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For the last generation, Americans have grown accustomed to evangelical Christianity aggressively entering the arena of public life to support a raft of conservative causes -- fights over the contents of school textbooks, battles against gay employment and marriage rights, anti-abortion activism -- all of it nudging the Republican Party further and further to the right.

It is, however, far less common to see Christian ideals -- or the ideals of any religion, for that matter -- harnessed to ideas or initiatives that originate on the political left. There are reasons for this. Offering a religious rationale for policy goals threatens what for many has become the cherished principle of secular rationalism in public life. Invoking a moral basis for public goals, to many otherwise well-intentioned liberals, undermines the separation of church and state, to which they reflexively seek to repel any threat. But this comes at the cost of chronically ceding the moral high ground and a potentially galvanizing force in national politics.

It’s refreshing, therefore, to see a group like What Would Jesus Cut? amid the partisan posturing surrounding debates over the federal deficit crisis. Launched by Jim Wallis, the co-founder and CEO of Sojourners magazine, this movement aims to infuse this critical national debate with thoughtfulness about the moral priorities it reflects. To deliver the message, the campaign sends What Would Jesus Cut? bracelets and emails to congressional representatives, and questions the limited pain of national belt-tightening the "super-rich" are asked to bear under the House Republican deficit-slashing plan.

Wallis correctly notes that recently passed tax cuts benefit ted this group, adding billions of dollars to the of burden future generations whose fiscal health the Republicans otherwise claim to defend steadfastly. He also points out that the GOP plan actually called for an $8 billion increase in defense spending, while cutting $758 million from Women, Infants, and Children, a program that provides nutrition for many of the nation’s neediest souls. Clearly, the What Would Jesus Cut? movement approaches the deficit dilemma by seeking to beat swords into plowshares.



Though its themes have been haltingly whispered before, the emergence of What Would Jesus Cut? represents the most viable, coherent and exciting vision for fastening a Christian moral vision to our national politics at the other end of political spectrum.

Wallis is no rookie in this quest. Beginning in the 1970s, Wallis turned Sojourners into a forum for ideas of social and economic justice. In the 1980s, at the height of the “Reagan Revolution,” its pages highlighted questionable national priorities in an era where spending on the privileged and on a robust military diminished domestic and social initiatives to benefit the poor. Wallis and Sojourners were also linked to the Central America Solidarity Movement, which mobilized Christian faith to counter the destructive collateral damage of Reagan administration policy in the region. Central America Solidarity in turn was linked transnationally to the burgeoning liberation theology movement in Latin America that harnessed the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church to the struggle for political and economic justice and against Latin America’s oppressive dictatorships.



There are signs that the 2010s could be a fertile ground for using Christian ideals to pursue goals of social justice. For one thing, in the run-up to the current deficit wrangling, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, initially appointed on the Republicans' watch, acknowledged that there were areas of the defense budget that could stand trimming right alongside other measures of frugality in discretionary spending. This is a good bit of progress since the Reagan era attitude that defense was not a budget item subject to the same "spending arithmetic" as others.

If the moral test of a society is how it treats its most vulnerable, the emergence of What Would Jesus Cut? may be the flashlight leading us out of the dark cave of budgetary wrangling. But it should also provide progressives with a model for marrying religion to politics in a way that reinvigorates their agenda, rather than simply leaving the field wide open to often intolerant evangelicals and social conservatives.

* Brad Martin is an associate professor of history at Bryant University in Rhode Island. He is the author of The Other Eighties: A Secret History of America in the Age of Reagan. More: Brad Martin

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Americans donate more of their $ to charity than anyone.

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:


I have said it before and I'll say it again: If the Republicans are serious about being fiscally responsible, defense spending must be at the top of the chopping block.

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Originally posted by LiLi:
If it's what they have to do to get the message across, then good for them I suppose, but I don't see why it has to be Christian to be moral.


Facts are stubborn things.

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Originally posted by LiLi:
If it's what they have to do to get the message across, then good for them I suppose, but I don't see why it has to be Christian to be moral.


Facts are stubborn things.

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Originally posted by Storymark:
making it Christian makes it harder for those who make a big deal of their Christian morals to ignore the fact that they actively work in opposition to those morals.

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Originally posted by TheHappyTrader:
I thought rap was athiest

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Originally posted by TheHappyTrader:
I thought rap was athiest, and is there any point in the personal attacks outside of trolling?

I dunno if it'll 'work' either, but I'd like it if they ended the misconception that to be 'Christian' is to be 'Republican.' I'd like it even more if we can get a more fiscally and socially responsible budget out of this.

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Originally posted by SignyM:
Rappy, your own figures on a per capita basis put America lower than most of your other cited nations. Each person in the following nations gives this many times MORE than each person in the United States

France 2.07
Germany 1.58
United Kingdom 2.01

So, your very own words and cites work against you.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
Rap

You are all about greed. But you don't want people to know so you call it 'freedom'. You despise it when society cares for its own rather than preys on its own. But you hate it when people call you out on your ruthless, vicious greed.

So, for the record, Rap, to avoid the label of greedy hypocrite, how much of your own personal money have you donated to charity, stated as a percent of your income?

C'mon little boy, man up.

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
Maybe he just wasn't interested in such things. Moaning about taxation is a minute earthly concern. Perhaps he had more important fish to fry.

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Originally posted by dmaanlileiltt:
And I would say that the way you defer all arguments to people have been dead more than 2 centuries is very....religious.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
Jesus wouldn't have any federal spending at all ... (or) being told what to do by a central authority.

Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's. He didn't appear to be against paying taxes to support a central government. He wasn't exactly leading a tax revolt.

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He didn't really die for your sins, he died for crimes he may or may not have been guilty of

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You're real giving with other's money, aren't you ? Is THAT how you measure 'charity' ? How much you can force from the tax payers and give to selected groups ?

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
The Dems fail to understand the mindset of their opponents. Jesus wouldn't have any federal spending at all, but his followers really don't care. They care about being allowed to live by their own values and not being told what to do by a central authority. But even if they did care about govt. programs, they would want them to be charities, and are probably likely to be suspicious of the govt's "assistance" as well they should be, given the past record.

"And then Caesar shall come down and lift you out of poverty with his divine powers and humanly goodness" - Jesus didn't say.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
There's nothing in the least bit superstitious about quoting those who came before us, is there ?

Don't think so.B]

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