Posted on 01/17/2005 12:20:04 AM PST by nickcarraway
Democrats, reeling from the Republicans' success at courting churchgoers, are focusing new attention on a religious and political anomaly: Jim Wallis, one of the few prominent left-leaning leaders among evangelical Protestants.
At the start of the Congressional session, Senate Democrats invited Mr. Wallis to address their members at a private session to discuss issues. A group of about 15 House Democrats invited him to a breakfast discussion about dispelling their party's secular image. And NBC News has enlisted him to appear as a guest during its inauguration coverage opposite Dr. James C. Dobson, one of the most prominent evangelical conservatives.
Last week, Mr. Wallis's publisher, a religious imprint of HarperCollins, released his new book, "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It," moving it up from a publication date this spring to coincide with the inauguration. It immediately jumped to the top of the best-seller list at Amazon.com, where it hovered between No. 2 and No. 7 over the weekend.
Mr. Wallis, the founder and editor of the Christian magazine Sojourners, has written two previous books on similar themes, "Who Speaks for God?" and "The Soul of Politics," without making much of a splash, but since the November presidential election he has drawn a new level of attention, especially from Democrats and liberals.
"Failure makes you reassess," he said. "The Democratic Party has increasingly had a problem as being perceived as secular fundamentalists."
James P. Manley, a spokesman for the Senate minority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said the reason Mr. Reid, a Mormon, had invited Mr. Wallis to speak was obvious. "It is clear from the results of the election that we Democrats need to be much more forceful and clear in communicating their faith and values to the electorate," Mr. Manley said.
"He can help us communicate with the rising number of evangelicals in the country, which is right now a Republican constituency," Mr. Manley said, "but which Wallis argues could easily become part of the Democratic constituency as well."
Mr. Wallis, a registered Democrat, told the senators that the Bible contains more than 3,000 references to alleviating poverty. He said Democrats needed to do a better job of explaining the moral and religious foundations of policies intended to help the poor, protect the environment and reduce violence.
He also urged the Democrats to look for middle ground on the social issues most troubling to religious traditionalists, like obscenity and abortion. Whatever their stance on abortion rights, he argued, Democrats need to treat its occurrence as a moral problem and propose ways to reduce it.
Several Roman Catholic senators, recalling that during the last election some conservative bishops condemned Catholic politicians who supported abortion rights, asked pointed questions on the subject, one person present said.
A few days later, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts echoed some of the same themes in a speech, calling for the party to "speak more directly to the issues of deep conscience" and emphasizing efforts to lower the abortion rate while preserving abortion rights.
Stephanie Cutter, a spokeswoman for Mr. Kennedy, said that he and Mr. Wallis had talked often over the years but that the part of the speech that most reflected his influence was a discussion of poverty, not the senator's thoughts about abortion.
Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, a Catholic who has led Democratic efforts to appeal to religious voters and who invited Mr. Wallis to talk with House Democrats, said many were frustrated at the public perception of the party as secular despite their personal devotion to their respective faiths. As a sympathetic evangelical Christian, Mr. Wallis could help "understand what the perceptions are," she said, applauding him for calling the federal budget "a moral issue."
But Dr. Richard Land, president of the ethics and religious liberty commission of the 16-million-member Southern Baptist Convention, called Mr. Wallis "a left-wing evangelical" ill-qualified to instruct Democrats on conservative Christian values. "The Democrats are turning to the guy they can find that is least scary to them," Dr. Land said.
He argued that Mr. Wallis misunderstood conservative evangelical voters because he conflated the moral issue of alleviating poverty with the practical issue of whether Democratic policies are the way to do it.
"I don't know anybody who is in favor of poverty," Dr. Land said. "He doesn't seem to have adequately comprehended that the debate is over, based on the 30-year experiment, about whether big government or free markets work better at producing wealth for everybody."
First time I ever heard of him. What brand of protestant does he claim to be?
PBS's religion and ethics program http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week720/profile.html had a feature on Congressman John Lewis this weekend. His current cause seems to be immigration. He's amazingly anti-Bush, and I guess I can be critical sometimes too but do blacks really feel he hasn't done well by him? That's what he says here: http://www.reachm.com/amstreet/archives/2004/10/11/john-lewis-fights-back/ . We need a way to represent American citizens in the obligations we have, and I would hope it would be color blind. Maybe it's time for that. I don't know that Rev. Lewis can accept such a change, though. But PBS wanted to talk him and his agenda up, and they sure got a chance for it. Is this part of the new left wing moral values campaign?
