God’s Politics?
I receive regular emails from LICC (the London Insititue for Contemporary Christianity) whom I would recommend for some of their comment on current affairs and cultural issues. Mark Greene is especially good. I was pleased to see that they were recommedning a book that I reviewed on my blog back on 6th September 2005 called God’s Politics by Jim Wallis. He is presently on a tour of Uk to promote his book (including in Manchester but I unfortunately won’t be able to get there!). Although my review makes clear that I have some reservations, I think this writer and activist has something to say that needs to be heard. Fans of George Bush on the relgious right won’t like him, but he offers a genuine call away from the polarisation of left and right to a truly prophetic vision that makes a call for both personal righteousness and social justice. I’ve copied the content of email from LICC below:
God’s Politics
Jim Wallis likes to make connections. The best-selling author, political agitator, Harvard lecturer and founder of the Sojourners Network may enjoy breakfast with Bono or Bush from time to time, but he’s quick to return to the poorest area of Washington where he lives and works.
He connects top to bottom; he also connects left to right. While he may sound like a Democrat in railing against tax breaks for the rich at the expense of the poor, he sounds like a Republican when upholding the sanctity of life and family values. In fact, he wants to take us beyond the political and spiritual clichés of left and right, to reclaim social action from the secularists and the language of faith from the Religious Right.
Wallis, like the prophets of old, makes other connections, too: between the local and the global, North and South, the West and the rest. He connects the powerful and the powerless, the oppressor to the oppressed.
They – we – are all linked by cause and effect; and it’s time, he argues, to begin a social movement, based on the words of Jesus and the prophets, which provokes us and our leaders to make a positive difference to ‘the least of these’, as Jesus said. At present, too many of us collaborate in the passive connection that kills 30,000 children a day in the developing world due to a lack of clean drinking water and vaccines.
This week, as he toured the UK to promote his book God’s Politics (already a New York Times best-seller in the US), he also made the news for his connection with Gordon Brown. Brown agrees with Wallis that global security is directly linked to poverty – an idea Wallis takes directly from the prophet Micah, whose vision of swords beaten into ploughshares relies – crucially – on everyone having their own ‘fig tree’ and ‘vine’, sharing the common good. Brown senses this; Bush does not, according to Wallis, who has the ear of both.
God’s Politics is packed with prophetic insight, and it calls us to make dynamic, faithful connections. Most movingly, perhaps, it demands that we connect faith with hope, and hope with action. To dream of swords and ploughshares, yes; but to act, too - to ensure that everyone has their tree to sit beneath, their own vine to tend.
Brian Draper
God’s Politics was published this week by Lion Hudson, priced £9.99. Tapes/CD’s from Jim’s talk on God’s Politics at LICC last Wednesday will be available soon, priced £5 (inc p&p). To order call 020 7399 9555.
February 18th, 2006 @ 3:25 pm
I am no advocate of President Bush or the Republican party. Mr. Wallis is correct in his assertion that the Evangelicals have a narrow, two issue platform in politics. Many of his contentions with the “religious right” I whole heartedly agree with.
However, I have grave reservations with Mr. Wallis’ foundational principles that bleed through all of his politics (and he is very political). Mr. Wallis states ”My moral compass is not based on religion, but on utilitarianism”. Here lies the problem. His moral compass is not based on the eternal word of God but on an utopian dream. Simply put, he is a socialist.
Government programs and ideologies will not solve poverty. The gospel of the kingdom is the answer. Poverty is caused by the sinfulness of man. The issue of sin must be addressed in order to see poverty eradicated. The church must take her rightful place in society and stop looking to the government to solve social problems.
February 18th, 2006 @ 9:39 pm
I have missed this quote from Wallis, Gavin, and am fascinated to know exactly what he means by it. I listened to him on the radio yesterday and he very clearly aligned himself with evangelicals.
