Bless Jim Wallis. He always lets me know what the left is up to. This week's hobby appears to be Jim-Dobson-bashing. (Always good to have a nice scapegoat to unify us, isn't it? Inevitable, I guess, since Sojourners doesn't represent a specific theological view or tradition.)

Question: When I have a problem with a fellow believer, how should I bring it up first? With that person? His organization? (Heh: On this blog, when the dispute is already public...) If I'm Jim Wallis, I thrash out my displeasure in the pages of the Huffington Post [1, 2], in front of people who are already frequently paranoid about Christians. (Will this hurt or help?)

I wonder if he remembered to mail a copy to James Dobson.

Wallis's attack is prototypically leftist in other ways, too: his article is named, in my e-mail, "Dobson and Friends, Outside the Mainstream." Outside the mainstream? A Christian? Heaven forbid! Being outside the pack might be a big crime on the left, but it's hardly a biblical basis for criticism.

In the bible, the "mainstream" is usually populated with the people throwing rocks at God's prophets, or the publicly-acclaimed false prophets who tell people whatever's already popular this month. God seldom won the popularity contests described in His own book. (Indeed, that's one of the things I find so stunning and unique about the bible -- and an important lesson to take away from it.)

Wallis writes:

Once again, the hard-core Religious Right has gone on the attack, orchestrating a new campaign to advance their Far Right political views.

This nefarious "orchestrated campaign" consists of a letter to the NAE, signed by Dobson and a dozen peers, complaining that the NAE's VP for Governmental Affairs, Richard Cizik, was giving the press the impression the NAE had taken a political stance on global warming.

Dobson et al suggest this was not a good move:

It does appear that the earth is warming, but the disagreement focuses on why it might be happening and what should be done about it. We believe it is unwise for an NAE officer to assert conclusively that those questions have been answered, or that the membership as a whole has taken a position on a matter. Furthermore, we believe the NAE lacks the expertise to settle the controversy, and that the issue should be addressed scientifically and not theologically.

And yet still: this is what Jim Wallis calls "outside the mainstream"? That global warming should be debated by scientists rather than being sold by well-meaning theologians? Preposterous, apparently. And how dare anyone imply, in the phrase Wallis singled out for criticism, that anthropogenic global warming "is a subject of heated controversy" -- and imply there might be a "wide diversity" of views?

Wallis assures his readers otherwise:

The truth, which almost everyone except them acknowledges, is there is little reasonable doubt left about the threat posed to the earth by climate change. There is an international consensus among scientists, religious leaders, business leaders, and economists that we must act, and act now, to preserve a world for our children.

So Dobson's crimes here are to fail to recognize this consensus, and to suggest the NAE has better things to do. How wrong, wrong, wrong it is for a group like the NAE to not do whatever the left tells them to this month. If the NAE's mission is supposed to be "demonstrating the unity of the body of Christ by standing for biblical truth" -- then, damn it, global warming activism it is!

None dare call it diversion.

The letter's authors complained "it is unwise for an NAE officer [Cizik] to assert conclusively ... that the membership as a whole has taken a position on a matter." And indeed, it seems Cizik has done exactly that. Read this Grist interview for example:

Thanks to [Cizik's] leadership, NAE, one of the most politically powerful religious advocacy groups in America, released a manifesto last year urging its members to adopt eco-friendly living habits and exhorting the government to lighten America's environmental footprint. Next month, the organization will begin circulating a charter calling on its member network and top-level Beltway allies to fight global warming.

The letter to the NAE also complains that Cizik is making statements in support of population control:

Mr. Cizik not only believes that global warming is an indisputable fact, but he also holds related views that he has not been willing to reveal to the membership at large. In an alarming speech he delivered to the World Bank in May of 2006, he said: “I’d like to take on the population issue, but in my community global warming is the third rail issue. I’ve touched the third rail but still have a job. And I’ll still have a job after my talk here today. But population is a much more dangerous issue to touch. We need to confront population control and we can -- we’re not Roman Catholics, after all, but it’s too hot to handle now.”

So Cizik is apparently a Malthusian?

Europe is dying of population collapse, China's efforts to control population have led to a massive genocide against women and a future threatening civil unrest -- and apparently an officer of the NAE is just waiting for the moment when he can openly come out and recommend -- what, sterilization? More abortion? Condom distribution has certainly proven ineffective. (Ooops! Sorry, I questioned the "science" again. Bad me.)

So the score so far is: (1) Dobson doesn't want the NAE putting its efforts behind political reactions to global warming, nor giving that impression via Cizik, and (2) Wallis is using the occasion to bash Dobson before the secular left, promote the view there are no reasonable questions on the subject, and promote urgent political action -- specifics unstated.

What next?

Enter Brian McLaren.

I am sitting in a hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and I just read Jim Wallis' recent post about global warming, responding to the recent letter written by several leaders of the Religious Right. The version of Christianity represented in that Bauer/Dobson/et al. letter indeed seems far away and rather odd...

The "version of Christianity" in the letter? Since the letter makes no overtly theological statements (to the contrary, it urges the NAE to stick with generally agreed-upon basics), McLaren surely means the existence of the letter, and what it implies.

