[Mb-civic] God's Politics: Frist Fights Filibuster on Judicial Nominees in "Justice Sunday"

[Michael Butler]

Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org
God's Politics: Frist Fights Filibuster on Judicial Nominees in "Justice
Sunday"

Tuesday, April 26th, 2005
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/04/26/1355204

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist delivered a taped speech Sunday at an
event called "Justice Sunday: Stopping the Filibuster Against People of
Faith," in which he again threatened to ban Democrats from filibustering
Bush's judicial nominees. We speak with preacher activist Jim Wallis, author
of "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get
It." [includes rush transcript]

The battle over President Bush's judicial nominees reached new heights this
past weekend. Senate Majority leader Bill Frist delivered a taped speech in
which he again threatened to ban Democrats from filibustering Bush's court
nominees. While the Republican leader's rhetoric was the same, it was the
venue of his address that grabbed national headlines.

The speech was part of an event organized by Christian conservative groups
called "Justice Sunday: Stopping the Filibuster Against People of Faith." It
was held at a packed Baptist church east of Louisville, Kentucky and was
simultaneously broadcast to churches around the country, as well as to 61
million households.

In his speech, Frist threatened again to use what is known as the "nuclear
option," - changing Senate rules to ban filibusters of judicial nominees.

Democrats have said they would retaliate by bringing most Senate business to
a halt. But now, the Senate's top two Democrats - Minority Leader Harry Reid
of Nevada and Minority Whip Richard Durbin of Illinois said for the first
time yesterday that they would consider a compromise in which some of the
seven stalled nominees would be confirmed and the others withdrawn.

While Frist didn't mention religion in his speech, others who were
headlining the event did. Charles Colson, head of Prison Fellowship
Ministries, said filibustering of court nominees is "destroying the balance
of power, which was a vital Christian contribution to the founding of our
nation."

Religious groups and Democrats said Frist should have played no role in the
heavily promoted broadcast which they say inappropriately brought religion
into a political debate. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York said the move,
"Clearly argues that people of one viewpoint have God on their side and all
others are faithless."

Frists speech comes as a new Washington-Post-ABC News poll finds that
Americans are opposed to changing the Senate rules by a 2-1 margin.
Meanwhile, the group, MoveOn.org, says it will finance TV commercials
criticizing the rule change and organizers will hold 120 rallies around the
country on Wednesday, including one in Washington with a speech by former
Vice President Al Gore.

    * Jim Wallis , author of "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong
and the Left Doesn't Get It." He is a founder of the Sojourners Community
and editor of Sojourners Magazine.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

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AMY GOODMAN: We're joined in our firehouse studio by Jim Wallis. He¹s author
of God's Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn¹t Get it.
He is founder of Sojourners Community and editor of Sojourners magazine.
Welcome to Democracy Now!

JIM WALLIS: Thanks, Amy. Great to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: It¹s good to have you with us. So let's talk about this event
that took place on Sunday called ³Justice Sunday,² and Senator Frist's
participation, the Senate Majority Leader.

JIM WALLIS: It was pretty amazing. You know, I have looked through my Bible,
and I can¹t find filibuster anywhere. I really looked hard. But it's not
there. A bit of historical perspective, after he was arrested once, Reverend
Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote a very famous letter from a Birmingham jail to
white clergy who opposed him, and it was about racial segregation and
violence against black people. Never once did he say they weren't people of
faith. He challenged their faith. He wanted them to go deeper with their
faith, but he never said my opponents are not people of faith. That's what
they're saying. Now, if King wouldn't say his opponents weren't people of
faith over racial segregation and violence, how can the right do this over a
filibuster? There's something crossing a lot of boundaries here.

AMY GOODMAN: What really is the big deal? It's their opinion versus yours.

