© 2013 by Jim Wallis

Published by Brazos Press

a division of Baker Publishing Group

P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516–6287

www.brazospress.com

Excerpted from On God’s Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn’t Learned about Serving the Common Good

Ebook edition created 2013

ISBN 978-1-4412-4596-0

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Unless noted otherwise, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked ASV are from the American Standard Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Conservatives, Liberals, and the Fight for America’s Future

Epilogue: Ten Personal Decisions for the Common Good

Notes

About the Author

Back Ad

Back Cover

Conservatives, Liberals, and the Fight for America’s Future

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

—attributed to Edmund Burke

It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.

—Hubert H. Humphrey[1]

Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

—Reinhold Niebuhr[2]

I am a democrat [proponent of democracy] because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. . . . The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. . . . I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.

—C. S. Lewis[3]

There is a war going on today in our nation’s political discourse. And the casualties are many. We’ve lost our civility, the ability to have public discussion that isn’t harsh or dismissive but respectful and genuinely open to dialogue and disagreement. We’ve also lost our ability to really listen to one another and even to learn from people who don’t have all the same views, perspectives, and experiences that we do. We’ve lost our capacity for political compromise, for actually finding solutions instead of just continually blaming each other for the problems. And we’ve lost our problem-solving commitment, which sometimes depends on different kinds of contributions and answers from varying points of view. We’ve certainly lost the kind of news and information outlets that regularly broadcast or publish different and even conflicting political opinions and therefore challenge our previously held thoughts and persuasions.

Perhaps the greatest loss is to the common good—because I believe that both conservative and liberal insights and commitments are necessary for it to exist. In short, I am convinced that the common good requires us to be both personally responsible and socially just. These are the two best big ideas of conservatism and liberalism respectively. Let’s unpack them.

Your Conservative Uncle or Liberal Aunt

With it [the tongue] we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. (James 3:9–10)

Imagine one of your favorite aunts or uncles, or one of your closest cousins, or a very dear friend of your family whom you have known for a long time. Remember all the wonderful times you’ve had with this person and the memories that will last forever. Now, if you are politically liberal, imagine that fond family member or friend is a conservative. Or, if you are a political conservative, imagine one that is a liberal. It is a very real experience that many of us actually have; we all know about those family gatherings and holiday dinners that are filled with political humor and even tension.

What do we really think of somebody who is very dear to us, maybe even our mom or dad, or a close brother or sister, who doesn’t share our political views and perhaps is on the other side of the political aisle? We certainly all know members of our faith communities, and even our own congregations, who are different from us politically. So we have dear brothers and sisters in faith who do not agree with our political opinions or our voting choices.

Now recall what you have heard conservatives say about liberals, or liberals say about conservatives, on talk radio, cable television, or the screaming covers of best-selling books. “They” are traitors, bigots, disloyal, unpatriotic, stupid, snobs, rednecks, elitists, fascists, socialists, phony Christians, repressive theocrats, anti-Christian, dangerous religious zealots, atheists, fundamentalists, secret Muslims, religious right or left, mean, hypocritical, hateful, liars, without moral values, even demonic, communists, or Nazis—and “they” are clearly threats to our national security, Christian civilization, and democratic society as we know it.

Do you apply those names to your beloved conservative uncle, wonderful liberal aunt, or close family member? Are these the words you first think of when you remember him or her? Likely not. Why is our current political discourse so hostile to people we all personally know and love? Why does it speak so harshly about them, saying terrible things that we know are just not true?

The 24/7 news coverage today, especially on radio, cable, and the internet blogosphere, doesn’t really “cover” the news but rather fuels the audience’s already-held prejudices about what is happening. Almost all of it is biased, much of it is distorted, some of it is just plain lies, and too much of it is downright hateful. Unfortunately, we are losing genuinely important ideas that the other political side has, which are often critically needed to find more balanced answers to our complex social, political, and economic problems. We’ve lost our integrity in the public arena, substituting ideological warfare for genuine and rigorous political debate, replacing substance with sound bites. Go to the competing networks and top-rated shows to listen to their tone and style; while the politics are very different, the approach and attacks are too often much the same.

In such a polarized, paralyzed, and increasingly poisonous political environment, it is very difficult to find or even discuss the common good. But I believe that both the conservative and liberal philosophies have critical contributions to make in solving our problems and that the best ideas from both are essential for reestablishing a serious public discourse about the common good. What are the best and biggest ideas from each side that we will all need to listen to?

The Best Big Conservative Idea

The best big conservative idea is personal responsibility. It focuses on the choices individuals make that determine the direction of their lives, families, communities, nations, and even the world. The famous quote above attributed to Edmund Burke appears more and more often at the bottom of personal emails and on websites from students of mine across the political spectrum. Individuals making good, moral, virtuous, noble, and courageous personal choices are absolutely essential to the well-being of society and the outcome of history. And that is something you cannot legislate or engineer from the top down; it comes from within. My son Jack’s travel baseball league is called “Win Within,” and the summer baseball camp our boys have gone to for years at the field next door to our house has a slogan: “Talent is what you have, effort is what makes you succeed.”

Doing the right thing, the moral thing, the ethical thing in personal decision making is key not only for individual well-being but also, I would argue, for the common good. Honesty, integrity, trust, compassion, and courage are all vital to personal and social relationships. Having your word or promise mean something is fundamental. Being someone whom others can depend on is of critical importance. Recently a friend I was having dinner with said of her father, “He was always a straight shooter. He was and did what he said he believed in.” That, she said, had shaped all of his five children, who have now passed that philosophy on to their kids.

Sound moral choices and solid decision making are certainly crucial to the quality of family life, which is absolutely foundational to a nation’s health and well-being. Faithfulness and fidelity in marriage are central to that. Infidelity is always based on deception, and the lack of truthfulness in one area of life can affect others. Trust is indeed a bottom line for both our personal and social relationships; if we lose that, other things begin to fall apart.

One critical area of personal decision making is the choice to make our children an absolute priority in our lives, which may be the most important personal and social decision that any of us parents can make. How we raise our young is what will most determine the future, not just for them but for the ripple effect it will have on their own families, communities, and world. Making our child rearing the priority around which other commitments must adjust, instead of the other way around, is the key here. Prioritizing our families is paramount to the common good.

I’ve asked parents who take clear liberal positions on public policy matters what they think will have the most formative influence on their own children’s lives. Will it be what happens in their homes or what the government can do for them? They all know it’s their home environment. Most of the things that affect families from the outside, positive or negative, will usually not shape children as much as what the most attentive parenting can do from the inside—or what a lack of parenting will create. I’ve watched, close at hand, the influence that the pathologies of poverty and violence can have on very poor families, especially if only one parent is available to combat those pressures. But even there, most young people who have escaped poverty give all the credit to a faithful single mom or a special teacher or a life-changing coach. The best ideas of education reform focus on the influence that very attentive teachers, principals, and schools can have. But again, the focus is on personal impact, one student and child at a time. The choices we make about our relationship to children or other people’s children shape not only their lives but also the common good in extremely important ways. Of course, many liberal parents emphasize all these same values, but the personal responsibility ethic is core to the conservative philosophy.

Our own Sojourners Neighborhood Center was run for many years in what was then one of the poorest and most violent neighborhoods of Washington, DC. We always stressed the critical importance of personal choices with the kids who came in every day. We didn’t tell them their lives were trapped in poverty and there was nothing they could do about it until that was changed. We emphasized the importance of their own choices: doing homework (which we helped them with every day at the center), rejecting drugs (through education and disciplined practices), resisting dangerous sexual activity (where self-esteem triumphed over peer pressure), learning how to resolve conflicts (not letting a fight over a jacket become a lethal event), and serving their communities (instead of being a problem or threat). We were always telling and showing them why they had to make clear personal choices, exercise good decision making, and take individual responsibility for their lives.

Similarly, across the country I have observed that those who run youth centers in the most dangerous urban neighborhoods—and who generally support very progressive public policies to combat poverty—are always counseling their young people to make these good personal choices, which could be called conservative personal decisions. None of us ever tell low-income kids there is really nothing they can do about poverty; we tell and teach them to take charge of their lives and circumstances by making better personal choices, and then to become activists to change the structures and policies that cause and perpetuate poverty. Most people I know who have escaped poverty usually did so with the help of social assistance, but it always involved clear individual decisions and solid personal choices as well.