I agree with you that sin in the human heart is the fundamental problem but doesn’t sin and evil manifest itself in social, economic, political and cultural ways? I also agree with you that the gospel of the Kingdom is the answer but that will also influence and impact every aspect of the world, including the social, political etc. I tend to agree with Wallis that thousands dying of poverty whilst others enjoy extravagant riches is a spiritual and moral issue, an issue of sin and one that the gospel of the Kingdom addresses. I also don’t feel that that it is a problem that you can leave to the possible charity and benevolence of individuals. Now does that make me and Wallis socialists? I don’t know. Although, Gavin, one could argue that in our country their is quite a rich strain of ‘Christian socialism’ not appreciated by many evangelicals.
However, I ultimately agree with Wallis that our ‘political debate’ must transcend the normal, polarised positions of left and right. We must find a truly biblical, prophetic, Kingdom vision that is not limited by those traditional polarities. It is just that, for me, Wallis seems to get nearer to that than say Messrs. Robertson or Rushdoony, for example.
Anyway, thank you once again, Gavin, for your thought-provoking comments. Let me know when you are next back over in this country. I would like to buy you a good old English pint and have a good, long talk!
February 18th, 2006 @ 9:53 pm
Just a quick note: I have not read God’s Politics, but from the little I have read from Mr. Wallis, I would critique him for violating his own standard. His “call away from the polarisation of left and right to a truly prophetic vision that makes a call for both personal righteousness and social justice” is certainly something that all Christian should be on board with. However, from what I’ve heard from him, his solution seems to be more of a call to conformity to the standard left-wing, democratic political position. It seems that consistency is the issue.
February 18th, 2006 @ 10:16 pm
Andrew, try reading him some more - especially God’s Politics. Many of his positions do refelct some of the concerns that have been considered left-wing but he comes at them from genuine biblical convictions. How far to the left we consider him will be determined by where we stand along the political spectrum.
February 19th, 2006 @ 4:23 pm
I read Jim Wallis and Sojourners Magazine regularly and I like his writing style. His books are interesting and hold the reader’s attention. I agree with him sometimes and then I disagree with him sometimes. Jim Wallis is a brilliant writer and speaker. I appreciate his contributions to the debate about the role of Christianity in America.
However, it is important to read about Jim Wallis and his past to really understand his writing. Even though he has some good ideas and I believe he is sincere about his Christianity, his view of the world looks too much like socialism disguised as liberal Christianity. With this in mind, the following history will be helpful in understanding Jim Wallis.
Wallis, founder of the Washington-based Sojourners community, stated that America should have apologized to Iran for taking American hostages. America, says Wallis, is partly responsible for the Soviet attack on Korean Flight 007, and responsible as well for seducing the Vietnamese boat people with an addiction to Western consumerism. In his own publication Wallis wrote: “Many of today’s [Vietnamese] refugees were inoculated with a taste for a Western lifestyle during the war and are fleeing to support their consumer habit in other lands” (Sojourners, September 1979).
Such a statement is staggering. With the exception of George Marchais, leader of the French Communist Party, no one in the West besides Jim Wallis went on record in defense of the Communists and in criticism of the boat people. Even the Italian Communist Party had the strength of mind to denounce the genocidal butchery of the North Vietnamese and later the Khmer Rouge. As Lloyd Billingsley points out in the final essay in this book, these “evangelical” purveyors of guilt are caught in a logical inconsistency: On the one hand, they say poverty is abominable, and God’s wrath is called down on us for allowing it…. On the other hand, radical Christians lead us to believe that poverty is the only acceptable lifestyle for Christians and hence desirable. One cannot have it both ways.
A hyperactive guilt reflex seems to be the motivating force behind their reasoning, not true Christian compassion. The lecture circuit is packed; the evangelical periodicals are loaded, with the purveyors of guilt. It is one thing to have wild-eyed doomsayers within the fold; it is another thing to make them our leaders. Unfortunately the drift of the evangelical leadership toward socialism, or at least pop-New Age leftism, is not solely the preserve of a few isolated individuals such as Jim Wallis.
