Sunday, June 19, 2005
(10:32 PM) | Dave Belcher:
Jim Wallis is a "Fundamentalist"
Now, before some of you Žižekians start to get excited, I mean that "Jim Wallis is a 'Fundamentalist'" by his own definition alone. He is quite clear what makes one a "fundamentalist":Fundamentalism is essentially a revolt against modernity. It is a reaction usually based on profound fear and defensiveness against 'losing the faith.'
(God's Politics, 66)
I want to highlight at least two fundamental (no pun intended) contradictions in these two statements. The first one is obvious to anyone who has read the book. Fundamentalism is a reactionary gesture against the possibility of "losing the faith." And, yet, the title of Wallis' second chapter is, "Taking Back the Faith." There is a profound sense of anxiety (as well as arrogance) in Wallis' words, fearful of letting the "fundamentalist freaks"--we might say--possess that which is properly "ours" (or his, or whosever). And actually we can use Žižek’s analysis of “authentic fundamentalism” as opposed to “perverse fundamentalism,” here. In On Belief, Žižek notes that “authentic” fundamentalists—using the Amish and Tibetan Buddhists as prime examples—don’t fear their neighbors. “Perverse” fundamentalists, however, have a great mistrust and even “envy” for the Other. This envy is manifest in a desire to fill a lack, something that was once possessed but has now been lost. So, the perverse fundamentalists envy the pleasure of the sinner’s life, secretly wishing to have back the jouissance which was previously sloughed off in “conversion” (See Žižek On Belief, 68-9). Is this not obviously the case for Wallis, who secretly wishes he could blend faith and politics even half as well as the Religious Right? Wallis’ “hidden” agenda, which reads like a failed attempt at threading a subliminal message into the fabric of the explicit discourse, is to mobilize the Democratic party to do just that: step to the “right” in order to outdo the Right on their own turf. Now of course the reverse would work as well: if the Right would step to the “left,” Wallis would still have his mixture of “conservative on cultural issues” and “populist” on economic issues (here, Wallis even says that such a stance would be “pro-poor”!). However, he is too busy drawing a caricature of the Religious Right’s fundamentalism. Now, admittedly, this is as much the fault of the Right as anyone! Regardless, however, Wallis’ continual picturing of all conservatives as fundamentalists (despite how he tries to cover his tracks) has burned all possible bridges. He has no other option but to turn to the Democrats. This is highly ironic, since his book is apparently an attempt at a “third way” in politics in America, drawing us away from the stale two-party system.
The second contradiction is in a phrase that Wallis invents—as oxymoronic as it is annoying: “secular fundamentalist.” Wouldn’t this phrase, coupled with Wallis’ primary definition of fundamentalism as “essentially a revolt against modernity,” be thoroughly implausible? Isn’t modernity—at least according to an extremely dominant historical interpretation—characterized by “secularization”? So, how could the secular and the revolt against the secular cohere? If Wallis were as clever as Derrida, this kind of unassailable Contra-Diction would in fact be plausible. But, and I don’t think I really need to say this, Wallis is no Derrida. Regardless, back to this ridiculous phrase. I immediately knew what he meant the first time I read it; one can easily infer what is meant merely by attending to the pretense of the book: the importing of “faith” into the political sphere. “Secular fundamentalists” are those—Democrats—who staunchly relegate both the language and the practice of faith to the “private” realm, not allowing the religious and the political to mingle in any way. This absolute refusal on the part of the Democratic party is, according to Wallis, contrary to the intention of the “founding fathers,” insofar as America was founded on “values.” Values, for Wallis, cannot be easily limited to the issues of “same-sex marriage” and abortion, as the Religious Right attempts. Rather, the economy, trade, agriculture, and so forth and so on; all these are inherently moral “issues.” If we take Wallis seriously, however, anything is a potential value; for example whether I use a toilet (and read a book) while I take a dump, or bury my shit in a hole in the woods imposes on me a moral choice. In this way “values” becomes something of an unlimited specter like the use of “terrorist” by the Bush administration. The field of potential enemies is leveled, such that anyone is a potential terrorist; or, in our case, any situation in public life is a potentially value-imbued situation. If “values” and “morality” were regulative ideals to which public deliberation and the use of reason strained, this might make sense. But, Wallis understands values and morality to be specifically religious and—at least implicitly—Christian. Christian dogma is disseminated into every inch and every moment of political life. This fits all too well Wallis’ own definition of fundamentalism, equivalent to “theocracy,” which attempts to seize power in order to impose a values system on public life. Now, according to Wallis, the theocratic imposition is from the top down, whereas “God’s politics” starts at the bottom. But, if this really were the case—if grassroots organizations were actually offering a third way for American politics, not reducible to one or the other, in such a way as to yet remain public—then Wallis wouldn’t need to write this book about a “third way” in politics, one which has as its basic agenda the Christianizing of the Democratic party, so as to have a vote which sits better on his conscience. And here it should be obvious from a thoroughly secular point of view why Wallis’ contradiction-laden book offers us nothing short of the same damn thing in a new, bright, shiny package.
But, of course, Wallis would say that it is our thoroughly secular point of view which keeps us from seeing his point. One must look through a Christian lens, as it were. However, Wallis himself does even worse on this note. Relegated to a list of tasks to be done, the issues of values upon which a religious person must hinge their vote, become the definitive marks of the gospel. Wallis continually points to text upon text in order to prove that there are more verses about ending poverty in the Bible than the values that attract the Right wing. And yet, this can be said from a far remove—and this of course has implications for us…me included—demanding great change on a world scale, while we ourselves are not changed. We can “end poverty” as a religious obligation, as a fulfillment of the gospel, without actually being ourselves transformed into something like the communities in Acts (4-5), who owned no private property, shared all in common, and yet not one was in need. We can at least fault the influence of Jeffrey Sachs on Wallis for this economically depraved “development” point of view. This, however, doesn’t make it excusable. And it definitely doesn’t make it Christian. If a Christian, according to “God’s politics,” is supposed to support and engage in government-supported programs to end poverty by bringing those who are the “poorest of the poor” up on to the first rung of the ladder of development, then I am no Christian; and that God, for me is dead. Christians are called to a beyond which can only be summed up as an ironic “detached and smiling ‘I think’ accompanying all our representations or projects,” as Stanislas Breton puts it. Those programs are indeed programs I support; and I will continue as a citizen of a liberal democracy to enter into the public sphere in order to voice those concerns. But, let’s not tack on a verse from Isaiah to a liberal democratic process and call it “Christian.”
