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Faith and PoliticsI just finished leading a 6-week community discussion for Trinitas, focused on Jim Wallis's best-selling book God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It. The liveliness of the conversation ebbed and flowed as the weeks progressed, but nearly everyone who participated affirmed Wallis's central thesis: our bipartisan system of politics in America has created an unnecessary fissure in the public arena--one can either be Republican and pro-life, pro-war, anti-poor, anti-gay, and pro-faith, or Democrat and pro-choice, pro-poor, pro-affordable health care, pro-gay, anti-war, and anti-faith. The dichotomy is not only unhelpful, but also disastrous for America.A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to hear Jim Wallis speak. I was curious to see how the perspectives he espoused in God's Politics might have changed since he wrote the book in 2004. As I suspected, Wallis was positive, hopeful, and prophetic. He noted that even democrats who wish to remain comfortably within the "secular camp" feel welcomed into the moral values conversation. Wallis avered that the country is hungry for a moral center that really addresses issues rather than using gays or the poor as pawns in a game of political chess. Wallis maintained that the Right still gets it wrong, but that conservatives are leaving the Religious Right in droves in search of a political platform that is geared toward a politics of action rather than that of complaint or blame. I was encouraged and glad to see the tides changing. Today I read in this article that Hillary Clinton, one of the front runners for the 2008 democratic nomination, has recently hired a faith consultant to help her give a public voice to her moral convictions. In speaking of her faith, those close to Senator Clinton insist-as the old Prego pasta sauce commercials used to say--"It's in there!" If that is true, and not just some cloned political strategy purloined from the Karl Rove play book, it needs to be visible come Iowa. Peace. posted by Jake at 12/15/2006 09:57:00 AM  
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Hopefully, both sides looking for some middle ground will be a reality come election time.
I need to read that book!