I pray Jim Wallis will eventually become a moderate Christian voice for positive change in America. As of now, he has blended his liberal politics and liberal Christianity into a message that sounds like the ramblings of Fidel Castro. Hopefully, he will see the light and turn to Jesus just like in the old Hank Williams song “I Saw the Light”. These words could have real meaning for Jim Wallis.
I wandered so aimless life filed with sin
I wouldn’t let my dear saviour in
Then Jesus came like a stranger in the night
Praise the lord I saw the light.
I saw the light I saw the light
no more darkness no more night
Now I’m so happy no sorrow in sight
Praise the lord I saw the light.
Just like a blind man I wandered along
Worries and fears I claimed for my own
Then like the blind man that God gave back his sight
Praise the lord I saw the light.
I was a fool to wander and astray
Straight is the gate and narrow the way
Now I have traded the wrong for the right
Praise the lord I saw the light.
February 20th, 2006 @ 1:24 pm
Hmmmm, seems that admitting any kind of left leanings polically could cause me some problems!
What I would say is that had I lived at various times in the UK in the last 200 years and holding the convictions I do about the Kingdom of God I would have chosen to associate myself with Labour, Liberal and Conservative parties depending on the era.
It seems to me that in the shifting world of politics we need to be more and more convinced of what we hold true about the message of the Kingdom that Jesus preached: and to make the distinction that he did not preach a political message but a spiritual one that when properly received and put into practice will make a clear political impact.
February 20th, 2006 @ 3:00 pm
I find it difficult to comment, T.L.Stanley, on quotes from Jim Wallis that are taken in isolation without fully knowing the context. And of course I have no obligation or desire to support everything that Wallis says. In my original review of his book, I clearly cristices some of his positions. However, from all that I have heard from him, I have no reason to doubt that he is a Christian and that he accepts the Bible as the inspired and authoritative Word of God. It is just that I find an echo in my own heart of some of the things that he is saying, and I think that he is right that much of the evangelical church (especially in the US) has been hijacked by a politically conservative agenda; and there are a growing number of Christians who are totally committed to the gospel, to the Word of God, to faith, to radical discipleship and a Kingdom which, as Matthew indicates, is essentially spiritual but makes an impact on politics and everything else but who do not feel at all represented on many social and global issues by this conservative agenda. That does not mean we are about to rush into the arms of the socialists (assuming we could actually find any, anyway) but we want to hear a radically biblical, prophetic and Kingdom voice, not one that just goes along with mainstream, conservative evangelicalism
February 20th, 2006 @ 9:16 pm
Interesting discussion brothers, I have been at these kinds of discussions long enough to know that “left”, “right”, and “mainstream” mean nothing. I’m not sure what a mainstream evangelical is anymore. Perhaps the Biblical solution is that the God of the Bible has sent his Son, The Lord Jesus Christ to rule over the nations with an iron septer and to set the people free with the power of His Spirit, delivering them from the wrath to come. Jesus does not need Rome, the US, or the UK. His word, all of it, will stand forever.
I do think that Trevor is wise to take some time. I would like to see some of the recent discussions framed in a Biblical context, rather than political, where actual passages of scripture are used to press points. But this is easier said than done. Keep at it Trevor I admire your courage and faithfulness to God.
February 21st, 2006 @ 7:36 am
Fair comment, Doug - both about the slippery nature of the word mainstream, and the need for a biblical context
June 3rd, 2006 @ 12:00 am
No need to worry, Trev. I wonder if the people attacking Wallis are Americans? Right-wing Americans tend to label any and every left-wing attitude as ’socialist’, using the word as a term of abuse with no knowledge of what it actually means in economic terms.
I flipped through Wallis’ book and it seems well thought out.
Useful talk of Christianity and politics must, of course, address not what an idealised ‘city of God’ looks like, but what we do to achieve it in our now largely secular states and societies. This leads to fascinating questions and paradoxes: e.g. the US ’separates church and state’ officially but Christians constitute a politically powerful group, England has an official but largely ignored ‘church’ which retains unfair influence over school admissions (e.g., painfully noticeably, in Lancashire).