Good personal decision making is a central part of the conservative ethic, and conservatives often emphasize it over social programs. But separating good personal decision making and good social programs is more the problem, in my view, than is the focus on individual responsibility, which is a very good and necessary thing. Programs of social uplift, without the ethic of personal responsibility, often don’t work and can, indeed, turn into situations and cycles of dependence. Therefore it is right and good, and part of the common good, to emphasize such a conservative ethic in making those good personal choices.

My own parents always emphasized the importance of personal decisions and moral choices in our home. Both of them were very hardworking middle-American Christians and Republicans who voted for Dwight Eisenhower, who they believed represented their own steadiness, competence, and moderation. My dad rose to be one of the youngest executives at Detroit Edison, and my mother ran another company as the CEO’s executive secretary, while they both started and led a new evangelical church. They raised five kids who always knew that love and values—both expressed in solidly “conservative” ways—were most important.

Those strong and solid personal values, choices, and decisions are at the heart of the conservative ethic of personal responsibility. Although many liberals have and live many of those same values too, liberalism tends not to use the language of personal responsibility and family values as much as conservatives do. But in a society adrift in narcissistic self-gratification and moral relativism, it is an absolutely critical language, and many long for that old ethic of personal responsibility again.

The Best Big Liberal Idea

The best big liberal idea is social responsibility. Being responsible for oneself and even one’s family isn’t enough. There is also our “neighbor,” and even other neighbors we don’t think of as such, as our previous discussion of the Good Samaritan gospel parable demonstrated. Compassion is an essential social virtue and should not be confused with political systems. Hubert Humphrey, quoted above, expressed it well: “Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.”[4] This great liberal icon identified the people for whom social compassion is most often necessary: those in the dawn, twilight, and shadows of life. The question of who will take responsibility for them is a soul-searching one from liberals, especially if those in need are outside of our own families and groups.

From an ethical or religious point of view, and certainly from a democratic point of view, we also have social responsibilities alongside our personal ones. There is a personal and a social gospel. Good, strong families are essential, but so is the health and vitality of the commons in our society: those places where we come together as neighbors and citizens to share public space. We shouldn’t need to have everything ourselves; we should also value the things that we share as part of the common good. And those interactions and relationships that come from that common sharing are essential to our own good. Our parks and playgrounds are crucially important, not just our own backyards. Everyone’s health care is vital, and, ultimately, it will affect the health of my family and children. Education isn’t just crucial for my kids, but for all the children of our society; so I shouldn’t just support the schools when my own children are of school age, but for the whole of my life.

Forgive another baseball analogy, but we do live right next door to the field! Every night during the spring and summer months, the four adjacent baseball fields are filled with players, parents, siblings, friends, and neighbors who come to watch the games. While we’re sitting up on the grassy hill overlooking the kids, coaches, and umpires, a real community event is taking place. Conversations are struck up, connections found, and new friends made. These are lovely evenings when everyone is relaxed and focused on our children, which is good not only for our own souls but also for the soul of the community. The place is even called, funnily enough, Friendship Field. And that is what happens there, especially over many seasons and with many siblings. It’s not unusual for the field to become the place where a problem is shared, a heartache acknowledged, a need expressed, and help found. The carpooling, often done to get kids to games and practices, does lead to a kind of “life-pooling,” in which more than rides are offered and shared.

My wife, Joy, is an Anglican priest who also happens to be a Little League baseball commissioner and the president of our school parent-teacher association. She isn’t working in a church at the moment but is rather a “village priest,” quietly serving that role in the broader community of school, sports, kids, parents, and life. The “field” becomes part of her parish, and it isn’t unusual for it to be a place where a serious familial problem is shared or a cancer diagnosis revealed to the response of cries, hugs, prayers, and support. Our Friendship Field has become a paradigm for me, a microcosm of what a neighborhood, community, and even society is supposed to be—suffused with an ethic of social responsibility and the common good.

The history of our democracy includes the steady inclusion of those who have been thought to be “the other” by the majority culture. Religious communities, at their best, have often led the way toward that inclusion, but the society eventually comes along. Much of that leadership has come from those who are called “liberals.” With some notable exceptions, conservatives mostly missed the civil rights movement, for example, while liberals were at the center of it. Again, liberals, more than conservatives, have been the supporters of equality for women in society and in the religious community. Now the inclusion issues pertain to undocumented immigrants, American Muslims, and gays and lesbians.

Again, my parents, in their own way, also expressed this liberal ethic alongside their conservative values. We had dinner together each night as a family. But often others joined us for a meal around the table, for an evening or a day or for much longer. The family whose house burned down would come and stay with us. A young person who needed a place to stay would be invited to take the room of one of us kids who had left for college. People who had needs would somehow gravitate to our home; or our parents would gravitate toward them, and we would ultimately find them at our house. My father was known in his company for hiring and promoting African Americans and women. And my mother, despite the conservative rules about women’s roles in our church, demonstrated every day the powerful leadership that women could have and mentored many younger women in the process.

Such values are passed down. Our house, next to the baseball field, is a kind of “clubhouse” where kids and parents often congregate. One night before dinner, our then-seven-year-old Jack asked if he could pray for the meal. We all bowed our heads, but there was just silence. Finally, I peeked open my eye and saw Jack looking around the table. “What’s the matter, Jack?” I asked. He replied, “I don’t think there are enough people here.” It was just us that night, and apparently Jack didn’t think we had a prayer quorum.

The “value” of other people becomes important along with our own traditional personal values. And the value of social responsibility is the necessary complement to the value of personal responsibility we’ve already discussed. Robert Kennedy said it well:

For the fortunate among us, there is the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who enjoy the privilege of education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. . . . The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike. . . . Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals and great enterprises of American Society.[5]

When I was a student, the quote from Bobby Kennedy that won my heart was this: “Some people see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say, why not?”[6] The strength of the conservative ethic is to preserve the critically important good of what has gone before. But the liberal ethic is aimed at the future hope of new possibilities. Let’s now get specific and tackle two controversial subjects that conservatives and liberals could do better on and perhaps find some common ground by moving to higher ground: strengthening marriage and ending poverty.

Strengthening Marriage

From a book tour for a previous book, I have a vivid memory of an interview I did at the offices of one of the most liberal, progressive magazines in the country. The young woman interviewing me was a Christian, the only one on the staff. After a terrific conversation, she said she had something personal to share with me and then whispered, “I’m getting married!” I remember replying, “Wonderful, but why are you whispering?” She said, continuing in her whispered tones, “If the people around here knew I was getting married, they would think me bourgeois and patriarchal.”

Marriage was not a positive value at this bastion of liberalism. That is a serious problem. Marriage is actually on the decline now around our country across all classes, but especially among low-income people.[7] Research from across the political spectrum—from the liberal Brookings Institution to the conservative Heritage Foundation—shows that marriage is one of the most critical factors in assessing the well-being of children and the common good—period. Children from married households do far better in life than children from unmarried households in regard to success in education, avoiding substance abuse and crime, and staying out of poverty. Obviously, having jobs that pay enough to support a marriage and family is a critical component of that success. Marriage is clearly an “antipoverty measure,” as conservatives are prone to say—and so are jobs that pay a living wage, as liberals often say. How about public policies that are friendly to both? Seldom do we hear that possibility from liberal or conservative leaders locked in ideological warfare around subjects like marriage.

During a press conference on welfare reform a number of years ago, one of the liberal speakers, promoting better funding for child care, said this: “Oh sure, marriage is an antipoverty measure all right—that is, if you marry a millionaire!” It was an embarrassing moment to have a liberal leader so completely distort the facts and caricature an important argument. Here are the facts: the poverty rate for married couples in 2008 was 6.4 percent, while for nonmarried, single-headed households, it was 36.5 percent. According to analysis from the Heritage Foundation, “marriage drops the probability of poverty by 80 percent.”[8] Researchers at the Brookings Institution agree; their analysis shows that “if we had the marriage rate we had in 1970, the poverty rate would fall by more than 25 percent.”[9] Isn’t it time to get beyond the sound bites and examine the barriers to marriage in low-income communities—for example, our broken criminal justice system and the massive incarceration rates for men of color from poor communities? Or the lack of the kind of jobs that can support a family in vast stretches of poor urban and rural America? Or the number of jobs low-income people need to have to pay their bills, and the time that working so many hours takes away from children and family? Yes, let’s talk about renewing marriage and family values and overcoming the real obstacles to it.

