http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6994480/site/newsweek/Whither Dean’s Dems?
To be called ‘secular’ these days is more of an insult even than getting labeled liberal. That’s why the new chairman of the Democratic Party has to begin defining its policies in moral terms
By Eleanor Clift
Newsweek
Updated: 3:03 p.m. ET Feb. 18, 2005
Feb. 18 - A crush of people pushed into my neighborhood bookstore Sunday evening to hear religious leader Jim Wallis talk about his book, "God's Politics: Why the Right gets it Wrong and the Left doesn't get it." Wallis is a progressive evangelical Christian, and no, that's not an oxymoron. He believes the country is ready for a new and better conversation about faith and values, and he wants to break the cultural zeitgeist that equates religion with the right wing.
"How did God get to be pro-rich, pro-war, and only pro-American?" he asks the crowd of various ages but mostly of the liberal persuasion. They're like the fellow in the movie, “Network.” They’re mad as hell and can’t take it anymore. They want to take God back, and they're looking to Wallis for inspiration. Dressed in clergy-like all black, he explains the Right is comfortable with the language of God—“so much they think they own it.” But they limit it to abortion and gay marriage.
The Left is uncomfortable talking about spiritual matters, which puzzles Wallis. He points out with wonderment that the Democrats, a party that during the time of the civil rights movement was led by black churches, allowed itself to get defined as secular. "Where would we be if Dr. King had kept his religion to himself?" he asks. The hard truth dawning upon Democrats is that this is a profoundly religious Christian country, and that’s a political reality that will relegate Democrats to the ash heap of history if they don’t figure out how to respond. A New Yorker cartoon captures the current mood with a church bulletin board asking, “What would Jesus do about Social Security?”
To be called “secular” these days is more of an insult even than getting labeled liberal. That’s why when Wallis was asked whether he felt Howard Dean is the right person to lead the Democrats, the bookstore crowd in upper northwest Washington, a liberal bastion, reacted with laughter. "I talked to him over the holidays," Wallis says. Both men are regulars at Renaissance, the New Year’s gathering of intellectuals and politicians pioneered by the Clintons. "I explained Job wasn't in the New Testament. He was grateful for that advice, and he won't make that mistake again."
The worst thing is being inauthentic, Wallis continued, and that's how Dean appeared when he called upon Job as evidence of his religiosity, and got him in the wrong Testament. "If you're motivated by religious values, let it shine through," says Wallis. But if you’re not, don’t be a phony. Dean was raised as an Episcopalian, and more recently has attended a Universalist church in Vermont. His wife is Jewish. Like most New Englanders, he is not accustomed to discussing his religious faith in a political context. "Dean talks about community and that's a value," Wallis says to reassure the crowd that the new Democratic leader can hold his own. "So let's hope for the best with Howard Dean."
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