HELL HATH NO FURY

from Midwest Conservative Journal by The Editor

Jim Wallis officially has his own stalker because Jim Naughton refuses to move on:

Earlier this month, Sojourners, the Washington-based magazine of an evangelical Christian movement distinguished by its primarily progressive political outlook, rejected an advertisement suggesting that Christians refrain from open rudeness toward gays and lesbians who attend their churches.

The magazine did not “take sides” on controversial issues, a spokesman explained in what would be the first of many attempts by Jim Wallis, the founder and editor of Sojourners, his staff and supporters to rationalise the rejection.

Surprising considering what a leftist Wallis supposedly is.

Jim Wallis’s supporters, who are more liberal than conservative, believe he has had a knack for creating a safe space in which religious leaders who hold divergent views on issues rooted in sexuality can make common cause against hunger, poverty and war.

But Naughton, who was born at night but not last night, can see right through the scam Wallis is running.

His detractors believe that his is largely a ministry based on media attention, painting him as a skilful straddler and self-promoter, who convenes gatherings of less politically savvy religious leaders, and then emerges as their spokesman.

Even if it was all fraudulent, Naughton admits that Wallis has achieved quite a bit.

Whatever one’s opinion, the nature of Wallis’s achievement is undeniable. By talking a bipartisan game, he made room for the views of progressive religious leaders in debates about the nature of public morality – debates that since the Reagan administration were dominated by the newly resurgent religious right. Like Bill Clinton, he could speak the language of Bible-believing conservative while advocating the policies of a chastened liberal. And, like Clinton, he became a hero to Democrats who were tired of wandering endlessly in the political wilderness.

This is where the “unfortunately” goes.

But one cannot be both the left bank and the bridge. Either one is the face of a movement whose values one embraces and espouses, or one practises circumspection to play the honest broker, the great convener, the architect of the grand synthesis. Wallis still wants to be both, and this is now manifestly unhelpful to LGBT people and their supporters.

And since Jim Naughton is an Episcopalian, there is only one right answer on the ligbit question and Jim Wallis doesn’t have it.

Over the years, Wallis has cultivated relationships with a broad range of religious leaders, but at the grassroots level, his followers are more left than centre. Additionally, this argument opens a self-inflicted wound, calling attention to the fact that Wallis’s appeal to the political right is based precisely on his willingness to toss LGBT people and women in need of abortions out of the basket when the balloon starts to lose altitude.

That’s one way to put it. The correct way to put it is that Jim Wallis, unlike Jim Naughton, can have principled disagreements with people without demonizing them.

Internecine tussles over Wallis’s positions have erupted, gone dormant and erupted again for more than two decades among progressive Christians. Veterans of these arguments are puzzled over the intensity of the reaction in this instance, saying those who weren’t aware of Sojourners’ line on equality for LGBT people simply weren’t paying attention. Pro-choice leaders, in particular, wonder why Wallis has never suffered a similar backlash for making common cause with religious leaders who seek to outlaw abortion.

So Wallis had better repent or he’ll be left on the ash heap of history.

The answer may lie in polling data. Support for extending equal rights to LGBT people is advancing at an astonishing rate in the US. Numerous surveys indicate that a slight majority of Americans now favour the legalisation of same-sex marriage. The left has undeniable momentum on this issue.

BEVERAGE ALERT: Naughton gets off one of the funniest lines he’s ever written.

The right has a phalanx of organisations led by conservative Christian clerics whose faith-based arguments are increasingly being rebutted by sound theological and scriptural reasoning.

Really, Jim? Really?!! I’ve got three words for you, pal. In. Your. Dreams.

Dude, have you even read “To Set Our Hope On Christ?” Dear LORD, what an inept embarrassment that was!! And TEO doesn’t seem to be too proud of it since I couldn’t find it on their web site; the only place online that I could find a copy was at the American Anglican Council.

Those guys are Anglican conservatives, Jim, so I can see why they might have an interest in keeping that total disaster alive. One other thing, big smacker. If TEO’s “theological and scriptural reasoning” is so “sound,” why has most of the Christian world COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY REJECTED IT?!!

I guess I probably don’t agree with Jim Wallis about all that much. But he sounds like a guy I could have dinner and a few beers with. And his version of progressive Christianity is formidable precisely because he is that most dangerous of all liberals.

Someone who can let details slide because he looks at the big picture. And someone seems to implicitly admit the possibility that he might be wrong.

Jim Naughton, on the other hand, has no such difficulties. As stated previously, to guys like Jim, there is only one right answer to the homosexual question. Dare to question the “sound theological and scriptural reasoning” of Jim’s fascistic “church” and you are nothing more than a contemptible bigot.

End of story.

Make no mistake. TEO puts no strings on its foreign largesse now. But as the Episcopal left accumulates more and more power, that will change. Foreign donations will be contigent upon correctness on The Issue.

As will ordinations. While it is impossible to be ordained in TEO now if you believe that the Bible means what it says, expect that sooner rather than later, the Episcopal left will quite happily do what the Episcopal right refused to do in the 1960′s.

Bring a priest or bishop up on heresy charges, convict him or her and remove him or her from the ministry.

Episcopal conservatives? You’re living on borrowed time. And not too terribly much of it.