Why can’t liberalism also extol the personal and social benefits of marriage, along with conservatives? I am married to one of the first women ordained in the Church of England. One day our first son was watching his mom celebrate the Eucharist. Luke was about five years old when he turned to me and asked, “Daddy, can men do that too?” In my household and in millions more around the country, the freeing notion of mutuality has replaced old ideas about male headship. That movement must continue until it replaces old patriarchal ideas and structures of marriage.

Liberals could change the conversation if they really affirmed the ideal and goal of marriage to young people who are shying away from such an important commitment. They shouldn’t just affirm gay marriage, as liberals are more prone to do, but lift up the personal, spiritual, and social strength of marriage for everyone, and then work to find ways to include same-sex couples in those benefits, as conservatives like David Brooks have argued for in naming marriage as a conservative institution that society critically needs.

Ending Poverty

In working to end poverty, we face a series of false choices—or political preferences between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives stress the cultural factors that can cause and further entrench poverty in regard to weak family structures, educational performance, work habits and experience, or substance abuse; and they observe that having children outside of marriage is a huge factor in creating and sustaining poverty. Liberals stress policy matters and the need for well-paying jobs, better education, quality child care, stable housing, and affordable health care.

But why are we forced to choose between these two agendas? Why is it either/or? Why not both/and? Many of us who work on issues of poverty see such political polarization and paralysis around these issues and often consider ourselves politically “homeless.” We often talk to each other about the need for a “both/and” politics in this nation.

Columnist Charles Blow summed up the problem this way: “Three out of four of those below the poverty line work: half have full-time jobs, a quarter work part time.”[10] That means that most poor people are working but are just not making enough to sustain their lives and families. When I hear conservative friends talk about government social programs in the language of “dependency,” I often ask if they actually know any low-income people or families in those programs—and they usually don’t. When I tell them, for example, that 75 percent of “food stamps” go to families with children, that those families mostly work, and that the programs are usually temporary, to get people through difficult times, and are seldom long-term or permanent, they are quite surprised and say, “You should get that information out!”

Isn’t it time to move from our ideological analysis of problems to practical solutions that would promote the values of both personal and social ethics? Mike Huckabee, the conservative talk show host and former presidential candidate, put it this way in an interview I did with him: “Given the choice between a hungry person and a government program, I’ll take the government program.”[11] He said a hungry person means that the society’s web of family, relationships, economic systems, and social protections has broken down; but when that happens the government needs to make sure the person is being taken care of—and this comes from a conservative. Huckabee says he disagrees with those in his party who are opposed to government programs to combat poverty under any circumstances and who would just let people go hungry for the sake of their ideology. Our whole society needs to work better, according to Mike, and not simply depend on government programs to solve everything. But part of government’s responsibility is to take care of those who are hurting, and sufficient social safety nets should be a commitment of both political parties.

There are indeed those who see government as the only answer to poverty and who miss the crucial role that civil society can play, not only in providing social services but also in encouraging the kind of personal and social values that help lead people out of poverty. The importance of the “mediating” institutions of the civil society is something that both conservatives and liberals ought to be able to agree on. Multi-sector solutions and a balance between the public and private sectors, government and civil society, cultural and policy strategies, and stressing both personal and social responsibility are the way of the future and the path to success.

So why are we at war? Most of the social problems we are trying to solve will need both of these ethics strengthened and neither one diminished. The ethics of personal and social responsibility are both clearly important and necessarily complementary. The best personal choices and the most compassionate behavior toward those in need are both essential.

From Winning to Governing, from Blame to Solutions

Winning or losing elections takes place every two, four, or six years, depending on the office of the public official. And in between, there is this idea called governing. But we seem to have lost that. Politics seems to be in constant campaign mode now. Our politicians are always running for office, always battling their opponents, always getting ready for the next election. Their political opponents are thought of more as enemies than as colleagues, and working with them is less important than planning how to defeat them next time. Party leaders now even admit this; their goal at the beginning of an opposing party’s presidential term is simply to defeat the new president, not to find ways to work with him or her until the next election. This language is especially prevalent from our most stridently ideological radio and television talk show hosts—who now seem to set the political agenda for their political parties.

Living in Washington, I have often described what I increasingly see taking place. As I wrote earlier, politicians take a problem and do two things with it. First, they try to make people in the public arena afraid of the problem. Then they try to blame the problem on the other political side. This is now a regular procedure of both political parties and is the theme of most political campaign advertising. And while most people say they are disgusted with negative political ads, the data show that these ads clearly do work. But what they also do is increasingly diminish the public’s respect and trust for politics and politicians, which is now at its lowest ebb in many years.

We are going to have to turn governing by problem solving into a political ethic expected of those whom we elect. How effectively our political leaders are actually solving problems must be scrutinized in great detail. We must no longer be content merely to listen to politicians lecture us on why we have such problems: “It’s the other side’s fault.”

Even on some of our most divisive issues, we could perhaps find some common ground if we were really looking for it. Those who are deeply committed to the sacredness of human life and those deeply sensitive to a woman’s control over her own body could perhaps agree to work together to prevent unwanted pregnancies and commit themselves to a national goal of reducing the number of abortions by supporting low-income women’s health care, offering alternative choices, and strengthening adoption. Criminalizing a woman’s tragic and often desperate choice might not save as many unborn lives as would offering alternative options, and it can create many new dangers and problems for women in crisis.

Similarly, disagreement on the theological and moral issues around homosexuality should not prevent people on all sides of the debate from supporting equal protection under the law for all people, regardless of their sexual orientation. We could develop new and creative strategies for overcoming poverty by combining both the cultural and policy choices discussed above. And even in areas like economics, believing that big banks and corporations need more public accountability does not prevent us from overhauling the regulations on small businesses that many people on both sides of the aisle believe need fresh scrutiny. There are many more examples of creative, common-ground problem solving in policy debates—if we were willing to listen to one another and work together.

One criterion for examining the problem-solving ability and commitment of elected officials is to see where and how they work with people on the other side of the political aisle. Today, politicians are sometimes afraid to work across partisan lines for fear of being criticized by the extremists (particularly on talk radio and cable television) for consorting with the enemy. To be honest and fair, the attacks on working with the other side have been most extreme, of late, on the conservative side; but neither can liberals continue to blame all our problems on the conservatives. We must turn that around, demanding to know what they are actually trying to solve and whom they are trying to solve it with. But for that, we are going to need a better political discourse.

From Ideological Warfare to Civil Discourse

It’s time to move from endless conflict to mutual respect.

The phone calls began a few years ago. Deeply concerned veteran members of Congress would call me to express a real despair about the alarming level of disrespect, personal attacks, and even hateful rhetoric they observed among their colleagues, reflecting a degeneration of public debate in our national culture. Political debate, even vigorous debate, is a healthy thing for a democracy, they all said; but to question the integrity, patriotism, and even faith of those with whom we disagree is quite destructive to democratic discourse. There were now even threats and implications of the possibility of violence toward those whose politics or worldview differed—an alarming sign of moral danger, and indeed, a sign of democracy’s unraveling. Some members expressed real fears about threats of violence they and other elected officials had experienced that were directed against themselves and even their families.

A group of more than 130 former legislators, both Republicans and Democrats, released a letter urging civility and encouraging candidates, once elected, to focus on cooperation in facing our country’s greatest challenges: “None of us shrank from partisan debates while in Congress or from the partisan contests getting there. During our time in Congress, partisans on the other side may have been our opponents on some bills and our adversaries on some issues. They were not, however, the enemy.”

These former Congressmen and Congresswomen pointed the finger at both parties for this breakdown, observing how legislators hold on to “wedge issues” to run on, as opposed to finding common-ground solutions. The letter also recognized the outside forces at work: “The divisive and mean-spirited way debate often occurs inside Congress is encouraged and repeated outside: on cable news shows, in blogs, and in rallies. Members who far exceed the bounds of normal and respectful discourse are not viewed with shame but are lionized, treated as celebrities, rewarded with cable television appearances, and enlisted as magnets for campaign fund-raisers.”[12] These public servants are no longer in office but did us a great public service with their letter. They sounded the alarm about the direction of our public discourse. Sadly and unsurprisingly, the media mostly ignored their appeal.

The Shooting of Gabby Giffords

I was working out in the gym one day when a picture of a friend came on the television screen I was watching. Gabrielle Giffords, a young Congresswoman from Arizona, had been shot at a small outdoor gathering. A young man kept shooting until fourteen people were wounded and six people killed, including a district court judge and a nine-year-old girl who was a member of her student council. At that time Gabby, as everyone calls her, was one of the most beloved political leaders in the Congress and in her home state of Arizona. Almost everyone on both sides of the aisle liked her. One of her colleagues remarked that if there was a list of the most vitriolic politicians in the country, Gabby’s name would be near the very bottom. Gabby was known as one of the warmest, brightest, and most open members of Congress, and one of its best listeners. She was listening to her constituents that Saturday at the shopping center when the young man pointed a gun at her head and shot her at point-blank range.

