Wallis's politics: not to be confused with God's. Or are they?IN 1995, Jim Wallis The Reverend Jim Wallis (b. June 4 1948, Detroit, Michigan) is an Evangelical Christian writer and political activist, best known as the founder and editor of Sojourners Magazine and of the Washington, D.C.-based Christian community of the same name. was arrested for protesting against welfare reform in the Capitol Rotunda rotunda In Classical and Neoclassical architecture, a building or room that is circular in plan and covered with a dome. The Pantheon is a Classical Roman rotunda. The Villa Rotonda at Vicenza, designed by Andrea Palladio, is an Italian Renaissance example. . In 1983, he was arrested in the Rotunda for protesting the MX missile. But these days, Wallis is more likely to be meeting lawmakers than breaking laws when he is on Capitol Hill. Senate Democrats invited him to a conference in January, and Senate Republicans have consulted with him about their anti-poverty agenda. His influence is even more pronounced in the media. Wallis has shared his insights with Tim Russert Timothy John Russert, Jr. (born May 7, 1950) is an American journalist who has hosted NBC's Meet the Press since 1991. He is the Washington Bureau Chief for NBC News, and hosts Tim Russert, a weekly interview program on MSNBC. and yukked it up with Jon Stewart Not to be confused with John Stewart or John Stuart. Jon Stewart (born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz on November 28,1962) is an American comedian, satirist, actor, writer, and producer. . His new, best-selling book, God's Politics, has been widely reviewed. His basic message is twofold: Democrats should be more accommodating of religion in public life; but religion does not have to be understood as Jerry Falwell This article is about Jerry Falwell, Sr. For the article about his son, see Jerry Falwell, Jr. Jerry Lamon Falwell, Sr. (August 11 1933 – May 15, 2007)[1] was an American fundamentalist Christian pastor and televangelist. understands it. One of the constant refrains of his book and his op-eds is that Jesus is not "pro-rich, pro-war, and only pro-American." Wallis has long edited Sojourners, which is generally described as a magazine for left-wing evangelical Christians This is a list of people who are notable due to their influence on the popularity or development of evangelical Christianity or for their professed Evangelicalism. Historical
But it's Democrats who have been most interested in his ideas. Republicans have talked to Wallis about a few discrete issues--such as Bush's faith-based initiative, which Wallis supports. Democrats, on the other hand, are listening to Wallis's advice on how to "frame" issues and borrowing his lines. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid has said that he wants to make the budget "a moral document." The words come straight from Wallis. The Democrats seem to think that Wallis offers a way to overcome their deficit among "values voters," a topic on which they have been fixated fix·ate v. fix·at·ed, fix·at·ing, fix·ates v.tr. 1. To make fixed, stable, or stationary. 2. To focus one's eyes or attention on: fixate a faint object. since the election. So does Wallis. As he writes in his book, If the Democrats could take the opportunity of a political defeat to really reassess their language and style, the way they morally frame public policy issues, and their cultural disconnect with too many Americans including many people of faith, they could transform the political discourse. But it will require a serious re-assessment. And if they are further willing to re-examine their positions on some of the cultural/moral issues the Republicans beat them with in 2004, they could virtually change the political landscape. If the Democrats could be persuaded by both good political sense and sound moral values to moderate some of their positions by becoming anti-abortion without criminalizing an agonizing and desperate choice, and being pro-family without being anti-gay, they would change politics in America by giving permission to millions of voters who would naturally vote for them except for the cultural and moral divide they feel with Democratic language and policies. Many Democrats find elements of the Wallis strategy attractive. It indulges their sense that Christian conservatives are hypocrites, betraying Jesus by smiting the downtrodden down·trod·den adj. Oppressed; tyrannized. downtrodden Adjective oppressed and lacking the will to resist Adj. 1. and exploiting the environment. It caters to their belief that they are already doing the Lord's work by helping the poor, and need only advertise the fact. But Wallis's major advice to the Democrats is likely to prove unhelpful. Some of it, indeed, they will ignore. About a third of Wallis's book is concerned with foreign policy. He is, if not a pacifist, a near pacifist. He is also anti-military. In 2003, he wrote, "There is no doubt in my mind that the importance the churches and the peace movement placed on protecting the innocents during the pre-war debate was very influential in keeping them from being directly targeted by military planners." (Wallis's move to moderation in rhetoric is not