JIM WALLIS: Well, I think it's fine for people to bring their moral
conviction, even their religious conviction in the public life. King did
that. I do that. The religious right does that, but when you say those who
oppose us, who have a different view, are not people of faith, or Jerry
Falwell and Pat Robertson said during the campaign, you can only vote for
George W. Bush. Now they're saying you must also agree with all of his
judicial nominees. Now this is really the hijacking of religion. It's making
it into a partisan wedge and a weapon to divide us, not a bridge to bring us
together. This is really the abuse and misuse of religion. We're having
these town meetings across the country disguised as book signings. And what
I'm learning is people are tired of the monologue of the religious right.
And the good news, having been to the East and the Mid-West and the South
and even Texas and the West, is the monologue of the religious right is now
over. And a new dialogue has finally begun.

AMY GOODMAN: And yet, isn't it at the height of their power?

JIM WALLIS: Well, it's interesting because they're in the White House now.
So you can say, yes, it's at the height of their power. But more than ever
before, it's almost like the rise of the non-religious right, which isn't
much of a name for a movement, but that's what I¹m sensing and feeling all
over the country. So a lot of people are saying, wait a minute, the way
faith is portrayed in the election, in the media, and invoked in the White
House isn¹t my faith. I¹ve got faith, too. I¹ve got moral values, too. They
don't speak for me. So, a lot of other people are saying, I want my voice to
be heard, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: This event that took place just this Sunday, filibustering
people of faith, took place in Louisville, Kentucky. You were there that
day.

JIM WALLIS: Well, there was another service, a counter-service. 1,200 people
showed up on about a week's notice. And that's what I'm finding all over the
country, packed churches, to say, well, their faith isn't our faith, and the
monologue doesn't represent the dialogue we now need to have. So, it was
lots of energy in the room. Good preaching, good choirs. And people said,
wait a minute, I don't agree, and they can¹t say this. One guy from Kentucky
said, he said, I have been an evangelical Christian my whole life. Imagine
my surprise when I woke up and found the newspaper saying I'm not a person
of faith. Imagine my surprise. It was great -- a great event to say, wait a
minute -- because someone doesn't agree with the judicial nominee or a
Senate procedure, you know, filibusters have been used for good and for ill.
But, my goodness, this is not a theological matter here. So, they're really
overstepping, they're overreaching. Last night, we had a debate. I was on
with Dobson and Moler.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain who Dobson and Mohler are.

JIM WALLIS: Well, James Dobson, the head of Focus on the Family, one of the
organizers of this event, and Albert Mohler be the president of the Southern
Baptist Seminary, also one of the planners of this event, and they're
already beginning to back off, which they should. We never said this is not
about people of faith. What they said, this is a filibuster against people
of faith. They said that the Democratic Party is hostile to people of faith.
That would be news to Barack Obama, for example, who is a deeply Christian
person, member of a black church the south side of Chicago. So, this kind of
rhetoric is really getting very old for a lot of people. I have often said
when people steal your faith in the public realm, it's time to now take it
back.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to read you the beginning of a piece that was in The New
York Times a couple months ago, New York Times Magazine. ³Faith, Certainty
and the Presidency of George W. Bush² by Ron Suskind. And it says, ³Bruce
Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and treasury official
for the first President Bush told me recently if Bush wins, there will be a
civil war in the Republican Party starting November 3. The nature of that
conflict, as Bartlett sees it, essentially the same as the one raging across
much of the world, a battle between modernists and fundamentalists,
pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion. Just in the past few
months, Bartlett said, I think a light has gone off for people who have
spent time up close to Bush, that this instinct he¹s always talking about is
this sort of weird messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.
Bartlett is a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian
republican who has lately been a champion for traditional republicans
concerned about Bush's governance. He went on to say, this is why George W.
Bush is so clear-eyed about al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy.
He believes you have to kill them all, they can¹t be persuaded, that they¹re
extremists driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just
like them. He goes on to say, this is why he dispenses with people who
confront him with inconvenient facts. Bartlett went on to say, he truly
believes he's on a mission from God, absolute faith like that, overwhelms a
need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for
which there is no empirical evidence, Bartlett paused, then said, but you
cannot run the world on faith.² Can you talk about that?

