As Senate Democrats began hearings yesterday on the Employee Free Choice Act, it seems like they needed the blessing of a religious figure to proceed. Lacking in imagination, they chose Sojourners president Jim Wallis.
Wallis spoke in favor of EFCA, which is obviously a good thing. The more support for the bill, the better. But Democrats lamely think all they need is a religious stamp of approval to convince the faithful that EFCA wouldn't portend the one-world order the Armageddon watchers believe Obama and his "socialist" agenda will bring. But in only trotting out Wallis, they're missing the boat, and an opportunity.
Wallis is everywhere these days. He's a longtime advocate for ending poverty, and his fans likely find his increased visibility heartening for the cause. Obama appointed him to serve on the Advisory Council to his Office on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, which will keep him in regular contact with the White House. He spoke at World Economic Forum in Davos, reminding the assembled of the "moral" dimensions of the financial crisis. That got a lot of play, but meanwhile other religious thinkers were assembled in Brazil, applying theology to the intertwined world ecological and economic crises.
Wallis also launched the Poverty Forum with former Bush speechwriter and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, aimed at finding discreet policy initiatives that Wallis and his allies could agree on with the staunchest of religious conservatives. EFCA didn't get mentioned there, probably because on this great moral issue Gerson has charged that Obama's support of the bill signals his "deep hostility" to business interests. So much for economic justice, and for all of Gerson's lip service to compassion for the poor.
As Peter Laarman, executive director of Progressive Christians Uniting, lays out at the Religion Dispatches blog, The Devil's Advocate, there are plenty of other faith leaders "in the various labor-religion coalitions that exist all over the country and in the national clearinghouse for such coalitions, a Chicago-based umbrella group called Interfaith Worker Justice." Laarman, who was a labor organizer before becoming an ordained minister, recently penned an essential faith-and-economics-based defense of EFCA, thick with policy arguments rather than mere rhetoric about morality and dignity.
"When are the Democrats (and their enablers in centrist religious circles) going to figure out that the Wallis brand is NOT the one size that fits all in matters of faith and public life?" Laarman asks, adding, "I'm waiting. And so are the workers."
--Sarah Posner
