« Blog Recommendation: Daniel Larison | Main | Happy Lent! »

February 20, 2007
Religious Left


"As I have traveled around the country, one line in my speeches always draws cheers: 'The monologue of the Religious Right is over, and a new dialogue has now begun.' We have now entered the post-Religious Right era." - Jim Wallis

Yes, that's Jim Wallis of Sojourners writing in Time. Are we to find it indicative of some trend that Sojourners types don't like the religious right? I'm not necessarily disputing that the political movement known as the religious right is largely in decline, but let's recognize that the people cheering Wallis on aren't exactly objective observers.

His whole article is pretty silly. Of course, it's desirable that the truths of faith are best left separated from partisan politics. But, um, let's remember that Wallis has written a book called God's Politics and that he runs a lefty blog of the same name, and that his magazine invokes God's name to argue for the Democratic party line.

I repeat, it's not that I dispute in any way that the "religious right" is waning, and it's not that I categorically diagree with everything that the Sojourners crowd stands for. Indeed, especially compared to the wine and cheese leftism of the Commonweal crowd, I find Sojourners more honest and more often on the side of truth, but I also see them mirroring the worst of the religious right's crassness in explicitly aligning themselves with a particular political agenda. The answer to the usurpation of religion by politicians is not to become the Democrat's version of Jerry Falwell.

Posted by Papa-Lu at February 20, 2007 8:40 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.stblogs.org/scgi-bin/mv/mt-tb.cgi/21402
Comments

Umm, dude? You've got badly overflowing linkage going on here....

Posted by: Klaus der Große [TypeKey Profile Page] at February 20, 2007 10:51 PM

Haha! Fixed! Thanks.

Posted by: Papa-Lu at February 22, 2007 8:37 AM
Post a comment
I welcome and encourage everybody to let me know what they think. It's OK to disagree with me, just be nice. I reserve the right to delete comments which are uncharitable, even if I agree with the content. My standards are purely subjective, so don't even bother trying to figure them out.




Remember Me?

(you may use HTML tags for style)


Please enter the security code you see here