I had been with Gabby just a week before the shooting, as both of our families celebrated the New Year’s holiday at a retreat for families in South Carolina. I count her as a friend, and so do many others. We had discussed her very tough and close election, which she won by only a few thousand votes in one of the most divided states in the nation, and where the political rhetoric had become more and more personal and poisonous—much like in the rest of the country.

Gabby is always engaging but never polarizing, and was the least likely person to be targeted by an angry and unhinged man. But she was. Miraculously, she survived the attack, although others around her did not. Now she is slowly recovering in a story that seems like a miracle in itself, but she is no longer a member of Congress. As the county sheriff in charge of the criminal scene in Tucson said that horrible day, this must be an occasion for national “soul-searching.”

How do we deeply reflect on the ways we speak to and about one another? How do we create environments that help peace and civility to grow or allow violence and hatred to enter? Many of us would never consider “violence of the fist,” but have been guilty of violence in our hearts and with our tongues. We need to be able to relate to others with whom we disagree on important issues without thinking or calling them “evil.” The words we say fall on the balanced and unbalanced, stable and unstable, the well-grounded and the unhinged alike.

How Did We Get Here?

How did we get to this place, I asked Michael Sandel, Harvard professor and author of the book Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? Michael said, “The reason for the breakdown of civil discourse is not that we have too much moral argument in politics, but that we have too little. What we really have are ideological food fights—assertions hurled back and forth on cable news. . . . What we don’t have is a serious engagement with the competing moral and spiritual convictions that citizens bring to public life.”[13] We don’t need to give up our values, water them down, or throw out our convictions to have civil discourse. It is exactly these beliefs that allow us to engage in real dialogue. I think there are three lessons of particular importance.

First, there is a religious issue. I am a Christian, and we must always be willing to say that while we Christians are politically diverse, we are united in Christ. Too often the church has reflected the political divisions of our culture rather than the unity we have in the body of Christ. The church in the United States should be able to offer a message of hope and reconciliation to a nation that is deeply divided by political and cultural differences. We can disagree, but how we disagree with one another is a question of our witness for Christ.

Second, we should speak the truth and seek it. Much of our worst political rhetoric these days is based on outright lies that “go viral.” I know pastors who now tell their congregations that it is morally irresponsible to forward “rumor emails” without first checking the facts. Too often we focus on media caricatures of political figures instead of treating them with honesty and fairness. Political falsehood and damaging lies are now the substance of politics, and that must be directly and visibly confronted.

Third, we must hold to the early American statement, “Out of many, one.” E pluribus Unum was not an admission of weakness but a proclamation of strength. The health of our democracy depends on not only the outcomes of elections but also on how those elections happen. We should all be able to say, in the humorous but painfully appropriate words of Jon Stewart, “I disagree with you, but I’m pretty sure you’re not Hitler.”[14] How do we model civil discourse and call our congregations, media, politicians, and nation to accountability?

A Covenant for Civility

Truth and civility are too important to lose. The political polarization of our society has now reached a new and dangerous level. Honest disagreements over policy issues have turned into a growing vitriolic rage against political opponents, and threats of violence against lawmakers have been credibly reported and even carried out.

Several members of Congress who have expressed their concerns and fears to me are also people of faith and are asking the faith community to help them lead in this dangerous moment.

So a group of Christian leaders began talking, praying, and discerning how the churches might lead by example to help create a more civil and moral tone in our national politics. We confessed that too often we Christians have merely reflected the divisions in the body politic instead of trying to heal them in the body of Christ. People of faith from all our religious traditions could help create much-needed safe, civil, and even sacred spaces for better public discourse at this critical moment in our nation’s history. What came from that prayerful discernment was “A Covenant for Civility: Come Let Us Reason Together.”

One hundred diverse church leaders from across the political and theological spectrum—who have voted Democratic, Republican, and independent in recent elections—joined together around the civility covenant, and the breadth of the signatories is a powerful statement in and of itself. Together we offered what we feel is a strong biblical statement motivated by deep concern about our present situation, and we invited thousands of pastors and laypeople in all of our churches to sign the covenant and seek to implement it in our congregations, communities, and nation.

The “Covenant for Civility” begins:

As Christian pastors and leaders with diverse theological and political beliefs, we have come together to make this covenant with each other, and to commend it to the church, faith-based organizations, and individuals, so that together we can contribute to a more civil national discourse. The church in the United States can offer a message of hope and reconciliation to a nation that is deeply divided by political and cultural differences. Too often, however, we have reflected the political divisions of our culture rather than the unity we have in the body of Christ. We come together to urge those who claim the name of Christ to “put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you” (Ephesians 4:31–32).[15]

We made seven biblically based commitments, seven steps we all could take for truth and civility today. We suggested that Christians should carry these seven commitments with them as a reminder for themselves and a challenge to others. Candidates need to know that voters care not only about who wins but also about how they win. And these commitments contain the essentials for creating for our nation—both its religious and its nonreligious citizens—a better and more civil discourse.

The covenant states:

1. We commit that our dialogue with each other will reflect the spirit of the scriptures, where our posture toward each other is to be “quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry” (James 1:19).

2. We believe that each of us, and our fellow human beings, are created in the image of God. The respect we owe to God should be reflected in the honor and respect we show to each other in our common humanity, particularly in how we speak to each other. “With the tongue we bless the Lord and [God], and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God . . . this ought not to be so” (James 3:9–10).

3. We pledge that when we disagree, we will do so respectfully, without falsely impugning the other’s motives, attacking the other’s character, or questioning the other’s faith, and recognizing in humility that in our limited, human opinions, “we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror” (1 Corinthians 13:12). We will therefore “be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love” (Ephesians 4:2).

4. We will ever be mindful of the language we use in expressing our disagreements, being neither arrogant nor boastful in our beliefs: “Before destruction one’s heart is haughty, but humility goes before honor” (Proverbs 18:12).

5. We recognize that we cannot function together as citizens of the same community, whether local or national, unless we are mindful of how we treat each other in pursuit of the common good, in the common life we share together. Each of us must therefore “put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body” (Ephesians 4:25).

6. We commit to pray for our political leaders—those with whom we may agree, as well as those with whom we may disagree. “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made—for kings and all who are in high positions” (1 Timothy 2:1–2).

7. We believe that it is more difficult to hate others, even our adversaries and our enemies, when we are praying for them. We commit to pray for each other, those with whom we agree and those with whom we may disagree, so that together we may strive to be faithful witnesses to our Lord, who prayed “that they may be one” (John 17:22).

We pledge to God and to each other that we will lead by example in a country where civil discourse seems to have broken down. We will work to model a better way in how we treat each other in our many faith communities, even across religious and political lines. We will strive to create in our congregations safe and sacred spaces for common prayer and community discussion as we come together to seek God’s will for our nation and our world.[16]

The late Chuck Colson and I, often on different sides in policy debates, wrote a column about the need for this civility covenant in the evangelical magazine Christianity Today. We said:

The working of democracy depends upon these virtues of civility. Standing for principle is crucial to moral politics, but demonizing our opponents poisons the public square. Therefore we must strive for both truth and civility. To be able to pursue the common good and to preserve the peaceful transition of political power means a commitment to both moral and civil discourse.[17]

I believe these are principles that are useful whether we are religious or not. We need to behave differently, for the sake of both our spiritual integrity and the health of our democracy. We have forgotten some of our key values, and it is time to recover them for the common good.

* * * * *

There is hardly a more controversial political battle in America today than that around the role of government. The ideological sides have lined up, and the arguments rage about the size of government: how big or how small should it be? Some famously have said government should be shrunk so small that it “could be drowned in a bathtub.”

But I want to suggest that what size the government should be is the wrong question. A more useful discussion would be about the purposes of government and whether ours is fulfilling them or not. Rather than big or small, we need a servant government. What are the proper functions of government, and how can we hold our political leaders to them? Ensuring smart and effective government, which serves its proper purposes and functions, would be a far better use of our energy than determining an arbitrary size. Here is where some of our biblical texts can help us.

