Books probe God factor in U.S. politics

Posted: 2/29/08

Books probe God factor in U.S. politics

By Daniel Burke

Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)—According to the old saying, there are two things a person never should discuss at a dinner party—religion and politics. But nothing says people can’t read about them. And as the presidential campaign season heats up, American publishers are releasing a flood of books on faith and public life.

Frank Lambert’s Religion in American Politics traces the tense interplay between pulpits and the public square through nearly two centuries of U.S. history. Some things, Lambert writes, never change.

For instance, pushes to proclaim the United States a “Christian nation,” stretch back to 1827, when the Calvinist minister Ezra Stiles Ely tried to mobilize a “Christian party in politics” to fight the delivery of mail on Sundays, among other causes.

Still, any group’s attempt to represent the nation’s religious heritage or claim to be its moral conscience is met with opposition, Lambert writes. The Purdue University professor’s book revisits some of those battles, from the nation’s founding to the possible re-emergence of the “religious left.”

E.J. Dionne, Souled Out.

Over the last few years, perhaps no one has worked harder to promote that liberal re-emergence than Jim Wallis, an evangelical author and founder of Sojourners/Call to Renewal in Washington, D.C.

Wallis’ 2004 book, God’s Politics, struck a nerve with liberals reeling from the re-election of President Bush on the strength of “values voting” conservative evangelicals. But Wallis says change is in the air, and his latest tome, The Great Awakening, hopes to “revive faith and politics in a post-Religious Right America.”

Wallis’ work runs through the history of progressive religious movements, lays out seven basic commitments (such as “God hates injustice”) for Christians engaged in politics, and attempts to ground those principles in biblical narratives and theology.

Like Wallis, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne says “the religious winds are changing.” Similarly, for Dionne, who writes from the liberal Catholic tradition, that means the political dominance of the Religious Right is over.

In Souled Out, the columnist explores the roots of American liberalism, diagnoses injuries caused by culture-war politics, reckons with the papacies of John Paul II and Benedict XVI and points the way to a future when “Christianity’s liberal commitments will be seen as more relevant than its conservative impulses.”

But religious liberals and Democrats can’t “level the praying field” if they don’t acknowledge mistakes made in the recent past, writes Time magazine editor Amy Sullivan.

David Gushee, The Future of Faith in American Politics

Sullivan’s The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats are Closing the God Gap argues the party’s fall from grace was abetted by liberals who belittled religious voters and Democratic leaders who wrote them off.

“National polls consistently show that two-thirds of Democratic voters attend worship services regularly,” Sullivan writes. “Yet the people who run the Democratic Party largely believe that the ‘God gap’ is an immutable law of the political universe.”

Sullivan sees reasons for hope, however, with the rise of Democratic candidates such as Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who have made concerted efforts to reach people of faith in their presidential campaigns.

Both Obama and Clinton, in fact, have made a play for centrist evangelicals, who evangelical scholar David Gushee says are “emerging with growing confidence and impact these days.”

In The Future of Faith in American Politics, Gushee offers an “insider’s account” of evangelicals weary of the partisan politicking and “angry entitlement” of their brethren on the right and yet wary of wish-washy liberals.

Typically, centrist evangelicals are strongly against abortion, gay marriage and euthanasia, but they also see room on a “broad and holistic agenda” for human rights, the plight of the poor and peacemaking, says Gushee, a Southern Baptist ethics professor at Mercer University.

Like Gushee, Florida megachurch pastor Joel Hunter, in his book, A New Kind of Conservative, says it’s time for evangelicals to focus on issues beyond abortion and homosexuality.

Joel Hunter, A New Kind of Conservative.

Hunter offers seven reasons why “the current strategy of the Religious Right” fails to resonate with conservative Christians, including personal attacks, too much emphasis on “below the belt” issues, a focus on political wins rather than spiritual results and a lack of intellectual heft.

“Jesus didn’t teach us what political platform would best represent the faith; but he did teach us by example how to help those who are in need,” Hunter writes.

Finally, for the political neophyte, Wheaton College political scientist Amy E. Black offers a crash course in Beyond Left and Right: Helping Christians Make Sense of American Politics.

With chapters dedicated to the U.S. Constitution and the separation of powers as well as the art of compromise and the application of faith to politics, Black navigates some of the trickier spheres of public life and brings them home to the kitchen table.

“At that proverbial dinner party, in our churches, or even in the comfort of our own homes, it won’t always be easy or comfortable to talk about religion and politics,” Black writes. “But the challenge is both worthy and worthwhile.”