Why Are Family Values Strengthened by Sticking a Gun in My Belly and Telling Me to Hand Over My Wallet?
Jim Wallis delivered a speech at the Sojourners/Call to Renewal Pentecost 2006: "Building a Covenant for a New America conference."
He published excerpts on June 29, 2006. 'Tis the season, it seems:
We are gathering here in the season of Pentecost, as we have done now for 10 years. It is the season when we celebrate the church coming down from that upper room into the streets with the power of the Spirit to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. The good news that he proclaimed in his opening mission statement in the little town of Nazareth: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor."
Yes, the poor need the good news of redemption. But so do the rich. So do the middle class, who control the majority vote in Congress. May the spirit of the Lord be on them all -- just not the spirit of Robespierre.
Mr. Wallis doesn't believe that the church has been faithful to Jesus' message of good news to the poor.
To a church whose mission statement hasn't always reflected this, we are here simply to say this: whatever else the gospel of Jesus Christ is able to change about our lives - overcome our sinful habits and addictions, save our marriages and families, make us responsible people - IF the gospel that we preach does not "bring good news to the poor," well then, it is simply not the gospel of Jesus Christ - and it is about time that we said that.
But exactly what is this good news to the poor? Mr. Wallis makes his answer clear, year after year: The government must steal from the rich to give to the poor! He never adds this proviso: minus 50% for handling.
Somehow, this sounds like the gospel of Robin Hood, not the gospel of Jesus Christ.
To the political leaders of this capitol city, and from the places you all live across this country, we are here to say something else: the days when you could win the support of the religious community by merely speaking the language of family values and the sacredness of life while ignoring the desperate plight of poor people in this wealthy nation and around the world are over. Because for a growing number of people of faith across the political spectrum, you will now be held accountable for how the leadership you offer and the policies you support impact the lives of those whom Jesus called "the least of these." You see for many of us, poverty is also a life issue and as our bumper sticker says "Poverty is NOT a family value!"
My question is this: Is sending the IRS to stick a gun in my belly to force me to hand over my money to the tax collector at rates four times that identified by the prophet Samuel as tyranny -- 10% (I Sam. 8:15, 17 -- the gospel of Jesus Christ? Mr. Wallis believes that it is, and has said so repeatedly.
Like all defenders of statist tyranny, he confuses "society" with "the state." Society, which is made of of a multitude of associations -- churches, families, charitable organizations -- is not the State, meaning organized force. To confuse the two is to confuse liberty with tyranny.
We need a new moral logic that merges personal and social responsibility - a more honest assessment of both the individual decisions and social systems that trap people in poverty. And that is the aim of our "Covenant for a New America."
He is invoking the language of covenant: oath-bound under God. He is imitating the language of the Republicans' 1994 ill-fated program, "A Contract With America." But he uses a biblical word, covenant, to gain support from Christians.
He calls for moral renewal, by which he means theft through the ballot box in the name of Jesus.
We need a new grand alliance between liberals and conservatives to create effective cultural, political, and economic strategies. We need a moral renewal of our priorities and a commitment to advancing the common good. We can overcome poverty, but only if we act together, and only if all sectors of society do what they do best.
We covenant together here, before God and our neighbors, to work and pray for a new America:An America where everyone able to work is working and able to support a family.
An America where those who are unable to work are compassionately supported.
An America where no child lives in poverty and goes to bed at night hungry.
An America where every person has a roof over their head.
And an America that opens its heart and its budget to our neighbors around the world.
A new America - where all of God's children have the life and dignity they deserve.
And how is this to be accomplished? With a gun. A government-authorized gun. Actually, lots of government-authorized guns. What has not worked in Iraq -- as Wallis the peacemaker says -- he believes can work in domestic politics: national redemption through the power of State coercion.
First, there is the universal gospel of redemption, which has become for Wallis the gospel of worldwide foreign aid through compulsion in America: the open wallet of every American who has more money than some Sudanese peasant.
We invite the churches and the wider religious community to reach beyond our divisions and our differences in order to make a profoundly moral appeal to the nation. The very soul of the nation is at stake in whether America's promise will truly extend to all of God's children and whether Americans will recognize that all the world's children are also God's and, ultimately, our own.
Got that? Those hungry, poverty-stricken children -- billions of them -- are ours, as Americans. We owe them support.
By the way, why didn't the prophets of Israel ever mention the moral requirement of foreign aid, meaning government-to-government aid?
He has confused society with the state. He has also confused the Fatherhood of God -- a Father who has disinherited the covenantal sons of Adam -- with the Social Gospel's version of the universal fatherhood of God and the creedless brotherhood of man.
If you don't think this is the Democrats' version of Bush's neo-Wilsonian "make the whole world democratic," you don't understand politics.
We invite the nation's political leaders to set party divisions and rivalries aside to address this fundamentally moral issue and challenge. We implore them to heed the message of the prophets that the nations will be judged not by their military might or gross national product but by how we treat the most vulnerable in our midst, "the least of these," and we appeal to them to fulfill the American dream of opportunity and the credo of "liberty and justice for all."
Got that? Nations will be judged. But what has this to do with the Social Gospel's politics of plunder? Where is there biblical evidence that the civil government has been authorized by God to provide economic support, collected by taxation, for poor people? Where is that biblical verse? It does not exist.
He moves on.
While the world fears American domination, it still looks for American leadership. And the very best defense against terrorism would be the example of the world's strongest nation leading the world in the moral battle against poverty, disease, intolerance, and oppression.
This is Woodrow Wilson's imperialism for Christians.
God bless you for the work you do, and for joining together this week to begin the campaign that will change the American conversation on poverty.
Israel wanted a king. Samuel warned them not to do it.
Wallis wants the Social Gospel. So far, America's churches are not lining up.
So far, so good.