In The Event That...

You're Waiting for Great Flood to Wipe Out the Religious Right


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Published: Oct 4, 2006

Jim Wallis

Thu., Oct. 12, 7 p.m., free, Barnes & Noble, 102 Park Ave., Willow Grove, 215-659-1001

Political question for biologists, or maybe a biology question for politicos: Which political creature is most often rumored to be extinct? If you answered "progressive Christians," you get a prize—Pat Robertson's undying hatred. But he probably hated you anyway.

Here's someone else Robertson definitely hates—Jim Wallis, editor of political mag Sojourners and leading light of the embattled Christian left. His 2005 best seller, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, says that liberals should do what they have mostly avoided: to attack the religious right for its misuse of theology.

He also writes: "To influence a democratic society, you must win the public debate about why the policies you advocate are better for the common good. That's the democratic discipline religion has to be under when it brings its faith to the public square."

When's the last time you heard something like that come out of Bush's mouth?