an intriguing election year

I'm sure I'm not alone in my increased interest in this year's election race. Part of it, for me at least, is that I am more informed than I was four years ago, and more able to think critically about politics and the role of government. I was fairly naive in 2004. I'm still naive now, just not quite as much so! But the other part of it is simply that it's an exciting race, at least on the Democratic side. It looks like it will probably come down the wire for Clinton and Obama, which should make the next 6 months quite interesting.

In any case, my point for this post isn't so much to discuss candidates or what's happening in the race. Rather, I wanted to provoke some thoughtful engagement in some important issues. Jim Wallis' book, God's Politics, has been immensely helpful in forming not so much my specific stances on issues, but in teaching me how to think about my role both as a Christian and a citizen (which go hand in hand) in the political arena. The central point of Wallis' book is that the best role for any faith community is to stand outside the central political sphere and speak prophetically to both the Right and the Left. Rather than letting the church become an arm of the Religious Right or of an opposing liberal agenda, God's people should speak truth across the board, and call biblical values in all political issues. For example, as Wallis points out, poverty is just as much a moral concern as abortion is. This has hit home with me. Perhaps this is why I resonated quite a bit with what John Edwards had to say in his campaign.

So, to illustrate a point, let's look at the poverty example. We could stand within the same old debate and listen to the conservatives on one side say "you can't just give people handouts; you need to hold them responsible!" Or the liberals on the other side saying "but these issues are systemic - it's all about society's oppression!" But here is why I like Wallis - he does neither of these. I post here a quote from his blog in which he describes a discussion he had on a conservative Christian radio station:

"When our discussion turned to the subject of poverty, I brought up how all too often our lack of relationship with the poor is a deeper problem than our ideological debates about how to solve poverty – how very few of us, including liberal Democrats, including Christians, have real relationships with the poor.

As a committed Christian and committed conservative, Thor [Tolo, the Christian radio host] believes it's primarily the church's responsibility to address poverty—not the government's. Even so, he admitted, "I feel very convicted by what you just said," and admitted his lack of relationship with poor people, even though he had concerns about government helping to promote a cycle of dependency.

I said we need a grand alliance between conservatives and liberals on the issue, an alliance that calls on liberals to address family breakdown, out-of-wedlock births, and other dimensions of poverty involving personal responsibility, and for conservatives to champion strategic investments in housing, health care, and education—with clear outcomes and results.

But I added, "When did Jesus ever call his followers to serve only the deserving poor?"

Smiling, he conceded the point. It's hard to disagree with Jesus."

What do you think of Wallis' point here? Is it possible to engage in these debates on a deeper level? Can the church stand outside these issues and be consistently biblical? I find myself much more hopeful, thanks to folks like Wallis, that she can.

Finally, his challenge to all Christians who say it's the church's responsibility to deal with poverty, should cause us to pause. If we say that, then are we doing anything about it? Do we actually have those relationships? Or do we just look like hypocrites? How can we respond to this challenge?

It will be an interesting year indeed.