God's Convenient Politics

Published on January 25, 2005

Lucky for Democrats, Jim Wallis is able to explain God’s politics, which are a curiously good fit to the current Democratic identity crisis: God’s “an economic progressive and family-values conservative,” just like the black, Latino, Catholic and working-class voters Dems miss. The Nation’s Katha Pollitt dismantles Wallis’ God’s Politics as an ahistorical and convenient interpretation […]

Lucky for Democrats, Jim Wallis is able to explain God’s politics, which are a curiously good fit to the current Democratic identity crisis: God’s “an economic progressive and family-values conservative,” just like the black, Latino, Catholic and working-class voters Dems miss. The Nation’s Katha Pollitt dismantles Wallis’ God’s Politics as an ahistorical and convenient interpretation of Christian politics (“If it’s wrong, it isn’t truly evangelical, therefore evangelicalism is purely good.”) that boils down to majority rule. Pollitt writes: “The more insistently people bring Christianity into politics, the more political argument becomes a matter of Christian hermeneutics. Does God say gays should be executed or married? ‘Spare the rod’ or ‘suffer the little children’? I don’t see how we benefit as a society from translating politics into theology. We are left with the same debates, and a diminished range of ways in which to think about them. And, of course, a diminished number of voices — because if you’re not a believer, you’re out of the discussion.”

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