The Winter 2007 issue of the Harvard Divinity Bulletin is an especially good issue of a magazine that ranges between liberally pious, bland, and brilliant. This edition contains much that’s in the third category, but only one short piece out of the three I’d planned to link to is online,“Vox Populi, Vox Dei,” a consideration of evangelical politics in the wake of the 2006 election by Mark I. Pinsky, an excellent religion writer who has a front row seat as a longtime reporter for The Orlando Sentinel, from which vantage point he recently published A Jew Among the Evangelicals: A Guide for the Perplexed.

I’ve been impressed (or maybe dismayed) by Hillary Clinton’s courtship of conservative Christians, but Mark thinks that should she win the nomination, Democrats will lose the spinter of new evangelical support they gained in 2006, and then some. Mark’s not a pundit, he’s a reporter, with amazing access to evangelical leaders, so I’m inclined to take that prediction seriously. On the other hand, I think Mark may be missing important details when he reads Senator Bill Nelson’s victory over GOP-challenger Kathryn Harris as an evangelical rejection of Christ-centered politics. Nelson, after all, is a longtime evangelical activist; his wife, Grace, has chaired the Florida Governor’s Prayer Breakfast for years, and Nelson has shaped his career under the spiritual counsel of Doug Coe, the organizer of the National Prayer Breakfast known the “Stealth Persuader” for his quiet but decidedly conservative ministry. Mark predicts that the highwater mark of evangelical influence has passed; but what if, down the road, voters are given the choice between a traditional Republican religious conservative like Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee (2012, if not ’08) and conservative evangelical Democrat like Nelson? Evangelical Democrats aren’t just the same as evangelical Republicans, but they may just lead a new wave–and a new kind–of Christian conservative power in the years to come.

Also in this issue of the Bulletin: James K.A. Smith on poet Franz Wright’s new collection, God’s Silence, in which he reveals the “Augustinian line” in these lovely lines of Wright’s: “that these words / are only / things,but / that all things are shining / words, busy / silently / saying themselves — / they don’t need me.” I don’t know Smith, but after disagreeing very persuasively with several of my articles, he had the grace–that’s a Christian thing, I think–to invite me to speak at Calvin College. I’ll be there April 11. His choice of these words of Wright’s reassures me that it won’t be a trap. There’s also his 2004 book Introducing Radical Orthodoxy, which I think every religion writer should have as a resource. I don’t believe hardly a word of it, but Radical Orthodoxy is what got me into writing about religion in the first place.

And then there’s this, the response to God’s Politics liberal evangelical Jim Wallis’ Bible for “faith-based Democrats” like Bill Nelson for which I’ve been waiting:

God’s Politics wants to encourage robust religious influence in the political sphere, but in the end the argumentis theologically evasive.If something “specifically religious” is called for, then something theologically clear is required. Conservatives, after all, are unequivocal not just about their policies but about the narrative that makes them believe, and their political commitments are extensions of that faith. But liberals tend to rely on principles rather than narratives, and the conviction seems less personal and more provisional. Where evangelicals say, love Jesus, liberals celebrate faith journeys. Religious liberals discuss a dynamic of love that makes life wonderfully rich; conservativs go on talking about the object of their love (and allegiance). And while it is interesting to hear Romeo describing his sence of inflation and intoxication, we also want to hear about Juliet. What is it he loves about her? Why her and no one else? … Because in the end we don’t want endless exegesis of Romeo’slove, we want our own Juliet…

I think this is one of the smartest things I’ve read about American evangelicalism, but, to quote everyone’s least-favorite Romeo, George W. Bush, If you don’t get it, I can’t explain. You’ll have to go to the library for the hard copy. Author Todd Shy, a book critic for the Raleigh News & Observer, does more than review Wallis. His essay, “The Democratic Dilemma,” is a full essay on how–or if–liberal Christianity can influence American politics. The fact that this is buried in the print-only edition of the Harvard Divinity Bulletin is a shame — Shy’s insight far outshines any of the bromides served up by Democratic “faith consultants” on op-ed pages. Here’s a little more:

The great strength of the liberal ideal has been its capacity to encompass modern ambiguities by, to borrow Isaiah Berlin’s phrase, shifting foot to foot…. Acknowledging distance between God and humanity is not a denial of values or a cowardice about faith. Hesitation to say, “This is the truth, we have received it from AMos,” is not a failure of nerve; it is hard-won wisdom. This shifting from foot to foot has been the virtue of liberalism, and the left should be wary of abandoning it for conservative-style conviction. Wallis and others are writing to chide the failure of liberal conviction, but the connection between political courage and theological boldness is a conservative confusion.

–Jeff Sharlet