Jim Wallis and John Bryson Chane

Jim Wallis, "editor of Sojourners magazine and the convener of Call to Renewal, a national network of churches working to overcome poverty", tries to tell the Democrats that they should stop being the Godless Party, at NYT today:

.... How a candidate deals with poverty is a religious issue, and the Bush administration's failure to support poor working families should be named as a religious failure. Neglect of the environment is a religious issue. Fighting pre-emptive and unilateral wars based on false claims is a religious issue (a fact not changed by the capture of Saddam Hussein).

Such issues could pose problems for the Bush administration among religious and nonreligious people alike — if someone were to define them in moral terms. The failure of the Democrats to do so is not just a political miscalculation. It shows they do not appreciate the contributions of religion to American life.

The United States has a long history of religious faith supporting and literally driving progressive causes and movements. From the abolition of slavery to women's suffrage to civil rights, religion has led the way for social change.

The separation of church and state does not require banishing moral and religious values from the public square. America's social fabric depends on such values and vision to shape our politics — a dependence the founders recognized.

It is indeed possible (and necessary) to express one's faith and convictions about public policy while still respecting the pluralism of American democracy. Rather than suggesting that we not talk about "God," Democrats should be arguing — on moral and even religious grounds — that all Americans should have economic security, health care and educational opportunity, and that true faith results in a compassionate concern for those on the margins....

(See "Our Secularist Democratic Party".)

Coincidentally, Episcopalian bishop John Bryson Chane is being pilloried around the Blogosphere because of the heresy he espoused in his Christmas morning sermon (embedded ellipses in original):

.... What was God thinking? That by the miracle of a tiny infant's birth in the squalor and poverty of Bethlehem in Judea, that this Son of God would grow and challenge people then, as he challenges us now to make a difference in the world by loving extravagantly, being reconcilers rather than instruments of estrangement, living as peace-makers rather than war makers, becoming providers of abundance rather than purveyors of scarcity, and being conductors of harmony rather than the orchestrators of dissonance.

Some would say that God does not exist, Jesus was a dreamer and that Christmas and Christ's birth and living presence among us has no real hold on the world to change it for the better... but I say it's already happening. And it is a miracle!

And what was God thinking... when the Angel Gabriel was sent by God to reveal the Law to Moses?

And what was God thinking... when the Angel Gabriel was sent by God to reveal the sacred Quran to the prophet Muhammad?

And what was God thinking... when the Angel Gabriel was sent by God to reveal the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God?

Were these just random acts of association and coincidence or was the Angel Gabriel who appears as the named messenger of God in the Jewish Old Testament, the Christian New Testament Gospels, and the Quran of Islam, really the same miraculous messenger of God who proclaimed to a then emerging religious, global community and to us this morning that we are ALL children of the living God? And as such we are called to acknowledge that as Christians, Jews and Muslims we share a common God and the same divine messenger. And that as children of the same God, we are now called to cooperatively work together to make the world a haven for harmony, peace, equality and justice for the greatest and least among us....

Why anybody should be surprised that an Episcopalian bishop thinks the Quran is divinely inspired scripture is beyond me: it has been manifest for decades that one can be an Episcopalian bishop without even being a Christian.

Coincidentally, did I say? Why, yes, Faithful Reader, I did say coincidentally. For Jim Wallis and John Bryson Chane made a splash in the Blogosphere nine months ago:

.... The world is desperate for a "third way" between war and ineffectual responses — and it must be strong enough to be a serious alternative to war. The threat of military force has been decisive in building an international consensus for the disarming of Iraq, for the return of inspectors and for pressuring Hussein to comply. The "serious consequences" threatened by the Security Council need not mean war. They should mean further and more decisive actions against Hussein and his regime, rather than a devastating attack on the people of Iraq....

Yep. Wallis & Chane were quite happy to give Saddam Hussein all the time he needed to do... whatever he would have wanted to do.

See "The Flatline Church": At Midwest Conservative Journal.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 12/29/03 08:13:24 PM
Categorized as Religious.