Paul Wilczynski's Observations

Don't challenge the rights' piety, challenge their theology

Ryan Lizza, a senior editor at The New Republic, reviews Jim Wallis's book God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It in the New York Times (free registration required). In the review, Lizza says

In ''God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It,'' Wallis has a simple message for Democrats: rather than challenging the right's piety, challenge the right's theology. ''Conventional wisdom suggests that the antidote to religious fundamentalism is more secularism,'' he says. ''But that is a very big mistake. The best response to bad religion is better religion, not secularism.'' Many liberals admonish President Bush for his use of religious language. Wallis is one of the few on the left to question the accuracy of Bush's biblical allusions, which he maintains ''are too often either taken out of context or, worse yet, employed in ways quite different from their original meaning.'' And instead of attacking conservatives for bringing religion into the public square, Wallis attacks conservatives for reducing the Christian policy agenda to abortion and gay marriage. After all, the Bible has far more to say about poverty, economics and war than it does about the right's two favorite wedge issues.

posted by Paul Wilczynski @ 8:03 AM