The monologue of the Religious Right is over and a new conversation has begun! Join the God's Politics dialogue with Jim Wallis and friends Brian McLaren, Diana Butler Bass, Becky Garrison, Gareth Higgins, Shane Claiborne, Mary Nelson, Gabriel Salguero, Tony Campolo, and others.
The Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA.org) was launched in 1979, in response to growing concern "over an increase of [sic] questionable fund-raising practices in the nonprofit sector." As their Web site explains, Sen. Mark Hatfield challenged "a group of key Christian leaders" to begin policing their own mission agencies as a kind of "Christian Better Business Bureau."
Perhaps 30 years later, evangelicals, because of "an increase in questionable rhetorical practices in the nonprofit sector," need to form the ECRA: The Evangelical Council for Rhetorical Accountability. Those of us who have a lot of pew time know ... not to mention those who listen to religious broadcasting and partake of religious literature, Web sites, and blogs (!) ... that such accountability is sorely lacking.
The need for an ECRA became clearer than ever to me this week when a beloved elder in the evangelical broadcasting community spoke out against Sen. Barack Obama. What is evident to me in this interchange is not just a difference in policy, but also a ...
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.
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.
Over the weekend, James Dobson backed off his earlier assertion that he would not cast a vote for president this year if John McCain clinched the GOP nomination. Voting is a "God-given responsibility," Dobson told host Sean Hannity Sunday night on Hannity's America, and one that he plans to fulfill despite his disenchantment with all three leading candidates.
But where does that leave Dobson? Will he backpedal and now throw his support behind McCain? Not likely, at least not yet. Before signing off with Hannity, Dobson made it clear that McCain's support of the pro-life and pro-marriage planks in the Republican Party platform was not enough; he wants assurances from the Arizona senator that he will oppose embryonic stem-cell research as well. "That's a major one for me," Dobson said. "You can't really call yourself pro-life if you're going to kill those babies."
The question now is who will blink first. If McCain holds his ground—he supports federal funding for research on unused embryos from fertility clinics—he risks losing the percentage of the evangelical vote that Dobson continues to influence. With the presidency at stake, that's a risk McCain most likely won't take despite all the chatter about Dobson's waning influence among evangelicals.
Still, there is that chance that Dobson has painted himself into a corner on this one. As recently as two months ago, he adamantly stated that he would not vote for McCain. If McCain doesn't change his position on stem-cell research to Dobson's liking, that leaves Dobson with precious few choices—namely, a compromise vote for McCain, an unlikely vote for Ron Paul (assuming he gets on the ballot), or a write-in vote for his assumed candidate of choice all along, Mitt Romney.
This could prove to be a defining moment in the relationship between the GOP and a historically prominent leader of the religious right. The perception of Dobson as an important player in conservative politics just may hinge on McCain's response to what appears to be Dobson's line-in-the-sand challenge.
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:
Tuesday evening, John McCain clinched the Republican nomination for president, and Mike Huckabee, the last remaining contender, conceded defeat. Huckabee's campaign, and the failure of the Religious Right to support him, has been one of the most interesting and puzzling stories of this primary season
While Huckabee is certainly a social conservative, he refused to toe the line on a number of issues. And that is why I say the monologue of the Religious Right has ended and the evangelical agenda has broadened.
In the Republican YouTube debate, the candidates were asked if they believed every word of the Bible. Huckabee said that while some of the Bible was allegorical, we needed to take much of it much more seriously than we do - like the words of Jesus which say, "As you have done to the least of these you have done to me." This is not the text that most conservatives quote when asked about the authority of the Bible. In an interview with Reuters in January, Huckabee spoke about the broadening evangelical agenda:
Unquestionably there is a maturing that is going on within the evangelical movement. It doesn't mean that evangelicals are any less concerned about traditional families and the sanctity of life. It just means that they also realize that we have real responsibility in areas like disease and hunger and poverty and that these are issues that people of faith have to address.
And when conservative columnists like Robert Novak attacked Huckabee for not being a "real conservative," this is precisely what they meant. When Huckabee was governor of Arkansas, he advocated spending money on poor people - behavior which is offensive to the economically conservative wing of the Republican Party. While Huckabee is a consistent social conservative, he is suspect by the party's economic conservatives who, of course, don't support spending any money on overcoming poverty. Huckabee disagrees with them.