complete.) Democratic politicians are well aware that pacifism pacifism, advocacy of opposition to war through individual or collective action against militarism. Although complete, enduring peace is the goal of all pacifism, the methods of achieving it differ. is not the ticket to electoral success and are not going to follow Wallis in declaring that God commands it. What seems to be catching on among Democrats is the idea that they should present the standard liberal arguments about government programs in moral and religious terms. "Reframing reframing (rē·frāˑ·ming), n the revisiting and reconstruction of a patient's view of an experience to imbue it with a different usually more positive meaning in the " issues is very in with Democrats these days. Their other major post-election guru, Berkeley linguistics professor George Lakoff
Yet a religious "reframing" may not achieve their goal. If Republicans openly defended the view that successful people should not be concerned about poverty or that the environment does not deserve protection, then Wallis's "prophetic" challenge to them would make sense. As it is, Republicans will always be able to retort re·tort n. A closed laboratory vessel with an outlet tube, used for distillation, sublimation, or decomposition by heat. retort a globular, long-necked vessel used in distillation. that they too believe in lifting the poor and stopping pollution--that they simply disagree with Verb 1. disagree with - not be very easily digestible; "Spicy food disagrees with some people" hurt - give trouble or pain to; "This exercise will hurt your back" Democrats about methods. Jim Wallis predicted that welfare reform would cause a "hurricane of human suffering." Republicans and moderate Democrats in Congress thought it would do the poor a world of good. The Bible does not settle who was right about the reform, but the evidence of post-reform poverty rates seems to favor the politicians. The comparison to the politics of abortion is instructive. Republicans have used that issue to pry religious voters from the Democratic coalition. Democrats may think they can use poverty and the environment to win them back--after all, the Lord said more about poverty than about abortion. But while Republicans claim to be interested in protecting the environment and fighting poverty, and even in deploying the federal government in both efforts, most Democrats do not, as a matter of principle, believe that the law should protect human fetuses against abortion. Then there is the question of what new voters Wallis-influenced Democrats would be picking up. There is a religious Left in American politics, but it is small, and it is already reliably Democratic. Democrats could try to get more left-wing religious voters to the polls, but the payoff would be low. If the constituency the Democrats have in mind is the red-state values voters, on the other hand, they have a different problem. That group does include a lot of voters, but they are unlikely to vote for the Democratic platform, even if it is described in religious language. A person who is voting Republican because he opposes abortion and same-sex marriage Noun 1. same-sex marriage - two people of the same sex who live together as a family; "the legal status of same-sex marriages has been hotly debated" couple, twosome, duet, duo - a pair who associate with one another; "the engaged couple"; "an inseparable is unlikely to vote Democratic because Howard Dean Howard Brush Dean III (born November 17, 1948) is an American politician and physician from the U.S. state of Vermont, and currently the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, the central organ of the Democratic Party at the national level. or Jim Wallis tells him that God wants him to protect the environment. Some voters, meanwhile, would be put off by an explicitly religious appeal. Nonreligious swing voters who generally vote Democratic because of their concerns about "theocracy theocracy Government by divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided. In many theocracies, government leaders are members of the clergy, and the state's legal system is based on religious law. Theocratic rule was typical of early civilizations. " might stop preferring the Democrats if they were constantly quoting the Gospels. And even mildly or strongly religious voters might not like Democratic God talk. They might decide that Democrats were presenting themselves as morally superior to them, and reject them accordingly. Republican God talk has the same potential drawback, of course, but it might be worse for Democrats for two reasons. The Democrats already have the burden of being seen as cultural elitists who look down on Middle America Middle America 1 A region of southern North America comprising Mexico, Central America, and sometimes the West Indies. Middle American adj. & n. . And conservative moralism mor·al·ism n. 1. A conventional moral maxim or attitude. 2. The act or practice of moralizing. 