February 22, 2005
Jim Wallis Talks About "God's Politics" (his Latest Best Seller) and Values...by Which Wallis Doesn't Mean Hate, Greed, and War Mongering
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
...religion has to be disciplined by democracy. That means you don’t enter the public square and say I’m religious so I ought to win. Or God has spoken to me directly and I have the fix for Social Security. You say my faith motivates me. It shapes my convictions or it compels me to act on behalf of the poor, or peace, or whatever.
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"Christianity Today" describes Jim Wallis as "an evangelical leader in the faith-based Left and a frequent critic of George W. Bush." Is there any wonder BuzzFlash is drawn to him? Both preacher and down-in-the-trenches social justice activist, Wallis currently is touring the country as a New York Times best-selling author discussing and signing his book, God's Politics, a BuzzFlash premium. Not surprisingly, Wallis' message of inclusion and involvement is reverberating with Christians who don't like the right wing's "holier than thou" approach to politics, with its narrow and divisive emphasis on abortion and gay marriage. BuzzFlash talked with Jim Wallis about progressive values, God, and good deeds.
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BuzzFlash: The subtitle of your book, God’s
Politics, poses the question, "Why the right gets it wrong
and the left doesn’t get it." What do you mean by that?
Jim Wallis: The right is very comfortable with the language
of faith and values and God and faith. In fact, they think they own it
sometimes, or almost own religion or own God.
And then they narrow everything to one or two hot-button social issues,
as if abortion and gay marriage are the only two moral values questions.
And those are important issues and they need a deeper, wider conversation
– kind of a moral discussion on all sides. That’s fine.
But did anybody really suggest or imagine these are the only two moral
values issues? I’m an Evangelical Christian and I find 3,000 verses in
the Bible on the poor, so fighting poverty is a moral value too, or protecting
the environment – protecting God’s creation is a moral value. The ethics
of war – whether we go to war, how we go to war, whether we tell the truth
about the war – are fundamental moral and religious questions.
So the right wing narrows and restricts, and a broader, deeper conversation
would really challenge the agenda of the right which values wealth over
work, and favors the rich over the poor, and basically in foreign policy,
sees war as a first resort and not a last resort.
The left, on the other hand...well there was a Democratic Party a few
decades ago that was vitally linked to a civil rights movement led by
black churches. And every major social reform movement in America has
been in part fueled by religion, by faith – abolition of slavery, women’s
suffrage, child labor law reform and, of course, civil rights.
But now, in the last several decades, the Democrats have become increasingly
uncomfortable with the language of religion, faith – even values sometimes
– and they sound very secular. They even sound, to many, hostile to religion.
I know a lot of religious people who share the Democrats’ social agenda
-- in fact, I’m more progressive than the Democrats often are – but they
feel disrespected by Democrats for applying their faith or their values.
So Democrats have to recover their heart and their soul. They need to
understand the separation of church and state does not mean the segregation
of moral values and religious discourse – religious language, even – from
public life. Where would we be if the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King,
Jr., had kept his faith to himself? He did it with a Bible in one hand
and the Constitution in the other hand, and had a moral discourse on politics
in a way that he made everybody feel invited and no one got left out.
BuzzFlash: Let’s move on to the issue of inclusion versus
exclusion. If we look at the Bush Administration and its fundamentalist
supporters, they exclude anyone that they believe has not been "saved"
by Jesus. In fact, you probably recall that both Pat Robertson and Jerry
Falwell indicated they thought the 9/11 horrific tragedy was a result
of America having become a morally fallen nation.
And so they view – and at times, even President Bush has implied this
in his good versus evil paradigm – that there’s the saved and the unsaved.
The Democrats respond, or the non-fundamentalists, with revulsion, because
that’s a politics where religion excludes people who don’t believe exactly
what a fundamentalist denomination does.
You depressant the politics of inclusion – working with different denominations,
and different religions. So, in a society where there is officially a
separation of church and state, how does one work with different religions?
And even though people pray to gods of their own religion, what brings
the values together?
Jim Wallis: Well, having had two debates this week with
Jerry Falwell, I want to tell you that he excludes me. Listen – religion
doesn’t have a monopoly on morality, and that should be clearly stated.
What we’re finding in this book tour and in my book signings – from Austin,
Texas to Dayton, Ohio to wherever we go – the usual reading to 50 people
sitting quietly in their seats has grown to be town meetings with 400
people sitting on the floor.
