Jim Wallis: Religious people don't get to win just because they are religious.

Here is an ABCNEWS piece on the Dobson/Obama tangle, which does a great job of contrasting what Obama said & what Dobson said:

2 observations:

• Apparently I was not the only person who found Dobson's choice of the term fruitcake peculiar:

image from mandjkenoyer

• It is telling that the ABCNEWS report ends with a quote from Jim Wallis, who has gone to great lengths to foster a broader sense of Christian moral engagement.  Obama gave his speech at the Sojourners/Call to Renewal event in 2006, which also included Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republicans Rick Santorum and Sam Brownback as speakers.  In a post today on God's Politics , Wallis makes this point:

Obama said that religion is and always has been a fundamental and absolutely essential source of morality for the nation, but he also said that "religion has no monopoly on morality," which is a point I often make. The United States is not the Christian theocracy that people like James Dobson seem to think it should be. Political appeals, even if rooted in religious convictions, must be argued on moral grounds rather than as sectarian religious demands -- so that the people (citizens), whether religious or not, may have the capacity to hear and respond. Religious convictions must be translated into moral arguments, which must win the political debate if they are to be implemented. Religious people don't get to win just because they are religious. They, like any other citizens, have to convince their fellow citizens that what they propose is best for the common good -- for all of us, not just for the religious.

The last 20-30 years of American churchianity have suffered, in my experience, from a presumption of superiority, a profound amount of what Brian McLaren calls excessive confidence.  Across so many issues - from economic justice to pre-emptive wars to our care for creation - we have struggled with too much of what Wallis describes as:

Religious people get to win just because they are religious.

Comments

[yo bro]

God does not waste His time in the Bible by being biliary in addressing issues that are less important than the salvation of man's soul(and that means all issues other than the soul- e.g. race, man's failed efforts at creating a really cool and groovy personal life experience, the economy, health care, poverty, music, the hope of the masses, sports, patriotism, even how to get a nation to move toward righteousness and goodness just for the sake of braggin' rights or so we'll feel better about living here)...God calls all men everywhere to repent and obey His Son