JIM WALLIS: You know, religion is being used by some to provide us with what
we really long for, which is a kind of easy certainty. But the better use of
religion is to provide us a deeper reflection. For example, if we can¹t see
the face of evil on September 11, I suppose we're suffering from some kind
of a post-modern relativism or something, but to say they're evil and we are
good is bad theology. Jesus said don't just see the log in your adversary's
eye, but also the one in your own eye. So that kind of bad theology, they're
evil and we're good, leads to bad foreign policy, to preemptive, unilateral
and endless war. Fundamentalism exists in all of our religious traditions,
and the antidote to it, I think, is prophetic faith. The answer to bad
religion, I think, is not secularism but better religion. So, how do we talk
about a prophetic faith? In my Christian tradition, I want to talk about
Jesus. How did Jesus become pro-rich, pro-war and only pro-American? It
doesn't make sense. And yet, that's what we're faced with. So, really, a
rescue operation is what I think is required now, to take back our faith
from those who have made it into a kind of a political weapon and a wedge.
The religious right is the political seduction of religion. The religious
right was the idea of the political right. They created it. There were
meetings. Republican political operatives, TV preachers, a deal was made.
Give me your lists. I'll make you famous. It was a Faustian bargain. But
what happens is when the progressives concede the entire territory of
religion and values and faith to the right, then they get to define it
however they want to, and they have in this very narrow, partisan,
ideological way. So that's what I want to take back here.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Reverend Jim Wallis, and we'll be back with
him. He is author of God's Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the
Left Doesn't Get it.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Our guest in the studio is Reverend Jim Wallis. He¹s an
evangelical preacher, a founder of Sojourners magazine more than thirty
years ago, and has a new best-selling book out; it is called, God's
Politics‹Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It: A New
Vision for Faith and Politics in America. I bring up best-selling, Reverend
Wallis, because ­ I mean, youŒve been doing this over three decades and --
What is it? Suddenly this has caught on? I mean, at a time when people are
saying that the right is in control, the religious right is at its height,
your vision of religion, secular religion, has caught on?

JIM WALLIS: You know, it's almost because of their success a lot of people
are saying: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I'm a person of faith, too, and
they don't speak for me. I was on Meet the Press with Jerry Falwell and he
said one of his usual crazy, outlandish things, and I just looked at him and
I said: ³Jerry, when you say those things millions and millions of American
Christians want to say to you, say to the nation: You don't speak for me.²
And I felt ­ I almost felt like the millions saying: ³Yes! Yes! Yes!² And
all across the country, we just packed houses every night because people --
It isn¹t about a book. It's about a desire to have their faith heard, too.
Their voice heard, too. And you know, we're -- Religion doesn't have a
monopoly on morality. Never has, never will. But we¹ve had in our history
progressive, prophetic movements of faith that have fueled every major
social reform movement, abolition of slavery, child labor law reform,
women's suffrage, of course, civil rights. To take back that prophetic faith
when we need it right now, is something people are very excited about.

AMY GOODMAN: How do you see the invasion and occupation of Iraq?

JIM WALLIS: When I was on Jon Stewart he said: ³You want to apply the
teachings of Jesus to politics?² And I said, ³Yeah. And I don't think his
first two priorities would have been a capital gains tax cut and the
occupation of Iraq. You know, the truth is, and the media never told the
story, that every major religious body around the world was opposed to the
war in Iraq except our American Southern Baptists. The Pope was -- The Pope
is hardly a liberal religious leader, but he shook his finger at George W.
Bush in the Vatican. The White House didn't get the photo op they wanted
that day. This Pope was against the war in Iraq.

AMY GOODMAN: Yet this hardly got that kind of attention from the media.

