May 20, 2005
The problem with Sojourners
So I finally got around to reading a whole issue of Sojourners this week. I've read a bunch of articles already, both through my church and various other blogs that seem to have been completely snowed by the progressive side of the aisle (just kidding! [kind of!). So I took a look to see what was going on.
At first, there are a lot of things to like. It's great to finally hear a Christian voice that isn't completely sold out to the right. There are good and Scriptural reasons to be suspicious about a lot of things our government does, and that includes the current administration. Furthermore, conservative Christians really do demonstrate a marked lack of interest in things that should properly belong to any coherent and complete Christian political stance: concern for the poor in this country and abroad, justice in things like taxation and trade laws, etc.
But after reading the latest issue and perusing some of their back-issues online, I've come up with the following objections to the SoJo project.
1) They are, to a significant degree, parroting the talking-points of the standard, secular Left. This is a problem. First off, it aligns them with people who are, by and large, pretty adamantly opposed to Christ and his church. Any time a Christian starts sounding like those who have publically stated their ambivalence towards God, that Christian needs to stop and consider what's going on. This accusation is as relevant for publications like WORLD (which I can't even bear to read anymore) as it is for Sojourners, but SoJo seems particularly vulnerable, as the secularists they're sounding like support things like abortion, the normalization of homosexuality, restrictions of parental rights, and the absence of anything religious from public life.
2) They assume that care for the poor necessarily equals the standard progressive platform and all of its usual solutions for various problems: more government, bigger welfare state, more taxes, etc. To me, this suggests that they're more interested in promoting their Lefty sentiments with religious language than they are actually interested in caring for the poor, which should, after all, be the point. There are significant factual debates about the best ways of doing that, but Sojourners as a publication doesn't seem to be any more open to this than your typical Democrat.
3) I have serious questions about their committment to the essentials of the Christian faith, and believe that their view of God's plan for salvation and the nature of the Kingdom of Heaven are at odds with Scripture. First off, they seem limited to a few parts of Scripture - Sermon on the Mount, some of the minor prophets, a few Psalms - that deal with what can be construed as social issues, while largely ignoring most of what is said about personal holiness, the nature of the church, the "mechanics" of salvation, and God's ultimate plan for the world.
It seems as if we've got two options here. On one hand we've got WORLD and its ilk. They've got serious problems with their political agenda, and have bought in far too easily to the Republican party. Scratch that. The lines between them and the Republican party are far too blurred. But I have no question as to their belief about salvation or the Kingdom. On the other hand, we've got a group of people, typified by SoJo who have a political agenda that I tend to want to agree with, but find that their theological positions are largely opposed to mine. They don't believe the same things about family, church, salvation, or heaven as I do.
This kind of tension is described in the latest SoJocover story [free registration required]. The author complains that while the Democrats seem to have the better part of the social justice argument (see, there they go conflating progressive politics with programs that actually better the poor; the Democrats haven't had a legitimately good idea in 70 years), the Republicans have completely dominated the issues of faith and belief in a way that has hurt the Left immeasurably.
For starters, I would agree. I have more and more problems with the Republican government, but I voted for them because though they may be wrong about some things, they're "right" about the really important things. It's really hard to be a person of faith and a committed, party-line Democrat, given the planks in their platform.
I would go right back at the author and say that SoJo has done exactly the same thing and have sold the theological farm. Hand-wave proof-texting using the Sermon on the Mount does not constitute a decidedly Christian worldview, and though care for the poor is to be an essential part of any Christian perspective, 1) there's a lot more to it than that, and 2) this does not necessarily mean being progressive.
Good comments. The battle lines between the "theological farm" and what I'll call the "practical mill" is hard to get rid of. It seems each side is scared of what the extreme views of the other side will do. It's too bad that this tension splits many churches and prevents us from truly being a 'catholic' church. We are trying to find the balance in our church since we have both sides in equal numbers, but it is hard. It's no wonder so many denominations form just to make things comfortable. The tension shouldn't even be there...
Posted by: andyp at May 20, 2005 2:37 PM"[Sojourners] are, to a significant degree, parroting the talking-points of the standard, secular Left."
