The Writer and the Christian

We begin our look at Wallis’ book proper in the introduction, which is essentially the ideological equivalent of a drive-by. A lot of faces go by, there is a lot of noise, and when it’s over we wonder what exactly the point of the exercise was.

He opens the introduction like he does in many chapters, by talking about his son Luke, who in this instance came to him believing that some friends didn’t believe in Jesus because their family is vegetarian (p. 1). The result was Wallis and his wife taking Luke on tour with them, to “meet some godly vegetarians,” (p. 1).

I begin here not simply because this is where Wallis starts, but because his approach to this issue is systemic of Wallis’s approach to Scripture throughout his book. He does not deal with Biblical passages which speak of vegetarianism as belonging to the one with “weak faith” (Rom. 8), nor talk about some of the anti-biblical assumptions (not to mention silly health beliefs) which spur on the popularity of vegetarianism. In fact, he ignores the Scriptures completely. He just assumes everything is fine and dandy with vegetarianism, and treats it as if it should somehow be normative in a world filled with the glory of the gospel. This, of course, is one kettle of fish I don’t want to spill any further.

Every major screeching point Wallis has he trips over here in the introduction, and as his remarks here are fairly sparse, I will try to limit myself to a similar level of word-count frugality.

He speaks of the astonishment of people when who apparently didn’t get the memo that Christianity had, you know, requirements. “I didn’t know Christians could care about poverty, the environment, or the war in Iraq,” (p. 1). It is hard to tell from this precisely what rock exactly these people have been huddled under since about 1973, but the evangelical head-count has been drastically dwindling on this front for some time. We’re all standing at the sidelines scratching our heads. This is something we all know, and the scary fundies before us. “What’s the trouble, now?”

Of course, once we agree that Christians should deal with poverty, the creation order, and the war in Iraq, we’re still not hopping down the yellow brick road arm-in-arm with Wallis. Nobody worth listening to on the conservative evangelical side is saying we should ignore these things, but we are disagreeing with the way in which Wallis and his cronies are going about it. And this, to some, is tantamount to apathy.

Next, Wallis brings up his heroes and their times to shine. He is a fan of Martin Luther King Jr. (that Holy plagiarizing womanizer), Finney, Ghandi, Lucy Stone, the Second Great Awakening (uh-oh), Christian Feminism, the Social Gospel, Liberation Theology, “interfaith dialog,” the Progressive Era, and the New Deal (p. 2-3, 6). This is enough to set off warning bells in any good Christian’s head. The Social Gospel, Progressive Era, and the New Deal were awash in socialist ideology, and as Jonah Goldberg has conclusively demonstrated in Liberal Fascism, fascist teachings as well. Liberation Theology was birthed from the merging of mainline Liberalism with Marxist ideology.

Wallis notes that “revivals often occur when politics is broken . . . Social movements then rise up to change politics,” (p. 2). Here we find just how fuzzyheaded his thinking honestly is. He confuses revivals, a spiritual awakening by the Spirit in the Church, with politics. Anyone who can merge two utterly dissimilar things so easily needs to be kept far from machinery. This is not to say that revivals do not change behavior and therefore politics; they do. But a revival occurs when the faith has lost its saltiness, not when the politicians are particularly inept.

He then speaks of “social justice,” never defining this term, except to say that it should be part of “a force for progressive social change,” (p. 3), which should make us all really nervous.

But what’s his deal with the ol’ RR (Religious Right?). Why, they’re trying to restrict the “moral values issue” to only two things, “abortion and gay marriage,” (p. 5). Those lousy conservatives, fighting against the mass slaughter of 60 million children and man-on-man action. Who do they think they are? What are they trying to do, deal with some issues about which God speaks very clearly and straight into the microphone, not a waver in His voice?

The solutions to poverty, at home and around our spheroid planet, are very complexicated. It is difficult to know what to do or what will help actually solve this thing, but God’s policy on genocide and the ethics of naughty touching are straightforward and travel along the lines of “Quit it!”

He doesn’t like the Religious Right because, “they’re so divisive!” (p. 7). They’re not encouraging the governmentally approved dosage of Group-Hugism. But the real and frankly deeper question is not whether or not we should be divisive, but with whom we should be divided? When lived properly, the Christian life will receive persecution, so we should be encouraged when this takes place that we’re actually doing something right. The trick is to get persecuted by the right folks.

And the fact that Wallis is buddy-buddy with Jimmy Carter, is published in the New York Times, and is universally loved by the established media, the Democratic Party, and most of the politicians in Washington really ought to be telling us something.