Critics on Our Left, Meet the Critics on Our Right

by Ryan Rodrick Beiler 10-09-2009

Every now and then someone to our right or left posts an article excoriating Sojourners or Jim Wallis for not being _____ enough, infuriated that we still claim to be _____ even though we’re really just _____. You may want to play along with this Mad Libs game at home. The comments on this blog often do, filling in those blanks with terms like “conservative,” “liberal,” “evangelical,” “progressive,” “pro-life,” “pro-abortion,” “anti-abortion,” “pro-gay,” “anti-gay,” “radical socialist,” “closet conservative,” “Obama shill,” and “White House hijacker” respectively, depending on whether it’s the right or left wing that’s doing the flapping.

While we don’t shy away from honest debate, we generally prefer not to respond to attacks that are unfair, inaccurate, or ad hominem. However, I’ve always had a tremendous desire to introduce our critics on the left to our critics on the right. I would love to be a fly on the wall as they debate which one of them is wrong about our position on hot button issues, of which abortion is the easiest example: “He’s anti-choice!” “He’s certainly not pro-life!”

Of course, they might just find common ground — that they both don’t like Sojourners or Jim Wallis. But at the risk of fanning the flames, I want to make at least one virtual introduction as an example: Adele Stan of Mother Jones, meet Keith Pavlischek of First Things:

From Stan’s “White House Religion Adviser Trying to Hijack Health Care For Anti-Choice Cause“:

[Wallis] says he’s progressive, and has some credentials to back up the claim: anti-poverty work and opposition to the Vietnam War. But he’s opposed to legal abortion … Despite his talk about not allowing abortion issues to “derail” health reform, that seems to be exactly what Wallis is up to … It’s a chip-away strategy, a nuisance plan on Wallis’ part to gum up the health-care works … what the heck is Wallis doing advising the White House, when he appears to be working against the president’s health-care agenda?

From Pavlischek’s “Back to Zero Cheers for Jim Wallis”:

[Wallis] has become little more than a flack for the Obama administration … Wallis has never really been serious on abortion … Wallis said that the abortion issue should not “doom the chances” of healthcare legislation … Back to zero cheers for Jim Wallis.

So which is it? Are we hijacking Obama’s health-reform policy with our radical anti-abortion agenda? Or are we uncritical lackeys of the Obama Administration that don’t really care about abortion? Do we really get zero cheers? And multiple jeers?

Of course, this brings to mind the old joke that being a bridge builder means you get walked on from both sides. And though being beaten up by both sides doesn’t necessarily make you the happy medium, there is something deeply gratifying about having the attacks of one set of critics offset by the arguments of their ideological counterparts. I suppose that’s the price for taking nuanced, common ground positions in a world of fundamentalists on both the left and the right.

Ryan Rodrick Beiler is the Web Editor for Sojourners and a photographer whose work can be seen at www.ryanrodrickbeiler.com.

Categories: Abortion, Faith and Politics, Health

Adele M. Stan

Just want to ask for a correction. Although you found my post on Mother Jones, where I am very proud to have it appear, it first appeared on AlterNet, where I am the Washington bureau chief.

As for a rejoinder, let me kindly suggest that the fact that the right doesn't find Rev. Wallis strident enough on abortion does not negate the fact that he is anti-choice himself. I believe my criticism stands up to that test.

RadicalChristianLibrarian

You make some pretty broad leaps in your article- leaving women out of the equation when it comes to anti-poverty measures because if one is for "equal justice for women, then you have to concede that abortion must remain a woman's option. A fetus is not a person." One cannot work against poverty and for justice for women and children and also believe that abortion is wrong? Really? Huge leap.

Our standard as Christians is not what "the right" thinks. Our standard is God's standard. This leads many of us to conclude that abortion is wrong, harmful to both mother and child. You are free to disagree with this position. This issue divides our country as no other issue does. It is good to have someone who understands a thoughtful, moral (non-reactionary) stance against abortion also working towards issues like health care, the environment, and other important issues.

Call Jim Wallis "sanctimonious" (I read the statements you reference and I don't smell a whiff of sanctimony in them) all you want, he's done a great deal to bring people together. It's not Wallis or the "religious left" who are derailing health care- the blue dog democrats, sold out to big insurance and big pharma, scared to death that they're going to lose their senatorial seats, are doing a fine enough job of that on their own.

Don't blame people who want to transcend the things which divide us and bring us together in common cause. It's time for Jim Wallis to go? He's trying to make a power grab for the Democratic Party? You accuse him of being in the same league as James Dobson- guilt by association? You sound like the reactionary purists who have hijacked the modern conservative movement.

ando

Is this the same Keith Pavlischek who worked with Evangelicals for Social Action? Is this the same First Things founded by Richard John Neuhaus, who worked well with Ron Sider even when they may have disagreed on some things? I think Keith P. is right on in his statement on Jim Wallis. It it seems that Jim Wallis is doing the same thing that Jim Dobson did when he was at the height of his political power in the 1990s and early 2000s: start complaining about those who oppose them. Perhaps Wallis should take a cue from people like Ron Sider and work with people on all sides of the political spectrum. But that would mean truly believing that God is neither a Republican or a Democrat.