On immigration, in that same debate, there was an all out attack on "illegal aliens" who became the new scapegoat, the new "other," for the Republican candidates - and the preferred way to energize their primary base. Except for the grateful acknowledgement from John McCain that "these are God's children too," every Republican candidate preceded to demagogue the issue, beating up on undocumented immigrants for crass political gain.
But then Mike Huckabee spoke. He agreed that our borders need to be protected and enforced (I do too), but then defended his support for a failed bill in Arkansas to give scholarships to exceptional students - including undocumented children. He said he didn't want to punish children for their parents' illegal actions because "that's not what we typically do in this country." This educational plan, he said, was intended to bring people from illegal to legal status. He continued, saying that he had received a good education, but if he hadn't, "I wouldn't be standing on this stage; I might be picking lettuce; I might be a person who needed government support." Then he said, "In all due respect, we're a better country than to punish children for what their parents did." Although he later moved more to the right in the heat of the primaries, that response remains.
Is that ultimately why the leaders of the Religious Right didn't support Mike Huckabee until late in the primary season? Is it because many on the Religious Right are really more committed to economic conservatism that social conservatism? Have religious conservatives gotten so used to their access to power that they are afraid to risk standing for principle over pragmatism? Huckabee was the most consistent social conservative Republican in the race, including winning the straw poll at the FRC Values Voters Summit, yet most of the leaders of the Religious Right never rallied around him. But the evangelical base did – keeping him the race until this week.
Now that he is out of the race, what's next for Huckabee? The conservative Washington Times says Huckabee is at the forefront of evangelical revival, and quoted his former communications director as saying
He has become the leader of a new generation of Christian conservative voters. ... There is nobody else you can identify outside of Mike Huckabee as a leading person to take on that role, really in a new era where evangelicals care about a lot of things like the environment and working with the poor.
That there's now a pitched battle for the soul of the religious right is a horrifying thought to Republican leaders long familiar with the old religious right, a hierarchical group dominated by larger-than-life figures who'd anointed themselves Jesus's political representatives. But that movement is withering at the top and in revolt at the grass-roots. … What's new is how widespread social justice issues are in the evangelical world. Leading New Testament theologian N.T. Wright, a conservative, says that the greatest moral issue today is not abortion but the economic inequality between the U.S. and Europe and the developing world.
So, stay tuned, we haven't heard the last from Mike Huckabee.
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.
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.
8. Mohler said the agreement "sends the wrong signal" and contains basic theological problems, especially in "marginalizing" Jesus Christ. He also condemned the apology for the Crusades. "I just have to wonder how intellectually honest this is," he said. "Are these people suggesting that they wish the military conflict with Islam had ended differently — that Islam had conquered Europe?"
Would it send the right signal if we rebuffed their request for dialogue? Does it marginalize Jesus Christ to try to practice his teaching by loving our neighbor, loving the "other," reaching out to those whom we have offended and who have offended us in a desire to seek reconciliation and make peace? Are you aware of the atrocities associated with the Crusades – the rape, torture, mass slaughter – all by people who were supposed to be in a tradition of "just war theory?" Are you unaware that our behavior fell far below that of our own ideals, and don't you believe we should acknowledge that fact? Are you aware of how your line of thought could be used today to justify torture and other atrocities – that, to achieve a desired outcome in a "military conflict with Islam," we are justified in resorting to any and all means that were used in the Crusades? Do you realize how horrible this sounds – not just to a Muslim, but also to a fellow Christian?
9. Gary Bauer, president of the Campaign for Working Families, told CitizenLink the NAE leaders "have left the (card) table without their pants — that is, they've been taken and may not even realize they've been taken."
Was Jesus more concerned about "being taken" or giving himself to the dangerous work of reconciliation? Was it a mistake for him to allow himself to be stripped naked at the "table" of the cross? Whose politics should we professed followers of Christ follow in situations like this? And how do you know we have been taken? On what do you base your suspicion? Could your suspicion be a matter of religious prejudice, perhaps bordering on racism? How would you know if a group of Muslim scholars were completely sincere in their desire to reach out for peace? How do you defend your suspicion in light of the teaching of Jesus, which invites us to forgive seventy times 7 offenses in the pursuit of reconciliation?