Let Every Person Be Subject

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. . . . For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. . . . Do what is good, and you will receive [authority’s] approval; for it is God’s servant for your good. . . . Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing. Pay to all what is due them—taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due. (Rom. 13:1, 3–7)

I saw a beast rising out of the sea. . . . It opened its mouth to utter blasphemies against God. . . . It was allowed to make war on the saints. . . . It was given authority over every tribe and people and language and nation. (Rev. 13:1, 6–7)

The words of Paul in the thirteenth chapter of Romans are perhaps the most extensive teaching in the New Testament about the role and purposes of government. Paul says those purposes are twofold: to restrain evil by punishing evildoers and to serve peace and orderly conduct by rewarding good behavior. It’s pretty straightforward. Government should not be “a terror to good conduct, but to bad. . . . Do what is good, and you will receive [authority’s] approval” (Rom. 13:3). And civil authority is designed to be “God’s servant for your good” (13:4). Government is supposed to be our servant for good. Today we might say “the common good” is to be the focus and goal of government. In the First Epistle to Timothy, Paul says we should pray for people in high political authority “so that we may lead a quiet and peaceful life” (1 Tim. 2:2).

N. T. Wright puts the Romans 13 paragraph in the context of the end of Romans 12 (which we have discussed in chapter 7), where Christians are told not to repay evil for evil but to overcome evil with good and try our very best to live peaceably with all, clearly leaving vengeance to God.

When we put these verses back into their context, right here in the letter, we start to see what Paul is getting at. He has just said, strongly and repeatedly, that private vengeance is absolutely forbidden for Christians. But this doesn’t mean, on the one hand, that God doesn’t care about evil, or, on the other, that God wants society to collapse into a chaos where the bullies and the power-brokers do what they like and get away with it. . . . We don’t want to live by the law of the jungle. We want to live as human beings in an ordered, properly functioning society. That is almost all that Paul is saying, making the point as he does so that the Christians, who were regarded as the scum of the earth in Rome at the time, must not get an additional reputation as trouble-makers. . . . They are indeed a revolutionary community, but if they go for the normal type of violent revolution they will just be playing the empire back at its own game. They will almost certainly lose, and, much worse, the gospel itself will lose with them.[18]

The Romans text is clearly not meant merely to describe the government authorities and how they always act but rather to describe what is the ideal for them, what God wills for them to do. Paul and the early church certainly understood that government doesn’t always live up to these ideal purposes. And the Romans text is certainly not an endorsement of everything governments do, nor does it command blind obedience to their demands. Repressive and unjust governments have sometimes even used Romans 13 to attempt to create both silence and submission to their unjust dictates, such as the Afrikaner regime of apartheid in South Africa and their white Reformed Church, which sought to give them theological justification. But that is a distortion of the text. Rather, these are the purposes that God intends for governments—punish the evil and reward the good—and Christians are allowed and encouraged to actually hold governments accountable to those rightful purposes. And they have often done so over the years, as the black churches in South Africa prophetically did, to cite just one example.

Paul himself on at least two occasions decided to vigorously stand up for his “rights” as a Roman citizen when he was mistreated by the governmental authorities. Clearly, government doesn’t always live up to the ideals that God desires. Wright comments:

The Christians are called to believe, though, that the civic authorities, great and small, are there because the one true God wants his world to be ordered, not chaotic. This does not validate particular actions of particular governments. It is merely to say that some government is always necessary, in a world where evil flourishes when unchecked. Of course Paul knew that quite often one might do the right thing and find the rulers doing the wrong thing. You only have to read the stories of his escapades in Acts to see that. But notice, in those stories (his visit to Philippi in Acts 16, for instance, or his trial before the Jewish authorities in Acts 23), that precisely when the authorities are getting it all wrong and acting illegally or unjustly Paul has no hesitation in telling them their proper business and insisting that they should follow it.[19]

The National Association of Evangelicals puts it this way: “God has ordered human society with various institutions and set in place forms of government to maintain public order, to restrain human evil, and to promote the common good. . . . Government must fulfill its responsibilities to provide for the general welfare and promote the common good.”[20]

The Beast from the Abyss

About forty years after the writing of Romans 13, the apostle John was imprisoned on the island of Patmos, a place then used for political detainees, where he wrote the book of Revelation. It is revealing how different Revelation 13 is from Romans 13. Most biblical scholars and commentators believe that John’s references to “the beast from the abyss,”[21] the “whore of Babylon,”[22] and all the “dragons” and the “beasts”[23] who rise up to command the obedience of all the peoples and nations, and even “make war against the saints,”[24] are code words for the Roman Empire. The Roman government had become even more oppressive and brutal under Nero and Domitian, claiming divine status for emperors and waging campaigns of violent persecution against Christians and other dissidents who would not submit to the Roman “gods.” The apostle John’s Revelation 13 depicts the state as a totalitarian beast—a metaphor for Rome, the persecutor of the early Christians.

John’s critique of Rome and promise of God’s ultimate triumph over the beasts and dragons in Revelation has become a much broader metaphor for resistance to all totalitarian governments ever since. We have, obviously, seen many examples of that kind of totalitarian state and the resistance to it, often by Christians. I think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church in Germany, which stood up to the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler. Political power can indeed turn demonic, replacing its proper civic role with the aspiration to absolute power and even trying to take the place of God.

N. T. Wright again makes very clear what New Testament texts like Romans are saying: “What Paul says is clearly anathema to the totalitarian: the point about totalitarianism is that the ruling power has taken the place of God; that is why it is always de facto, and frequently de jure, atheist. For Paul, the ‘state’ is not God. God is God, and the state is thus relativized, as are the powers precisely in Colossians 1:15–20, where they are created and reconciled but not divine.”[25]

The Revelation passages serve as a clear warning about the abuse of governmental power. A power-hungry government is clearly an aberration from what it is intended to be and a violation of the proper role of government in protecting its citizens and upholding the demands of fairness and justice. To disparage government per se—to see government as the central problem in society—is simply not a biblical position. But to not see the potential danger of dictatorial government power is also to ignore the biblical warnings.

So there is a biblical tension when it comes to the role of government. Government can be either a minister of God or an instrument of Satan. The Bible sees government not only as important and necessary because of the real evil in the world but also as provisional, temporary, and ultimately subject to the authority of God. The role of government is therefore a paradox that includes the terms of both Romans 13 and Revelation 13. And holding governments accountable to the former is the best defense against the latter. Jesus says in Mark’s Gospel, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:17 ASV). And God decides what is rendered to Caesar, not the other way around. Remember, Jesus also called Herod “that fox”[26]—not a very positive term for his most immediate political ruler in occupied Palestine.

The word “conscience” is also invoked in the Romans text, and sometimes the only way to honor the office of government, or its intended purposes, is to disobey it in conscientious acts of civil disobedience, as we have seen in the nonviolent actions of Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, or Desmond Tutu. But those who “honor” government by disobeying it when it is wrong must also be willing to pay the penalty for their civil disobedience, which has often led to changes in the law itself. When I have been a part of civil disobedience, I’ve had the experience of judges saying that they respected what we had done around the cause we believed in, but that we still had to go to jail, which we were willing to do. I remember one magistrate who was so conflicted that she asked us to write essays about law and conscience for her while we were in jail!

The Bible is discerning about government, calling for us to “be subject” to it, to “honor” it, and to pay our taxes, but it never implies that submission means complete or unquestioned obedience or that honor is the same thing as fear. Rather, to be subject, to honor, and to pay taxes means to recognize the standing of government and its legitimate and necessary role in society. We have what Wright calls “ties of obligation” to our fellow humans and must understand that God “has called his human creatures to live in harmony with each other.”[27] These obligations are to be enshrined in the laws that governments make.

To Protect and Promote

So the purpose of government, according to Paul, is to protect its people from the chaos of evil and to promote the good of the society: to protect and promote. Preserving the social order, punishing evil and rewarding good, and protecting the common good are all prescribed, and we are even instructed to pay taxes for those purposes. Practically, what does that mean? What is a government supposed to do, from a biblical perspective? First, government is supposed to protect its people. That certainly means protecting its citizens’ safety and security. Crime and violence will always be real in this world, and that’s why we have the police, who are meant to keep our streets, neighborhoods, and homes safe. When law and order break down, as they sometimes do in the aftermath of natural disasters, for example, we see how quickly chaos, looting, and random violence can break out, pointing again to the need for the maintenance of civil order and protection.