Agreed. The most obvious example of this recently was Jim Wallis wimping out on Terri Schaivo, claiming that the controversy was too gray to call.
"[Sojourners] assume that care for the poor necessarily equals the standard progressive platform"
I would argue that Sojo's editors have often articulated a stance that personal responsibility and corporate assistance from the government are both often necessary, and that the left and right too often create a false dichotomy between them.
Regarding #3, it is true that Sojourner's emphasis is on these passages, but they are directly related to the explicit mission of Sojourners. Does this mean that they lack a complete understanding of salvation? Not necessarily, you don't have to invoke the fundamentals of doctrine everytime you have a Christian conversation. That being said, there are a number of mainline contributors who, because of their denominations of choice, are presumably way out there, but very rarely is their doctinal liberalism brought up.
I support Sojourners as providing a balance to the abuses of the GOP and their blinding of many in the church, but I would never say that they don't mess up sometimes.
Plus, too ecumenical.
Posted by: Nat at May 20, 2005 3:13 PMI'd say that their ecumenical tendencies are a strength, not a weakness (at least in theory).
But I'm gonna stick to my guns on the fundamentals issue. Not that the gospel needs to be explicitly invoked every time you have a conversation, but that from reading the writings in SoJo, I come away feeling like they mean something very different than what I mean when we talk about Christian beliefs.
When I talk about politics, I want to say that Scripture requires X, therefore we should do X. When I read SoJo, the arguments are that we should do X, and hey, Scripture says that too. The committment seems to be to a political agenda first, and to Scripture second. Compasion without a foundation in Christian belief is just another hippy-dippy love fest, and about as effective.
Posted by: ryan at May 20, 2005 4:56 PMI ran into alot of this at Eastern -it is, afterall, the home of the Campolo School of Social Change. But this agenda mostly came from the social science departments.
I remember at one forum, the issue of Americans as dependents of Arab Petroleum somehow boiled down to clean water, wind power, and freedom for the Middle East from American oil tycoons -and this also to the ministry of Christ, being a good steward, and world peace. The lingo used was exactly, Ryan, as you found in Sojo.
I think the most difficult part of this problem is talking: it's nearly impossible to have a real conversation about faith and progressive politics when the other party is totally sold on following the establishment's progressive agenda as opposed to the progressive agenda of Christianity. And this mainly because if you dissent from the Sojo/Jim Wallis/Tony Campolo thesis, you are automatically seen as a oil-drinking, straight-ticket voting, warhawk Republican. In essence, a nodding head.
But these same folk are the ones who most times complain of how quickly others polarize issues into 'clearly this or that' as opposed to finding another way. Though to be fair, I think when it comes to ideologies 'polarization' and begging for dialogue is a two-way street -especially considering both parties want to convert the other. But if we both are concerned for the social agenda of the church as followers of Christ, I think we should at least be able to sit down, lay out our cards on the table, and talk honestly. But this doesn't often happen.
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Posted by: Tyler Grisham at May 22, 2005 6:08 PMRyan, I think your criticisms are very valid. I've been following Sojo & Jim Wallis a good bit since the election last fall and have been a bit disappointed. I actually went to an event last week here in DC at the Heritage Foundation where Wallis and a senior writer for Heritage (Joe Loconte) debated the Christians & Politics issue. I've been meaning to throw together some commentary on that event for my blog, but haven't gotten around to it yet.
Two quick comments: 1. I can sympathize with your concerns about the theological grounding of Sojo, but I don't want to be too quick to judge. Wallis, in his book and in person, claims to be an orthodox, conservative Christian and I have to take that claim seriously. What's problematic is that I worry that the rest of the Sojo staff might not be as orthodox or Biblically grounded as Wallis is or may be. 2. When I first started reading God's Politics I became excited about the prospect of people actually thinking through issues biblically before applying party lines. However, I quickly became disillusioned by how little creative political thinking actually comes out of Sojo. I'd love to find a group that actually tries (on a fairly consistent basis) to approach politics from a Christian perspective before a party perspective.
Posted by: justin at May 23, 2005 1:44 PM