Joe Loconte does the twist

Maybe Joe Loconte just can't read.

I'm just trying to figure out why Loconte keeps insisting that Jim Wallis has been silent on topics he's written extensively about. Or why Loconte keeps employing out-of-context quotations to imply that Wallis has said things he's never said. Maybe Loconte's not really a dishonest, malicious hack. Maybe he just can't read and he doesn't realize he's offering a twisted misrepresentation.

Yesterday, Loconte recycled yet another variation of his caricatured attack on Wallis, the leader of the Sojourners community and the Call to Renewal.

Loconte's shtick is to argue that Wallis and other religious progressives are simply the mirror image of the would-be-theocrats of the religious right. That's an odd claim to begin with, since I don't recall ever hearing Wallis or any other religious progressive talk about "reclaiming Christian America" or declaring that "the separation of church and state is a myth" or using any of the other theocratic language of the religious right.

Loconte's New York Times op-ed piece yesterday — "Nearer, My God, to the G.O.P." — is only slightly modified from the version he wrote back in July, "From Gospel to Government," which was itself only slightly different than the Nov. 2004 version, "Prophets and Politics."

(Loconte is no environmentalist, but at least he recycles his column every six months.)

All three versions go after Jim Wallis by name, but not honestly. Take this, for example, from the first version:

Rev. Jim Wallis, who leads a coalition of churches devoted to social justice, usually sounds more like an operative for the Democratic National Committee. No matter what the social problem, their answer is always more government spending. But what about the decline in personal responsibility, the breakdown of the family, or a media culture that denigrates religious values? Democratic leaders almost never raise these questions, and neither do their faith-based supporters. …

Religious liberals condemn the policies of Israel and the U.S. prison abuses at Abu Ghraib. But they remain absolutely mute about the human rights records of China, Syria, North Korea and other brutal regimes.

Perhaps you've heard of Sojourners magazine, which Wallis has been publishing for more than 30 years. Loconte has apparently never seen it. He's certainly never read it. If he had, he'd know the above claim that Wallis "never raises" questions about the family, or media culture, or human rights in China, Syria and North Korea is pure nonsense.

But again, maybe Loconte just can't read.

He doesn't seem to have read anything by Stanley Hauerwas, either. Loconte attacks Hauerwas as another theocratic Christian progressive who is captive to the Democratic Party and intent on imposing a left-wing theocracy.

"Professor Hauerwas," Loconte writes, "joins a chorus of left-wing clerics and religious scholars who compare the United States to Imperial Rome and Nazi Germany."

Nazi Germany, really? Where? Loconte doesn't provide an example.

Hauerwas is an intriguing guy who doesn't fit neatly into anyone's chorus of clerics, left-wing or otherwise. The belligerent pacifist from Duke University has written volumes about "the decline in personal responsibility, the breakdown of the family, [and] a media culture that denigrates religious values." He can be a tiresome scold on these topics.

But a major theme in all of Hauerwas' writings is his provocative critique of what he calls "Constantinianism" (see especially his most popular book, Resident Aliens, co-written with William Willimon). This critique certainly does compare the United States to Imperial Rome (and also, as in the title "Resident Aliens," to Babylon), but Hauerwas' focus is not on America, but rather on the church in America. The conversion of the Emperor Constantine and the subsequent attainment of temporal power by the Christian church, Hauerwas argues, was the worst thing ever to happen to Christianity. He argues, consistently and emphatically, against the idea of "Christendom" and against what he calls the Constantinian temptation.

Yet Loconte cites Hauerwas as an example of left-wing Christians who "invoke a biblical theocracy as a handy guide to contemporary politics" and thus "threaten our democratic discourse."

This would be laughable if it weren't for Loconte's additional, nasty suggestion that any comparison of the United States with Imperial Rome is the equivalent of comparing it to Nazi Germany. This is beyond twisted. In pretty much everything Christians have written about politics and the state since St. Augustine (if not since St. Paul), "Rome" has served as shorthand for "the state." Loconte suggests that this centuries-old metonymy is the equivalent of accusing George W. Bush of being Hitler.

But maybe Loconte hasn't read St. Augustine or St. Paul either. Maybe Joe Loconte just can't read.