Governments also need to protect their people judicially and make sure our legal and court systems are procedurally just and fair. The biblical prophets regularly rail against corrupt court decisions and systems, in which the wealthy and powerful manipulate the legal processes for their own benefit and put the poor into greater debt or distress. Arbitrary injustice is a regular target of the prophets, who hold the courts accountable to justice. The prophet Amos speaks directly to the courts (and government) when he says, “Hate evil, love good; maintain justice in the courts” (Amos 5:15 NIV).

Along with protecting, governments should promote the good of society. The prophets hold kings, rulers, judges, and even employers accountable to the demands of justice and fairness, therefore promoting those values.

The Scriptures say that governmental authority is to protect the poor in particular and promote their well-being. The biblical prophets are consistent and adamant in their condemnation of injustice to the poor and frequently follow their statements by requiring the king (the government) to act justly. That prophetic expectation did not apply only to the kings of Israel but was also extended to the kings of neighboring lands and peoples. The justice requirement is not simply for “the people of God” but for all kings or governments, wherever they happen to be.

Jeremiah, speaking of King Josiah, said, “He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well.” And the subsequent line is very revealing: “‘Is that not what it means to know me?’ declares the Lord” (Jer. 22:16 NIV). Of Solomon, the Scriptures say, through the words of the queen of Sheba, “Because the LORD loved Israel forever, he has made you king to execute justice and righteousness” (1 Kings 10:9). Psalm 72 begins with a prayer for kings or political leaders: “Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king’s son. May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice. May the mountains yield prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness. May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor” (Ps. 72:1–4). There is a powerful vision for promoting the common good here, a vision of prosperity for all the people, with special attention to the poor and to “deliverance” for the most vulnerable and needy, and even a concern for the land.

Ron Sider, in his book Fixing the Moral Deficit, summarizes the biblical meaning of the justice required of kings and governments by focusing on the Hebrew words for “justice.”

The biblical understanding of justice clearly includes both procedural and distributive aspects. That the procedures must be fair is clear in the several texts that demand unbiased courts (Exodus 23:2–8; Leviticus 19:15; Deuteronomy 1:17; 10:17–19). That distributive justice (i.e., fair outcomes) is also a central part of justice is evident not just from the hundreds of texts about God’s concern for the poor . . . but also in the meaning of the key Hebrew words for justice (mishpat and tsedaqah).

Time and again the prophets use mishpat and tsedaqah to refer to fair economic outcomes. Immediately after denouncing Israel and Judah for the absence of justice, the prophet Isaiah condemns the way rich and powerful landowners have acquired all the land by pushing out small farmers (Isaiah 5:7–9). It is important to note that even though in this text the prophet does not say the powerful acted illegally, he nevertheless denounces the unfair outcome. In another text Isaiah denounces the powerful who used “unjust laws” to “deprive the poor of their rights” (Isaiah 10:2). . . . The prophets clearly teach that justice includes fair economic outcomes, not just fair procedures.[28]

Notice that Sider says “fair outcomes” and not “equal outcomes.” The political right continues to accuse all who would hold governments accountable for justice of asking for equal outcomes from public policy. But that simply is not true. Rather, we are asking for fair outcomes. Indeed, the historical attempts by many Marxist governments to create equal outcomes have dramatically shown the great dangers and fallacies of that approach. Individual freedom has been crushed, and the concentration of power in a few government hands has led to totalitarian results.

The radical economic sharing of the early Christians, recorded in the book of Acts, left “not a needy person among them” (Acts 4:34). But that was voluntary economic redistribution on the basis of faith, not the forced distribution of communist regimes, which have proven, as evidenced by the lifestyles of their dictatorial rulers, to be oppressive and hypocritical. The theological reason for that outcome is indeed the presence and power of sin and the inability of such fallible human creatures to create social utopias on earth.

Yet the biblical prophets do hold their rulers, courts and judges, and landowners and employers accountable to the values of fairness, justice, and even mercy. The theological reasons for that are, in fact, the same: the reality of evil and sin in the concentration of power—both political and economic—and the need to hold that power accountable to justice, especially in the protection of the poor. So fair outcomes, not equal ones, are the goal of governments.

Checks and Balances

Here is where the comments of Reinhold Niebuhr and C. S. Lewis above are very important. Lewis says, in effect, that his pessimistic view of the human condition is his reason for supporting democracy. Democracy is important not because of how good we are but, in fact, because we are often not very good. Lewis continues: “The danger of defending democracy on those [optimistic] grounds is that they’re not true. . . . I find that they’re not true without looking further than myself. I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation.”[29] Human fallibilities, illusions, and the will to control are the reason a theologian like Niebuhr, who knew many of the politicians of his day, called democracy a necessity in combating our human “inclination to injustice.”

What the theologians are calling for here, and what the biblical texts clearly suggest, is a political system of checks and balances. In the United States, we have such a system already built right into the government, at least theoretically, with the constitutional separation of powers between the three branches—executive, legislative, and judicial. And we have seen government acting in our history to provide a check on powerful people, institutions, and interests in society that, if left unchecked, might run over their fellow citizens, the economy, and certainly the poor.

Does anyone really think it isn’t necessary for the government to have the power to try to make sure our food is kept clean, our waterways unpolluted, and our air fit to breathe? What kind of bad theology suggests that we could trust all our big companies to voluntarily protect the safety of their consumers or be good stewards of the earth? Is there any evidence that we don’t need government to check the behavior of private corporations to keep us all safe and secure?

What do those saying they want to make government so small it could be “drowned in a bathtub” really mean in light of these biblical passages and theological warnings about the fallen behavior and selfishness of humanity and its institutions? Without civil authority having the strength or capacity to protect the people, who would protect us from the biggest, wealthiest, and most powerful persons, interests, and corporations, for example, which are now larger than many governments around the world?

The antigovernment voices clearly don’t believe in a “sinless government,” and neither do I. There are myriad examples of government bureaucracy not doing a good job, standing in the way of good social outcomes, or stifling necessary innovation and creativity. This is why the need for reform of our governments is constant, and why we have regular elections in democracies. But do those government critics really believe in a “sinless market”? Should market forces be set free to create an economic wilderness free of any values or constraints? Should big economic enterprises be allowed to become all-powerful and virtually unaccountable to us as citizens? If government is rendered unable to “punish the evil” or “reward the good” when it comes to the behavior of huge corporations and banks, for example, exactly who else is going to do that? The radically antigovernment stance of the current right-wing Tea Party ideology is simply contrary to a more biblical view of government, the need for checks and balances, the sinfulness of too much concentrated power in either the government or the market, the responsibilities we have to our neighbor, and the God-ordained purposes of government in serving the common good.

Jubilee

In the Scriptures, the most important resource for people is land. Many texts tell how people should be treated in relationship to the land. Landowners are instructed to leave the edges of their fields unharvested for the poor. Illegal and even legal behavior by large landholders that took away the land of smaller owners was vigorously condemned.

In the biblical tradition of Jubilee, three things were commanded to be done periodically: setting slaves free, forgiving the debts of debtors, and returning land to its original owners. Three things are worth recognizing about the Jubilee laws. First, these are not minor references in the Scriptures, but a teaching and tradition that begins in the book of Deuteronomy and runs right through the Scriptures to the first words of Jesus at Nazareth about his mission “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:19 ASV). Second, these are not suggestions that individuals do certain things voluntarily; they are structural requirements. Third, these laws dealt with the critical elements of society that could easily lead to great injustice and inequality, and they are meant as periodic and corrective measures.

Today, with only about 1 percent of Americans owning farm land,[30] those critical elements that contribute to injustice and justice will be very different. But the principle of corrective measures that are structural is still very important.

Unfortunately, the issue of slavery is still with us, with 2.5 million women and children being sexually and economically trafficked, silently and invisibly, at any given time, not only in the developing world but even in major American cities.[31] A primary goal and purpose of government protection should be to combat the sexual trafficking and economic exploitation that are today’s slavery. Powerful faith-based movements are growing around the world to abolish the modern slavery of trafficking, but often without the active and focused help needed from many governments.

Financial capital now holds the place that land once did. Today there are so many violations of ethics around financial capital that governments need to address them just as they do other ethics violations. Predatory lending practices (such as payday lending) that principally target low-income people are a great injustice that perpetuates poverty and even leads to violence. Contracts for credit cards and home mortgages have grown into many impossible-to-understand pages, with the purpose of cheating people and enslaving them to debt. Young people and low-income people are especially susceptible to abuse by credit card companies. Slavery to debt is another form of modern slavery that government should address—both the procedures and outcomes. Simply making procedures and contracts clear, aboveboard, understandable, and accountable to fairness would make a great difference for many people.

