Poor Mojo's Newswire

Evangelical leader Jim Wallis, author of The Great Awakening and founder of Sojourners, the largest network of progressive Christians in the United States, today criticized James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, for distorting Barack Obama's statements on faith and politics at the annual Pentecost Conference in 2006 held by Sojourners. ... First, Dobson and Minnery's language is simply inappropriate for religious leaders to use in an already divisive political environment. We can agree or disagree on both biblical and political viewpoints, but our language should be respectful and civil, not attacking motives and beliefs. Second, and perhaps most importantly, is the role of religion in politics... Contrary to Dobson's charge, Obama was very strong in defending the right and necessity of people of faith bringing their moral agenda to the public square, and was specifically critical of many on the left and in his own Democratic Party for being uncomfortable with religion in politics. ... The United States is not the Christian theocracy that people like James Dobson seem to think it should be. Political appeals, even if rooted in religious convictions, must be argued on moral grounds rather than as sectarian religious demands--so that the people (citizens), whether religious or not, may have the capacity to hear and respond. ... In making abortion the single life issue in politics and elections, leaders from the Religious Right like Dobson have violated the "consistent ethic of life" that we find, for example, in Catholic social teaching. Dobson has also fought unsuccessfully to keep the issue of the environment and climate change, which many also now regard as a "life issue," off the evangelical agenda. Older Religious Right leaders are now being passed by a new generation of young evangelicals who believe that poverty, "creation care" of the environment, human trafficking, human rights, pandemic diseases like HIV/AIDS, and the fundamental issues of war and peace are also "religious" and "moral" issues and now a part of a much wider and deeper agenda. That new evangelical agenda is a deep threat to James Dobson and the power wielded by the Religious Right for so long.