers, supporting him for reelection by a ratio of four to one. Republican strategists predicted that religious traditionalists would help bring about an era of dominance for their party.
But now,
another confluence of factors is threatening to tear the movement apart. The extraordinary evangelical love affair with Bush has ended, for many, in heartbreak over the Iraq war and what they see as his meager domestic accomplishments. That disappointment, in turn, has sharpened latent divisions within the evangelical world — over the evangelical alliance with the Republican Party, among approaches to ministry and theology, and between the generations.
Contributing to this change:
a younger generation of evangelical pastors — including the widely emulated preachers Rick Warren and Bill Hybels — are pushing the movement and its theology in new directions. There are many related ways to characterize the split: a push to better this world as well as save eternal souls; a focus on the spiritual growth that follows conversion rather than the yes-or-no moment of salvation; a renewed attention to Jesus' teachings about social justice as well as about personal or sexual morality. However conceived, though, the result is a new interest in public policies that address problems of peace, health and poverty — problems, unlike abortion and same-sex marriage, where left and right compete to present the best answers.
Kirkpatrick notes the theological importance of these changes:
Ever since they broke with the mainline Protestant churches nearly 100 years ago, the hallmark of evangelical's theology has been a vision of modern society as a sinking ship, sliding toward depravity and sin. For evangelicals, the altar call was the only life raft — a chance to accept Jesus Christ, rebirth and salvation. Falwell, Dobson and their generation saw their political activism as essentially defensive, fighting to keep traditional moral codes in place so their children could have a chance at the raft. But many younger evangelicals — and some old-timers — take a less fatalistic view. For them, the born-again experience of accepting Jesus is just the beginning. What follows is a long-term process of "spiritual formation" that involves applying his teachings in the here and now. They do not see society as a moribund vessel. They talk more about a biblical imperative to fix up the ship by contributing to the betterment of their communities and the world. They support traditional charities but also public policies that address health care, race, poverty and the environment.
And the political implications:
Today the president's support among evangelicals, still among his most loyal constituents, has crumbled. Once close to 90 percent, the president's approval rating among white evangelicals has fallen to a recent low below 45 percent, according to polls by the Pew Research Center. White evangelicals under 30 — the future of the church — were once Bush's biggest fans; now they are less supportive than their elders. And the dissatisfaction extends beyond Bush. For the first time in many years, white evangelical identification with the Republican Party has dipped below 50 percent, with the sharpest falloff again among the young, according to John C. Green, a senior fellow at Pew and an expert on religion and politics. (The defectors by and large say they've become independents, not Democrats, according to the polls.)
I could quote much more – it's a carefully-researched and well-written piece, but that's enough to give the general theme. Everywhere I speak, I come to the same conclusion as Bill Hybels told Kirkpatrick: "People who might be called progressive evangelicals or centrist evangelicals are one stirring away from a real awakening."
Who made the following statement in a recent television interview?
I'm not sure that that group in Washington is really representative of evangelicals across the spectrum. This is the Family Research Council and some of the James Dobson supporters, I just think that's just a narrow slice of evangelical thought.
A) Jim Wallis
B) Pat Robertson
C) Hillary Clinton
C) Rick Warren
D) Rudy Giuliani
Drumroll ... the answer is B) Pat Robertson! Dan at FPL will soon tell me to do my own research and stop ripping off his posts, but I just couldn't pass this one up. In the context of the original video segment it's a little unclear exactly what Pat meant by this statement - though my guess is that he's saying the FRC Summit represents only a slice of evangelical thought about which Republican candidate to support.
Ryan Rodrick Beiler is the web editor for Sojourners.
I'm grateful to Tony Perkins and FRC Action for hosting the Oct. 19 dialogue focused on the "values" for values voters. I also thank Richard Land, my frequent dialogue partner and friend. I believe we found areas of real agreement and also healthy disagreement - and that is good.
We both agreed that the issue is not whether faith should help to shape our public life, but how.