And they’re not just large crowds, they’re diverse crowds.
You’ve got Evangelicals who don’t feel represented by Jerry Falwell. You’ve
got Catholics who feel the bishops – the right-wing bishops who command
them to single-issue voting only on abortion, and ignore all the rest
of Catholic social teaching – they don’t feel spoken for by them. You’ve
got mainline Protestants who feel left out of the whole conversation and
always disrespected. You’ve got black churches who feel like this is always
a white conversation about religion. Latinos, Asian Christians, and a
lot of Jews are coming out – rabbis and their congregations. A lot of
the synagogues are having book studies on the book. And it’s full of Mikah
and Amos and Isaiah, and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, as well as Martin
Luther King, Jr. And a lot of the Muslims who are looking for a better,
more humane, inclusive religion are coming out to this, too, of course.
A lot of folks who are not religious but would call themselves spiritual
are interested, and a whole lot of young people – a whole lot of young
people who maybe saw me on Jon Stewart, on The Daily Show, and they are
now saying we didn’t know that Christians could care about poverty, the
environment, or be against the war in Iraq. They didn’t know a progressive
religion option even existed.
And while that’s amazing and sad, it’s now heartening that they see that
one does exist. So they’re coming out in droves – high school kids and
college kids and students. We’re having these great town meetings, basically.
What was going to be a book signing became a town meeting in all these
bookstores. And of course we’re having it in churches and colleges, too.
The country is hungry – hungry – for a new conversation, a better dialogue,
on faith, values and politics. And the one thing that’s true – I can say
after four weeks on the road here – is in regard to faith and values and
politics, the monologue of the religious right is now over and a new dialogue
has begun.
BuzzFlash: I’ll paraphrase what you said on the Jon Stewart
show.You said that Jesus, if He were here today and in the White House,
wouldn’t have begun His work by starting a war and lowering taxes for
the wealthiest people in the country.
Jim Wallis: Well, it was really kind of funny. Jon, and
I made a nice connection on the show – I just liked him a lot. He said,
“So, Jim, you like want to apply religion like the teachings of Jesus
like to politics?” And I could feel like millions of his audience saying,
“Oh, no – Jon’s got some wacky right-wing Evangelical. It’s going to ruin
my favorite show.” And I said, “Well, Jon, I hardly think that Jesus’
two first priorities would have been a capital gains tax cut and the occupation
of Iraq.” And the audience started to relax and think,“Yeah!” and cheered.
At one point, my favorite – I cited the 25th chapter of
Matthew, where Jesus says, “I was hungry. I was thirsty. I was naked.
I was sick. I was a stranger. I was in prison. And you didn’t come to
see me. You didn’t minister to me.”
And they say, we didn’t know – “When did we see you hungry, thirsty, naked,
sick, stranger, in prison?” And as He says, “As you’ve done to the least
of these, you’ve done to Me.” And so the audience – this young audience
– cheered for Matthew 25. I thought it was great.
And then I said, “How did Jesus become pro-rich, pro-war, and only pro-American?”
And I’ll tell you, the response from that youthful, you know, pretty secular
crowd of people in the audience and around the country has been just overwhelming.
First of all, it shows you how many people watch Jon’s show. Lots of people
watch the show, and not just young people. But to have that conversation
and break open the stereotype – this, in the cultural zeitgeist, the stereotype
still is, religious equals right wing. And if this book helps to break
that stereotype, I will be very happy indeed.
BuzzFlash: I’m looking at parts three, four and five
of your book – “When Did Jesus Become Pro-War?” “When Did Jesus Become
Pro-Rich?” “When Did Jesus Become a Selective Moralist?” Within the Christian
denominations and certainly vis-à-vis President Bush and his fundamentalist
supporters, there is a difference of opinion – a battle – over Jesus at
this point. If you are a Christian, what are you to make of this?
Jim Wallis: Well, I think, you know, the real battle
is not between being religious and being secular. That’s the old battle.
The real battle is between very different versions of faith, very different
versions of what it means to be religious. I don’t quibble with George
Bush’s piety, his personal faith. I don’t think it’s fake or fraudulent.
But I challenge his theology.
And so basically we have a real debate about what faith means in the world.
Like you said before, is it exclusive or inclusive? Does it support a
prosperity gospel that basically says the rich are so because of God’s
blessing, and the poor are so because of their own failings and their
own faults? Or is this a God who stands on the side of the poor, like
the prophets do, and challenge the rich and powerful to change their ways
and their policies?
