God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It

While the religious has hijacked the language of faith to prop up its political agenda, the left hasn't done much better, largely ignoring faith and continually separating moral discourse and personal ethics from public policy. While the right argues that God's way is their way, the left pursues an unrealistic separation of religious values from morally grounded political leadership. Jim Wallis is the founder of Sojourners, a nationwide network of progressive Christians working for justice and peace.

From the publisher ...

Since when did believing in God and having moral values make you pro-war, pro-rich, and solely pro-Republican? And since when did promoting and pursuing a progressive social agenda with a concern for economic security, health care, and educational opportunity mean you had to put faith in God aside?

God's Politics offers a clarion call to make both our religious communities and our government more accountable to key values of the prophetic religious tradition -- that is, make them pro-justice, pro-peace, pro-environment, pro-equality, and pro-family (without making scapegoats of single mothers or gays). Our biblical faith and religious traditions simply do not allow us as a nation to continue to ignore the poor and marginalized, deny racial justice, tolerate the ravages of war, or turn away from the human rights of those made in the image of God. These are the values of love and justice, reconciliation, and community that Jesus taught and that are at the core of what many of us believe, Christian or not. Jim Wallis inspires us to hold our political leaders and policies accountable by integrating our deepest moral convictions into our nation's public life.