There’s no better time to read and discuss this book, when Katrina has brought the poor into our living rooms and exposed the lethal leadership of “bubble boys” like Bush and Brownie. God’s Politics offers an “amen!” moment on every page, attacking the Administration’s war on the poor and the “original sin” of American racism.

While Wallis rejects religious leaders’ right to “ordain candidates,” he extols the MLK model that codified civil rights and the prophets who spoke truth to power with the integrity of outsiders. No one escapes his criticism, from Christian celebrities seduced by their access to power, to Bible bullies who cherry-pick passages on sexual conduct while ignoring entire chapters on poverty and tolerance. Ceding neither party a “monopoly on morality,” Wallis condemns Republicans for their empty religious rhetoric and Democrats for distancing themselves from Biblical terms and tenets. He calls on officials to “find common ground by moving to higher ground,” uniting voters around their shared values and putting their ethics into action.

Wallis assails this Administration’s culture of violence and its “dangerous mix of bad foreign policy and bad theology.” He denounces Bush’s moral manifest destiny to rid the world of “evildoers” while ignoring our sordid history and refusing international accountability, from pollution to torture. He draws disturbing parallels between the Roman Empire demonized in the New Testament and U.S. attempts to distort God’s word for propaganda purposes and usher in His kingdom at the point of a gun.

Wallis offers Jubilee 2000 as a hopeful model of the potential for progress. A grassroots movement for debt forgiveness joined countries, churches and charities in pressuring governments worldwide to address international inequities. Gulfgate offers Americans a similar altar call to connect the dots between our Bibles and our budgets. The starved beasts of New Orleans and Biloxi—even now being carved up by Halliburton—expose a donor-driven agenda that has widened the class gap and pushed millions to brink of bankruptcy. But it also brought reporters back from Aruba to interview John Edwards on our Two Americas and emboldened the Black Congressional Caucus to throw down the gospel gauntlet.

Rep. Cummings’ assertion that “God cannot be pleased with our response” when measured against the standards of Matthew 25:40 echoes Wallis’ warning that our treatment of “the least of these” will determine our fate on J-Day. In the meantime, he calls on churches to take the Micah Challenge (http://www.micahchallenge.org/overview/), consumers to support fair trade (with products like Pura Vita coffees available at http://puravidacoffee.com/work/work_body.asp, and people of faith to take the Call To Renewal’s “Katrina Pledge” (http://go.sojo.net/campaign/katrinapledge) to “build a new America”.

Regardless of our religious convictions as individuals, Democrats should seize this opportunity to reprioritize our policies and show the Left gets it. We should keep our media focused on the real story and lead our leaders in the right direction. We may not soon get another chance to prove Wallis’ thesis that “the world can be changed” by principled people who become “the ones we have been waiting for.”

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