Christians for a Sustainable Economy make their CASE

David French introduces a new coalition to counter the Religious Left on economic issues. I'd say it's about time the claims of Jim Wallis and company were openly challenged.

Over the past several weeks I’ve been writing about the religious Left’s relentless effort to wrap its arms around big government and, disturbingly, the progress it’s making in divorcing evangelicals (especially young evangelicals) from fiscal and economic common sense. Jim Wallis and other religious leftists have formed a so-called “Circle of Protection” whose purpose is to ask, “What would Jesus cut?” This coalition — which gained an audience with President Obama two weeks ago — views federal budgeting practices that would ruin households, corporations, and local and state governments as not just fiscally appropriate but morally imperative.

The time has come to push back, to let the president and the public know that the religious Left does not speak for the entire faith community and that there is another relevant question to ask as we face a deficit crisis: “Whom would Jesus indebt?” I — along with my ACLJ colleague Jordan Sekulow — have joined an informal coalition of Christian leaders called “Christians for a Sustainable Economy.” As our first act, we’ve sent our own letter to President Obama. It begins:

Recently, in the midst of the debt-ceiling crisis, a group calling themselves the “Circle of Protection,” led by Jim Wallis of the activist group Sojourners, met with you and your staff to claim that biblical mandates preclude limits to federal programs for low-income people. The Circle includes representatives of the National Association of Evangelicals, Bread for the World, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Wallis and the “Circle of Protection” do not speak for all Christians. However laudable their intentions, the consequence of their action is to provide a religious imprimatur for big government and sanctify federal welfare programs that are often ineffective — even counterproductive. Contrary to their founding “Statement,” we do not need to “protect programs for the poor.” We need to protect the poor themselves. Indeed, sometimes we need to protect them from the very programs that ostensibly serve the poor, but actually demean the poor, undermine their family structures and trap them in poverty, dependency and despair for generations. Such programs are unwise, uncompassionate, and unjust.

The answer is not higher taxes and more government spending:

The debt disaster is a spending issue. Tax revenues are finite, while the growth of government is unceasing. By any measure, federal spending has skyrocketed, from $2.9 trillion in 2008 to $3.8 trillion in 2011. We presently borrow over forty cents of every dollar we spend. While increasing taxes will generate additional revenues and reduce the deficit in the short term, it will ultimately harm the economy, constrain economic growth, and hasten the out-of-control growth of government. To give more money to Washington is to give the sickness the remedy it requests. The last thing the government needs is more money. It needs to cease its unwise and profligate spending.

And what is the true moral imperative? The letter puts its well:

We believe the poor of this generation and generations to come are best served by policies that promote economic freedom and growth, that encourage productivity and creativity in every able person, and that wisely steward our common resources for generations to come.

The letter represents just one step in a long battle to educate Americans — of all faiths — that the poor are not best served by welfare and that hundreds of billions of dollars of Great Society entitlements have not eradicated poverty but have instead created a permanent underclass and stifled the social mobility that is one of the cornerstones of the American dream. You can sign the letter as well and lend your voice to a new and vital effort.

A hill for liberals to die on

Hunter Baker has some sobering words for Christians whose politics lean to the left.

Well, we’ve had our discussions about budgets as moral documents and now have reached a budget deal that went right up to the brink of a government shutdown.

To those friends of mine who are also Christians, but identify more with the left than the right, I have a question for you: Just exactly what hill was it the Democrats decided they wanted to die on in this battle? Where did they draw the line and say, “This far and no further!”

It turns out their one adamantine point of no compromise was . . . funding Planned Parenthood. Wow, that’s a real Mr. Smith Goes to Washington moment. Gets you right in the old ticker.

I suspect Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo are feeling a little uncomfortable as they review the bidding.

Not that this should come as a surprise. How many Democrat figures have been down this path and learned that they have to make a choice? Ted Kennedy was pro-life and was forced by his party’s realities to change. Jesse Jackson was pro-life. Same result. Ditto for one Albert Gore.

There is one orthodoxy in the party of the left that will not brook disagreement. Bob Casey the elder knew it. And Ramesh Ponnuru wrote a book about it.

The Friday Funnies: Jim Wallis Left-Center-Left

James Kushiner at Mere Comments chronicles the amusingly irrelevant "sojourn" of the amusingly irrelevant Jim Wallis.

Mark Tooley, the new president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, yesterday pointed out the conversion of Sojourners as a member of the Religious Left. Ted Olsen at CT gives some interesting details and responses from Sojourners about this at CT's blog (HT David Mills). I guess they can't really be sojourners anymore, having finally arrived.

But in 2002 Mark Tooley wrote in Touchstone in Sojourn to the Center:

Six years ago [1996] I wrote about Jim Wallis and his then new movement, “Call to Renewal.” It was advertised as a coalition of religious activists that transcended old categories of left and right. But at that time it seemed a barely repackaged coalition of religious left fixtures from the National Council of Churches, left-wing Catholic orders, and the liberal fringes of the Evangelical world.

The emphasis of the Call has changed. The “prophetic” denunciations of capitalism are almost all gone. Republicans, and the Democrats who dare to seek alternatives to liberal orthodoxy, are no longer excoriated, at least not loudly.

Tooley concluded:

Wallis now cites the family, not the state, as the center of society. And his underlying message acknowledges that faith, not government programs, is the ultimate answer to the human condition.

A cynic might suspect that Wallis is simply deploying the language that will appeal to the traditional religious groups that he seeks to recruit for the Call. But even most cynics will acknowledge that age, marriage, and children can change a man.

Whether Wallis is sincere or opportunistic in his move to the center, it bodes well that he has moved

So according to Tooley, in 1996 or so, Wallis was clearly on the Left (not that he would have used that label), then moderated to the center more or less by 2002, but in 2009 is openly on the Left again.

So let me get this straight: 1996, 2002, 2009--Clinton, Bush, Obama--Left, Center, Left.

Hmm, maybe I spoke too soon. Sojourners no more? They may be on the move again at some point in the future. Perhaps its not really a matter of whether the state or the family is at the center, but whether Sojourners is....?

BTW, congrats and all the best to my old friend Mark Tooley on his promotion to president of the IRD. As for Wallis and his political grandstanding, I have long since seen through his thin disguise.