Life of the Party

Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners, tells Democrats how they can attract moderate religious voters: Be authentic and don't be afraid to use the G-word.

By Tim Grieve

May 2, 2005 | Two days before he lost the presidential election, John Kerry made a campaign appearance at Shiloh Baptist Church in Dayton, Ohio. It was the fifth time in five weeks that Kerry had stopped at an African-American church in Ohio, but that doesn't mean he was comfortable in the setting. As the church choir rocked through a long number that morning, Kerry sat stiffly in a chair near the pulpit, looking lost. Do I clap? Do I tap my foot? Do I sing along? And when Kerry rose to spoke -- when he invoked the Book of James and talked of the emptiness of "faith without deeds" -- he came across not as a fellow Christian but as a politician visiting a foreign land, trying to win over the locals with a few words in their native tongue.

While the importance of "moral values" in the 2004 election has surely been overstated, Democrats take it on faith that they've got to do better next time with people of faith. The problem: So few of them seem up to the task. For every Bill Clinton or Barack Obama -- "We worship an awesome God in the blue states" -- there's a John Kerry or a Howard Dean, who famously put the Book of Job in the New Testament during his presidential run and now quotes Scripture as if he's writing speeches with a list of the "10 Most Famous Bible Passages" sitting next to his yellow pad.

Can Democrats do better? Jim Wallis says they have to. Wallis, the evangelical Christian who founded the religious social justice group Sojourners, has spent the last three months on an extended book tour in support of "God's Politics," and he says he has seen signs that the right's one-sided conversation about religion is finally over. Americans are ready to hear a different, more progressive dialogue about the role of faith in public life, but they'll listen only if the Democrats' messengers can speak with religious authenticity, Wallis says.

"It's so transparent when somebody is being inauthentic about religion," Wallis says. "There are millions and millions of moderate evangelicals and moderate Catholics who are simply not in the pocket of the religious right. And yet Democrats haven't got a clue as to how to speak to them. They have no idea! And Kerry gave them nothing to vote for."

Wallis says that Democrats have to begin a discussion with voters about how faith drives their public policy ideas beyond the confines of abortion and gay marriage. And he says the party needs to find candidates who can talk about God -- or at least spirituality -- more generally, in ways that don't sound as phony to Christians as Ronald Reagan's invocation of Bruce Springsteen sounded to rock 'n' roll fans.

Salon spoke with Wallis last week as he traveled from his home in Washington to Philadelphia for another stop on his book tour.

The subtitle of your new book, "God's Politics," is "Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It." What's the "it" that Democrats don't get?

The left, the progressive side, has conceded the entire territory of values and religion to the religious and political right. That's the biggest mistake the left has made in years. It allows the right to define religion and values any way they want to, and that's what they do. That's what you saw on Justice Sunday. When only one side is doing the defining and the talking, when one side talks about what God says and the other side doesn't want to use the G-word, it's clear who wins the public debate.

The right can take an issue like the Democrats' opposition to a handful of George W. Bush's judicial nominees, turn it into this huge religious spectacle, and then argue that the Democrats' views are somehow an attack on people of faith. And instead of being able to engage on the religious level, all many Democrats can say is, "No, wait, this isn't about faith."

If the first time Democrats ever talk about faith is to say, "Oh, this isn't about faith," if you haven't been talking about faith for years and years, the [public's response is,] "How do you know it isn't about faith?"

You know, Martin Luther King Jr., in "Letter From Birmingham Jail," responded to white clergy who were criticizing him for what he had done [in the civil rights movement]. But he never said they weren't people of faith. In arguing on behalf of racial justice on the basis of faith, he assumed integrity on their part, and he appealed to the best of their own traditions. Now you have leaders of the religious right saying, "Anybody who disagrees with us on the filibuster is not a person of faith."

When the other side speaks in such outrageous terms, there has to be a real counterpoint. The Democrats were vitally connected to the civil rights movement, [which was] led by black churches. So how is it that they are now successfully portrayed as a so-called secular party and a party hostile to faith?

Next Page: "The right gets it wrong by saying there are only two moral-values issues"

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