MahonyFest 2007 - Jim Wallis a key speaker

Closed Cafeteria ^ | February 1, 2007 | Gerald Augustinus

[NYer]

You may remember MahonyFest 2006 with dread. The Religious Education Congress in LA showcases the cardinal's violations of liturgical norms, bad taste in music, gimpy wanna be pop stars and the oddest dancing this side of "Hair". Then there are the speakers, some of which make one wonder.

Every day has a main speaker. On Saturday it's a priest specializing in "social justice". The Sunday address will be given by Jim Wallis. Who's Jim Wallis? Another "social justice" guy. Or rather, "socialist justice". A Protestant married to an Anglican priestess, he's as left as it gets. He founded the magazine Sojourners. He has a book out called "God's Politics - Why the Right gets it wrong and the Left doesn't get it". Here the promo text:

Since when did believing in God and having moral values make you pro-war, pro-rich, and pro-Republican? And since when did promoting and pursuing a progressive social agenda with a concern for economic security, health care, and educational opportunity mean you had to put faith in God aside?

God's Politics offers a clarion call to make both our religious communities and our government more accountable to key values of the prophetic religious tradition - that is, make them pro-justice, pro-peace, pro-environment, pro-equality, pro-consistent ethic of life (beyond single issue voting), and pro-family (without making scapegoats of single mothers or gays and lesbians). These are the values of love and justice, reconciliation, and community that Jesus taught and that are at the core of what many of us believe, Christian or not.

While he makes some valid points, the alternatives he offers are rather stale. He's a member of the "Religious Left", a new Democrat effort to counter Republicans in the area of religion. I think the effort won't bear much fruit since it mainly focuses on economics.

[NYer]

Jim Wallis is a bestselling author, public theologian, preacher, speaker, activist, and international commentator on ethics and public life. His latest book, God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It (HarperCollins, 2005), was on The New York Times bestseller list for four months. He is president and executive director of Sojourners/Call to Renewal, where he is editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine—whose print and electronic publication reaches more than 250,000 people—and also convenes a national network of churches, faith-based organizations, and individuals working to overcome poverty in America. Jim Wallis speaks at more than 200 events each year and his columns have appeared in major newspapers such The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe, among others. He appears regularly on radio and television programs, including Meet the Press, Hardball, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The O’Reilly Factor, and National Public Radio. In addition, Jim Wallis teaches a course at Harvard University on “Faith, Politics, and Society,” and is the author of eight books, including Faith Works; The Soul of Politics: A Practical and Prophetic Vision for Change; Who Speaks for God? A New Politics of Compassion, Community, and Civility; and Call to Conversion.

Jim Wallis was raised in a Midwest evangelical family. As a teenager, his questioning of the racial segregation in his church and community led him to the black churches and neighborhoods of inner-city Detroit. He spent his student years involved in the civil rights and antiwar movements. While at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Illinois, Jim and several other students started a small magazine and community with a Christian commitment to social justice that has grown into a national faith-based organization and network. In 1979, Time magazine named Jim Wallis one of the “50 Faces for America’s Future.”

Jim lives in inner-city Washington, D.C., with his wife, Joy Carroll, one of the first women ordained in the Church of England and author of Beneath the Cassock: The Real-life Vicar of Dibley, and their sons, Luke (8) and Jack (3). He is a Little League baseball coach.

(September 2006)

[NYer]

Mahony Fest 2006

[narses]

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[AnAmericanMother]

Yeeeep! What's that supposed to be -- "Heil Mahoney"??!!??

More than a passing resemblance there (that's a shot from the opening of the Olympics in Berlin in 1936).

[ClaireSolt]

I brought Wallis' book home but found it a tough slog and gave up.

[livius]

Actually, I think that's supposed to indicate that they're "feeling the Spirit." You know, as Rev. Billy Bob of the First Flaming Pillar of Fire Flat-Out Gospel Holiness Church says, put your foot in the bathtub and your hand on the radio and...

[AnAmericanMother]

. . . and "shake hands with Jesus!"

I'm sorry, that looks way too much like a Nuremberg rally for my taste.

Why can't they just hold hands like all the touchy-feelies do for the "Our Father"??

[dighton]

And here you don’t even get Jesse Owens.

[rogator]

"On Saturday it's a priest specializing in "social justice". The Sunday address will be given by Jim Wallis. "

You are takiking about the church of modernism. You would expect Mahony to have Traditionally Catholic speakers?

[madprof98]

I'm surprised Wallis would appear with Mahony. The Cardinal is pretty soft on abortion.

[vox_freedom]

[livius]

Seeking his contact lens - or listening for his master's voice?

[AnAmericanMother]

WHAT is going on there? Did he drop a Host?

[vox_freedom]

Knowing about Phony Mahony, he is probably looking for his faith...

[dsc]

Seeing that crowd reminds me of the confrontation I had with a priest here...he told me that there were "lots of people" who had no objections to the things I was complaining about, as though that were a valid argument.

It nauseates me to see how many people think they are Catholic and yet have no problem making the Satanic, Nazi Heil salute during Mass.

In this diocese, they do it when sending the children off to...whatever they do instead of catechesis...as the laity "join" the priest in "blessing" the children.

Looks like it's an eighty-mile round trip to the nearest reverent Mass. Wish I could spend an hour talking with a faithful priest.

[Tax-chick]

If you know that Cardinal Mahoney is a Goa'uld, it all becomes clear.

Wallis is just a patsy.

[NYer]

Wish I could spend an hour talking with a faithful priest.

Our faithful priest wishes you were a member of his congregation. He gets frustrated delivering orthodox catholic homilies to the disinterested.

[bethelgrad]

Is the "salute" a normal Catholic practice?

[dsc]

I consider it to be an abnormal Catholic practice.

I'm sure a lot of people would roll their eyes, but I believe that the smoke of Satan has entered the sacristy. Satan's Nazis used that gesture, and I'm sure it amuses him that his modernists have Catholics using it too.

[dsc]

"He gets frustrated delivering orthodox catholic homilies to the disinterested."

He can e-mail them to me any time. I assure you I will read them.