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To: coug who wrote (686)	3/12/2006 12:17:58 PM
From: coug	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3961

Two books on the religious right call upon a new generation of leaders on the spiritual left to take back values from conservatives. BY ALEXANDRA ALTERaalter@MiamiHerald.com THE LEFT HAND OF GOD: Taking Our Country Back from the Religious Right. Michael Lerner. Harper SanFrancisco. 416 pages. $24.95. THE HIJACKING OF JESUS: How the Religious Right Distorts Christianity and Promotes Prejudices and Hate. Dan Wakefield. Nation. 252 pages. $23.95. Fifty-five House Democrats issued a statement highlighting the role the Catholic faith plays in their public policy. Sen. Hillary Clinton recast her take on abortion after meeting with a prominent evangelical Christian. And this May, rabbi/activist Michael Lerner and a handful of luminaries from the spiritual left plan to hold a ''teach-in'' on spiritual politics at the U.S. Congress. It seems the religious left has finally found a collective voice. It's even packaging its message into a successful new literary sub-genre: the liberal, Bible-based counterattack. Evangelical author Jim Wallis dominated the New York Times bestseller list for months with God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It. Now, Michael Lerner and Dan Wakefield have joined his call for liberals to take back religious values from the right. Lerner attacks the right with breathless (and often tiresome) social theory, while Wakefield explores the chasm between liberal and conservative Christians with a novelist's eye for character and detail. Both authors enlist the same cast of characters -- Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Tim La Haye, co-author of the Left Behind books -- as the collective incarnation of the fundamentalist Christian sector. Citing the same statistics, they condemn religious conservatives for caring more about fetuses than children living in poverty. And, not surprisingly, both praise Wallis, citing his now-familiar charge that the right reduced Biblical values to a handful of wedge issues. But despite using much of the same material, Lerner and Wakefield build vastly different books. Lerner, editor of the spiritual/political bimonthly magazine Tikkun, deconstructs the rise of the religious right using leftist theory rather than theological arguments. Drawing on hundreds of interviews conducted through focus groups with union workers, Lerner blames materialism and greed -- not abortion and homosexuality -- for driving the culture wars. His argument: right-wing religious leaders convinced working-class people to vote against what he sees as their own economic self-interest by supporting conservative Republicans. He describes a country paralyzed by a ''spiritual crisis'' as its workers, demoralized by a materialistic culture that treats them as commodities, turn to various forms of fundamentalism. Echoing Wallis, he urges the political left not to let their desire to appear ''tolerant'' be mistaken for a lack of morals. Lerner starts to sound a little huffy, however, when he describes his falling-out with the Clintons, early apostles of Lerner's ''politics of meaning'' who later dropped the rabbi when the press identified him as ''The White House Guru.'' Lerner objects to the media's cynicism, then proceeds to enforce their perceptions: ``Anyone who knows Hillary Clinton knows how ludicrous this charge was. It was true that she had invited me to the White House . . . and that she had told me that she was going to work with me to ensure that the Clinton White House would become a bully pulpit for the politics of meaning. . . . The whole episode concerning my role in Hillary Clinton's political life was a tiny moment that might have had no lasting impact but for the fact that it coincided with a deep struggle going on in the White House. . . . '' He concludes the tale with a sniff of optimism, announcing he has given up courting individual politicians to pursue a loftier goal: building a national social and political movement. Wakefield, meanwhile, builds his narrative on personal anecdotes, colorful reporting and interviews with religious leaders across the political spectrum. His motivation for writing the book is personal: ''When I say ``I'm a Christian,'' I feel the need to explain myself: I'm not one of ''them,'' the ones who fit the image of the faith that you see in the headlines now.'' A journalist and writer in residence at Florida International University, Wakefield uses detail and an engaging first person-style to bring the struggle for the soul of Christianity into pews, homes and offices. The result is a loosely organized series of scenes and interviews with a splash of theology that is absorbing but frustrating in its lack of cohesion. But Wakefield yields insights worthy of a meticulous scholar. In his most striking observation, he nails down how conservative evangelicals systematically sought to weaken mainline churches through organizations such as the Institute for Religion and Democracy, and the National Association of Evangelicals. Wakefield backs up his claim with astonishing quotes, including the following vitriol from Pat Robertson: ''You say you're supposed to be nice to Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists, and this, that, and the other thing,'' Robertson told his 700 Club viewers. ``Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist.'' Unlike Lerner, who professes qualified admiration for the right, Wakefield paints Christian conservatives with the same broad strokes the right has used to malign liberals as ''anti-faith.'' In Wakefield's estimation, ``If typical Evangelicals were asked on a lie detector test to state their basic beliefs, it would probably be some version of pro-life and antigay before they even got to Jesus or Christianity, much less the Sermon on the Mount. . . .'' Fittingly, Wakefield ends his multilayered manifesto for the spiritual left with Jesus' mountaintop sermon, which he repeats not as a statement of faith but as a call to action: ``Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.'' Alexandra Alter is The Miami Herald's religion writer. miami.com