God's Politics Quotes

“It just doesn’t make spiritual sense to suggest that the evil all lies “out there” with our adversaries and enemies, and none of it is “in here” with us—embedded in our own attitudes, behaviors, and policies.”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“The former South African archbishop Desmond Tutu used to famously say, “We are prisoners of hope.” Such a statement might be taken as merely rhetorical or even eccentric if you hadn’t seen Bishop Tutu stare down the notorious South African Security Police when they broke into the Cathedral of St. George’s during his sermon at an ecumenical service. I was there and have preached about the dramatic story of his response more times than I can count. The incident taught me more about the power of hope than any other moment of my life. Desmond Tutu stopped preaching and just looked at the intruders as they lined the walls of his cathedral, wielding writing pads and tape recorders to record whatever he said and thereby threatening him with consequences for any bold prophetic utterances. They had already arrested Tutu and other church leaders just a few weeks before and kept them in jail for several days to make both a statement and a point: Religious leaders who take on leadership roles in the struggle against apartheid will be treated like any other opponents of the Pretoria regime. After meeting their eyes with his in a steely gaze, the church leader acknowledged their power (“You are powerful, very powerful”) but reminded them that he served a higher power greater than their political authority (“But I serve a God who cannot be mocked!”). Then, in the most extraordinary challenge to political tyranny I have ever witnessed, Archbishop Desmond Tutu told the representatives of South African apartheid, “Since you have already lost, I invite you today to come and join the winning side!” He said it with a smile on his face and enticing warmth in his invitation, but with a clarity and a boldness that took everyone’s breath away. The congregation’s response was electric. The crowd was literally transformed by the bishop’s challenge to power. From a cowering fear of the heavily armed security forces that surrounded the cathedral and greatly outnumbered the band of worshipers, we literally leaped to our feet, shouted the praises of God and began…dancing. (What is it about dancing that enacts and embodies the spirit of hope?) We danced out of the cathedral to meet the awaiting police and military forces of apartheid who hardly expected a confrontation with dancing worshipers. Not knowing what else to do, they backed up to provide the space for the people of faith to dance for freedom in the streets of South Africa.”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“Most Americans believe that if you work hard and full-time, you should not be poor. But the truth is that many working families are, and many low-income breadwinners must hold down multiple jobs just to survive.”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“The religious Right went wrong by forgetting its religious and moral roots and going for political power; the civil rights movement was proven right in operating out of its spiritual strength and letting its political influence flow from its moral influence.”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“Christ instructs us to love our enemies, which does not mean a submission to their hostile agendas or domination, but does mean treating them as human beings also created in the image of God and respecting their human rights as adversaries and even as prisoners.”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“Abraham Lincoln had it right. Our task should not be to invoke religion and the name of God by claiming God’s blessing and endorsement for all our national policies and practices—saying, in effect, that God is on our side. Rather, Lincoln said, we should pray and worry earnestly whether we are on God’s side.”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“Cynicism really comes out of despair, but the antidote to cynicism is not optimism but action.”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“Wealthy Christians talk about the poor but have no friends who are poor. So they merely speculate on the reasons for their condition, often placing the blame on the poor themselves.”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“you have substituted your nation and your army for God, your faith is more American than Christian, the Jesus you claim is not the Jesus of the New Testament and his kingdom will not be ushered in by the U.S. military.”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“Being raised evangelical in the Midwest gave me a personal experience of the phenomenon called “religious fundamentalism.” A story illustrates. When I was a boy in high school, I was interested in a girl from our church. It was an evangelical church, although some might have called it a bit fundamentalist—taking a hard line on cultural issues. But I took a chance and invited her to a movie, which was certainly frowned upon back then in our church culture (though my own parents snuck us out to Walt Disney movies at the drive-in, where we were unlikely to be spotted). I chose The Sound of Music, thinking it was “safe.” Who could object to Julie Andrews, I confidently thought? I was wrong. As we left the house, my girlfriend’s father stood in the doorway, blocking our exit, and said to his daughter, “If you go to this film, you’ll be trampling on everything that we’ve taught you to believe.” She fled downstairs to her bedroom in tears. We missed the movie, and the evening was a disaster. A year later, the fundamentalist father watched The Sound of Music on his television—and liked it.

