Jim Wallis: The Left's Own Falwell?

A review of Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It.

Jim Wallis may not like this. He may even be shocked to read this. But here goes. He could benefit by emulating Jerry Falwell less and G.K. Chesterton more. Nearly a century ago G. K. Chesterton asked “what’s wrong with the world?” His answers included the usual suspects among the universal “isms,” especially socialism, feminism, capitalism, and imperialism. But his first and last answer was always the same: “I am.” If only Jim Wallis would be tempted to give a similar answer. Instead he’s busy telling us what’s wrong with everyone and everything else. Apparently things like that befall those who carry the special burden of claiming to know “God’s politics” and believing that they have discovered a third way.

Chesterton also offered the world and each of its neighborhoods a third way by way of his own “ism,” as in distributism. Grounded in his antipathy to the increasing bigness of big business and big government, Chesterton’s distributism was consistent with the Catholic doctrine of subsidiarity in that it elevated the local over the national, the family over the state, the rural over the urban. If only Jim Wallis could be persuaded to read Chesterton. Instead he’s too determined to damn others who claim to know “God’s Politics”—and too convinced that the American federal government is both the answer (to domestic poverty) and the obstacle (to achieving international peace).

Given his own third way sympathies, Chesterton might have been tempted to assume a holier than thou “plague on both your houses” stance. He might even have been tempted to abandon his ultimate answer to his own question. But he always managed to resist that temptation. If only Jim Wallis’ resistance might have been stronger.

Who knows what answer Wallis would give to G. K. Chesterton’s question. What is clear from page after interminable page of God’s Politics is that God’s translator has any number of answers, none of which has anything to do with whatever he has ever thought —- or done —- or proposed. Or is now proposing. Which, I suppose, is entirely understandable. After all, if you can claim to understand God’s Politics how could you possibly ever believe that you might possibly be part of the problem—or ever wrong about anything.

A member in good standing of the religious (as opposed to secular) left, Wallis cannot resist criticizing the Reverend Falwell, who was quick to blame Hollywood types and sodomites for 9/11. In issuing his jeremiad, Falwell was Cotton Mather when he might have been Abraham Lincoln. In his famous Second Inaugural Address, Lincoln deemed the Civil War to be God’s punishment for the sin of slavery. That sin was America’s sin. Lincoln was telling his countrymen that all of us, rather than some of us, were sinners. Not so Falwell and those like him who like to think that God is on their side. Among those others is one Jim Wallis.

No doubt this Jim Wallis would be horrified by such a comparison. After all, didn’t Falwell try to pin the blame for 9/11 on his enemies? And doesn’t he equate his enemies with America’s enemies? And doesn’t he believe that God is on his (and America’s) side? Surely, Jim Wallis is none of the above. To be fair, he isn’t all of the above. But he comes uncomfortably (for him) close on the third question when he makes this distinction: ask not if God is on your side, but if you are on God’s side. Really now, isn’t this one of those distinctions without a difference?

Picking up this book, I had a premonition that I might find a reason or three to disagree here and there with Wallis, but I had no reason to think that the book would exude the tone that it does. Then again, maybe I should have been suspicious. The title is, how to put it, off-putting. So is the subtitle.

Admittedly, third ways can be beguiling -— both for those who think they have found such a way and for those who might be tempted to follow the finder. Wallis’s alternative path is suggested by the subtitle: “Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It.” Hmmm . . . After reading the book I’d offer the following as a fair translation: “Why the Right is Wrong and Will Remain Wrong Until It Moves Left; and Why the Left Can Remain Left Once It Get One Big Thing Right.”

That one big thing is the sticky matter of abortion. If only the Democratic party would moderate its position on abortion, laments Wallis, all would be right with the left. Well, almost all. To be fair, Wallis does resort to a few other minor lamentations over the current state of the Democratic party. But his disagreement with the Democrats centers on abortion, an issue on which Democrats are much more “doctrinaire” (he might have written “extreme”) than Republicans.

So what must be done to return pro-life Catholics and evangelicals to what he knows is their proper political home? Wallis preaches the mantra of moderation. In the process he invokes the Clintonian call to make abortion “safe, legal, and rare,” even as he criticizes Clinton for doing next to nothing on the rareness front.