Fred Barnes is right and I'm probably wrong. We will see how the claim stands up when the Senator actually has to vote on pro-life legislation over the coming year. Here's a good opportunity for him to show he's not Barbra Boxer's brother.
Klein quotes Kate Michelman, the former head of NARAL Pro-Choice America, as saying of Reid, "I'm honored to be his friend." When Reid ran for Democratic leader, neither NARAL nor Planned Parenthood voiced a peep of opposition. And WeNews, an online publication for women, concluded Reid's ascension wouldn't affect the strong pro-abortion position of Senate Democrats. Meanwhile, Douglas Johnson, the chief lobbyist for National Right to Life, said Reid "is certainly no ally of the pro-life movement. He usually votes against pro-life interests when it matters most."
In other words, more of that slick labeling I mentioned in an earlier post. I hope they keep it up. Deceit only carries you so far and the Democrats' strategem is getting tired.
Speaking of Jim Wallis, this is an example:
Bogus Betrayal - [New York Times {mis}identifies livid lib as disillusioned Bush supporter
They were never conservatives to begin with. There are liberals who do serve in a Republican administration. They simply don't reveal their true colors until well after they've left office.
Unfortunately it carried Bill Clinton very far.
I still can't get over how funny it is to have the guy who wrote off his 'charitable' gift of used underwear on his income taxes act the part of talking head to persuade OTHER Americans to dig deeply in their pocketbooks for the relief effort overseas.
11. From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs
Oh yeah? Tell me how candidates Clinton has endorsed have fared in past elections. What goes around, comes around.
Nah. More like, "Thy God is the Democratic Party and The One Commandment Is "If It Feels Good, Do It." That's all that's necessary to be on the Left these days.
So now the scumbag Democrats are going to revise the Bible and proclaim Jesus a big-government socialist. They will paint him as a typical Demcorat: an athiest, a drunken pornographer, and an abortion enthusiast. Finally, they'll claim He was a homosexual. The scumbag Democrats will stop at nothing.
Moral Absolutes Ping.
Actually it's pretty funny. They dredge up some leftist Democrats who claim allegiance to religious denominations in order to whitewash the Dem's leftist agenda; to make it look as though there's some kind of religious morality involved.
It's like watching someone trip over their own feet over and over again.
I wonder if anyone will be fooled?
Let me know if anyone wants on/off this pinglist.
Note: if they really believed that alleviating poverty was a religious duty, they'd let people keep more of their own money, so they could donate more to churches and private charities who help the poor.
Some of them already do claim Jesus Christ was a homosexual. Sickos.
Oh... Democrats look to the polls to see if they should be religious... Now I understand. So when the Muslim population in the US grows they will become Muslim? My guess is yes...
They they will say Dubya called Ted Kennedy the conservative Senator from MS.
"Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners..."
That's all you need to know.
Book Review: Why the Left Is Not RightThe Religious Left: Who They Are and What They Believe by Ronald Nash Published in The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty - December 1997 by Doug Bandow http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=3918
(snip)
...However, Nash devotes most of his attention to the lesser-known left-wing evangelicalism. He argues that the New Left and “the adversary culture” of the 1960s spawned political liberalism among Protestants who purport to hold a more conservative, orthodox theological view. Nash focuses on three leading leftish evangelicals: Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners magazine; Ron Sider, founder of Evangelicals for Social Action and author of Rich Christians in a World of Hunger; and Tony Campolo, sociology professor, well-published author, and presidential confidante.
The scrutiny is warranted, though Nash seems more skeptical of the trio’s good intentions than is justified. Wallis, for instance, lives his beliefs. Two decades ago Wallis moved his magazine to a poor section of Washington, D.C., and formed a community of the same name. At the same time, however, he has, as Nash points out, remained imbued with the leftist Zeitgeist of the 1960s. The boat people fleeing communist Vietnam, Wallis wrote, were leaving “to support their consumer habit in other lands.” Their departure should not be taken to “discredit” Vietnam. Wallis’s views toward Cuba and Nicaragua were similarly skewed. ...
Ooops I meant - They they will say Dubya called Ted Kennedy the conservative Senator from MA
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