God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It

I like Jim Wallis' stories. The stories illustrate his efforts to create a shared vision. In the past few weeks since the election, I've been repeating, like a mantra, the title of Chapter 21, "The Critical Choice: Hope versus Cynicism." It's essentially a spiritual choice, but one with some structure, so let's call that religious, because unless we do this together, there is nothing left. We do this in community, with a certain shared vocabulary; it is not possible in a private spiritual bubble. I'm grateful for his persistent prophetic voice, calling us together.

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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.

A bit dated, but still a good perspective on what we need American politics. A worthy read for any Christian American. ( )

Recommended or quoted from by Ronald Rolheiser, May 3-5, 2013, King's House talks on Fear and Tensions within the Church and Culture and Ourselves

This is a book stuffed full of common sense and good Christian, and I am sure all other religious groupings', sentiment.

The book is,mainly, about America but so much of what Mr. Wallis says is true of Britain too. The right have high-jacked Christianity as a weapon to attack Gay people and to justify war against non-Christian countries whilst, the left declare religion to be the opiate of the people. This latter point is particularly interesting in the British context, as the church played a great part in setting up the Labour Party.

I particularly like Mr Wallis' definition of religious politics (borrowed from Abraham Lincoln); " Our task should not be to invoke religion and the name of God by claiming God's blessing and endorsement for all our national policies and practices - saying, in effect, that God is on our side. Rather, we should pray and worry earnestly whether we are on God's side." This seems to, in a couple of short sentences, cut the ground from the 'Bible-bashers' and set a clear delineated path for all men, of whatever, religious and political persuasion. I shall try to bear it in mind.

The saddest part of this book is that it was updated, with a new forward, for sale in Britain, following the re-election of George W Bush, in 2005. Jim Wallis is optimistic that the rational religious people of America will take back the Bible for the people: since then, of course, we have had the rise of what I can only describe as the religious nutters (aka the Tea Party). At the moment, this is an American entity but, what our transatlantic cousins do today, we Brits will follow a fortnight next Tuesday. I am not looking forward to this trend coming here! ( )