By: Stephen Bates, religious affairs correspondent
Guardian Unlimited, Thursday February 16, 2006
One of the most influential religious figures in the US has called on progressive Christians to seize the religious agenda from the right.
Jim Wallis - who has been consulted by US presidents as well as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown - yesterday urged liberal Christians to move the agenda from the right's focus of sexual morality to a less partisan approach.
The 57-year-old, of Washington DC, is a long-term campaigner for social justice and fighting poverty.
"We need a moral discourse in public life, and it is wrong for the left to leave it to the political right to define the issues," he said. "The left lacks respect and is too often disdainful and condescending in listening to people of faith.
"Religion does not have a monopoly of morality - the issue is not whether a person has a personal faith but whether they have a moral compass."
Mr Wallis is in London to promote his latest book, God's Politics: Why the American Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It.
Mr Brown has called the book powerful reading for anyone interested in social change. It has sold 300,000 copies since going on sale in the US last year, and spent four months on the New York Times bestseller list.
"People should not be apologetic for having a religious faith, and the left needs to remember there is a long history of progressive religion," Mr Wallis said.
"Where would we be if Martin Luther King or Desmond Tutu had kept their faith to themselves? Clearly, there are examples of bad religion - American television evangelists and Muslim suicide bombers - but the answer is not no religion, but better religion."
His book argues that the political right in the US has hijacked what is perceived to be the religious vote after making deals with television evangelists for access to their mailing lists, and has also annexed issues of sexual morality for partisan purposes.
It says: "Clearly, God is not a Republican or a Democrat ... the privatising of faith has weakened its impact on critical public issues and opened the door for a rightwing Christian politics which both narrows and distorts a biblical agenda."
Mr Wallis's call came as the Conservatives sent their adviser on faith issues, Tim Montgomerie, to the US to learn about the Republican electronic lobbying techniques used to target religious voters in the 2004 presidential election.
US polling showed 80% of those who chose moral values as their most important issue in the presidential campaign voted for George Bush.
Mr Wallis said the US president and the religious right were distorting religious messages for political purposes.
As an evangelical, whose faith is based on his Biblical reading, he pointed out the Bible's 2,000 references to the poor - references he said the Republicans appeared to have overlooked.
"I don't doubt the president's sincerity, but his theology is alarming," he said. "It is a theology of empire.
"In his heart, he cares about poor people - but it does not matter to him because that's an issue to be left to charity. His constituency base is the wealthy, and tax cuts are at the heart of his policy. Only in America could you have the prosperity gospel - that the rich are rich because they have God's favour."
He said religion could be "motivating and transforming", adding that more was being said about US social justice by "progressive, moderate religious folks than the Democrats and the political left, which is pretty well dead".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1710985,00.html
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