“Prophetic” State Worship from Jim Wallis

Laurence Vance has blogged many fine entries on this page dealing with Christian evangelicals who have given their hearts to the idolatry of the state. I have written about people on the left who do the same thing, especially Jim Wallis of Sojourners.

However, today I received an email from Sojourners with the kind of prose that is so over-the-top that I want to share with the rest of those who read this page. Wallis wrote his thoughts as he participated in the inauguration, and I must admit that what he wrote qualifies as utter state worship, while declaring these things to be “prophetic.” Pathetic is more like it.

Here are some selected passages, and I will let the reader decide if I am exaggerating:

It’s a better country than I thought it was. I honestly wouldn’t have thought this possible. I guess I would have agreed with the older generation of African Americans in my neighborhood: This day would never come in our lifetimes—but here it is.

For four decades, I’ve been fighting against all the bad stuff in America—the poverty, the racism, the human rights violations, and always the wars. At a deeper level, the arrogance, self-righteousness, materialism, and ignorance of the rest of the world, the habitual ignoring of the ones that God says we can’t, the ones Jesus calls the least of these.

From the time I got kicked out of my little white evangelical church as a young teenager, and plunged into the student movements of my generation, the issue that drove me was racism. Now the son of an African immigrant and a Kansas white woman has become president. I keep pinching myself.

And he talks differently—about almost everything.

And this:

I’ve known him for a decade, but I watched him grow as a leader all through this campaign, and now each day. I have never met a more self-disciplined political leader, with one exception—Nelson Mandela. And Mandela had the advantage of 27 years of spiritual formation in a South African prison.

Now we find out that Wallis is a Really Important Prophet:

I am used to White Houses who want to arrest me—22 times over 40 years. (He takes part in the kinds of protests in which everyone knows they will be arrested, and the police kindly oblige. These are arrests that are unlike what real dissidents have to face.) This White House wants our advice. Leaders from the faith community have been virtually inhabiting the offices of the Transition Team over the last weeks, with our advice being sought on global and domestic poverty, human rights, criminal justice, torture, faith-based offices, foreign policy, Gaza and the Middle East. A staffer joked one day, “We should have just gotten all of you bunks here.”

Now, here is a guy who supported Mao, Pol Pot and Castro, yet he says he is against torture? Some of the greatest mass murderers and torturers of all time have been among his greatest heroes.

But, what is American State Worship without homage to our greatest killer of Americans, Abraham Lincoln?

I took my two boys to the Opening Ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial, which I thought was just going to be “a concert.” But it turned out to be a wonderfully musical civic lesson about the best of America, the history that has been a shining light to the world at our best, and one that has attracted the most diverse population on the earth. I watched my boys watch and listen, and even felt proud of my country for the first time in a very long time. Bono and Springsteen weren’t bad either, and Tom Hanks’ reading of Lincoln might have been the high point for me (italics mine). Everybody was very happy and even hopeful.

But nothing was greater than the inauguration speech, which apparently combined the words of Christ and who knows who:

Read the speech a few times. But some of the highlights for me were:

That the national security strategy of Donald Rumsfeld will now be replaced by the wisdom of the prophet Micah—that our security depends upon other people’s security.

That the secret governance and detention centers of Dick Cheney will now be replaced by the rule of law and the renunciation of torture as not American after all.

That the money changers of the temples of Wall Street will be replaced with the call of the prophet Nehemiah to rebuild the broken walls and establish the common good.

The last time I checked, Bob Gates still was Secretary of Defense (or, more accurately, Secretary of War). I guess that he became a good guy as soon as Obama took his oath of office.

Of course, the socialist Wallis must take that swipe against capitalism and pronounce the Great Golden Age of State Control of the Economy:

The opportunity that has always been the American promise must now be extended to all, including those at the bottom of the economy, said the new president, who also pledged that the poor of the world would not be abandoned anymore.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.

He also gave a stern warning to the country about the results of misplaced policies and priorities.

This crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control. The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.

Obama sometimes did sound like the prophet Nehemiah, who after he carefully surveyed the broken walls of the temple, called the people together to start the rebuilding and to “commit themselves to the common good.”

Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

Afterwards, as we were leaving the Capitol, my son Luke whispered in my ear, “Yes, we did.”

Ironically, Obama already has taken the first step, committing U.S. tax dollars to promoting and paying for abortion on demand overseas. No doubt, the Prophet Amos would have supported such destruction of unborn life, or at least that is what Wallis would have us believe.

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5:11 pm on January 22, 2009