And indeed, that's apparently so:

My experience here in Asia matches what I've heard around the world over the last year, in 21 countries in all. Again and again, chagrined Christians ask me, "Is it true that some Christians in the U.S. still oppose taking care of creation? Is it true some of them still deny the threat of human-induced climate change? Is it true there's a pro-Hummer, pro-SUV mentality among American Christians?"

Well, what a neat little block of false dichotomies. If you question the threat of human-induced climate change (or, more correctly, the elephant in the room -- coercive political "antidotes" of suspect value), you're opposed to taking care of creation. Unthinkable!

The debate is opened and shut before the period arrives.

Moreover, McLaren has jetted to Asia, producing more CO2 than an army of SUV-driving US Christians do in a year, in order to confirm the secular media's skewed portrayal of believers with whom he disagrees, and denounce their sins. Without naming names, of course.

And note the underlying current again: The US is out of the mainstream.

How embarassing for him!

I try to explain that some very famous and powerful people feel this way, but that many of us ignore them and pursue our passion to positively call people to care for God's beautiful world in every way we can. Then I often tell them of the courageous and important work of Christian leaders like Richard Cizik [and many others] .... My friends around the world are always encouraged to hear this, because it brings them no little embarrassment when their brothers and sisters in the U.S. declare, as they did in this letter, that there are only two or three moral issues Christians (or evangelicals, anyway) are allowed to speak out on, global climate change NOT being one of them.

Did McLaren read the same letter I did? The point was not that "Christians [aren't] allowed to speak out on ... global climate change." The complaint was more such actions were outside the NAE's stated mission.

And note what's going on in the text: McLaren is deploying dishonest rhetoric at each point, langauge brimming with false dichtomies, imputed ad hominem arguments, and misrepresentations. I'm not a fan (nor critic, either) of Dobson, but I'll note his language was much more honest and forthright.

Through the rest of his journal entry, McLaren speaks as a headmaster dealing with a retarded schoolboy.

Another positive sign: Bauer/Dobson/et al. are becoming aware of diversity in the evangelical world when they say, "We acknowledge that within the NAE's membership of thirty million, there are many opinions and perspectives about the warming of the earth. We are not suggesting that our beliefs about it necessarily reflect the majority of our fellow evangelicals." This is a powerful realization, a relatively new one, I think, for which they should be rewarded with loud "amens."

I expect Dobson is proudly beaming at Master McLaren's generous "reward". So nice to see the young pup finally growing up a little, eh? Time he realized that different people have different views -- something that surely had never crossed his mind before this.

Of course, what McLaren just condescendingly praised Dobson for is the exact thing Wallis just condemned: suggesting there's a wide diversity of views on the subject of global warming. Ironic, that. It makes one wonder why he isn't attacking Wallis, then, who has apparently still failed to come to that realization, rather than Dobson, who has.

But you know what they say: My enemy's enemy...

For outsiders, I want to mention that this isn't my vision or experience of Christianity. I have no issue with those who think their belief has political implications but one of the reasons I'm so critical of the Christian left is the way politics -- utilitarian power-aggregating goals -- so triumphs over any other particular principle.

In this case, the NAE's mission is supposed to focus on "biblical truth" -- and I would no more condemn Dobson's complaint that I would if a left-leaning brother complained it had thrown backing behind the Iraq war. Both are outside it's mission, and both jeopardize that mission by unhelpfully conflating contemporary political hot-buttons with enduring biblical values.

But the debate is not honestly engaged: At no point does Wallis address (or even acknowledge!) the core point of the letter. (Indeed perhaps anticipating this, the authors stated it several times: "We, the undersigned, want to state our position again. We believe the NAE lacks the expertise to take a position on global warming. That is the essential point of this letter.")

This is, sadly, not atypical in my experience. You can't seem to have an honest debate with these folks: it comes down to false allegations about your motives, your level of concern, your imputed lack of emotional maturity, words put into your mouth which were not there -- etc. This is not the kind of tone the bible teaches, when it tells to speak the truth to one another in love, and to be transparent and honest in our dealings.

Further, I'm appalled by the way in which some people -- and I'll name names -- like McLaren and Wallis, apparently -- want to be well-liked by what they view as a broad international consensus. I understand this, and went through it in school: you mock a third party to deflect possible dislike for you. ("Oh, I'm a cool Christian, not one of those 'fundamentalists' like Falwell or Dobson.")

And I do honestly dislike Falwell's approach, but I came to realize this was simply a sin, and that I cared more about what people's approval than I did about doing whatever was right.

And "what's right", outside of a few key unifying doctrines, more often comes down to how we go about doing things, rather than the specific stance we claim to hold.

I'm not moral because I favor lower taxes. I favor lower taxes because I think it will help people, including (and especially) the poor. I'm not moral because I don't drive an SUV. And I don't condemn those who do: who am I to categorically condemn what isn't clearly prohibited by the bible, or a reasonable second-step deduction from it? I'm moral only to the extent that I do what God has asked me to do.

And many days, that's not very moral at all.