PJR: Skillen on Wallis et al.

The third quarter issue of the Center for Public Justice's Public Justice Report is now online. Among the articles of interest is a review by James W. Skillen of three notable books: Michael Schluter and John Ashcroft, eds., Jubilee Manifesto: A Framework, Agenda and Strategy for Christian Social Reform (Leicester, U.K.: Inter-Varsity Press, 2005); Ronald J. Sider and Diane Knippers, eds., Toward an Evangelical Public Policy (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2005); Jim Wallis, God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005). Each of these books in its own way urges members of the body of Christ to engage the public policy process as Christians. Given that Wallis' book has been a best-seller and has gained considerable media exposure, I will quote from Skillen's review of God's Politics:

Wallis’ use of the biblical prophets in God’s Politics raises yet another question. Wallis, whose prophetic counter-culturalism might suggest that he belongs in the Hauerwas camp, frequently sounds more like a civil-religionist of the left. That is to say, his use of the prophets, in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr., echoes themes from the Social Gospel movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The religious movement that Wallis hopes is now arising is one that will transform America in the here and now. At one point Wallis quotes from one of Micah’s end-times visions (4:1-4), which speaks about the Lord judging and arbitrating among the nations with the consequence that "they shall beat their swords into plowshare, and their spears into pruning hooks; . . . neither shall they learn war any more." In Wallis’ estimation, the United States does not seem to be directing its foreign policy in tune with Micah, but it should be doing so. More than that, Micah’s promise is that all people, under the Lord’s rule, will be able to "sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees." So the conclusion Wallis draws for American policy is that "military solutions are insufficient to bring peace and security," and only when all people on earth "have some share in global security" will they be able to beat their swords into plowshares. The wisdom of Micah, writes Wallis, "is both prophetic and practical for a time like this." Wallis has no hesitation about deriving public policy ideas from eschatological prophesies and does so as easily as the pro-Israel lobby of Evangelicals draws its policy ideas from other prophetic passages. Does either side do justice, however, to the prophets or to the formation of sound public policy?

Wallis does a similar thing with quotations from Isaiah and Amos. Prophetic anticipations of the coming day of the Lord, when there will no longer be hunger and all of God’s people will enjoy the work of their hands, become, for Wallis, anticipations of the work that the religious community in America can accomplish. "We must ensure that all people who are able to work have jobs where they do not labor in vain, but have access to quality health care, decent housing, and a living income to support their families." How can that be done? And what role does government have in trying to make it happen? Wallis avoids the hard work that groups like the Jubilee Centre and some of the authors in Toward an Evangelical Public Policy are doing to try to develop policy proposals that can make a difference in a still fallen, selfish, and fractured world. Wallis’ language sounds utopian, in part because the biblical savior, judge, and lord whom the biblical prophets anticipated is the Messiah of God, not ourselves. In the passages referred to above, the prophets were speaking of what God would do in fulfilling his promises, not describing the outcome of human self-salvation.