BOB ABERNETHY, host: All week, financial experts in and out of Washington warned of the catastrophic consequences if Congress does not raise the country’s debt ceiling by August 2. After that deadline, the government would not be able to pay all its obligations for the first time in history. Officials warned that that could trigger financial chaos and vast hardship. By week’s end, there were signs of a temporary fix to the debt ceiling problem, but no agreement on a long-term deal on spending and taxes, which many had wanted, including the president.
President Obama: And I think it’s important for the American people that everybody in this town set politics aside, that everybody in this town sets our individual interests aside, and we try to do some tough stuff.
ABERNETHY: In the midst of the financial debate, where are the churches? Can religious leaders influence the politicians? Author and activist Reverend Jim Wallis is the editor of Sojourners magazine. His is a leading religious voice in political debate. Jim, welcome.
JIM WALLIS (President, Sojourners): Thanks, Bob.
ABERNETHY: There are two big questions that people have been arguing about in this town. One is the debt ceiling. The other is long-term. The debt ceiling is something has to be done now, but long term, how do we bring the country’s spending and taxes in line? You’ve been working very hard lobbying to protect government programs that help the poor. How are you doing?
WALLIS: Well, I think I’m happy with what we’ve seen so far. We started with a provocative question: What would Jesus cut? That got attention to the question. Then we fasted for almost a month in Lent. That brought more attention to it. Then we formed a “circle of protection”: Roman Catholic bishops, Salvation Army, National Association of Evangelicals, many people, not the religious left here, almost everyone saying that you can’t balance the budget on the backs of the poorest people. And I think that voice is now being heard. We’ve talked to Republicans, Democrats, and the White House right along on this.
ABERNETHY: You are trying, I think, to get a meeting with a lot of the players in this?
WALLIS: We have been meeting right along.
ABERNETHY: Well, what do you say to them?
WALLIS: We say, you know, there are principles here, that a budget is a moral document and must be evaluated by those from the bottom up. That’s our point of view. And the common good has to outweigh ideological political battles in this town. But we also ask them what their faith means. If they are people of faith, and many say they are, what their faith means, their moral compass, how they decide things.
ABERNETHY: You take that argument, what does your faith mean, to Republicans in the House who insist on no compromise?
WALLIS: We sure do. The Catholics, evangelicals, Republican side, Democratic side. Now we don’t get involved, Bob, in which bill we are going to support. We don’t lobby for bills. But we say there are principles here. You can’t just have the benefits all go to corporations and wealthy people and nothing for those who are most vulnerable.
ABERNETHY: But the common good. This idea of the common good, very important in religious and ethics. How do you define it, and who says what the common good is?
WALLIS: Well, this week we’ve organized 5,000 pastors to say let’s look at the real people in our congregations and our communities, what’s going to happen to them, as opposed to the Washington, D.C. question, who’s up, who’s down, who’s going to be the Speaker of the House next time, who’ll win the next election. The common good is about the real people, the people we have to always take into account. And pastors, I think, I wanted to talk to people whose job it is to have re-read the Bible to get to the focus on who the real people are here.
ABERNETHY: But this argument about how to cut spending, what could be cut, how to raise income, this is a very technical, very political argument. How do people, how do religious leaders feel? Do you feel that you have the ability to get in and be influential in something as technical as this debate?
WALLIS: You know, the details are technical and not difficult, really. Once you agree to some principles, the details can be worked out by the politicians. We say “let justice roll down like waters.” Let the politicians work out the plumbing here. You know, we don’t get into all the details. We’re saying there are principles here. If this is going to focus on targeting poor people, we say that’s wrong. It’s got to be shared sacrifice here. How you do it, this really isn’t rocket science. We could solve this if the principles were clear from the start.
ABERNETHY: Many thanks to Jim Wallis of Sojourners magazine.
WALLIS: Thank you, Bob.
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Any moment now, the fundies will show up to tell us Jim isn’t a “real Christian”… . As everyone knows, Jesus approves of tax breaks for billionaires.
