Democracy Project has a thorough and fairly ascerbic critique of Jim Wallis' book God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It. The review is too lengthy to reproduce in its entirety here, but it should be read by anyone who thinks that Jim Wallis is really seeking a "third way" in American politics. According to DP Wallis' position is that the Left is almost completely right except on abortion, and the Right is almost completely immoral and unChristian. In other words, Wallis' third way is for everyone to become Left-wing Democrats save with respect to abortion, but his prescriptions for actually ending abortion are apparently obscure:
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.
DP hammers away at Wallis' fondness for driving in the far left lane of the ideological highway, a proclivity apparent in the tendentious wording of much of what he writes. For example:
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?
There is much, much more to this review at the link and those likely to read Wallis' book or who are themselves interested in the mesh of politics and Christian faith would do well to give it a look.
If you would like a review which offers a more sympathetic treatment of God's Politics than Democracy Project does you can find a good one here.
