Oh gee, here we go again. This article is pointed out by Jesus Politics, and it has the same arguments from the “keep church and state separate” folks, and a glaring cluelessness about the connection between faith and life.

Jesus Politics: Katha Pollitt, Jim Wallis and God’s Politics

God’s politics turn out to be curiously tailored to the current crisis of the Democratic Party.

This review by Katha Pollitt in The Nation is totally useless. She has no clue about Wallis’ subject matter, and so she may has well just not tried. But Wallis’ book and appearances have been making a splash, and so she took it on. I explore some of here criticisms below:

After all, the case for Christianizing progressive politics is not just about quoting the Bible more, or framing healthcare as a religious value. It’s about lowering the wall between church and state, giving churches more power, more rights and more taxpayer money.

The link to the article:
The Nation | Column | Jesus to the Rescue? | Katha Pollitt

Some more examples of clueless ranting by Pollitt:

After all, the case for Christianizing progressive politics is not just about quoting the Bible more, or framing healthcare as a religious value. It’s about lowering the wall between church and state, giving churches more power, more rights and more taxpayer money.

Hah? Who says this? Certainly not Wallis. In fact, he is now skeptical of the implementations of the “faith-based initiatives”.

The argument in favor often boils down to majority rule–most Americans claim to be devout Christians–but that’s actually the argument against it. Look what Christians did when they had the chance!

Weak. Shallow.

Yet the triumphalism and self-righteousness he condemns in the former crops up throughout God’s Politics: “religion” and “faith” are usually synonyms for Christianity, and Christianity mostly means evangelical Protestantism. Evangelicals get most of the credit for everything good in US history, from women’s suffrage to the civil rights movement.

She totally misses the audience and the point of Wallis’ book. She is “out of the loop” totally. She CAN’T get it. OF COURSE Wallis speaks in terms of Christian tradition! DUH! He IS ONE. OK? Of COURSE he stresses that he sees himself fitting firmly within the evangelical tradition! He DOES. Only she has no concept of the points Wallis is making. Wallis is making an argument to RECLAIM not only Christianity but Evangelicalism. This author simply wants Wallis to talk in generic religious terms. I believe that Wallis DOES speak a universal language, and so does the Bible; only the Christian Right would have you ignore the universal human values expressed in the Scriptures such as justice and compassion expressed in a system of governance.

Pollitt is so deeply emeshed in the “separation” arguments and the tired old Crusades arguments (yes, the Crusades were awful; and Bush is the most blatant and incarnate expression of this very concept that has existed SINCE the Crusades) that she cannot see that there is a place for the kind of Christianity that Wallis’ vision embodies. It simply would not and could not evolve into “crusades”, since non-violence is at the center of it, since it was at the center of Jesus’ ministry.

And what about the opponents of women’s rights and racial integration? Weren’t a lot of them evangelicals too? At times Wallis seems to be in a kind of denial: If it’s wrong, it isn’t truly evangelical, therefore evangelicalism is purely good. Today’s robust evangelical right is the fault of–wait for it–“secular fundamentalists”! Blame it on the ACLU.

This is unbelievably bad. This is unbelievably shallow. There IS a possibility that “evangelicalism” is not the exclusive province of people who are prejudiced, nor should the distorted expressions of those who claim to be evangelicals mean that this IS evangelicalism, anymore than those who claim to be Christians are faithful expressions of it. Obvious.

Wallis’s God calls on Christians to fight racism, poverty, war and violence–what’s wrong with mustering support for these worthy goals by presenting them in the language spoken by so many Americans? The trouble is, the other side does that too.

OK. SO what? She begs the question on every criticism. There IS such a thing as misrepresentation, unfaithfulness, misinterpretation, and self-interested manipulation of a popular religion. These things are what Wallis is attempting to engage; and Pollit just keeps on insisting that Christians and Evangelicals just mess it up. So she would suggest we just keep our faith out of the public arena. Fine. She has plenty of company, and they can stand on the outside and keep throwing those stones.

And Wallis is as much a power player. By a remarkable act of providence, God’s politics turn out to be curiously tailored to the current crisis of the Democratic Party.

Yeah, this is a good one. And another totally CLUELESS one. If the Democratic party says they stand for a government that has more responsibility for the poor, then anybody who also believes that is “partisan”? What about the concept that concern for the poor has BEEN AROUND A BIT LONGER as a guiding principle (like back to the Hebrew Prophets, and back beyond that) ? Isn’t this the idea behind politics? That parties represent concerns of their constituents? The party would not exist without a basic agreement of the people about the worthiness and possibilities for their proposed program? The underlying philosophies are created out of a basic scan of the concerns of the people, and out of a sense of conscience beyond mere polling and opinion and in the responsibility given by a voting public to vote for representatives that they trust to make wise decisions for them in the halls of government. The Democratic party platoform has been backed by social justice people for decades because their concerns are expressed in the party’s adoption of such concerns. Pollitt has a shallow grasp of politics in general.

Here’s a good indication that Pollitt has no clue what Wallis stands for, and thus, what he’s arguing in God’s Politics:

It’s interesting that in his earlier book The Soul of Politics Wallis cited numerous women theologians, while God’s Politics mentions not one. Perhaps this is because the liberationist theologians he wrote about in The Soul of Politics are mostly very strong feminists who think women are capable of making moral decisions about childbearing and that abortion can be one such decision. Wallis constantly accuses “the left” of resisting “moral” arguments. I would say it is he who resists fully engaging moral arguments that differ from his own.

Wallis argues against the kind of anti-women’s rights attitudes that Pollitt here seems to be suggesting that Wallis has “forsaken” since he wrote “The Soul of Politics” and sided with the evangelicals. Once again, Pollitt totally misunderstands where Wallis is coming from. Much of God’s Politics is in clarifying what he considers to be basic to a faithful evangelical faith. For Pollitt, it all comes down to abortion. If you’re against abortion, you’re not for womens’ rights. Wallis is pro-life, but across the board, and he is not for the legislation against abortion. Wallis over and over says he is in favor of the government striving to remove the conditions that make abortions more frequent.

Wallis often points out that the Bible mentions poverty thousands of times and abortion only a few. I’m not sure what this tells us–first we eradicate poverty and then we force women to have babies against their will?

The pattern is becoming clear. Pollitt is dead-set against anybody who doesn’t espouse the feminist cry of “a woman’s choice to choose”, as if that is the highest priority. She is right to sense that Wallis is not gung-ho “woman’s choice” on abortion, since he believes that abortion is generally wrong, especially as a matter of career convenience or personal preference). He simply believes that there is too much reliance on abortion, and too many conditions that make abortion seem like the only option. In attacking the root causes of abortion, Wallis is truly pro-women and pro-life. The fact that under Bush abortions have risen for the first time in 20 years show that “talk” about being pro-life is unrelated to actually preventing abortion. It just may have something to do with the existence of other options of caring for children, and making it in a society where the poverty level is rising.