Rethinking Faith and Politics

It has always disturbed and confused me how we Christians have often been seen as very narrowly focused on the political and cultural landscape - only seeming to care about two very controversial issues; abortion and gay-marriage. One might add to that how so many people of faith confuse national allegiance with following Jesus. The close ties of the Republican Party with the Religious (Christian) Right has unfornunatley become a litmus test of authentic Christianity where many Republicans of faith, particularly ones in many of our churches, will actually make statements like, "You can't be a Christian and vote for a Democrat." I have heard this comment spoken (without jest) on many ocassions. It is disturbing and completely ignores the broader issues that Christians need to be concerned with culturally, spiritually, and politically.


However, it is also true that many progressive Christians have aligned themselves with the sole agenda of the Democrat party as well. Although I have never heard a Democrat of faith say that you can't be a Christian if you vote for a Republican (though, just because I haven't heard it, it doesn't mean it hasn't been said), it is clear that conservative, progressive, liberal, fundamentalist, the Christian or religious right, etc. all have allowed political party agendas and power to define our faith as opposed to Jesus' teachings being our guide. Wallis is equally critical of the left's dismissal of important family issues and sanctity of life issues that are important to Christian community as well. Too often we have allowed political power platforms from all parties to lead us into notions of misplaced nationalistic self-preservation and led us to justify obvious inequities and injustices around the globe, even in our own nation. It is into this landscape that Jim Wallis' new book, The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America, enters and suggest a more faithful and just path to addressing so many critical national and global issues of today.



Wallis' book is a celebration of how social movements with spiritual foundations can address and actively change politics and the important moral and ethical issues around the world. It particularly addresses how the U.S. can be renewed and revived to honestly and humbly face its own disintegration into being world spectators as opposed to authentic activists who seek equity and justice for the whole world, not just for our own selfish desires for resources, power, and control.



In a world of divisions, even within the Christian church, it is refreshing to read and hear from a prophetic voice that challenges Christians to be more than "two-issue" people of faith. His assesment of the Religious Right's single-minded focus on the issues of abortion and gay-marriage is that they have ignored the broader realities of biblical justice and discipleship. Wallis, as a self-titled "progressive evangelical" goes to great lengths and depth to help us move beyond right and left, liberal and conservative, and get down to the business of faithful action that will move our churches, politicians, nation, and world, to genuinely collaborate to discover equitable, workable solutions to the critical global crises of the day. Wallis writes:


As I travel the country, I can see and feel new things happening - I find a revival of faith that is directly leading to new calls and commitments for social justice. That rebirth and renewal is being directly applied to the moral and biblical scandal of poverty around the globe and here at home, to the crises of environmental degradation and climate change that pose such a threat to God's creation, and to the mulitple assaults on human life and dignity that shame our world. (p. 3)



He goes on to add:



...Many of the great social issues we face feel like huge, unmovable mountains: disease pandemics that kill millions, massive inequality that imprisons half the world's people in miserable poverty, human sexual and economic trafficking, dangerous climate changes in the earth's temperature, genocide that no one seems able to stop, so many threats to the sanctity of human life, endless violations of human dignity, and the alarming unraveling of both family and community systems. (p. 3)



Although Wallis' entire book is important for Christians of all political and theological persuasions, I personally found Chapter five, entitled, "Inclusion and Opportunity: The Welcome Table," to be a foundational one that underlies addressing all the other issues. Here, Wallis takes the terminology of the welcome table from an African-American spiritual by that same name. He suggest that this idea, based on Jesus parable of the Kingdom of God about the banquet table found in Luke 14 is, "...an excellent image and metaphor for spiritual transformation and the political strategy needed to overcome poverty." Later in the chapter, Wallis quotes Bono of the Irish rock band U2, who spoke at the 2006 National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., as saying:



...God is with the vulnerable and the poor. God is in the slums in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them. (p. 110)



Bono goes on in that speech to suggest that we need to move away from seeing response to these needs as an act of charity. He says, It is not about charity, it's about justice. (p. 110)



Overcoming poverty has to be about relationships. I would suggest too that this is true of all the issues raised in The Great Awakening. We must welcome people to the table, the poor with the rich, the Christians with the Jews, Muslims, and other faith traditions with the scientist, the Republicans with the Democrats. As long as we continue to use our personal theologies and political agendas to keep us separate, we will never build the important relationships needed to genuinely address the crises in our world today. I believe young people today are getting this as does Jim Wallis. So many young people today just do not understand the uncritiqued loyalty to particular parties where real solutions to real serious problems get swallowed up in political rhetoric and power plays - all the while nothing gets done not only on the world stage, but in our local communites as well. Jim Wallis holds out a great deal of hope for the future recognizing that a younger generation just may be the ones who are emerging to lead us into a more hopeful future of collaboration, of sharing power, resources, and ideas to finally make a huge impact.



Read this book. Use it for a study group in your church, book club, or just among friends.