And Ryan, thanks for reminding me about First THings. I may want to renew my subscription that I was getting for a time about 10 years ago. They may provide an effective moderately conservative counter-balance to Sojo.

brentw

Fundamentalists, in my view, alre those who hold certain positions on issues that are beyond contestation. The grounds for such can be intuition as in the self-evident rights in the Bill of Rights, or the truths of revelation, or the suggestions of empirical investigations, or the supposed demonstrations of syllogistic logic. Facts are that in a pluralist context none of these indubitable grounds are convincing to those of different pursuasions.

And in this wise, I also argue that the mediative position of those who seek to achieve compromises on divisive issues are also, in their way, ideologues in that they think that some sort of consensual truth can emerge from the contentious disputes engendered in pluralist societies.

In short, lacking ABSOULTE proof of one' s preferred point of view, i.e., one that is manifestly obvious to all, we, seemingly, are relegated to producing better arguments and by appealing to a "more" human sensibility to carry the day.

Ideology, that is, our interpretations of the things that be and the values that define the good life, are necessarily contestable so long as we live in a pluralist world.

Thus, on this view, neither the right nor the left nor the center can escape the mangle of ideology.

This bespeaks, contra discourse consensualists like Habermas and Rawls, a modus vivendi wherein we reach no consensus but a begrudging acceptance (for the nonce, if possible) of a dominant ideology on issues that are radically contentious.

And one's ideological vocation in this landscape of unerasable dispute is to contine the fight for one's "truth" so that it becomes the warp and woof of the law of the land and the law of peoples and the law of their hearts.

RadicalChristianLibrarian

Yes, take heart. I believe we're doing something right if we're getting it from both sides.

jjjc

Ok. Here is an honest question. Why is it that for the past 8 years there wasn't a day that went by where Sojourners was not demanding an end to these unjust wars now (which for the most part I agreed with) but when President Obama got in office, I've hardly noticed one article demanding the same. Yes, Obama has promised (which by the way is something at which politicians are very good) to shut down Guantanamo (hasn't happened), end the Iraq war (I see no signs of that) and has vowed to INCREASE our presence in Afghanistan. So what has ACTUALLY CHANGED in the Obama administration (and lofty promises and flowery rhetoric do not count, unlike they do for the Nobel Peace Prize committee)? I like what Sojourners stands for (a non-partisan Christian voice) but this kind of double standard make you guys look like a watered down hack for the Democrats and Obama, at least on the issue of war. That is my honest observation. I'd love to hear an honest response.

RadicalChristianLibrarian

I've only recently started reading and posting on the Sojourners blog, so I can't speak for the past eight years or even the past 8 or 9 months that President Obama has been in office. But it is troubling to me as well that people are not as vocal against the war as they were when President Bush was in office. Of course, he (Bush or Cheney or whoever the heck was in charge) is the one who decided to invade two sovereign nations.

People are still suffering and dying, though. Pres. Obama (and the United States) is in a pickle- because, as he (Obama) rightly pointed out during the campaign, we took our eyes off Afghanistan when we invaded Iraq without any cause whatsoever. To be fair, this is a stance he has taken from the beginning and so I don't think it should be a surprise to anyone that he would increase our presence in Afghanistan. Although, I'm not sure he even thinks that is the right thing to do.

Meanwhile, the empire dithers and Iraqis, Afghans, Americans, Germans, and others in "the coalition" continue to die, to be maimed, to be traumatized, with shattered minds and lives of addiction and PTSD. It's a mess. It might be easy to blame the warmongers who caused the mess, but I don't think that gets us any closer to peace. So, yes, people of conscience should still be demanding peace as loudly as ever. Your point is taken and is something that has been worrying me as well.

letjusticerolldown

I think it hard to decide whether to support ongoing US and Nato intervention when there is not a clear case being made as to why we are there, what the objectives are, what the strategies are, what the exit strategy is, etc. It seems like an ongoing "must intervention" with revolving rationale--almost as if the nation has lost its mind.

I know we are trying to rid Afghanistan and Pakistan of all that bad stuff. Come to think of it--all the bad stuff that existed before 9/11 and will exist after we leave.

Ya' see--this is when officials get backed into the corner and start coming up with desperate rationales like non-existent WMD's.

Our large cities have thousands of armed terrorists on the streets--called criminal gangs--whom the government cannot track nor control. Why we believe terrorist networks need a nation like Afghanistan to communicate, to gather, to train, etc is beyond me. They could exist in the US. They could exist in the most controlled environments in the US under the nose of Uncle Sam--Federal Prisons. We have militaristic groups that train; home-grown terrorists that build bombs; and gangsters woven into the fabric of the military.

I didn't buy the invasion of Afghanistan nor Iraq. Didn't buy it then. Don't buy it now. Iraq at least had a long history of direct defiance to UN action, external aggression, and demonstrated use of WMD's. The argument for invading Afghanistan was that some gangsters who trained in some tents there had punched us in the nose.

RadicalChristianLibrarian

You're right, I think a case can be made that neither war was justified, nor has either war accomplished anything good for the United States or the world. Only suffering and death.