It is now clear that both unethical and criminal behavior on the part of half a dozen banks and financial institutions led to the financial meltdown of 2008 and the resulting Great Recession, which has caused much suffering for many people. Some criminal penalties have been imposed (though hardly at levels befitting the crimes), and embarrassing revelations about the practices and products of some of the nation’s leading financial institutions have been splashed across the op-ed pages of our newspapers by former employees disgusted with their firms’ greedy and immoral behavior.[32]

There had been rules and regulations that might have prevented those behaviors, but they were repealed in the Congress by the senators and representatives who came to represent those banking interests and whose campaigns had been financed by them. Most of those historic rules were based on old usury laws that had their origin in the religious community, but they began to be suspended in the 1980s. Elizabeth Warren, the first acting director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, put it like this to my class at Georgetown: “We were protected by usury laws, all the way from the Code of Hammurabi until 1980.” It is very necessary for civil government to employ those kinds of laws, rules, and regulations consistently in order to protect the people and the economy. To push them aside because of the political power of wealthy interests is simply a violation of that legitimate public role and trust.

Perhaps the most important resource today, like land was in ancient biblical times, is education. Here is where some of the greatest injustices in our society are occurring. Many schools in our most deprived urban neighborhoods, where poor children of color are forced to go, should not be called schools at all but prisons, because they do not educate, but simply imprison the next generation in poverty and maintain an endless cycle of impoverishment from one generation to the next. A good education is today’s clearest and best way out of poverty.

The goal of the reform and renewal of our educational system should be one of the most important purposes of government. That doesn’t mean that government must do all the educating but rather that it makes sure it is being done and done well, especially for those who have been trapped in educational poverty. Like land in ancient biblical times, the asset of accessible education for all should be a basic concern of government. Fortunately, there is a growing educational reform movement now that is bipartisan and focuses on the most important ingredient: the teachers and principals we desperately need. Real reform requires the political and financial commitments of our public policy makers. Supporting that movement focused on teachers and prioritizing resources for educational transformation will be one of the best ways to pursue the positive role of government in our day. It is a very contemporary example of stopping the evil and rewarding the good.

Finding the Balance

Today we are facing political philosophies that hold individual rights as their supreme value and consider government the major obstacle. The “just leave me alone and don’t spend my money” opinion is spreading quickly across American life and has shaped the political debates around debt crises and deficits. But the enshrinement of individual choice is not the only or preeminent Christian virtue when it comes to a biblical view of government. Emphasizing individual rights at the expense of others’ needs and rights violates the whole idea of the common good. The Christian answer to the question of whether we are our brother’s keeper is decidedly yes. Jesus tells us that the greatest commandments are to love God with our whole being and to love our neighbor as ourselves. In so doing, he gave a proper regard to looking after oneself but put it in the context of having the same concern for our neighbors.

Loving your neighbor is a better Christian response than telling your neighbor to just leave you alone. We have seen how both compassion and social justice are fundamental Christian commitments. And while the Christian community is responsible for living out both commitments in the world, we can see how government is also held accountable to the requirements of justice and protection of the poor.

A thoroughly antigovernment ideology simply isn’t biblical. In Romans 13, Paul describes the role and vocation of government in addition to that of the church, and the apostle teaches that government also plays a role in God’s plan and purposes. Of course, debating the size and role of government is always a fair and good discussion, and most of us would simply prefer smart and effective to “big” or “small” government.

But a supreme confidence in the market is also not consistent with a biblical view of human nature and sin. The exclusive focus on government as the central problem ignores the problems of other social sectors, and in particular, the market, which I addressed in chapter 10. When government regulation is the enemy, the market is set free to pursue its own self-interest without regard for public safety, the common good, or the protection of the environment, which Christians regard as God’s creation. Those who believe in what I call the myth of the sinless market seem to think that the self-interest of business owners or corporations will always serve the interests of society, and that if they don’t, it’s not government’s role to correct it. That’s more than bad politics; it is also bad theology.

Such antigovernment theorizing also ignores the practical issues that the public sector has to solve. Should big oil companies like BP simply be allowed to spew oil into the ocean? And is regulating them really un-American? Do we truly want no one inspecting our water, making sure our kids’ toys are safe, or guarding our health care procedures and products? Do we really want owners of restaurants and hotels to be able to decide whom they will or won’t serve, and should liquor store owners also be able to sell alcohol to our kids?

Given the reality of sin in all human institutions, doesn’t a political process that provides both accountability and checks and balances make both theological and practical sense? Again, we need democracy not because people are essentially good but because they often are not. Public accountability to democracy is essential to preventing the market itself from becoming a beast of corporate totalitarianism.

Of course, excessive government spending is a legitimate concern, and those with more positive views of government are more vulnerable to ignoring that problem. But to mainly attack social programs for the poor, rather than the billions and trillions of dollars in other more protected areas of spending such as “corporate welfare” or Pentagon waste, is morally inconsistent. Coming to a better moral balance in achieving fiscal responsibility while protecting the poor should be a bipartisan effort, as we discussed in chapter 4.

Looking to government first to solve all our social problems is a common mistake of pro-government forces. We need to forge new partnerships between the public sector, private sector, and nonprofit civil society, which also includes communities of faith. Innovation, new solutions, creativity, and multipurpose projects often come from the NGO (nongovernmental organization) world. Social entrepreneurs from both the private and public sectors are rolling up their sleeves to actually find solutions to many social problems today. But questions of scale are important. Major philanthropists such as Bill and Melinda Gates come to Washington regularly to remind our politicians that their foundation’s billions are not enough to ensure basic health for the world’s poorest—that public investment in global health on the part of governments is absolutely crucial. Charity is insufficient, and that’s why justice is the preferred biblical solution to injustice, as the Scriptures clearly demonstrate.

Common Ground for Higher Ground

As we have already discussed, the solutions to problems like poverty concern both policy and cultural matters. For example, marriage and healthy families are a critical antipoverty solution, as are living wages, stable housing, earned income and child tax credits, and affordable child care. Public policies that promote and are friendly to all those crucial factors are much needed. And the vocational and unique role of nonprofit organizations and faith communities in changing cultural habits and behaviors is also essential.

Ultimately, these should not be such partisan matters, despite all the current battles around the role of government. We have seen support across the political aisle for effective initiatives aimed at overcoming poverty, shoring up international aid and development for the most vulnerable, and supporting critical agendas, such as encouraging the international adoptions of marginalized children and fixing the broken domestic foster care system. Indeed, some of our efforts to combat poverty and disease, especially efforts against HIV/AIDS, malaria, and massive hunger in the poorest parts of Africa, have even brought liberals and conservatives together.

Some of that support comes from the agenda of “compassionate conservatism,” in which political leaders who are fiscally conservative, favor small government, and believe in the free market also believe that government should and must partner with the private sector—especially nonprofit and faith-based organizations—to help lift people out of poverty, both abroad and here at home. Such a conviction requires two things: a genuine empathy and commitment to the poor on the one hand, and a more balanced and positive view of government on the other. It expresses both conservative principles and social conscience, with particular concern for the poorest and most vulnerable. The compassionate conservative space is vital to the health of the nation and the future of the poor, and therefore preserving it is essential. Such space is open to the kind of bipartisan cooperation we have had before and now desperately need again.

Mike Gerson, former speechwriter for and policy adviser to President George W. Bush, and now a columnist for the Washington Post, is one of the most eloquent spokespersons for this compassionate conservatism, and I count him as a friend and ally. Mike and I helped to create something called the Poverty Forum,[33] which brought together policy experts from both Republican and Democratic administrations and Congresses to propose commonsense steps to reduce poverty. The project produced a surprising level of consensus, as participants focused on practical solutions that are proven to work rather than on ideology.

I saw that energy again at a reception that Bono and his ONE Campaign hosted for World AIDS Day on December 1, 2011. Earlier in the day, three US presidents—Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton—had spoken at a televised gathering, celebrating the real successes achieved over the last thirty years in the battle to end the scourge of AIDS and committing to finishing the job.