I believe that Christians across the political spectrum might have more common concerns than people think - and potential common ground - on critical issues.
First, there are biblical principles of the kingdom of God on which we can agree.
Second, there are prudential judgments on policies where there is room for disagreement and deeper dialogue
Third, we must make sure our faith trumps ideology. For me, that often means making sure that my faith challenges the Left. And as I said to you on Friday, most of you probably don't have that problem! But how can you make sure that your faith challenges the Right?
And together, as Richard and I both try to do, we should challenge those who wish to banish religion from the public square.
On what do we agree?
We all agree that faith plays an important role in public life; faith is personal but never private. But as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "The church should not be the master or the servant of the state, but the conscience of the state." King also never endorsed a candidate but made them endorse his agenda. There's a lesson for us in that.
Red and blue, Left and Right, are not biblical categories. They are political ones, and religious people don't easily fit the labels - nor should we. God's politics resists ideology and often calls us to transcend our narrow political categories and place our commonality as Christians above any political allegiance or identification with a political party.
God is not a Republican or a Democrat. The people of God must not be in the pocket of any political party. There is a great danger in being too close to either side and not maintaining our critical prophetic distance. We should be the ultimate swing vote, judging all the candidates by our moral compass.
Presidential candidates were at your conference seeking your vote, and you took a straw poll which became the center of media attention in their coverage of your gathering. But let me suggest that if your favorite candidate wins (whoever that turns out to be), they will not be able to really change the biggest moral issues of our time unless there is a movement from outside to continue pushing them. Remember, Lyndon Johnson did not become a civil rights leader until a faith-based civil rights movement made him one.
When politics fails to resolve the great moral issues, social movements often rise up to change politics - and the best social movements have spiritual foundations. We have been divided, but perhaps we can find ways we might work together in the future on the greatest moral issues of our time.
In the spirit of the great social movements that Christians have helped to lead—abolition of slavery, child labor laws, women's suffrage, and the civil rights movement—we might do it again.
The more we look like our evangelical foreparents, the more we see our faith as the spark for social justice, the more faithful and united we could be.
And this is the key: The biblical prophets tell us that God judges societies not by their gross national product, their military strength, or their cultural dominance, but by their justice and righteousness - especially how they treat the weak and vulnerable.
We know there are multiple threats to human life and dignity that suggest a new moral agenda that could bring us together:
Strengthening marriage and families
Renewing the moral fabric of our culture
Overcoming extreme global poverty and disease, as well as unnecessary poverty at home
Ending human trafficking
Healing the wounds of racism
Protecting God's creation
Finding a better path to national and global security
Advancing a consistent ethic of the sanctity of life
If those we could agree on these basic principles, we could reshape American politics - and, with God's help, we might change some of the big things that politics has been unable to.
As for politics in an election year, the Catholic Bishops have some good advice for us. They counsel Christians to be:
political but not partisan
principled but not ideological
clear but also civil
engaged but not used
Because, above all, (back to where we started) we are called to be faithful to the principles of the kingdom of God.
No doubt there are critics who will dispute Jim's description of the Religious Right as having an overly narrow agenda. Case in point: Witness this dynamic observed by Faith in Public Life's (former Sojourner intern) Dan Nejfelt, live blogging from the FRC Summit on Friday:
Earlier [FRC head Tony] Perkins said "values voters" aren't single issue voters. Brownback - "you're right, I care about two issues." [Okay, that's a paraphrase, but he said it. Those issues are abortion and "restoring decency" to America's culture.]
"Restoring decency" - I guess that's a shorthand way of letting listeners fill in the blank with their favorite cultural boogeyman. But even with that deliberate ambiguity this narrow assertion is surprising given Brownback's outspoken concern for poverty. But, like any good politician, he knows his audience, and when speaking to this crowd, he knows which buttons to push.