Afghanistan was poor, feudal and ruled by warlords before we invaded, is now that we are occupying it, and will be when we leave, which we will do eventually. It's just a question of time, which is why I think we should remove troops as soon as possible. I agree with you about not having a clear strategy. I don't have any clear answers, but it would be ideal if we put resources into rebuilding Afghanistan and spreading peace instead of waging war.

Iraq to me was completely unjustified. Never bought the reasons for going in either, which have since been proven to be lies, lies, and more lies. (An aside: Christians!- Where was your discernment when it came to the reasons for invading Iraq? Was it another casualty of war?) Now, Iraq is in shambles. To paraphrase Colin Powell, we broke it. We're there to stay as well, until the money and oil required to run the war machine runs out anyway.

letjusticerolldown

In run-up to Iraq, the US Evangelical missionaries I heard from all said, "Please don't." I think its something about the water we're drinking here in the homeland.

RadicalChristianLibrarian

The water, eh? That's just about as good of an explanation for the strange, militaristic support of the war by Christians as I have heard. I am still befuddled by it.

That reminds me of the story Shane Claiborne told in "Life as an Ordinary Radical." The one about the Iraqi bishop curious about what American Christians thought about the war in its run up- when he finds out that most are for the war, misguided by the idea that we were there to "liberate" Iraq with the full force of our military. He says (and I'm paraphrasing), but that's not what we believe. We believe in peace, that those who live by the sword die by the sword, etc. In other words, they actually believe the things Jesus said. He goes on to say that the Iraqi church will pray for us, will pray that the church in America would be the church.

If that doesn't convict and prompt one to fall down and beg for forgiveness, I don't know what will. I was against the war from the start, but I am still responsible. It was my country that invaded and I didn't do enough to stop it.

BuckeyeDon

Sojourners has made repeated calls against the escalation of war in Afghanistan.

http://blog.sojo.net/2009/04/15/might-will-neve...

http://blog.sojo.net/2009/06/11/demand-an-exit-...

http://blog.sojo.net/2009/06/18/rethink-afghani...

RadicalChristianLibrarian

Thank you for posting those articles. Woodley's is a particularly articulate argument for discontinuing military action in Afghanistan.

Mennoman

Very interesting posting, Mr. Beiler. Thank you.

jesse3

"So which is it? Are we hijacking Obama’s health-reform policy with our radical anti-abortion agenda? Or are we uncritical lackeys of the Obama Administration that don’t really care about abortion? Do we really get zero cheers? And multiple jeers?"
--Of course, the problem is that you're trying to have it both ways by talking out of both sides of your mouths. For example, you talk like you're pro-life, but when it gets down to substance, you're actually no different than the average pro-choice politician. How is this a 'common ground' or ground-breaking approach? To most people it just seems deceptive. Sorry.

allison33

I think it is a matter of Rev. Wallis not passing the litmus tests of abortion and gay marriage that gets the Left mad at him. Wallis, because of his religious beliefs, is pro-life and for gay civil unions, which makes some religious liberals like Pastor Dan and Sarah Posner nuts. But shouldn't people be allowed to take their own positions and not always worry about ideological purity? Wallis might agree with Posner and Pastor Dan on other issues, but all they focus on is litmus tests. He's not pure enough for them.

calledme

I think y'all provide perfect illustrations to fill out Ryan's story -- except I wonder where all the people went who have strong passions about religious and social issues and can say so without denigrating anyone else? Or make an argument that inspires and pulls us out of mud?

letjusticerolldown

Is that your calling? I will affirm such and do what I can to uphold it.

letjusticerolldown

Of course, then there are some of us who happily and enthusiastically uphold your calling to take it from both sides, who raise issues in which we think you are not upholding that calling well--or confusing/compromising it--or simply think you might give some consideration to different tactics in fulfilling.

And in that line my frustration is not even whether you find the raising of such concerns helpful--it is that when asked to simply reflect and explain what your are you doing--there is silence.

Silence from the proponents of dialogue--by the way. Might you simply catch a whiff of why that is offensive?

Advocates of a "third way" can come across in different ways:

1. As innovators: They look at option A and B. And turn around and invent something totally different: Option Bolderdash.

2. As compromisers: Split the difference. Middle-of-the road centrists.

3. As Common-Grouders: Find the mutual commitment and build from there.

4. As avoiders: Separate the feuding parties--and argue there is no conflict.

5. As Transcenders: Find a framework (and/or higher ethical good) able to embrace and answer the highest aspirations of both parties.

6. As cynics: Everyone else is disgusting.

7. As arrogant critics: Everyone else is stupid.

8. As self-righteous fundamentalists: Us against the self-righteous extremists.

How do you think you come across??? How do you desire to come across?

instructor29

I would say that Jim Wallis and Sojourners have been the uncritical shills for the Obama administration. Another writer pointed out that the demands for the unjust wars to end has ceased since Obama took office. Jim Wallis never questioned all the waste in the stimulus bill that was rushed through Congress but defended the whole thing based on the extension of unemployment benefits and one other item that escapes my memory. Instead of speaking truth to power, Sojourners has become the cheerleader for it.