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“Here’s a bold prediction: Evangelicals will present few if any obstacles for the Democrats in next year’s presidential race, but may prove problematic for the Republican nominee.”

Jim Wallis: “The best news of all for the American church and society is this: The monologue of the Religious Right is over, and a new dialogue has just begun.”

Sojo.net: Jim Wallis: ‘The uncritical alliance between the Religious Right and the Republican Party should be named a theocratic mistake and idolatrous allegiance.’

Boston Globe: Jim Wallis: ‘The best public contribution of religion is precisely not to be ideologically predictable or a loyal partisan.’

Allen at The Right Christians alerts me to Rev. Jim Wallis’ Backward Christian soldier: An open letter to the Christian General, Lt. General William “Holy War” Boykin, in response to Boykin’s remarks as noted, for example, at MSNBC and in the LA Times —

General, your theology bears no resemblance to biblical teaching. You utterly confuse the body of Christ with the American nation. The kingdom of God doesn’t endorse the principalities and powers of nation-states, armies, and the ideologies of empire; but rather calls them all into question. …

Brother Boykin, … Why were you never taught in Sunday school about the real meaning of the kingdom of God, and the universality of the body of Christ? And why have you never heard that only peacemaking, not war-making, can be done “in the name of Jesus?” …

When a high-ranking military officer espouses a zealous religious nationalism that claims the name “Christian” for both his nation and his army, and when he invokes the name of Jesus — not to love our enemies as he instructed, but rather to target them for destruction — the church must discipline that errant brother and name his public statements for what they are, not mere political incorrectness, but idolatry.

It occurs to me that if I, too, could do forcible truth-telling like this to brethren who’ve conflated flag and cross, nationalism and religion into an unholy, idolatrous mess as General Boykin has, I’d be doing what I’m called to do. I wouldn’t be in my present predicament of wondering if I can ever return to church.

Thanks for setting a good example, Brother Wallis.

In today’s Washington Post article The war after the war:

Twice a week, transport planes land at Andrews Air Force Base, bringing fresh casualties. Accidents, ambushes, pockets of resistance. Nearly 650 soldiers have passed through Walter Reed [Army Medical Center] during Operation Iraqi Freedom, more than half of them since the conflict was officially declared over.

On TV, the war was a rout, with infrared tanks rolling toward Baghdad on a desert soundstage. But the permanent realities unfold more quietly on Georgia Avenue NW, behind the black iron gates of the nation’s largest military hospital.

Associated WaPo photo gallery The Soldiers of Ward 57 is required viewing for every American IMO.

If I or anyone I know has to sacrifice a limb or a life for this country as these guys have, it had damn well better be for an unshakeably sound reason. If there’s any doubt as to why we’re doing it, any doubt whatsoever, then the cost is unthinkable.

In this conflict, not only is there some doubt as to why we’re doing it, it’s essentially all doubt; there’s hardly a trace of evidence to support our having launched a preemptive war against Iraq.

This situation goes far beyond politics: As one of my theological heroes Jim Wallis said of this conflict back in May, “America is making not only a political mistake, not only a theological mistake; we are making a spiritual mistake.”

I am ferociously angry at the men and spiritual powers in the White House that are doing this. And I am simultanously overcome with compassion for our longsuffering men and women in uniform who are bearing the consequences.

One powerful way to honor and give meaning to our soldiers’ sacrifices is to let their sacrifices motivate us to forcible action that stops further sacrifice in this unjust, unnecessary, unwinnable, ungodly, unending war.

For me this means, Bring them home. Initiate regime change here.

[thoughts initiated by Daily Kos entries The men of Ward 57 and How to volunteer at military and veterans hospitals]