Then again, Brownback is dropping out of the race, which may say something about how much appeal either an agenda focused on abortion and "decency" - or one that includes a strong concern for poverty - may have within the Republican party. Discuss.
Ryan Rodrick Beiler is the web editor for Sojourners.
Last week Jim was on The Tavis Smiley Show and talked about how the changing political landscape will affect the upcoming '08 election. Jim and Ken Blackwell, former Ohio secretary of state, debated and discussed both the impact of "value voters" on the election and what those values entail.
Earlier this week we posted an open letter from Tony Campolo in response to a Christianity Today column by Stan Guthrie, "When Red is Blue," in their November issue that was critical of the Red Letter Christians concept. CT has now posted Guthrie's column online, accompanied by an edited version of Campolo's letter. We said we'd let you know once that was online, so here it is.
As the Religious Right has diminished in influence, many are searching for a new political agenda that doesn’t fit the standard right/left battles of American politics and is more consistent with their deeply held values. That new agenda would be good news for the majority of Americans who are alienated by the political extremes and are hungry - not for a soulless centrism - but for a new moral center in our public life.
To ground that new agenda, we need a better understanding of the role of faith in public life. Political appeals - even if rooted in religious convictions - must be argued on moral grounds, rather than as sectarian religious demands, so that the people (citizens), whether religious or not, may have the capacity to hear and respond. Religion must be disciplined by democracy and contribute to a better and more moral public discourse. Religious convictions must therefore be translated into moral arguments, which must win the political debate if they are to be implemented. Religious people don’t get to win just because they are religious (in a nation that is often claimed to be a Judeo-Christian country). They, like any other citizens, have to convince their fellow citizens that what they propose is best for the common good—for all of us and not just for the religious. Clearly, part of the work to be done includes teaching religious people how to make their appeals in moral language, and secular people not to fear such appeals will lead to theocracy.
The public discussion about and between evangelicals and progressives has been dominated by too many false choices and too much mutual misunderstanding. It is time to work for common ground on some of our most critical issues. We must address a compelling vision to the many Americans who are actually more “purple,” than “red” or “blue.” What could evoke their convictions, reflect their values, summon their commitments, and change America? What would a broader and deeper moral politics or values politics begin to look like?
An important step toward those goals was taken yesterday with the release of “ Come Let Us Reason Together ” by the Third Way culture program. I applaud this effort by Third Way to develop common ground.
In a section on the role of faith in public life and politics, the paper outlines three “basic principles as a first step in bridging the divide over the role of religion in American public life:"
Respect for religious beliefs and religious diversity is vital for a healthy society.
Religion plays an appropriate public, not just private, role in American life.
All citizens have a constitutionally protected right to articulate the religious or moral basis of their political views in the public sphere, and protecting these expressions does not conflict with a commitment to the non-establishment of religion.
The heart of the paper, “Come Let Us Reason Together” provides significant common ground with a “ Shared Vision on Five Divisive Cultural Issues” – affirming the human dignity of gay and lesbian people, reducing the need for abortion, placing responsible moral limits on the treatment of human embryos, creating safe spaces for children online, and encouraging responsible fatherhood. The authors explain:
In this section, we have taken five key cultural areas and identified common ground in order to show that it is possible to have conversations even on some of the toughest issues. Beyond promoting sound policy for the nation, our hope is to help evangelicals and progressives move beyond mutual distrust on cultural issues to respectful civic partnerships that operate on the assumption of good faith even in the midst of disagreement. This reconfiguration makes a significant contribution to a more civil democratic dialogue and serves as a foundation for progress on the toughest issues.
The paper concludes:
In order for this paper to bear more fruit, both progressives and evangelicals will need to continue the hard work of reasoning together. We do not conclude that these conversations will be easy or that the paper’s proposals in themselves will resolve all the real disagreements and tensions on cultural issues. But we believe that the gap need not be as wide and the mistrust need not run as deep.
