Books - "On God’s Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn’t Learned About Serving the Common Good" by Jim Wallis

Ever the Prophet, Never the King

By Josh Good

Jim Wallis’s new book asks readers to consider what each side of the political aisle gets right and to recall an ancient religious commitment to the common good.

Rather than focusing primarily on questions about the Right and Left, Jim Wallis’s new book, On God’s Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn’t Learned About Serving the Common Good, asks readers to “go deeper” and to recall the ancient religious commitment to the common good. In the immortal words of President Lincoln, we should ask “not whether God is on our side,” but instead “seek to be on God’s side.”

Wallis asks his readers to consider what each side of the political aisle “gets right.” For conservatives, it is the idea of personal responsibility, which he has witnessed in his own family and sees as an essential ingredient to helping men and women overcome poverty. “It is right and good, and part of the common good, to emphasize such a conservative ethic in making … good personal choices.”

Similarly, the best liberal idea is social responsibility. This value expresses itself through compassion, a politics of inclusion, and our efforts to end poverty, Wallis says. We will do better as a nation if we attempt to see the good in one another’s positions — not demonize our opponents.

Wallis encourages his readers to consider the power of social movements rather than politics alone to achieve the common good and to address the major problems of our time, whether through strengthening marriage or confronting the horrors of sex trafficking. (Some of his best insights about the priority of social movements can be viewed here.)

His advice to not rely on politics alone is particularly useful given that he is consistently light on policy proposals — even when attempting to speak on matters of today’s political economy. Like Wallis’s other books, On God’s Side is prophetic in tone, rather than kingly. That is, Wallis is a perennial activist: his ideas are frequently meant to provoke, rather than prescribe.
......
Read more: www.american.com