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

The following three “political options” are described by Wallis in his article God’s Politics: A Better Option, are the ones we see “out there”, listed by the media, and by political pundits, but which limit and polarize the debate, and have prompted Wallis and Sojourners to start a movement to “Take Back the Faith” and suggest a fourth option, which is , at its heart and roots, Biblical, but not “of the conservative theocratic variety” which is so often conjured up in the minds of secularists: the fundamentalists dream of a government imposing a particular worldview upon everyone, but rather, a Biblical base which confronts politics on the basis of its care for the least of these, that calls into question the rush to war, ans which calls into question the dominance of the powerful over the less fortunate.

THERE ARE NOW three major political options in our public life. The first political option in America today is conservative on everything – from cultural, moral, and family concerns to economic, environmental, and foreign policy issues. Differences emerge between aggressive nationalists and cautious isolationists, between corporate apologists and principled fiscal conservatives, but this is the political option clearly on the ascendancy in America, with most of the dominant ideas in the public square coming from the political Right.
The second political option in contemporary America is liberal on everything – both family/sexual/cultural questions and economic, environmental, and foreign policy matters. There are certainly differences among the liberals (from pragmatic centrists to green leftists), but the intellectual and ideological roots come from the Left side of the cultural and political spectrum – and today most from the liberal/left find themselves on the defensive.
The third option in American politics is libertarian – meaning liberal on cultural/moral issues and conservative on fiscal/economic and foreign policy. The “just leave me alone and don’t spend my money option” is growing quickly in American life.