Fundamentalism is essentially a revolt against modernity. It is a reaction usually based on profound fear and defensiveness against “losing the faith.” My girlfriend’s father instinctively knew that his religion should make him different than the world. That is a fair religious point, and to be honest, there is much about modernity that deserves some revolting against. But I wish he had chosen to break with America at the point of its materialism, racism, poverty, or violence. Instead, he chose Julie Andrews.”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“Couldn’t both pro-life and pro-choice political leaders agree to common ground actions that would actually reduce the abortion rate, rather than continue to use abortion mostly as a political symbol?”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“Conventional wisdom suggests that the antidote to religious fundamentalism is more secularism. But that is a very big mistake. The best response to bad religion is better religion, not secularism.”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“the peace movement sometimes does underestimate the problem of evil, and in doing so weakens its authority and its message.”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“the principle of always seeking an alternative applies to nonviolence as well. It is this: If nonviolence is to be credible, it must answer the questions that violence purports to answer, but in a better way.”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“If evil in this world is deeply human and very real, and religious people believe it is, it just doesn’t make spiritual sense to suggest that the evil all lies “out there” with our adversaries and enemies, and none of it is “in here” with us—embedded in our own attitudes, behaviors, and policies.”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“How does allegiance to the Christian Prince of Peace or the God of the Hebrew prophets square with a national security policy that still relies on threatening the use of nuclear weapons—something all of our religious traditions abhor?”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“A modern American prophet, like Micah, once said, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is a nation approaching spiritual death.”3 He was Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., and he also made the connection between war and poverty.”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“Significant numbers of American evangelicals reject the way some have distorted biblical passages as their rationale for uncritical support for every policy and action of the Israeli government instead of judging all actions—of both Israelis and Palestinians—on the basis of biblical standards of justice.”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“Fuzzy and ideological definitions of terrorism just make it easier to kill people. When you know your actions will kill innocent noncombatants, that’s terrorism. And it must be clearly named as unacceptable—no matter who does it (individuals, groups, or states), whatever the weapons, the expressed intentions, or political justifications.”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“he doesn’t agree with the conventional wisdom that says, “The world changed on September 11.” Hauerwas says, “No, the world changed in 33 A.D. The question is how to narrate what happened on September 11 in light of what happened in 33 A.D.”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“As Jane Lampman, who wrote the Monitor article, put it, “The Gospel, some evangelicals are quick to point out, teaches that the line separating good and evil runs not between nations, but inside every human heart.”20”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“The religious conviction that challenges us to see the image of God in every person is an absolute barrier to the practice of torture.”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“Instead of imposing rigid pro-choice and pro-life political litmus tests, why not work together on teen pregnancy, adoption reform, and real alternatives for women backed into dangerous and lonely corners?”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“Our foreign policy has become an aggressive assertion of military superiority in a defensive and reactive mode, seeking to protect us against growing and invisible threats instead of addressing the root causes of those threats.”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“I believe there is a “fourth option” for American politics, which follows from the prophetic religious tradition we have described. It is traditional or conservative on issues of family values, sexual integrity and personal responsibility, while being very progressive, populist, or even radical on issues like poverty and racial justice. It affirms good stewardship of the earth and its resources, supports gender equality, and is more internationally minded than nationalist—looking first to peacemaking and conflict resolution when it come to foreign policy questions.”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“What would you do if you faced a candidate who took a traditional moral stance on the social and cultural issues? They would not be mean-spirited and, for example, blame gay people for the breakdown of the family, nor would they criminalize the choices of desperate women backed into difficult and dangerous corners. But the candidate would decidedly be pro-family, pro-life (meaning really want to lower the abortion rate), strong on personal responsibility and moral values, and outspoken against the moral pollution throughout popular culture that makes raising children in America a countercultural activity. And what if that candidate was also an economic populist, pro-poor in social policy, tough on corporate corruption and power, clear in supporting middle- and working-class families in health care and education, an environmentalist, and committed to a foreign policy that emphasized international law and multilateral cooperation over preemptive and unilateral war? What would you do?” I asked. He paused for a long time and then said, “We would panic!”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“Fundamentalism is essentially a revolt against modernity. It is a reaction usually based on profound fear and defensiveness against “losing the faith.”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“Exclusively private faith degenerates into a narrow religion, excessively preoccupied with individual and sexual morality while almost oblivious to the biblical demands for public justice. In the end, private faith becomes a merely cultural religion providing the assurance of righteousness for people just like us.”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“The lack of vision in public life and the emptying out of values that visionless leadership creates lead to a politics of complaint.”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

“Oh, then you must be the religious Left.” No, not at all, and the very question is the problem. Just because a religious Right has fashioned itself for political power in one utterly predictable ideological guise does not mean that those who question this political seduction must be their opposite political counterpart.”
― Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It