bama and McCain are firing it up now, with the national conventions and announcements of VP running mates. Of course, all of this is merely Ra-Ra-Ra pep-rally stuff, with lots of big talk… I’m anxious for the debates, when the issues are more thoroughly dissected and where the finer details are discussed (i.e., how are ya gonna pay for that?).

Of course, what’s become clearer and clearer is that the two major parties — as different as they are — share one thing in common: Neither bears much resemblance to God’s politics.

God’s Politics — That’s the title reverend Jim Wallis gave to his book that describes the way the Bible instructs Christians to vote. In a nutshell, God’s politics combines the more traditionalist societal attitudes of the “conservatives” with the economic and social justice concerns of the “liberals.” The subtitle describes it well: “God’s Politics: Why the Right gets it wrong and the Left doesn’t get it.”

Much of the book would sound familiar to anybody who heard the Religious Right before… but there is one important difference, and it’s a big one: God’s politics, as Wallis describes it, views poverty to be a moral issue, and therefore budgets and social service programs and party platforms related to these are all moral issues. This is such an important foundational point for God’s politics that three-quarters of the book is devoted to poverty and social justice.

Of course, any orthodox Catholic should know this — but putting it into practice is another story.

everal years ago, Catholic Answers published its Voters’ Guide for Serious Catholics, which delineated five non-negotiable issues that should guide our selection of candidates. These were abortion, euthanasia and assisted suicide, fetal stem-cell research, human cloning and homosexual “marriage.” Miserere.org promptly issued a response entitled, “Make it six non-negotiable issues,” which identified another moral issue that should (must!) guide our choice of political leaders: Concern for the poor, elderly, children, infirm and handicapped.

While our article was met with very mixed reviews (including some vehemence by some in the Christian Right, who as Republicans, did not think care of the poor or infirm should justify increased taxes), it turns out that we’re in some good company now. Wallis’ latest book is entitled The Great Awakening and is about reviving faith and politics in a post-Religious Right America. He and other social activists have made the rounds on not only Christian but also Republican talk-radio stations. People are starting to wake up. When Wallis said, “Poverty is a moral issue. Therefore budgets are moral documents,” formerly anti-taxation moderators admitted, “I never thought about it that way before.”

Sadly, little of this will make its way to the presidential debates. But if you’d like to read more about God’s politics and the role of government in social justice, you might enjoy the following:

• A responsibility to care — Mike Huckabee talks about children, poverty and the role of government in this interview with Jim Wallis.
• A new moment dawning — A solution to poverty will take both liberals and conservatives and those who are neither.
• Faith-based fraud — Political manipulation of religion only compounded the crime of political neglect of the poor.
• Vote Out Poverty — An initiative by Call to Renewal and Soujourners magazine that aims to cut poverty in the United States by 50% in 10 years and to end extreme global poverty. Also reference their Voting All Your Values voters’ guide.
• Poverty USA — The Catholic Campaign for Human Development’s campaign to raise poverty awareness and to end poverty in the United States.