Christian Century: Faith-based politics: An exchange
On not mimicking the religious right by Jan G. Linn
The day after Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama appeared at a June 4 candidates forum on faith and politics, sponsored by Sojourners/Call to Renewal and televised on CNN, Sojourners leader Jim Wallis wrote: "Last night, we made history. For the first time ever, leading presidential candidates gathered for a conversation focused on faith, values and poverty." He had previously described the event as "a unique forum to ask questions not just about issues, but about values. Not just what policies the candidates propose, but why. Not just whether they believe privately, but about how they live out their faith in public life."
On the surface this event would seem to be a good thing. But in the long run I would submit that the forum was not a victory for the faith community but is rather a sign that social-justice Christians are making the same mistakes that the Christian right has been making—with the nation and Christianity paying the long-term price.
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was among those Christians who reacted to the Christian right by joining "People of Faith for Kerry." Our group met weekly, bought ads in newspapers across the state voicing our support for Kerry as Christians, and had T-shirts made that carried our message. I spent a large portion of my day at the Minnesota State Fair talking to people who stopped me because of the T-shirt I was wearing.
Looking back, I see this as a colossal blunder. I was committed to making a public statement that Christians could in fact be Democrats. But like members of the Christian right, we were aligning ourselves with partisan politics, leaving us vulnerable to the charge that what we believed in as Christians was nothing more than partisan politics.
Principled, not partisan, politics by Jim Wallis
Jan Linn raises some old questions that I thought had been laid to rest. He says that groups like Sojourners/Call to Renewal should not be making religious faith a qualification for president, aligning themselves with partisan politics (like the religious right does) and mixing religion and politics. Linn writes: "I was heartened to hear that faith and prayer serve as a source of personal strength for these political leaders, but it completely escapes me how this affects their qualifications to be president."
It also escapes me. We are not asking that faith be a qualification for office but asking how, in the case of candidates who are people of religious faith, their faith grounds, informs or shapes their political leadership and public policies.
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Our forum recalled the words of Lincoln, who warned us not to believe that God is on our side, but to worry and pray earnestly that we are on God's side. We might also heed the advice of the U.S. Catholic bishops, whose guidelines on faith and public life bear repeating. As Christians, they wrote, we are called to be political but not partisan, principled but not ideological, clear but also civil, engaged but not used.
The question is not whether faith should shape politics, but how. That was the subject of our forum.
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