So what does Wallis propose to do? Once again, what we’re left with is that call for moderation. In fact, when all has been written and not written that’s all we’re left with. This is at once strange and revealing. When the matter at hand is Third World debt relief or domestic poverty, Wallis has any number of numbers and specifics at hand. Writing like the policy wonk that he insists he isn’t, Wallis can reel off problems and solutions in equal and equally mind-numbing numbers. You want a plan for eliminating Third World debt? It’s here. You want concrete proposals for creating a more equitable society here at home? They’re here. Too.

So what does he want Democrats to do to make abortion rare? Moderate and moderate some more. Does that mean a ban on partial birth abortion? Wallis is silent. Parental notification? Silence again. A 24-hour waiting period. Silence. A ban on federal funding of abortions? Silence. Overturning Roe v Wade. Deafening silence. Returning the issue to political debate and the state legislatures? Total silence. Detailed information on the potential physical, emotional, and spiritual harm caused by abortion. Mum's the word. Stringent limitations on health of the mother exceptions. Not a word.

Wallis claims to be a pro-life Democrat. Fair enough. He’s also convinced that to be such is not an oxymoron. Fair enough again. But the proof is in the details. And when it comes to Jim Wallis and the abortions wars, the details are missing in action.

Actually, Wallis might be right. If the Democrats could bring themselves to endorse all or even most of the above, they might have a shot at returning to majority party status. At the very least, if they took these bold steps and held the line on first trimester abortions, the result might be an unbridgeable rift in Republican ranks.

But never fear. The “secular fundamentalists” (Wallis’s term on non-endearment) that control the Democratic party will not retreat. The party that once wanted to make the world safe for democracy is now committed beyond all else to making abortion safe and legal —- and not necessarily rare —- in America. The Jim Wallises of the American left may do their best to give the Democrats cover. They might even get away with it, if all they are asked to do is assert their sincerely held “moderate” pro-life position and avoid all specifics.

And claim that you are on God’s side. Convinced that he has discovered the ultimate put-down for putting down the dreaded Religious Right, Wallis asks us to wonder if we are on God’s side. The trouble is Wallis does more than wonder; he knows. And if you happen to think otherwise, you are guilty of practicing “bad theology.” Do you support the war in Iraq? The charitable explanation is bad theology. Anti-inheritance tax. You guessed it, bad theology. Pro defense build-up? Once again, it’s bad theology. Anti-anti-poverty programs? What else: bad theology. And the litany goes on.

Be prepared—and forewarned. Jim Wallis is quite capable of being uncharitable as well. If you disagree with Wallis you stand to be accused not just of being theologically wrong, but of being spiritually impoverished, biblically illiterate, and morally obtuse. The “morally obtuse” part may be too generous on my part. But let’s give Wallis the benefit of the doubt that he does not grant those with whom he disagrees. Wallis is always quick to claim the moral high ground. He’s also quick to deny it to others. For example, the American war in Iraq is, according to good theologian Wallis, immoral. To call it so is to be moral. Or so Wallis presumes.

Let’s grant him this presumption. But then let’s do something else. Let’s wonder why a defense of the war in Iraq cannot be made in moral terms. And then let’s wonder further. What are we to conclude about someone who is quick to claim the moral high ground —- and just as quick to see through the phony moral claims of his opponents?

We might conclude that such an individual is awash in hypocrisy. Wallis, of course, sees himself as neither a hypocrite nor a cynic. He is, after all, a man of hope. And such a man cannot possibly be a cynic. Or so Wallis presumes. Now he may be hopeful that his third way will prevail. But it cannot help his case to deny hope to others -— especially those to his right. Or to presume that those on the Republican right are less moral than he is. But that’s exactly what he does presume as he accuses the Bush administration of cynically pretending that they are liberating Iraq (even as they pursue “empire” in the Middle East) or cynically seeking the votes of pro-lifers (even though they have no intention of actually doing anything to end abortion).

Is Jim Wallis even-handed in his presumption of immorality? In a word, no. The religious right is immoral; the secular left is misguided. The Republican party pursues immoral policies; Democrats pursue failed policies. And so on.