In the education debate there are principals involved. In this one, your transcript typist and editors missed the principles of correct English spelling involved.
Wallis didn’t say anything, though he repeated himself several times. Yes, there are principles involved here. Duh. That’s what this is, a debate about principles.
In fact, the whole American Experiment, the purpose of the American Revolution, the framing of the Constitution, the dramatic break from the old feudal notion that “the people” need better educated, more intelligent, better informed leaders to tell them how to best live their own lives, that is all a matter of a few principles. Principles based in the founders’ reading of Scripture and the classics of the Western political and cultural canon that people like Wallis (and too many other clergy malformed by contemporary Seminary education, which manages to read Scripture solely through the lens of Moltmanian collectivism) reject.
What, Jim Wallis, does that “justice” you want to see rolling down the hills look like in practice? That the poor have an outcome equal to the rich? Is that justice? What minimal level of “decency” must we insist upon for the least among us, how does it inflate over time, and why (that is, according to what principle)? Does it account for differences in temperament, ability, motivation, drive, passion, interest?
Even the churches in Chicago and Detroit learned, decades ago, that no good was accomplished by giving charity to the needy without expecting – nay, demanding – accountability and changes in behavior from the recipients. In other words, that those on the dole begin to think and act more like those providing the dole. Which is to say, culture does matter, and some forms of acculturation produce better personal outcomes than others (something even modern research has shown in, for example, the discovery that children of stricter, more church-attending (often Evangelical) parents report happier lives and demonstrate more accomplished lives as young adults than do the children of the typical guilt-ridden, permissive mainline Protestant.
These issues of motivation, temperament, and acculturation are left unaddressed by Wallis because the answer is assumed – it is an answer in moral/theological terms that looks very much like the socio-political answers given by the left. And all of that is derived from a late 19th century notion of society. How is it that in the modern era (because progressives have not progressed beyond modernism) Christianity no longer challenges the State, but actively conforms to and supports it in its left-leaning iterations? And what principles of biblical interpretation allow so-called scholars to discover that God is really a closet socialist?
Yes, Jim, this is all a matter of just a few principles which, could we resolve them, would lead to obvious solutions. Our problem, O sage of DC, is that we cannot agree on those principles. A few of us knuckle-dragging evolutionary “throwbacks” actually think the principles enshrined in the Constitution are an advance on the ideology Jim espouses, which is nothing more than a return to feudalism under a new name and waving a new banner. The human revolution was the liberation of the individual given form in the American Revolution. The efforts to unseat it are counter-revolutionary; an effort to re-submerge the individual in his or her group, class, genus, and to treat each group as a single unit, deserving of a one-size-fits-all life, lifestyle, and benefits package – as assigned by those who are sure they know what is the “common” good.
Jim, I don’t want a common good. I want my own good, secured by my own effort, and according to my own, God-given, unique and idiosyncratic personality. I want to express my life my way, without you telling me what I must have, must avoid, or must contribute to some other person. I want to give the charity I am moved to give, to those I am moved to give to. I want the individual liberty to pursue my own happiness – chasing whatever weird combination of money, time, possessions, thoughts, habits, behaviors I choose. I do not want to be limited by your notion of what is good for me, or the community, or the earth. You don’t know; you only know what you think is good, limited mortal that you are. And, limited mortal that you are, you have no right – certainly no God-given right – to impose your poor insight on my poor insight.
Given your way, awfully mired in yesteryear’s ideology, wanting to replace the radical empowerment of the individual occasioned by the U.S. Constitution with the old, tired feudalism that preceded it and threatens to replace it, you offer nothing new, only the return to serfdom that existed before 1750 and reappeared wherever “scientific” socialism has raised its ugly head over the last century and destroyed the common wealth and human spirit.
But, hey, in your dystopia at least the “common” will have an equal “good,” however pathetic it becomes. And you, of course, knowing better and being more virtuous, will have an unequal “good” befitting your sacrifice for the people.
“Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.” — Daniel Webster
@TBascom: “A few of us knuckle-dragging evolutionary “’throwbacks’”
That’s about it.