JIM WALLIS: No, it didn't at all. And I was stunned because I¹ve never seen
such a unity among religious leaders around the world. In fact, every
evangelical group around the world, even in our allied countries like the
U.K., they were all against the war in Iraq. And yet that never got reported
here. Tony Blair met with a number of us before the war, at the run-up.

AMY GOODMAN: You met with Tony Blair?

JIM WALLIS: With Tony Blair, five American church leaders. The
President‹President Bush‹would never meet with any of us who had questions
about the war in Iraq. There was a powerful -- The majority of Christians
around the world were opposed to the war in Iraq, because by any criteria,
this was not a just war.

AMY GOODMAN: And so what do you think needs to happen right now, and what
about the situation for Muslims in this country?

JIM WALLIS: Well, you know, there will never be a resolution in Iraq until
the American occupation is over. The American occupation is not the
solution; it's the problem. And, you know, there's a­ You know, Reza Aslan
who¹s got a great new book out called, No God But God. He¹s a young Islamic
scholar. He was on Jon Stewart just this past week or so. He says there's a
big battle internally going on within Islam. It's not the clash of
civilizations, like Samuel Huntington says, the West and Islam. It's within
Islam, fighting for the hearts and souls. I feel that way about my Christian
faith. We're fighting for the heart and soul of our traditions against a
fundamentalist sort of takeover that really wants to take over all of them,
and then a prophetic faith which is the counter to it. So, in every
religious tradition there's a prophetic, progressive tradition stream,
energy movement flowing; and I'm finding young people all over the country
who want to join that. They want to sign up. They want to be part of a move
-- They want a -- Faith does big things. It's supposed to change the things
that no one else thinks can be changed. The things that have no hope and the
odds are against us. That's why we have faith. Three billion people living
on less than two dollars a day. That's a big thing. Thirty thousand people,
children, dying every day in a silent tsunami because of lack of clean
drinking water and lack of food. That's a big thing. These are the big
things faith is supposed to change. Instead, we're debating filibusters.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Reverend Jim Wallis. He has written God's
Politics, a new book, but he has been the editor of Sojourners magazine for
many decades. Can you talk about the founding of Sojournersmagazine, why you
did it in early 1970s, and the difference between the climate then and the
climate today?

JIM WALLIS: I was fresh out of the movement. I had been kicked out of my
little evangelical church at 14 over the issue of race, and I joined the
civil rights movement and the anti-war movement. And I came back, really, to
Jesus. I find Jesus the most radical historical figure I¹d ever known, and I
was captivated, converted, by this radical Jesus, who turned the world
upside-down. So I went to seminary. I found a different kind of religion
there than I had found in the gospels. We started this thing and we said,
you know, we want to be as radical -- try to be -- as Jesus was, and so, we
started this. At first it was aimed at movement folks like us; and it
attracted all these Christians who were tired of a private faith (either
just me and the lord, not the world) or a very kind of reactionary
right-wing faith. And so, we began this movement a long time ago. It's been
like speaking in a stadium without a microphone. You can reach a section at
a time. We¹ve been going around the country and we have a serious
constituency. But now the time has come that the microphones are now open to
a different kind of voice. So, now the right doesn't have the monologue
anymore. And it¹s -- it drives them crazy. There's a dialogue now and they
don't want ­ they don¹t know what to do with that. So, we're going to have a
serious debate with the religious right about what faith means and with the
progressive side. You know, the right gets it wrong because they want to
narrow all the moral values issues. There's just two: abortion, gay
marriage. That's it. You know, what about 3,000 verses in the Bible on
poverty. Fighting poverty is a moral value. Protecting the environment,
otherwise known as God's creation, that's a moral value issue. And as you
said, the ethics of war. When you go to war, how you go to war, and whether
you tell the truth about going to war. These are profoundly religious
matters. The left, I think, needs to recover its own progressive history,
its heart and soul, its moral vocabulary and not give the right that whole
territory of religion, values and politics. We can¹t ever do that again.
That was a mistake.

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