Of course, those on the right are redeemable, but only if they convert. (Those on the left need not convert; save for abortion, where moderation and a charge of heart are in order, they’ve already got most of it right.)

Ah, that ever-illusive, ever-seductive third way. Admittedly, it is appealing. It was that to G.K. Chesterton; and it is that to Jim Wallis. The problem is that Wallis’s third way is a far cry from Chesterton’s distributism. It’s also a far cry from anything that might appeal to any significant number of American voters. What it amounts to is a defense of the welfare state that cozies up to socialism and a call for a multilateral foreign policy that is indistinguishable from pacifism.

Nowhere, of course, does Jim Wallis call himself a pacifist. But his test for a just war begins and ends with a call for collective security. A nation state that takes military matters into its own hands, preemptively or otherwise, is a nation state that is automatically in the wrong, not to mention one that is behaving immorally. Wallis also makes outlandish, even laughable claims for the success of nonviolent action. Such action allegedly drove Milosevic from power. Really. Such action even ended the Cold War. Now of course, Pope John Paul II’s trip to Poland was both a valid and a powerful demonstration of nonviolence in action. And of course the Berlin Wall came tumbling down without tanks rumbling in. But for Wallis to contend that victory in the Cold War represented a victory for nonviolent action is enough to make one resort to, well, to something other than nonviolence. What adds to the frustration is that Wallis also wants to claim the moral high ground for those (Jim Wallis included) who opposed the Reagan defense build-up of the 1980s. Did it ever occur to him that that very build-up might have had something to do with the fall of the Soviet Union? If so, he doesn’t let on.

What Jim Wallis does do is let us in on the mindset of a fellow whose mind works in strange and not-so-wonderful ways. He is forever pointing to the need for Americans, especially conservative Americans, to remember the mote in their own eye. If only Wallis would ever be inclined to take his own advice. Are there any Jim Wallis second thoughts about his anti-Vietnam war activities? No. Or second thoughts about his defense of John Kerry, circa 1971. No. “ . . .What Kerry said about Vietnam was true then and is still true now; and it was John Kerry’s finest political hour.” The last line might actually be true, especially in light of last year’s Kerry campaign. It also isn’t saying much.

Wallis is very big on the reality of evil in the world. Just so we’re all clear about his even-handedness, let’s stipulate the following: a) Jim Wallis is aware of the existence of evil; b) he’s against it. So what’s the problem here? Plenty. His commitment to evenhandedness leads him to find evil all over the place, especially in George Bush’s Washington. Something about that mote in the eye. To be sure, Wallis found a good deal of evil in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. When it comes to the deposed dictator, Jim Wallis is no Michael Moore wannabe or devotee. Wallis may not be a spirited American flag-waver, but his pre-2003 Baghdad was not overrun with blissful kite-flyers. Yet this fleeting retreat to hard-headedness only adds to the general frustration level. In the first place, why was it immoral to remove the evil Saddam from power? Or at the very least, why is it impossible to make a moral case for his removal, even if that removal had to be carried out by largely American force?

Secondly, and more practically speaking, wouldn’t it make more sense to find a third way as, say, a Joe Lieberman Democrat, as in yes to big government activism across the board. Instead, Wallis’s third way has taken him to the left wing of the Democratic party on both fronts, even as he concedes that Saddam and Al Qaeda (while not necessarily linked) present very real, very evil, and very terrifying problems, problems that somehow, some way, something called the international community will some day take care of.

Frustration extends to other fronts as well. Jim Wallis is forever setting up straw men and offering false choices. “Oh really,” I kept muttering to myself as I came across this or that line. “We are all diminished when our social life is reduced to the survival of the fittest” (as if that is the world according to those on the right). Or the Democrats need to, there he goes again, “moderate” their position on abortion “without criminalizing an agonizing and desperate choice” (as if jailing women is at the top of the pro-life wish list). Or the GOP is “wrong” to see religious issues “solely” in terms of “individual moral choices and sexual ethics” (solely?). Or the Christian Right is led by “theocrats,” such as those ever-ready (and increasingly irrelevant) bogeymen, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, and theocrats have a “fatal attraction” for violent solutions. (In truth, Falwell is as close to being a theocrat as, well, as Jim Wallis.)