10. Bauer said he already was dismayed by the NAE's recent controversial excursions into questionable areas such as global warming.
Can you see, even though you may disagree with it, the logic of our actions – those of us who are concerned about both the stewardship of the planet and the pursuit of peace with our Muslim neighbors? Can you see that Jesus' love for "outsiders" – the Syrophonecian woman, the Samaritan woman, the Roman centurion, not to mention notorious sinners – motivates us to love our Muslim neighbors; and it motivates us to join God in caring for the birds of the air and flowers of the field? Do you understand how for many of us these "excursions" flow from our understanding of Jesus' message – the good news of the kingdom of God?
11. Sookhdeo called for Christian leaders who signed the letter to withdraw their names, saying the confession of guilt puts Christian communities in Muslim areas of the world at risk.
By this reasoning, would you oppose the invasion of Iraq because it also put Christian communities in Muslim areas of the world at risk? And does it put Christians at risk more when Christians humbly admit their faults, or when they arrogantly remain in denial about them? When they reach out in friendship in response to Muslim scholars, or when they rebuff requests for dialogue?
4. Dr. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Seminary (Southern Baptist), termed it "naiveté that borders on dishonesty."
Did it border on dishonesty for God, who has all power, to be expressed among us as a Word "veiled" in frail human flesh? Was it naive for Jesus to go to Jerusalem, knowing what waited for him there? Would it be naïve or dishonest for us to claim to love our neighbors and even our enemies, as Jesus taught us, and then to reject requests for dialogue? Wouldn't it be more naïve to think that the problems between Christians and Muslims around the world will be resolved by a refusal to dialogue? And when our neighbors come to us, reaching out their hands in friendship, and when our hearts tell us – after sincere prayer and reflection – that we cannot fold our arms in exclusion but must open them in friendship, how can we not respond?
5. Their response — initiated by Yale Divinity School and endorsed by other liberal Christian leaders — apologized for the sins of Christians during the Crusades and for "excesses" of the global war on terror, without mentioning Muslim atrocities.
When you have a conflict with your wife where both you and she have made mistakes, do you only agree to acknowledge your own faults if she will also acknowledge hers? If you say, "Yes, I may have made a small mistake, but you made even bigger ones," do you expect this to lead to a better relationship? If Muslims apologized for their faults, would you then be willing to dialogue with them in a respectful way?
6. It even seemed to acknowledge Allah as the God of the Bible.
Are you not aware that the word "Allah" is simply the Arabic word for God, just as in English we say God, and in Spanish people say Dios, and in Greek, theos? Did you know that when millions of Arabic Christians pray, they use this normal Arabic word for God? Don't you know that throughout history, the Christian faith has used the words for God already found in the language and culture into which they came with the good news of Jesus Christ?
7. The very name of the Muslim communiqué — A Common Word between Us and You — is from a verse in the Quran that condemns "people of the Scripture" (Christians) for alleged polytheism (the doctrine of the Trinity).
Are you aware that the trinity is not just a matter of disagreement, it is first a matter of misunderstanding between Christians and Muslims? Do you see that we can only deal with disagreements when we have achieved some basic understanding of what we mean by our key terms? Are you aware that many Muslims believe that our doctrine of the trinity affirms that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three different gods? Can you suggest a way of clearing up this misunderstanding without respectful dialogue? And are you aware that the apostle Paul respectfully quoted the writings of Greek philosophers and respectfully referred to Greek religion in his dialogue with the Athenian philosophers? With Paul's example in mind, should we never have any interaction with the Quran, one of the most important works of literature in the history of the world and unspeakably precious to about 21 percent of the world's population – except to argue with it? Have you ever actually read the Quran?
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Marcia Ford is the author of 
Brian McLaren also blogs at 
Over the weekend, James Dobson backed off 
Tuesday evening, John McCain clinched the Republican nomination for president, and Mike Huckabee, the last remaining contender, conceded defeat. Huckabee's campaign, and the failure of the Religious Right to support him, has been one of the most interesting and puzzling stories of this primary season