An answer to those who ask "What is the religious community doing...

[Sapphire Blue]

... to stand up to the bush administration?"

An excerpt from a Sojourners email...

Our Moral Choice
by Jim Wallis

On Tuesday, March 7, Jim Wallis spoke on Capitol Hill at a "Rally to Protect America's Priorities" on the proposed 2007 budget, sponsored by the Emergency Campaign for America's Priorities, ACORN, and the U.S. Student Association. Following are his remarks.

I want to begin with what the Religious Community said all last year: A budget is a moral document! That was our clarion cry in the 2006 budget debate. If some political leaders haven't got the message yet - just wait until this year.

You see, we believe that fiscal choices, economic choices are also moral choices and, for us, even religious choices. Who is important? And who is not? What is important? And what is not? Who do we most value? And who don't we value at all? They are fiscal choices, but also moral and religious matters.

Jesus actually got uncharacteristically judgmental about these kinds of choices. He said, "As you have done to the least of these, you have done to me." Are you paying attention yet, members of Congress?

Because of moral pressure - much of it from the religious community who every day care for the poor that our national politics neglect - last year's budget almost didn't pass. It took a fast trip home from Dick Cheney to pass the budget in the Senate and, in the House, the final budget measure only passed by a few votes. Some elected officials were making new moral choices. But the White House and the Republican leadership seem not to have gotten this message from the religious community, by the look of the new budget they now propose. I thought we were supposed to be their base?

(snip)

We've had a year of organizing around the budget in the religious community. We are watching this debate very carefully. We will hold our elected officials accountable in 2006 and 2008 for their votes on this budget - whether they vote for or against poor families.

If you think we were aroused last year, we were just getting started. Budgets are moral documents and we will fight this budget. And that's our moral choice.


Wallis' remarks can be read in their entirety @ http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=sojomail.display&issue=060308#4

Please also see this thread & take action...

**** CHN Report on Federal Budget for FY 2007 **** EMAIL CONGRESS ****: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x601371

[greyl]

1. Wallis isn't a great example.

He's head and shoulders above Falwell et al, but he's still an evangelical who believes the state should be infused with the morals of his "one true" religion.

Also, I don't think the question is "what is the religious community doing to stand up to the bush admin?", rather it's "what are they doing to stand up for human rights, tolerance, and the separation of church and state?".

"For Wallis, religion is not one possible source among many for influential narratives of justice; the Bible is the source. (There is one place in the book where he speaks of "our biblical and other holy texts," but he doesn't elaborate or clarify the reference.) He does allow that the United States is a pluralist society and that it includes citizens who do not share his theology, his religious conviction, or his embrace of the Bible as Scripture. Moreover, he argues that Christians ought to engage in democratic public debate, to bring themselves under what he calls "democratic discipline," rather than attempting simply to take over the mechanisms of the state. Yet Wallis states again and again his overarching perspective: "The real question is not whether religious faith should influence a society and its politics, but how." Religious faith is no generic category here; it means biblical religion.

http://www.slate.com/id/2111701

In the case of abortion, schizophrenia abounds: First Jim Wallis, the moderate evangelical preacher who speaks frequently on behalf of religious progressives, tells us we shouldn't focus on this issue at all; then he expounds on what the Democrats should do to attract "'centrist' Catholic and evangelical voters." Wallis says the Democrats should "welcome pro-life Democrats--Catholics and evangelicals--and have a serious conversation with them" about how to reduce teen pregnancy, make adoption easier and conditions for low-income women better. It is odd for a progressive religious leader to suggest that Democrats, rather than Republicans, are the obstacle to helping teens and low-income women but perhaps not surprising from a man whose personal commitment to dialogue has included demonstrating at a nuclear plant and an abortion clinic on the same day.

Wallis is the most visible antiabortion cleric in the progressive movement, but even those who are personally pro-choice won't touch the issue. The Rev. Bob Edgar, a pro-choice former member of Congress who now heads the National Council of Churches, has been active in a number of the new groups that are promoting a progressive religious agenda excluding women's equality and reproductive rights. That's because some of the council's members hold different opinions on these issues, and it does not want to offend the Catholic Church. For the same reason, the oldest of the religious left groups, the Interfaith Alliance, refuses to take a position on controversial social issues, opting for a vague commitment to "tolerance."

Such evasiveness not only works to the advantage of religious conservatives but hampers attempts to articulate a coherent religious left agenda. After all, these issues, especially international access to safe and legal abortion and recognition of the civil rights of gay couples, are as important to a comprehensive vision of a just society as is the eradication of poverty and the creation of a secure and peaceful world.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20041213/kissling

Ever since George W. Bush's reelection in November, a victory secured at least in part by the intense devotion of his Christian right base, the rest of us have been wondering how to respond.....
.....
When liberal evangelical leaders like Jim Wallis argue that liberals should soften their support for abortion and gay rights, and when Democratic centrists like Bill and Hillary Clinton advocate this view, they are acting as if the Christian right had brought about a new national consensus to which liberals must accommodate themselves. Yet 85 percent of Americans want their kids to learn about condoms and birth control in their sex education, not abstinence only; 70 percent thought Congress should not have intervened in the Terri Schiavo case; two thirds say they support gay civil rights and gay civil unions; and the majority of Americans — even the majority of Republicans — still support legal abortion.

http://www.jewishcurrents.org/2005-july-kaplan.htm

[trotsky]

2. Seems to be the old "Let's out-Jesus the fundies" rallying cry.

It won't work. That Jewish Currents article does a GREAT job pointing out that the progressive message already enjoys majority support.