"God's Politics"

Since when did believing in God and having moral values make you pro-war, pro-rich and pro-Republican? And since when did promoting and pursuing a progressive social agenda with a concern for economic security, health care, and educational opportunity mean you had to put faith in God aside?

While the Right in America has hijacked the language of faith to prop up its political agenda -- an agenda not all people of faith support -- the Left hasn't done much better, largely ignoring faith and continually separating moral discourse and personal ethics from public policy. While the Right argues that God's way is their way, the Left pursues an unrealistic separation of religious values from morally grounded political leadership. The consequence is a false choice between ideological religion and soulless politics.

With liner notes like that, I couldn't resist picking up Jim Wallis' book, "God's Politics," when I went to trade in some books a few weeks ago. It's been a bit of a slog since then, but I managed to finally finish it last week. Shame on me, too, for not getting to it much earlier. It came out in 2005, shortly after GWB had begun his second term, and so, it features a scathing critique of Bush's decision to go to war as well as the me-first economic and tax policies of those times.

Wallis, for the uninitiated, is a Washington, D.C.,-based evangelical who founded Sojourners, a nationwide network of progressive Christians working for economic justice and peace. He's a prolific author and lecturer and, judging from this book, at times too self-promoting.

Nevertheless, his message -- that there is ample room for a middle ground at the intersection of religious and political life in America -- is a sound one. Wallis spares no mercy ripping into the Religious Right (and politicians who cater to them) for pushing a morals-based agenda on abortion and gay rights while ignoring broader concerns like poverty and the growing gap between rich and poor. At the same time, he scolds the Secular Left -- that would be me -- for insisting on an absolute separation between church and state when there are opportunities to join together for the common good.

I've seen in my own community how people motivated by their religious values can put their beliefs into practice. The best example: the Season of Service organized by the Luis Palau Association that has created partnerships between Portland metro area churches and public schools with high concentrations of poverty. See Tom Krattenmaker's essay, published earlier this year in The Oregonian, to read about West Linn's SouthLake Foursquare Church and its involvement at North Portland's Roosevelt High School.

This being a Sunday morning, I'm here at my computer, not in a church. I don't think that's going to change. But I can say Wallis has opened my mind on these issues of religion and public policy. Dozens of dog-eared pages attest to various passages that resonated with me. I especially appreciated how he ended the book with a chapter on "The Critical Choice: Hope Versus Cynicism."

The choice between cynicism and hope is ultimately a spiritual choice, one that has enormous political consequences, he writes.

Cynicism does protect you in many ways. It protects you from seeming foolish to believe that things could and will change. It protects you from disappointment. It protects you from insecurity because now you are free to pursue your own security instead of sacrificing it for a social engagement that won't work anyway.

Ultimately, cynicism protects you from commitment. If things are not really going to change, why try so hard to make a difference? Why become and stay so involved? Why take the risks, make the sacrifices, open yourself to the vulnerablities?

But, he argues:

More than just a moral issue, hope is a spiritual and even religious choice. Hope is not a feeling; it is a decision. And the decision for hope is based on what you believe at the deepest levels -- what your most basic convictions are about about the world and what the future holds -- all based on your faith. You choose hope, not as a naive wish, but as a choice, with your eyes wide open to the reality of the world -- just like the cynics who have not made the decision for hope.

I've always thought of myself more as a skeptic than an outright cynic. Even so, as a lapsed Catholic, Wallis has given me plenty to think about. More important, he's given me plenty of cause to re-examine my values and choices, and ample reason to more often choose hope.