When making a difference in the lives of poor and vulnerable people is seen as a nonpartisan issue and a bipartisan cause (as the battle against AIDS has been), then we make the most progress. In a New York Times op-ed that same day, Bono celebrated the success against AIDS and gave shout-outs to people as diverse as evangelicals and the gay community, Democratic senator Pat Leahy and former Republican senator Rick Santorum, and ideological foes such as Nancy Pelosi and Jesse Helms![34]

The victories that have been won in the global battle against AIDS are the result of the efforts of many—Republicans, Democrats, conservatives, liberals, Christians, Jews, Muslims, and people of no particular religious predilection—and most big gains for the poor will require support from both sides of the political aisle of government to serve the common good.

Government can do good things and bad things. Some of the good things are big, and some are little. And we can all point to horrendous things done in the name of government, with its complete political authority. My friend Richard Land is a political conservative, but we agree that the GI Bill and FHA (the Federal Housing Authority) made a big and positive difference in the lives of our families and so many others by educating fathers and making first family homes possible after our dads came home from World War II. Most people who have Medicare are very happy with it, and Social Security rescued an older generation from poverty. But some government programs don’t work, and we need to be completely honest about that.

For people of faith, government is never ultimate but needs to play the important and modest role of servant. The criteria for evaluation and judgment of civil authority are whether it is serving the people, whether it is guarding their security, whether it is maintaining a positive and peaceful social order, whether it is helping to make the lives of its citizens better, and, in particular, whether it is protecting the poor. Because of the human will to power, political leaders must always be held accountable, and the best governments are characterized by checks and balances. To be opposed to government per se, especially when that opposition serves the ultimate power of other wealthy and powerful interests, is simply not a biblical position. Transparency, accountability, and service are the ethics of good government. “Of the people, by the people, and for the people” is still a good measure and goal of civil authority. But people of faith will ascribe ultimate authority only to God, to whom civil authority will always be accountable.

Epilogue

Ten Personal Decisions for the Common Good

The common good and the quality of our life together will finally be determined by the personal decisions we all make. The “commons”—those places, as we noted earlier, where we come together as neighbors and citizens to share public space—will never be better than the quality of human life, or the human flourishing, in our own lives and households.

Here are ten personal decisions you can make to help foster the common good.

1. If you are a father or a mother, make your children the most important priority in your life and build your other commitments around them. If you are not a parent, look for children who could benefit from your investment in their lives.

2. If you are married, be faithful to your spouse. Demonstrate your commitment with both your fidelity and your love. If you are single, measure your relationships by their integrity, not their usefulness.

3. If you are a person of faith, focus not just on what you believe but on how you act on those beliefs. If you love God, ask God how to love your neighbor.

4. Take the place you live seriously. Make the context of your life and work the parish that you take responsibility for.

5. Seek to develop a vocation and not just a career. Discern your gifts as a child of God, not just your talents, and listen for your calling rather than just looking for opportunities. Remember that your personal good always relates to the common good.

6. Make choices by distinguishing between wants and needs. Choose what is enough, rather than what is possible to get. Replace appetites with values, teach your children the same, and model those values for all who are in your life.

7. Look at the business, company, or organization where you work from an ethical perspective. Ask what its vocation is, too. Challenge whatever is dishonest or exploitative and help your place of work do well by doing good.

8. Ask yourself what in the world today most breaks your heart and offends your sense of justice. Decide to help change that and join with others who are committed to transforming that injustice.

9. Get to know who your political representatives are at both the local and national level. Study their policy decisions and examine their moral compass and public leadership. Make your public convictions and commitments known to them and choose to hold them accountable.

10. Since the difference between events and movements is sacrifice, which is also the true meaning of religion and what makes for social change, ask yourself what is important enough to give your life to and for.

Finding the integral relationship between your own personal good and the common good is your best contribution to our future. And it is the best hope we have for a better life together.

Notes

[[1]]. Hubert H. Humphrey, remarks at the dedication of the Hubert H. Humphrey Building, Washington, DC, November 1, 1977, in Congressional Record, vol. 123 (November 4, 1977): 37287.

[[2]]. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness: A Vindication of Democracy and a Critique of Its Traditional Defense (1944; repr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), xxxii.

[[3]]. C. S. Lewis, “Equality,” in Present Concerns (San Diego: Mariner Books, 2002), 17.

[[4]]. “Hubert H. Humphrey Quotes,” http://thinkexist.com/quotation/compassion_is_not_weakness-and_concern_for_the/209236.html.

[[5]]. Robert F. Kennedy, as quoted by Edward Kennedy at his funeral, June 8, 1968, http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2009/08/take-a-moment-read-ted-kennedys-euology-of-bobby.

[[6]]. Kennedy was quoting George Bernard Shaw. See Robert F. Kennedy, remarks at the University of Kansas, March 18, 1968, http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Ready-Reference/RFK-Speeches/Remarks-of-Robert-F-Kennedy-at-the-University-of-Kansas-March-18-1968.aspx.

[[7]]. Pew Research Center, Barely Half of U.S. Adults Are Married—A Record Low (December 14, 2011), http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2011/12/Marriage-Decline.pdf.

[[8]]. Marriage and Poverty in the U.S.: By the Numbers (Heritage Foundation, 2010), http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2010/pdf/wm2934_bythenumbers.pdf.

[[9]]. Combating Poverty: Understanding New Challenges for Families (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, June 5, 2012), http://www.brookings.edu/research/testimony/2012/06/05-poverty-families-haskins.

[[10]]. Charles M. Blow, “For Jobs, It’s War,” New York Times, September 16, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/17/opinion/blow-for-jobs-its-war.html?ref=charlesmblow.

[[11]]. Author’s conversation with Mike Huckabee for a radio show pilot, December 2011.

[[12]]. Former Members of Congress for Common Ground, Letter to Congressional Candidates, October 4, 2010, http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/10/04/fmoc.letter.pdf.

[[13]]. Jim Wallis, “Doing Justice,” Sojourners, December 2009, 52, http://sojo.net/magazine/2009/12/doing-justice.

[[14]]. Joanna Walters, “Daily Show’s Jon Stewart Calls on American Voters to Rally for Sanity,” The Guardian, September 18, 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/sep/19/jon-stewart-daily-show-rally.

[[15]]. “A Covenant for Civility,” March 25, 2010, https://secure3.convio.net/sojo/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=341.

[[16]]. Ibid.

[[17]]. Jim Wallis and Chuck Colson, “Conviction and Civility,” Christianity Today, January 24, 2011, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/januaryweb-only/convictioncivility.html?paging=off.

[[18]]. N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone: Romans Part 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004), Kindle edition, locations 1366–78.

[[19]]. Ibid., 1382–88.

[[20]]. National Association of Evangelicals, For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility, 5, 10, http://www.nae.net/images/content/For_The_Health_Of_The_Nation.pdf.

[[21]]. Rev. 11:7.

[[22]]. Rev. 17:5.

[[23]]. Rev. 13:1.

[[24]]. Rev. 13:7 (NIV).

[[25]]. N. T. Wright, “The New Testament and the State,” Themelios 16 (1990): 15.

[[26]]. Luke 13:32.

[[27]]. Wright, “New Testament and the State,” 15.

[[28]]. Ronald J. Sider, Fixing the Moral Deficit: A Balanced Way to Balance the Budget (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2012), 54.

[[29]]. Lewis, “Equality,” 17.

[[30]]. US Department of Commerce Economics and Statistics Administration, Who Owns America’s Farmland? (Washington, DC: United States Census Bureau, 1993), http://www.census.gov/apsd/www/statbrief/sb93_10.pdf.

[[31]]. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, “Human Trafficking: An Overview” (New York: United Nations, 2008), 6, http://www.ungift.org/docs/ungift/pdf/knowledge/ebook.pdf.

[[32]]. See, for example, Greg Smith, “Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs,” New York Times, March 14, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-goldman-sachs.html?pagewanted=all.

[[33]]. http://www.thepovertyforum.org/.

[[34]]. Bono, “A Decade of Progress on AIDS,” New York Times, November 30, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/01/opinion/a-decade-of-progress-on-aids.html.

Jim Wallis is president and CEO of Sojourners and editor in chief of Sojourners magazine. He is a best-selling author, public theologian, national preacher, social activist, and international commentator on ethics and public life. Wallis has written ten books, including the New York Times bestsellers God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It and The Great Awakening, and is a frequent speaker in the United States and abroad. He has written for major newspapers and appears frequently on CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, on shows such as Meet the Press, Morning Joe, Hardball, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and The O’Reilly Factor, and on NPR. He also teaches at Georgetown University and has taught at Harvard University.

www.ongodsside.com

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Conservatives, Liberals, and the Fight for America’s Future

Epilogue: Ten Personal Decisions for the Common Good

Notes

About the Author

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