Or, it is wrong to resort to “purely military solutions” (purely?). Or it is “mean-spirited to blame gay people for the breakdown of the family” (as if those who oppose gay marriage are unaware or otherwise unwilling to call attention to the myriad reasons for the collapse of the family).

Or, with Iraq occupied the Bush administration “now intends to control the rest of the world too” (must be that those neocons have been listening to the theocrats on the subject of violence -— or is it the other way around). In any case, such immoderate statements made in the name of moderation are more than moderately astounding.

Or, those who believe that “there is nothing we can do about poverty” are those who take comfort from Christ’s reminder to his disciples that the “poor you will always have with you.” Nothing?? Really?

Wallis thinks he is having great fun with subtitles. His section on “economic justice” is subtitled: “When Did Jesus Become Pro-Rich?” And his section of foreign policy is subtitled: “When Did Jesus Become Pro-war?” Well, two can play this smirking little game. Why not a subtitle for economic justice that goes something like this: “Just When Did Jesus Endorse the Modern Welfare State?”

Wallis reminds us that Christ's statement on the ever-present poor is taken out of context. Fair enough. He also insists that it is the most famous biblical reference about the poor. His evidence? Informal polls of his audiences. It’s a nice story, and possibly even true if his primary listeners are those same social Darwinists he complains about. In any case, it must be a heart-warming confirmation to Wallis of the essential hard-heartedness of oh-so-many right-wing Americans.

Another nice story concerns the “holely” Bible. It seems that when Wallis was a seminarian, he and his fellow students literally cut out of the Bible every reference to the poor. The result was the Holy Bible transformed into the “holely” Bible. Clever and perhaps instructive. But only perhaps. How many lines endorsed this or that government action? And among the many lines excised, was God’s call to Micah to “do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.” Hmmmm .. . Might that call be just as readily employed by those seeking to defend, say, America’s presence in Iraq?

Wallis is surely on firm biblical ground in reminding us that Christ cared deeply about the poor. But who doubts that? What is debatable is the question of who should do what for the poor. To presume that the high moral ground is reserved for advocates of government action is, well, debatable.

Whether the subject is Vietnam or the war on poverty, Jim Wallis’s call for a prophetic new vision is stuck somewhere in the 1960s. And, by the way, it’s curious indeed that the pacifically-inclined Wallis is not at all hesitant to throw around the word “war” when it comes to class warfare, urban war zones, or anti-poverty crusades. The word only seems to stick in his craw when he has to contemplate the prospect of military conflict between nation states.

Wallis, of course, seeks to persuade us (and maybe himself) that “thoughtful” people oppose war and hold to a “consistent ethic of life.” And mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most thoughtful one of all, but Jim Wallis himself.

Why, he’s so thoughtful that he hasn’t yet made up his mind about gay marriage. Which brings us back to that pesky matter of sex. The subtitle for this section is “When Did Jesus Become a Selective Moralist?” Why not, “When Did Jesus Get So Confused about Gay Sex and Abortion?”

After all, who says that conservatives practice selective morality by opposing gay marriage and abortion? Jim Wallis says. And he thinks he can do so because he equates his understanding of morality with his definition of social justice, his commitment to international peace, and his call for moderation on abortion.

As for gay marriage, Wallis is quite content to let the “states . . . revolve the legal and civil issues through referendums and legislative proceedings.” He is also content to stand for “civil unions” while standing by and waiting for the states to sort things out. Does he favor or oppose a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage? Here again his silence is revealing. He is also curiously silent on the role of judges, state and federal, in this debate. Recent history tells us that all those “referendums and legal proceedings” will soon be rendered meaningless, not to mention unconstitutional and immoral, unless judges are blocked from inventing a “right” to gay marriage.

Clearly, on the subject of homosexuality, Wallis is so confused as to be unclear. This confusion may or may not grounded in cynicism, although one could draw cynical conclusions about Wallis’s confusion. In other words, one could be as cynical about his confusion as he is about Republican leaders and their alleged willingness to “play the card” (never mind Democratic fear tactics designed to keep the black voter on the plantation) or their currying favor withy pro-life voters without doing anything meaningful to advance the pro-life agenda.

