Wallis-fest in the New Republic

The current issue of The New Republic features two articles that should be of great interest to MOJ readers, and that are also relevant to Michael's post, below, about the expression of opposition by some Calvin College professors to President Bush's policies.

"What God Owes Jefferson," by Alan Wolfe, is a lengthly review essay of two books, Jim Wallis's God's Politics and an edited volume, Taking Faith Seriously.  Wallis -- currently the Nation's most prominent left-leaning evangelical Christian -- is also the focus of Michelle Cottle's piece, "Prayer Center."

Early on in the essay, Wolfe writes: 

Once confined to the margins of American politics, the religious right seems to be everywhere these days, rallying to the cause of Terri Schiavo or lobbying intently for conservative judges.  No wonder that activists on the left of the political spectrum find themselves filled with wonder.  Surely, they believe, it ought to be possible to remind Americans that Jesus was a man of compassion who turned swords into plowshares.  On theological grounds alone, the left's case to rally God to its side ought to be stronger than the right's. "It's time to take back faith in the public square," writes Jim Wallis, America's leading evangelist for progressive causes. In the presidential campaign last year, Howard Dean asserted that he belonged to the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. Jim Wallis insists that he belongs to the Christian wing of Christianity.

Sigh.  In my view, that "Jesus was a man of compassion" does nothing to support the claim that "on theological grounds alone, the left's case to rally God to its side ought to be stronger than the right's."  That is, it does nothing to support this claim unless one proceeds from the (I think) debatable premises that (a) "the left", but not "the right", embraces "compassionate" policies, and (b) that there is nothing else in Christianity that might be relevant to the challenge of "choosing sides", besides a particular notion of "compassion" and what it requires.  Of course Jesus was, and called us to be, "compassionate"; of course this call is relevant to politics, and of course this call will likely make it hard for committed Christians to be entirely at home in today's Republican (or Democratic) Party.  But the politically relevant "theological grounds" supplied by Christianity are considerably more complicated than a bare injunction, "be compassionate".  (And, the content of the injunction "be compassionate", is also considerably more complicated than "support Professor Wolfe's slate of public-welfare programs").

There's a lot more to the essay, and I'd welcome others' reactions.  I should say, I agree entirely with a claim that Wolfe makes later, namely, that "separation of church and state" and "free exercise" are ideas that are good for religion, including "conservative" religion.  (Wolfe writes, for example:  "Of all liberal society's great innovations, none has been more important to the rise of conservative religion than the commitment to free exercise embodied in one of the First Amendment's two clauses."). Wolfe is wrong, though, to direct his complaints against a straw-man "religious right", who (Wolfe thinks) rejects these "liberal ideas."  With a few marginal exceptions, "conservative" Christians in America do not reject the "separation of church and state", properly understood, and they agree completely with Wolfe that the autonomy and freedom of the church from state control and manipulation is essential to religious freedom.  They simply believe (reasonably) that the content of the separation norm has been distorted and misshaped, into a norm of established secularism and enforced privatization of religion.  There is, in my view, nothing particularly "liberal" about these distortions. 

Wolfe writes, approvingly, that -- from the beginning -- "American religion, banned from the state, infused the culture. The more it was kept out of politics, the deeper would be its reach into every other area of life."  As has been observed many, many times on this blog, though, "politics" is part of "culture", and to exclude religion from the "state" is not, and should not be, to exclude it from "politics."  To be sure, as Wolfe cautions, it is a dangerous and bad thing for religion to be "politicized," but this does not mean it should be "privatized."

Well, the Cottle essay is well worth reading, too . . . but this post is already too long.

Rick