A Voice in the Wilderness In Defense of "Mere Conservatism"

A Must-Read Book Review At The Gospel Coalition.org

A few summers back I was an intern for World Magazine and Dr. Marvin Olasky in Manhattan for three months.  One of the other interns working there at the same time was Alisa Harris.  Ms. Harris has written a book called Raised Right: How I Untangled My Faith From Politics.

I've yet to read the thing, but a new friend I met at The Acton Institute's summer conference back in June, Andrew Walker, has written a wonderful review of the book over at TheGospelCoalition.org and I highly recommend you check it out!

An excerpt:

Harris gets a lot right in her book—namely, that “something is deeply wrong with the evangelical politics in which our childhood were immersed” (8). Her volume reminds us that however we vote, we must be vigilant and chastened in how we arrive at the decision. Truly, no party in American politics is the Christian party, for no party up to this point in time has adopted (nor should they) any particular religious creed into its platform. Her book offers both an important reminder in how Christians often wrongly use their rhetoric to support their positions and also a strong rebuke to the “politically obsessed.” She approvingly quotes Peggy Noonan, who warns, “Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their nature; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.” A wise warning, indeed.

What the reader will notice, however, is that Harris’s call for love, justice, and a truce in the culture wars results in the now predictable angst-ridden liberalism. She may wish to escape such labels, but her voting record and newfound political principles reveal it. This story has been told before. Whether it be Donald Miller’s youthful protest, Anne Lamott’s introspective self-doubt, or Jim Wallis’s liberalism, Harris’s volume is but another in a long litany of what Marvin Olasky calls “self-hating evangelical” manifestos.

Give the full review a tumble, folks!