Progressives and evangelicals are people who care deeply about the justice and health of our society, and potential alliances between us on key issues could provide a genuine convergence for the common good. This paper was endorsed by a wide range of religious leaders, and I look forward to the “hard work of reasoning together” in further conversations.
Though I own several Bibles with the words of Christ in red, I've always found the concept a bit iffy. After all, we evangelicals believe in the plenary, or full, inspiration of Scripture, don't we? Setting off Jesus' sayings this way seems to imply that they are more holy than what is printed in ordinary black ink. ...[I]f all Scripture is God-breathed, then in principle Jesus' inscripturated statements are no more God's word to us than are those from Peter, Paul, and Mary - or Ezekiel.
While we, like you, have a very high view of the inspiration of Scripture and believe the Bible was divinely inspired, you are correct in accusing Red Letter Christians of giving the words of Jesus priority over all other passages of Scripture. What is more, we believe that you really cannot rightly interpret the rest of the Bible without first understanding who Jesus is, what he did, and what he said.
Likewise, we believe the morality in the red letters of Jesus transcends that found in the black letters set down in the Pentateuch, and I'm surprised you don't agree. After all, Stan, didn't Jesus himself make this same point in the Sermon on the Mount, when he said his teachings about marriage and divorce were to replace what Moses taught? Don't you think his red-letter words about loving our enemies and doing good to those who hurt us represent a higher morality than the "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" kind of justice that we find in the Hebrew Testament? Is it really so hard to accept that, as God incarnate, Jesus set forth the highest law in the Bible, and therefore that law is more important than the Kosher dietary regulations we find in Leviticus and Deuteronomy?
You got us RLCs right again when you suggested we were anti-war, pro-environment, and deeply committed to ending poverty primarily because we believe Jesus is anti-war, pro-environment, and deeply committed to ending poverty. The only mistake you made was to imply that thinking this way - or trying to influence our government according to these values - makes us the Religious Left:
Unfortunately, the platform of Red Letter Christians always seems to come out of the wash blue, just as some other "nonpartisan" Christian groups consistently align with the Republicans.
That you think asking questions such as, "Do the candidates' budget and tax policies reward the rich or show compassion for poor families?," or "Do the candidates' policies protect the creation or serve corporate interests that damage it?," is partisan saddens us. We believe these are the questions that every Christian should be asking, no matter which political party or candidate has the better answers at a given time in history.
I'm sorry you don't want to be one of us, Stan. In the struggle to convince our fellow believers to think, act, give, and vote according to the teachings of Jesus, we Red Letter Christians could really use a bright, articulate guy like you.
With James Dobson and major conservative evangelical leaders threatening to bolt the Republican Party if Rudy Giuliani is nominated for president, conventional wisdom about God and politics has been turned on its head. For the last 25 years, conservative evangelicals could reliably count on the Republicans to choose a candidate acceptable to their version of Christian politics. This year, however, the leading Republican candidates seem unable to articulate any convincing religious message, much less a strongly biblical perspective on issues. All the while, the three leading Democratic candidates can testify to personal faith, possess robust theological views, and ground many policies in broadly biblical principles.
In recent weeks, Rudy Giuliani has awkwardly quoted scripture ("let he who is without sin cast the first stone") to defend his personal record with adultery, multiple divorces, and family dissension. John McCain, an Episcopalian, said he was really a member of a Baptist church in Phoenix for the last 20 years—only to later confess that he had not been baptized in that tradition, thus excluding him from membership in the congregation. Fred Thompson rarely attends church. And, of course, Mitt Romney, a Mormon, appears to be serious and faithful about his religion—a religion long categorized as a "cult" by many evangelicals. While Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee hold pristine evangelical credentials, neither appears able to move into the top tier of Republican candidates. Republicans are all over the theological map, with no clear direction.
