Posted on 01/24/2005 5:07:45 AM PST by billorites
Like any preacher worth his salt, Jim Wallis, the self-described "progressive evangelical" leader and editor of Sojourners magazine who has lately been discovered by Democrats in Washington desperate to learn the language of "moral values," likes to tell a story to drive a point home.
In his new book, "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It" (HarperSanFrancisco), just published this week and currently sitting at #2 on Amazon.com, Wallis recalls speaking to "a group of Boston's best and brightest Left/liberal intelligentsia" gathered in "a large living room" a few blocks off Harvard Square. Wallis, a Washington insider who has consulted both the Clinton and Bush administrations on antipoverty policy and who led a peace delegation of American religious leaders to meet with Tony Blair on the eve of the Iraq war, thought he'd given a pretty good talk on the topic of religion and public life – until he got his first question.
"But Jim, what about the Inquisition?"
"I said, 'Well, I was against it at the time. And I'm still opposed to it!' " Wallis writes with characteristic vigor. "Then I challenged him, 'Unless you want me to raise the specter of the Communist butcher Pol Pot and his brutal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia every time you talk about the need for a comprehensive national health plan, why don't we move on to a better discussion?"'
Wallis's point is about more than straw men. He uses the story to launch into a passionate critique of "secular fundamentalists" who attack politicians or public officials "who dare to speak from their religious convictions." That point of view, Wallis said this week in an interview, "has too much influence in the Democratic Party" – to the detriment of its electoral success.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
:)
I've heard this guy before and he is all for it.
I expect the Democrats to attempt to wrap their communism in religious language, as Hitlery Rodham-Stalin has been doing recently. But the most anti-Christian doctrine, short of the Koran, is the Democratic party platform.
Communism is originally an outgrowth of Christian communal groups trying to set up utopian societies in this country, long predating Marx.
If the Dem/Socialists ever drop the rabid secularism and get back to their rotos in the Christian faith, they could grow like wild fire.
When the party was hijacked by the moral relativists, feminists, anti-religion activists, and other leftist interest groups, some people with strong moral value started to abandon them.
I've picked up and read many copies of Wallis' Sojourners magazine during the last election cycle. The Catholic church I attend has the copies available for free in their literature reading rack. Of all the many popular Catholic publications I have read, I can honestly say that there is not a more leftist-liberal, anti-traditionalist rag in exitence, not even Dorothy Day's Catholic Workers communist pamphlets. Sojourners is a rabidly leftist-liberal, pro-abortion, pro-Moslem, anti-capitalist, anti-American, hate-Bush, hate the Republicans, screed in print today. Forget this guy Wallis!
This man portrays himself as an Evangelical, but; in reality, he's nothing but a socialist paradeing as an Evangelical. For more information regarding this man, and also Ron Sider- a man who is in the same league with Wallis, read "Productive Christians In An Age Of Guilt Manipulators" by David Chilton.. available to read in entirely on line at www.freebooks.com
An evangelical who supports the abortion- and gay-activity -promoting Democratic party is no evangelical -- what do these heinous policies have to do with the Gospel?
"At the time, they appealed to the social-justice feelings, but held the Judeo-Christianity moral views. So, the battle was mostly in 'economic arena'."
That was the Hubert Humphrey era. By the end of the 60's,
the Dems had taken up with the hippies and had adopted hedonism, anti-establishment leanings, (including organized religion). By the early 70's, the left had completely consumed the Democratic party, and has controlled it ever since.
Isn't it funny that the only area in which Leftists invoke religion is "social justice" -- i.e., the Leftist doctrine of taxing those who work in order to give to those who won't?
Quoth Wallis:
Where I disagree with George Bush is in his theology. I think that George Bush's God is a God of charity, and the Bible presents a God of justice, in terms of issues of poverty and economic justice...I say budgets are moral documents. They reveal the priorities and values of a family, a church, a nation.
This sentiment is nothing less than a wish for establishment of a state religion -- a redistributionist religion that forces taxpayers to give their money over to the government in the name of "economic justice."
Liberals who screech for "separation of church and state" fail to see the irony.
"what do these heinous policies have to do with the Gospel?"
Nothing, but this "con man" is accomplishing one thing....he is getting rich off his ruse.
Who? When I look at history's communal or socialist groups they seem for the most part to be Christian bashers.
Christianity teaches individualism. That doesn't fly with the collectivist.
Wallis and his ilk are guilt manipulators of people who are too busy to minister to the poor on an individual basis. They would achieve "economic justice" with taxes confiscated by the power of the government, an act of thievery at best. Not even God Almighty coerces people to tithe.
I want to see if this guy tries to take the party back to that path: fight hard for social justice but hold a conservative view on social issues. Will the Dems be in power again if they do that?
My guess is he won't, and the Dems will not regain power in the forseeable future.
While you are caring about "poverty," don't forget to consider that an American secretary today wouldn't blithely trade places with Queen Victoria - who, for all her baubles, didn't have anything that ran on electricity or gasoline, anything made of plastic, or any but the most primitive medical care.And if she wouldn't trade with Queen Victoria, she wouldn't trade places with any of the antebellum slaveowners in the South, either. The truth is that poverty which would be recognized as such by the biblical prophets is mighty thin on the ground in America. Self-righteousness is not merely a snare for Christians, and especially conservative ones; economic self-righteousness is when you demand that other people "contribute" taxes to pay for what you think is necessary charity. And which a conservative may suspect is mere "enabling" of pathology.
In a time of war against our lives and ways of life, this is what syrupy stuff he espouses.
Denny Crane: "I look to two things: First to God and then to Fox News."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.