3. Often undue concern for morality. tends to be allied with tradition, whereas liberal moralism tends to be innovative. The former can thus be presented as humble submission to the wisdom of the past, whereas the latter inescapably has the air of a vanguard trying to pull backward and unenlightened people into agreement with a new orthodoxy. Democrats could, of course, try changing some of their positions on cultural issues as well as making their rhetoric on all issues more religious. Wallis wants Democrats to criticize sex and violence in movies and video games See video game console. . They would probably profit by doing so, and by calling for more measures to help parents monitor their children's leisure time (such as the V-chip) and for restrictions on the entertainment industry's marketing of its products to children. Some loss of Hollywood donations would be worth the extra votes. But on other issues, the advice seems faulty. Wallis's preferred stance of opposing same-sex marriage while supporting civil unions was tried, last year, by John Kerry tr.v. fore·stalled, fore·stall·ing, fore·stalls 1. To delay, hinder, or prevent by taking precautionary measures beforehand. See Synonyms at prevent. 2. same-sex marriage--an unwillingness that seems, on the evidence of God's Politics, to be shared by Wallis--it did not do him much good. Wallis believes that we should fight abortion by providing poor people with jobs and health care. Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy For other persons named Ted Kennedy, see Ted Kennedy (disambiguation). Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy (born February 22, 1932) is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. have recently taken a somewhat similar line. They place more emphasis on promoting contraception than Wallis does, and they are vocal supporters of legal abortion while he is not one. But all three share a belief that the abortion rate should be reduced without criminalizing the choice to abort (1) To exit a function or application without saving any data that has been changed. (2) To stop a transmission. (programming) abort - To terminate a program or process abnormally and usually suddenly, with or without diagnostic information. . When Senator Clinton gave a speech along these lines, pundits swooned. But "safe, legal, and rare" has already been a Democratic mantra mantra (măn`trə, mŭn–), in Hinduism and Buddhism, mystic words used in ritual and meditation. A mantra is believed to be the sound form of reality, having the power to bring into being the reality it represents. for 13 years now. Doubtless it is a smarter political slogan than "abortion is wonderful" would be. That doesn't mean that repeating it will win new votes. And it raises an obvious question: If Democrats think abortion is such a tragedy and want to reduce its incidence, why are they against any legal restrictions on it and, indeed, for its subsidization? A few liberal writers have given Democrats better advice than anything Wallis offers: What Democrats need to do about social issues, they say, is to get them out of the courts. Liberals' political muscles atrophied at·ro·phied adj. Characterized by atrophy. , these writers say, because they relied on courts to do the heavy lifting; they failed to build strong popular followings for abortion rights and the like. Law professor Burt Neuborne Burt Neuborne is a nationally renowned civil liberties defender. Professor Neuborne has acted as lead counsel in the recent Holocaust Litigation against the Swiss Banks. A former National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, he is currently on the faculty of New recently noted in The American Prospect that church-state litigation An action brought in court to enforce a particular right. The act or process of bringing a lawsuit in and of itself; a judicial contest; any dispute. When a person begins a civil lawsuit, the person enters into a process called litigation. has cost liberals dearly in return for very little. When I was national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union during the Reagan years and the board had sent me out to argue my umpteenth creche case, I wrote a memo saying that I didn't take the job to stamp out the Virgin Mary. Is it worth alienating people in the red states who might vote for a minimum-wage bill or back economic policies that do not savage the poor just to make a lawyer's point about separating church and state? Wallis complains in his book about "secular fundamentalists" who deny religion a voice in the public square, but he doesn't say much about the courts. If I were a Democratic politician who wanted my party to thrive in the future and had enough clout with liberals to speak my mind--if I were someone like Ted Kennedy--I would sponsor a constitutional amendment to take the same-sex marriage issue away from the courts. Most Democrats believe the public will come around on its own to supporting same-sex marriage. So why spend the next ten years losing elections because courts are forcing the issue ahead of schedule? It may be that the modern liberal conception of individual rights, and of the courts' role in vindicating those rights, is too deeply rooted in the Democratic psyche to be removed. But what the Democrats need isn't Jim Wallis's "prophetic voice." What they need is for Roe to fall. |
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