Reply #24: Wallis makes some good points that regardless of your beliefs. [View All]

[ultraist]

you will agree with, such as seperation of church and state and how Repuke religious nuts are hypocritical.

I'm not religious at all and plan on reading his book from a sociology of religion perspective.

snip from interview:
http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2005/03/gods_politics_jim_wallis.html

Jim Wallis: The Right is comfortable with the language of religion, values, God talk. So much so that they sometimes claim to own that territory. Or own God. But then they narrow everything down to one or two issues: abortion and gay marriage.

I am an evangelical Christian, and I can’t ignore thousands of verses in the Bible on subject, which is poverty. I say at every stop, “Fighting poverty’s a moral value, too.” There’s a whole generation of young Christians who care about the environment. That’s their big issue. Protecting God’s creation, they would say, is a moral value, too. And, for a growing number of Christians, the ethics of war—how and when we go to war, whether we tell the truth about going to war—is a religious and moral issue as well.

I think the Right has made a serious mistake in adopting a moral-values strategy, because they’re winning in the short run. in the long run, they’re going to lose this debate because they won’t be able to restrict it to two issues. Once you open that door to a values conversation, it’s going to undercut a right-wing economic agenda, which values wealth over work and favors the rich over the poor, or resorts to war as the first resort and not the last. To quote the White House, when it comes to moral values in this discussion, I say, “Bring it on!” Let’s have the conversation, because the Right’s going to lose this debate in the end. But not if the Left doesn’t even get in the conversation.