Is this a God who is somehow an American God who has called
America to lead a war on terrorism, and even the President to do that?
Or as Jesus said, don’t just see the log in your adversary’s eye, but
also the one in your own eye. Just to see evil in the faces of September
11th is one thing. Of course, anybody who can’t see evil in the face of
September 11th is suffering from some kind of post-modern relativism,
I suppose. But to say they are evil and we are good is bad theology. It’s
simply bad theology and it leads to bad foreign policy.
BuzzFlash: I’m not quite sure of the implications of
what you’ve said about moving from a secular to a a religious society.
I regard a secular society as a society that includes all faiths or people
who don’t have faith.
Jim Wallis: Right.
BuzzFlash: And it means, not that society is without
religion, but that the government doesn’t impose any one religion or religious
interpretation...
Jim Wallis: Right.
BuzzFlash: ...on all the people of society because people
have the right to believe in their own faith, or not believe in a faith.
I just want to know if you are comfortable with that definition of secular.
Jim Wallis: Yes. I was saying that, when I was growing
up, it was often viewed as a real battle between religion – us – and secularism
– secular humanism. That’s always the big fight. I’m saying no – within
the religious community, the real battle is what kind of faith are we
talking about?
Two – there are different versions, different visions of faith that are
really in a serious debate now, a serious dialogue. And in the religious
community, there’s a real debate about what they feel. I’ve had big debates,
as I mentioned, with Jerry Falwell. We have very different visions and
versions of the Christian faith – very different.
Now we live in a democratic, pluralistic, very diverse society in which
we believe strongly in the separation of church and state. And that means
the government does not establish religion, does not establish one religion
over others, or doesn’t establish religion over unbelief. There’s no distinction
between whether a citizen is religious or not.
In the public square, we have a moral discourse on politics. We don't
vote for somebody who prays the most often or has learned the most Bible
verses or goes to church the most often. We don’t ask about the religiosity
of a candidate. We ask about their moral compass – what is their moral
sense of politics? And if faith shapes that, then it’s fine to learn about
how their faith shapes their moral compass, whether they’re a Joe Lieberman
or a George Bush or a John Edwards or Barack Obama?
But in the public square, religion has to be disciplined by democracy.
That means you don’t enter the public square and say I’m religious
so I ought to win. Or God has spoken to me directly and I have the fix
for Social Security. You say my faith motivates me. It shapes my convictions
or it compels me to act on behalf of the poor or peace or whatever.
But then you say, here is my best offering on this question, and I have
to persuade my fellow citizens. I have to persuade them that what I think
is best for the common good – not that it’s the best religious vision,
but it’s best for all of us.
Martin Luther King had a wonderful vision of the beloved
community, where everybody had a place at the table, and especially those
who were left out and left behind had a front-row seat, you know? But
then he said, now we need a civil rights law. And by 1964, he persuaded
his fellow citizens and the Congress that this was good for the country.
In 1965, we got the Voting Rights Act. So he had to persuade – he and
all the civil rights religious leaders, they didn’t say, you know, this
should happen because I’m a Baptist or because I’m a Jew. They said this
is best for the country. So religion has to operate under the democratic
discipline and argue what’s best for the common good.
BuzzFlash: You live in D.C., where you have devoted yourself
to empowering those who are poor, to try to move beyond their poverty
into mainstream society and become productive citizens and move up the
ladder of economic opportunity to sustain their families and give their
families a financially and spiritually fulfilling upbringing. In your
deeds, you carry out your religious convictions.
Do you think that, at least with the Jerry Falwells of the world, and
the Pat Robertsons, there is a disconnect between the language of theology
-- their religious assertions -- and their deeds? Do they seem more concerned
with criticizing people who don’t share their interpretation of the Bible
than in doing the type of deeds that you are doing from day to day, such
as helping the poor in D.C.?
Jim Wallis: Well, in the New Testament, it says, “Faith
without works is dead.” So unless there are deeds – unless there is action
to carry out faith, and even to show that it’s real – then faith – that’s
a pretty strong word – is dead.
