Coming during the week prior to Easter, I naturally thought the email I received from Sojourners — which I have been reading for my Lenten penance religiously — would contain some spiritual admonishment. “Just one week until … ” the subject line said. Am I at fault for thinking my mind was going to be directed to the good news of human redemption in the Resurrection of the Lord just a few days hence?
Read more on Jim Wallis Book Hype: Embracing the Market Economy?…
Religious groups seeking to serve myriad liberal agendas during the 2013 shareholder proxy resolution season look no further than As You Sow, a group dedicated to “large-scale systemic change by establishing sustainable and equitable corporate practices.”
AYS will unveil its Proxy Preview on March 7. Trumpeted as the “Bible for socially progressive foundations, religious groups, pension funds, and tax-exempt organizations” by the Chicago Tribune, this year’s preview predictably includes such “issues” as hydraulic fracturing; e-waste recycling; waste disposal; and pushing coal-fired utilities to adopt more stringent environmental standards than required by law.
Nowhere does AYS mention companies’ fiscal responsibility to return profits to shareholders. Neither does it mention how adherence to these progressive shibboleths might negatively impact the world’s most economically disadvantaged by reducing corporate profitability. Read more on As You Sow’s Grim Reaping…
“I was Hungry and You . . . Called your Congressman” is a good report from Kristin Rudolph over at the IRD blog. The article covers Bread for the World president David Beckmann’s comments to a group of “emergent Christians” in Washington D.C.
Read more on The Religious Left’s Hunger for Big Government…
My recent piece in The American Spectator took the left to task for its misuse of the terms justice and social justice. The piece was more than a debate over semantics. In it I noted that Sojourners and its CEO, Jim Wallis, continue to promote well-intended but failed strategies that actually hurt the social and economic well-being of poor communities. I also called on everyone with a heart for the poor to set aside a top-down model of charity that “has trapped so many humans in a vicious cycle of paternalism and dependency” and instead to focus “on cultivating political and economic freedom for the world’s poor.” Sojourners’ Tim King responded here and then emailed me to ask for my thoughts on his response. I’ll start by emphasizing a few areas of agreement, adding a caveat here and there so as not to overstate the areas of overlap, and then I’ll move on to some areas of difference.
Faith leaders protest budget cuts (at U.S. Capitol, not NCC meeting)
A “budget is a moral document,” right?
The Institute on Religion & Democracy reports that following the loss of a major donor, the National Council of Churches (NCC) finds itself “closer than ever before to the precipice” of financial collapse. The progressive/liberal church coalition, comprised largely of mainline Protestant and Orthodox churches, is running out of dough. IRD’s Barton Gingerich:
Read more on National Council of Churches ‘balancing the budget on the backs of the poor’?…
My commentary this week addresses the importance of federalism and our fundamental founding principles in relation to the problems that plague the nation. There was once plenty of commentary and finger pointing in regards to setting a new tone of political and civil discourse in the nation. However, the more the Washington power structure is threatened by those unsatisfied with where the leadership is taking us, the more those demanding a return to first principles will be splattered with, at times, revolting words and admonishment from those who think they know best. The commentary is printed below:
Mark Tooley has an excellent write up over at FrontPage about religious left figures staging martyr like arrests in defense of tax increases, unsustainable deficit spending, and the welfare state. Here are some details provided by Tooley:
In my 2009 commentary addressing the nation’s debt crisis I included words from Admiral James B. Stockdale. The full quote comes from an essay on public virtue from the book Thoughts of A Philosophical Fighter Pilot. In his 1988 publication, Stockdale declared:
Essential reading on Jim Wallis by long-time observer Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion & Democracy:
How does Wallis—the old Students for a Democratic Society agitator who touted the Vietcong in the 1970s and the Sandinistas in the 1980s, who denounced welfare reform in the 1990s as a betrayal of the poor, and whose funding by George Soros was exposed last year—enlist Catholic bishops and mainstream evangelicals in his endless political campaigns? “We’re frankly challenging leadership on both sides of the aisle on this one,” he recently told reporters. “If you’re going to come after the poor, you have to go through us first.” Famously a name dropper, Wallis mentioned his impending White House visit. He’d urged evangelicals to support Obama in 2008 and has carefully not burned bridges, despite passage of the ultimately bipartisan 2011 budget cuts against which he fasted.
Read more on Jim Wallis: From Sandalista to Champion of Big Government…
My commentary this week focuses on the how the rise in prices at the pump is impacting the poor. Currently, in many areas of the country a gallon of gas is now priced over $4. I also argue that we need a more coherent energy policy coming from leaders in Washington. Part of the argument against drilling in ANWR (Arctic Refuge) over a decade ago was that the oil wouldn’t hit the market for 10 years. That’s a very shortsighted way of thinking about meeting our energy needs. We need leaders in Washington to work for us not against us.
Read more on Acton Commentary: High Gas Prices Devastating to Poor…
