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Book Reviews
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God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong
and the Left Doesn't Get It
by Jim Wallis
(Harper San Francisco, 2005; $24.95)
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God’s Politics is a voice of hope in the Christian Right wilderness. As many of my non-believing friends, I had nearly despaired of all things Christian in the months leading up to and following Election 2004. The Taliban-type of Christianity — hateful, arrogant and simple-minded —had gained prominence, preaching its xenophobic mix of smug contempt for and moral superiority over gays and lesbians, single mothers, and Muslims.
The Christian Taliban had cast its own twisted prophetic cloak over George W. Bush as their Great Leader in the fight against evil. In doing so, they sanctioned violence against women, minorities, Iraqis and the environment. Christianity, as represented by those who supported the Bush administration and its war against terror and diversity, had grown ugly. My daughter, a devout and tender Christian at 16, had been told by one of her peers that anyone who didn’t vote for Bush couldn’t be a “good Christian.”
For radicals like me who still believed in the biblical imperative to pursue peace without violence, and to love one’s enemies, the Christian Right was anything but Christian. Rather, it appeared more like the whitewashed tomb full of dead men’s bones of which Jesus spoke: all pretty and slick on the outside but contemptible and reeking of death on the inside. To me, these were the very people who would have demanded Christ’s crucifixion were he alive today. I was convinced that Jesus would have spoken out against Bush, the war on Iraq, and the Christian Right.
Yet, I fumed and searched fruitlessly for a voice in the Christian wilderness to show me a better way. But none was available. The prophetic voice of hope and love had somehow gotten swallowed up in the religious fervor of hate and violence. Not until this year, in fact, did anything rise up out of the mire of religious hatred to suggest that, indeed, maybe a few Christians still existed in the United States who truly believe in the love of God as a transformative power to end greed, war, poverty and hate.
Jim Wallis is one of those Christians. His book offers “a new vision for faith and politics.” The prophetic voice of Christianity, he points out, largely addresses the need to care for the poor, to secure the safety and livelihoods of people everywhere, and to relieve the burdens of debt and despair. Lacking these, any program, politician or policy that claims to be Christian, is Christian in name only. In other words, the Bush administration’s budget, its war on Iraq, and its foreign and domestic policies, lack real Christian underpinnings. Actions speak louder than words.
Or, as Jesus would say, “You shall know them by their fruits.” Killing one’s enemy, for example, is not a Christian value. Wallis puts up a solid challenge to the belligerent and unchristian policies and practices of George W. Bush and the Christian right that endorses him. Thank God.
My daughter has on numerous occasions invited me to attend church with her. Until recently, I’ve turned her down out of disgust for the Christian Taliban that seemed to have taken over our country. Thanks to Wallis’s sensible critique of religious nationalism and his defense of the poor, I’ve accepted my daughter’s invitation.
Stacey Warde
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