I was asked to do a national television interview with Brian Williams
on Inauguration Day. They wanted my perspective because God is almost
always invoked when a President is sworn in. But I said days like this
remind me of the prophet Amos when he said, “Take away from me the noise
of your solemn assemblies, but let justice roll down like waters, and
righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
So I think religion has to be taken to the street. It has to be real on
the ground. And I also think Christians ought to be those who lead by
example. Religious people – I mean, the best rabbis I know, the best priests
and pastors I know, the best lay people I know, are the ones who just
do their faith. You know, they don’t just proclaim their faith, they do
their faith. St. Francis once said, “Always preach the gospel, and use
words if necessary.” You know, so he’s making your point. He’s saying
it’s what we do. That’s the key. And then people say, "Why do you
do all these things?" And I say: "Oh, it’s because of my faith,
because I think that’s what Jesus is calling me to do and I’m trying to
be a follower of Jesus." So I think putting faith into action is
critical.
I also think the prophets had very strong words to say about kings and
rulers and judges and employers and all the rest. They didn’t hold back.
But the people Jesus had the strongest words for were the hypocritical
rulers, both religious and political, where people were just mostly saying
what was wrong with somebody else. And I think religion has gotten into
that too often, rather than calling us all to a higher standard. I always
say the best way to find common ground is to move to higher ground.
BuzzFlash: Let me close by paraphrasing something Susan
Jacoby brought up in an interview we did recently, a famous statement
Abraham Lincoln made about the Civil War. He said, in essence, I can’t
say whether God is on our side, but my great concern is to be on the side
of God. That seems to be emblematic of much of what we’re discussing.
President Bush says God is on his side. He has said he was selected by
God to be President, that he was leading a Crusade, although he backtracked
on that comment, and that God had chosen him to lead this war against
Iraq, and that God is on his side. This is pretty definitive. As you say,
perhaps he indeed believes that. Lincoln, on the other hand, said we must
hope we are on the side of God, which is a very different emphasis.
Jim Wallis: Yes, you’re right. These are the two ways
of bringing God into public life. This is our American history. One is
God on our side, and that leads to the worst things in politics. It leads
to overconfidence and hubris – triumphalism – and often to bad foreign
policy, often to wars, and in this case, now preemptive, unilateral war.
The other way about worrying – praying earnestly if we’re on God’s side
– brings into politics the things that we're missing today, like humility
and penitence and reflection, and even accountability.
Lincoln got it right. We don’t claim God’s blessing on our politics and
policies. We don’t claim that God is on our side. We worry, we pray, we
just always examine ourselves to see if we are on God’s side. And if Lincoln
got it right, I think Martin Luther King did it best. With that Bible
in one hand and the Constitution in the other hand, he really didn’t pronounce,
he persuaded. He didn’t shut people out; he invited everybody in to a
moral discourse on politics. And he said we can do better. We can do better
than this by our democratic values, by our religious values.
We have to ask what kind of people do we want to be, what kind of nation
do we want to have, what kind of world do you want to leave for our children.
And when every major progressive social movement in our nation’s history
was fueled and driven in part by religion, by faith, by moral values,
we have a very powerful, prophetic and progressive religious tradition
in America and around the world.
I think of my friends – Desmond Tutu in South Africa and Oscar Romero
in El Salvador, the Archbishop there set against the junta and the U.S.-supported
military dictatorship – and all these movements around the world where
religion has been progressive.
I had a wonderful experience in Memphis recently. I wanted to get a cab,
and a 23-year-old African-American woman who was a bellhop at the hotel
was helping me find a cab. She sees the book under my arm and says, “Oh,
God’s Politics, all my friends are talking about that book. Is
it good?” Then the two older bellhops, who knew I was preaching in town,
whispered to her that I wrote it. She said, “Oh, I’m sorry.” I told her,
“Don’t be sorry – that’s great!”
And the technicians who worked with me before a TV appearance
said to me, we saw you on this, we saw you on that...we don’t normally
listen to the people we wire up, but we’re all listening this morning.
When ordinary people are having this conversation about what faith and
values mean to our politics, that’s just the best!
BuzzFlash: Jim, thank you very much for your time. It’s
a wonderful and inspirational book that reframes the nation's conversation
about religion.
Jim Wallis: Well, it’s great to be on your web site.
It sounds like you’re doing some great stuff.
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
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Resources
God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get
It
by Jim Wallis
http://www.buzzflash.com/premiums/05/02/pre05013.html
Sojourners
http://www.sojo.net/
Call To Renewal, a faith-based movement to overcome poverty
http://www.calltorenewal.org/index.cfm