I still can’t figure it out

Kingdom and Principalities: April 2005

Whether he likes it or not (or whether he’s trying to or not), he’s creating the atmosphere in the political arena for the reinvention of the Democratic party and the rise of a religious left.

Now, regardless of the widely agreed upon fact that neither a “religious left” or a “religious right” are gauranteed solutions, or even good solutions, I would choose a “left” over a “right” anyday. There simply IS no talk of “imposition” of faith upon the country in a religious left. To speak of a “religious ANYTHING” does not automatically imply that this group would seek “theocracy” as it has been described.

Whether he likes it or not, lots of the people who identify themselves as Sojourners were Democrats to begin with, and aren’t going to stop being Democrats.

So? What’s that got to with anything?

Whether he likes it or not, many evangelicals will swing to the other side of the aisle, instead of trying to dismantle the aisle as he says he is trying to do. Whether he likes it or not, his efforts will help reinvent the Democratic party in much the same way the Republican party was reinvented in the early ’80s.

There he goes again. Why “in much the same way”? No. Religious conservatives who fantasize about theocracy have something in mind that I would consider somewhat equated with the Taliban. And The Crusades. Liberals , or the “Left” , at least STUDY and promote dialogue about the Jesus who challened the status quo. Conservatives (the kind leaning toward or firmly into fundamentalism) fit Jesus into a status quo box that they wrap up in religious garb.

Now if obedience is not the result of any in this “religious left”, then they are no more Christian than the disobedient ones from the oppostie end of the pole. Wallis has ALWAYS affirmed and stressed the role of the Church, and the preaching of a Kingdom that Jesus spoke of as “among us”, and not some vaccuous notion of some “remade Democratic party”. These critics have no historical knowledge of what Sojourners has done over the past 30 plus years, and they make the mistake of lumping Wallis and Sojourners into categories which is one of the very things Wallis is trying to debunk. But they haven’t read as much as half of God’s Politics, much less very many if any of the articles and writings out of that community and from Wallis himself.

I’ve been to seminary twice. I’ve read plenty of books, left, right , and moderate (and maybe some “Biblical” ones that fit neatly into NONE of those categories). And I can find no sign whatsoever of some misguided effort to create a “New Democrat”. That’s not Jim Wallis. That’s Howard Dean (and by the way, that’s a job I am pulling for him and the Dems, even though I’d much rather see the rise of altenatives with a legitmate shot of overcoming this stale, marketed, two-party system we have now).