It’s official. Jim Wallis said it on Jon Stewart. January 23, 2008
Posted by Zack in New York , trackbackThere are these moments, in the progression of mass movements—or in mass changes to cultures—when someone says, “This is happening!” It has been happening for decades, but at a certain point a critical mass of people inside and outside of the movement have become aware of it, have talked about it, and then people start to declare it in mainstream public forums. Jim Wallis did that on Jon Stewart last night:
Tags: Jim Wallis, jon stewart, religious rightThe dominance of the religious right over our politics is finally finished…
But the even better news is that now a new generation has come of age and they’re applying their faith to the biggest issues each of us faces: the moral scandal of poverty, the degradation of the environment which we call God’s creation, climate change, Darfur, human rights…the exclusive use of war to fight evil and the cultural assault on your three year old and my four year old.
The country isn’t hungry for a religious left to replace the religious right. They don’t want to go left or right. They want to go deeper. They want to go to a moral center.
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I pray Wallis is right, but I still fear that he might be overstating the case.
so all those people who gathered for the Values Voters Summit in November were… not important?
you hear everyday how talk radio and fox news are gaining a bigger audience, not shrinking. and it’s because a lot of America connects with that conservative mindset [though of course fox states they give an equal voice to conservatives].
indeed, George W Bush himself has been giving a lot of funding to the crisis in Darfur and other worthwhile causes. this is good. but the day global warming is the top issue we as Christians are trying to address in the public arena… well, i won’t be counted in that religious left group.
I can’t tell if your title is snark.
Of this new(ish) “religious left social movement,” I must ask “Who is organizing it?”
Also, if this religious left mobilizes around electoral goals, is it a movement, or simply an opening in the electorate on which political campaigns may capitalize ? Where is the sustained challenge to establishment power-holders and/or culture?
I don’t mean to be critical, but I currently study religion and social movements and just do not see the organized collective challenge that a social movement needs. I see, rather, a noticeable (and noticed) shift in electoral priorities among a self-identified religious left and a collection of disparate faith-based community organizing units.
In response to the question “Who is organizing it?”, what if the answer is “Jesus Christ”?
Not necessarily a “religious left social movement”, which is *not* what Wallis is advocating/predicting. He’s talking about the current generation of collegians and their older/younger spiritual siblings. They care for neither left nor right, but want to define themselves in other ways.
In Jesus, there is no “left” or “right” - He sees only “saved” or “unsaved”. I hope and pray that we can see a shift from divisive doctrinal idolatrists -those who set up “right” or “left”, “liberal” or “conservative” and all the other “human important” issues as their own golden calves- and shift our focus to working together on the issues that concern the Lord.
I would much rather stand before the Lord’s judgment and say that I tried to live as Jesus with the Holy Spirit as my guide than that I tried to uphold a conservative social movement.