Meanwhile, over in the Democratic camp, Hillary Clinton appears increasingly comfortable speaking of her faith, prayer life, and the Christian bases of policies such as health care, poverty, and the environment. A new book, God and Hillary Clinton: A Spiritual Life, written by Paul Kengor (although his conservative bias colors the analysis, he attempts to be fair) depicts Senator Clinton as a classical Methodist who takes the social vision of John Wesley seriously, and as a baby-boomer seeker whose life can be seen as a search for a meaning, wisdom, and social transformation. In 2005, Matt Bai of Time magazine suggested that Mrs. Clinton could lead an ethical revolution toward a "new Democratic moralism."
Senator Clinton is not alone among Democratic candidates. Barack Obama is an adult convert to the Christian faith with a sophisticated grasp of neo-orthodox theology and a commitment to African-American Christianity. John Edwards consistently bases his primary issues—poverty and peacemaking—in the biblical values from his Baptist faith. All three appear to be renewing the Christian tradition of the Social Gospel, developing new ways of interweaving vital faith with the need for political change. They are reminding a new generation of American voters that, in the words of theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, "God is the substance of all revolutions."
In this election, the leading Democratic presidential candidates are more conversant with scripture, Christian theology, and biblical ethics than the Republican candidates. (I, for one, would like to see a Bible drill between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Giuliani!) The Democratic candidates' interpretation of faith points them toward different policies than the conservative evangelical politicians of decades past, but theirs are Christian perspectives and passions nonetheless.
Of course, evangelicals like James Dobson will never support Clinton, Obama, or Edwards no matter how richly theological their vision. But while religion should never be a test for political office, people of any faith should cheer that the Democratic Party now appears to understand that American pluralism and politics benefit from open, theologically serious, and spiritually grounded leadership. And we all benefit when more than one party contributes to the conversation between faith and public life.
Diana Butler Bass (www.dianabutlerbass.com) is the author of Christianity for the Rest of Us: How the Neighborhood Church is Transforming the Faith (Harper One) just issued in paperback this week.
When I got an invitation to attend the launch of New York Faith & Justice (www.nyfaithjustice.org), their mission statement caught my eye. Simply stated, their goals are: Following Christ, uniting the church, and ending poverty in New York through spiritual formation, education, and direct advocacy. Grounded in the words of Isaiah 61, this movement envisions a city where New Yorkers are released from the oppression of poverty and the poverty of riches.
I can hear the naysayers now: "Here we go again. Another PC peace and justice group that's all talk and no action. They might spout a bit of scripture but in the end, they're really just a front for the Democratic Party. Been there. Done that. Next."
I understand this kind of cynicism. I've covered too many "religious" justice-oriented gatherings that were full of sound and fury but in the end signified nothing. The power of prayer and preaching about the Risen Christ seemed to take a back seat because God forbid we talk about Jesus and offend our secular counterparts. Also, after satirizing the antics of the Religious Right for more than 12 years, the last thing I want to see is the creation of a Progressive Left counterpart.
So when I read that this group was "ecumenical," I was skeptical at first. While religious leaders whose backgrounds ranged from PCA to ECUSA were invited to participate, would they actually show up? In a post-9/11 New York City, one seldom sees Orthodox, evangelicals, mainline Protestants, and Pentecostals willing to set aside their differences and come together in the name of Jesus.
However, this movement showed all the spiritual signs of being Bible-based and truly nonpartisan from the get-go. You know something is up when 15 students from Intervarsity Fellowship and Union Theological Seminary carry a wooden cross -- literally -- for 5.3 miles, trekking from Trinity Baptist Church, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side, over to the Bronx.
This broad-based ecumenical spirit carried on throughout the evening with prayers offered by ministers representing a broad swath of the Christian faith. Liturgies, worship songs, spoken-word poetry, and visual art were intertwined with speeches by Lolita Jackson from Mayor Michael Bloomberg's office; Rachel Anderson, director of Bo
Two of the mantras that my evangelicalism has taught me over the years are these:
Troy Jackson is senior pastor of University Christian Church in Cincinnati, a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary, and earned his Ph.D. in United States history from the University of Kentucky. He is author of Becoming King: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Making of a National Leader and a participant in Sojourners' Windchangers grassroots organizing project in Ohio to work on the Vote Out Poverty Campaign.
