So many theological/political arguments pose a false dichotomy: that it is not the job of Government to care for the poor, to seek justice, to provide safety nets. Curiously, many of the same people who suggest this are also involved with Churches who do none of this either. So who is left to provide the care; the safety nets, the justice? They say the market will take care of itself. The market will set everything right. This is idolatrous; and it is naive; and it ignores a basic Biblical warning: “The Love of Money is the Root of all evil”. To leave these calls to “the least of these” to “market forces” ignores the fact that whenever “trickle down economics is employed and given a chance to work during Republican administrations, the gap between the rich and poor grows, unemployment rises, and the population sees a rise in the poverty level. Trickle down seems to be the unsubstantiated dream of the powerful (and I would sugest they don’t really care; that this is but an argument they use to get elected, and then the numbers are ignored as their strategies are unfurled.

No, it’s not to be left to “market forces”, but is the responsibility of any “citizen” of any community, and , byu inference, by its elected representatives, who are elected to help fashion a just society in its details and implementation. Many government programs are checks and balances against the abuse of power. The neoconservatives want to strip government, excdept for its responsibility of defense (which, conveniently benefits many of those neoconservatives and their alliances with forces which see America as the world’s most worthy reperentative of righteousness. “Compassionate Conservatism” rings hollow in the face of actual policy implementation in this administration. And the actual numbers needed to falsify or buttress are misrepresented, distorted, avoided, and covered in a media blitz of secular equivalents of pious platitudes.

Social justice is also not the sole province of faith communities (especially when an alarming proportion of these do nothing in these areas), but a calling of any who would profess to care about fairness in a society. Wallis declares that social justice is not only the call of God to his people, to live out in the lives of their Churches, but also the civic responsibility in a secular politic whose responsibility it is to implement just structures, and work for the common good. There are certainly many points of collaboration that could be found. John DiUlio found that Bush’s Faith-based initiatives to be far from priority; indeed, even a target of scorn by a administration insiders who frequently ridiculed DiUlio’s role (ie “Pick a faith-based initiaitive; any initiative” was heard more than once in the White House, chiding DiUlio).

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

Prophetic politics would not be an endless argument between personal and social responsibility, but a weaving of the two together in search of the common good. The current options are deadlocked. Prophetic politics wouldn’t assign all the answers to the government, the market, or the churches and charities; but rather patiently and creatively forge new civic partnerships where everyone does their share and everybody does what they do best. Prophetic politics wouldn’t debate whether our strategies should be cultural, political, or economic; but show how they must be all three, led by a moral compass.