But let’s grant that Wallis is not taking an agnostic position on gay marriage while he waits for judges to impose it anyway (at which point he can simply throw his hands in the air and plead for Christian tolerance.) No, Jim Wallis couldn’t possibly be that cynical. Instead, let’s just say that he is terribly confused.

Not so confused as his evangelical colleague, Tony Campolo, whom he quotes as denouncing homophobia, even as he makes clear (?) that the Bible “does not affirm homosexual practice.” Does the Bible condemn homosexual practice as sinful? Here Campolo is apparently as silent as Jim Wallis is on what to do about gay marriage —- or precisely how to go about making abortion rare. Silence apparently can be golden when you’re trying to bridge unbridgeable gaps, as you proceed merrily on your search for a third way.

That search takes Jim Wallis into confusing rhetorical thickets. In the name of achieving some sort of balance, Wallis instructs the left to “give itself permission to recognize the benefit of two-parent families.” This is gentle Jim at his gentle best, as he gives himself permission to ask the left, ever so gently, to move ever so slightly away from its full-bore assault on the traditional family. Could they, he pleads, at least be open to the possibility that a child might possibly have a good life if he happens to be stuck living with both parents? Wallis might have dared to inform his friends on the left that a child is actually better off living under the same roof with both parents. But that sort of daring declaration is more than gentle Jim could summon as he nears the end of this book.

Besides, Jim Wallis is in the bridge-building business, is he not? And if that’s your business, you don’t want to get anybody too angry, especially not your friends. But wait a minute. Isn’t this the same fellow who not so gently dismissed a few of his enemies as “theocrats?” Maybe anger does have its uses after all.

Not that Jim Wallis is permanently angry. He’s too hopeful a fellow for that. For starters., he hopes that everyone will read this book and discover that he and God are on the same page, every page. He hopes that the 1960s will be re-born. He hopes that the day will come when leftist solutions will be regarded as mainstream, even moderate, and certainly thoughtful. He also hopes that the conventional wisdom is wrong. According to Wallis’s reading of that wisdom, “liberal Christians have a social conscience and evangelicals do not.”

Permit me to express a different hope. I hope that Jim Wallis lives long enough to have a Bill Bright epiphany. Wallis ends this third way sojourn with a conversion story of sorts. The convert is not Jim Wallis, but Bill Bright, founding father of the Campus Crusade for Christ. A conservative California businessman, Bright turned to promoting a “far right” political agenda in the 1970s. Wallis tells us that he used his Sojourners magazine to investigate and expose Bright’s efforts to “politicize” campus evangelicals specifically and Christian prayer fellowship groups generally. The result was two decades of alienation and bitterness between the two men.

That bitterness did not end until some time in the 1990s when Wallis took the first step. The occasion was a Presidential Prayer Breakfast. He tells us that he approached Bright and apologized (although it’s unclear what exactly he apologized for other than for not trying to mend the breach sooner). That did it. Bright, then in his eighties, “melted” into Wallis’s arms as he tearfully expressed his concerns about the poor and his support for Wallis’s efforts to help them. Another nice story, although it’s not apparent that Bill Bright was ever unconcerned about the poor.

Who knows, maybe the day will come when an octogenarian by the name of Jim Wallis melts into someone’s arms and offers his own confession. And perhaps that confession will reveal a new understanding about what it means to have a social conscience. Maybe an older and wiser Jim Wallis can grow to see that one’s social consciousness is not defined by one’s commitment to the federal, or even to the state, government. Maybe the day will come when Jim Wallis will discover that concerns about personal morality are also an expression of social conscience. Maybe Jim Wallis will one day answer G.K. Chesterton’s ever-relevant question with the ever-revealing answer, “I am.”

That step toward Bill Bright at that prayer breakfast may have been one small step for a man. But it was a step. And there is hope. There is always hope. And hope, Wallis, reminds us, is a decision, not a feeling. So here’s hoping that sojourner Wallis will one day decide that a search for a third way inevitably begins at home.