23rd September, 2006

DAVID ADAMS

God's Politics: Why the American RIght Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It
Jim Wallis
Published by Lion Hudson, Oxford, England, 2005

"While 'God’s Politics' deals with big picture stuff, it also shows how individual Christians, uniting with their brothers and sisters both in their own country and around the world, can make a real difference operating at a local level."

Warning: this is not a passive read. Forget the niceties of dinner party conversations, Jim Wallis’ book dives straight into the issues of religion and politics and makes no apologies for doing so.

Global poverty, the conflict in Iraq, the “War on Terror” and corporate misconduct are among key issues Wallis - a world renowned preacher, theologian, activist and author - dips into in the pages of God’s Politics as he challenges, in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets, what have become the established Christian attitudes in the US on both sides of politics and warns against such things as the emergence of a “national theology of war” in the US.

In their place he offers a new paradigm for the future of Christianity in politics, one in which Christians weigh up the policies of all parties against the Biblical model and which sees Christians moving beyond "single-issue voting" and applying equal weight to issues such as abortion and capital punishment while at the same time ensuring a Biblically-based consistency when looking at issues, whether they be corporate governance or global poverty.

While it primarily addresses the US political situation - where religion plays a far more overt role in federal and state politics than in Australia - the conclusions Wallis draws and the challenges he sets out are nonetheless confronting for Christians in any context.

Nowhere more so than in Australia where the question and role of God in politics and the separation of church and state have been constantly in the headlines since the last Federal Election.

Not only have the past few years seen a new voice emerging among voters - what the Australian Christian Lobby, itself a relatively new lobbyist organisation, calls the “Christian constituency”, the nation has also witnessed the rise of new party Family First and the election of its first senator, Steve Fielding, to Federal Parliament and the high profile politicians attending overtly Christian events such as the annual Hillsong Conference.

If there were ever a time for a book to look at such issues, this is indeed it.

While God’s Politics - which features a forward in the Australia edition by World Vision chief executive Tim Costello - deals with big picture stuff, it also shows how individual Christians, uniting with their brothers and sisters both in their own country and around the world, can make a real difference operating at a local level.

It challenges commonly held assumptions and beliefs with Biblical reality, demolishing the excuses so many of us use - “but Jesus says ‘The poor will always be with us’ so why should I do anything to help alleviate poverty” - not to take action as Christ would have us do.

Jim Wallis is a passionate man and God’s Politics is a clear testament to it. This is a book to make you think but more than that, it’s a book to challenge you to step out and start to actively examine the world around you.