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Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is the author of New Monasticism: What It Has to Say to Today's Church (Baker).
During the New York City leg of Brian McLaren's empowering 
Dr. James E. Brenneman is an Old Testament scholar and the president of Goshen College, a Mennonite college in Indiana. Brenneman, who has a Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University, spent 25 years in Los Angeles as a pastor with an interest in ecumenical conversations before returning to Goshen College as president in 2006.
Diana Butler Bass holds a doctorate in American religion from Duke University. She is the author of six books, including 
Following is an excerpt from an interview with Bob Abernethy that will appear in a forthcoming issue of 
In writing my new book, 
Steven Waldman is editor-in-chief of Beliefnet.
Rev. Gabriel Salguero is the pastor of the Lamb’s Church of the Nazarene in New York City, a Ph.D. candidate at Union Theological Seminary, and the director of the Hispanic Leadership Program at Princeton Theological Seminary. He is also a Sojourners board member.
This afternoon's top news is Mitt Romney's announcement that he is ending his run for the presidency. Romney's candidacy raised the issue of whether a Mormon could be elected president. The media stories were about evangelicals who didn't like him because they thought Mormonism was an un-Christian sect. 
Adam Taylor is director of campaigns and organizing for Sojourners.
Mary Nelson is president emeritus of 
Either way, I'll continue to remember him as the lanky, frenzied, six-foot-six screaming skeleton whose music helped to inspire my own activism. Also, he's a church-going Christian, which doesn't necessarily make him a better politician, though I do think it made him a better rock star, as his faith-infused lyrics—which railed against environmental degradation, militarism, and consumerism—were an early and unlikely witness to my budding integration of faith and politics.
In what may be the defining moment of his campaign, Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and a Mormon, addressed the issue of faith and its bearing on his pursuit of the presidency. Pundits inevitably compared Romney's speech in College Station, Texas, with the speech that John F. Kennedy gave just down the road at the Rice Hotel, Houston, on September 12, 1960.
Randall Balmer, an Episcopal priest, is professor of American religious history at Barnard College, Columbia University, and a visiting professor at Yale Divinity School. His most recent book, 
In the news you might have missed over the Thanksgiving weekend, Labor Party leader 
In many pulpits during this Thanksgiving season, love of our country and pride in our citizenship will be pronounced in the same breath - and often with the same intensity - as declarations of love for our God. But we must be careful, for patriotism can be destructive as well as constructive. Worse, it can become idolatrous.
At its board meeting last month, the National Association of Evangelicals formally named Leith Anderson as its president. Anderson is senior pastor of Wooddale Church in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and has been serving as interim president of the NAE for the past year.
Last week Jim was on The Tavis Smiley Show and talked about how the changing political landscape will affect the upcoming '08 election. Jim and Ken Blackwell, former Ohio secretary of state, debated and discussed both the impact of "value voters" on the election and what those values entail. 
As the Religious Right has diminished in influence, many are searching for a new political agenda that doesn’t fit the standard right/left battles of American politics and is more consistent with their deeply held values. That new agenda would be 
In response to Stan Guthrie's article in the October 2007 Christianity Today, 
With James Dobson and major conservative evangelical leaders threatening to bolt the Republican Party if Rudy Giuliani is nominated for president, conventional wisdom about God and politics has been turned on its head. For the last 25 years, conservative evangelicals could reliably count on the Republicans to choose a candidate acceptable to their version of Christian politics. This year, however, the leading Republican candidates seem unable to articulate any convincing religious message, much less a strongly biblical perspective on issues. All the while, the three leading Democratic candidates can testify to personal faith, possess robust theological views, and ground many policies in broadly biblical principles.
Diana Butler Bass (
When I got an invitation to attend the launch of New York Faith & Justice (