Occupying Wall Street for God

Occupying Wall Street for God? [Excerpts]

Religious Left icon Jim Wallis has announced he will conduct a visitation to the occupiers [of Wall Street] presumably to bestow his blessing and, he doubtless hopes, to receive their homage. “The Occupy Wall Street protests make some people nervous, while others scratch their heads, and more than a few grab their sleeping bags and join in,” Wallis carefully noted in his Sojourners. Himself a former rambunctious street activist who now aims for respectability among middle class churchgoers, Wallis almost certainly would like to bring a sleeping bag.

Professing to not yet fully understand the movement, Wallis still rhapsodized about “Occupy Wall Street:”

“When they stand with the poor, they stand with Jesus.

When they stand with the hungry, they stand with Jesus.

When they stand for those without a job or a home, they stand with Jesus.

As to Wallis’ comparisons of Jesus to “Occupy Wall Street,” he never cited any specific instances of the Savior demanding the state coercively redistribute wealth.

A prominent Wallis acolyte is pacifist Evangelical Left activist Shane Claiborne, who likened the Wall Street Occupiers to St. Francis of Assisi, whose feast day is this week. “One of the quotes attributed to Francis is a simple and poignant critique of our world, just as it was to his: ‘The more stuff we have the more clubs we need to protect it,’” Claiborne wrote for The Huffington Post. “It does make you wonder if he’d be on Wall Street protesting today.” 

Setting up the usual stereotypes about conservative religionists in contrast with St. Francis, Claiborne complained: “We’ve seen Christian extremists burn the Quran, blow up abortion clinics, bless bombs, baptize Wall Street, and hold signs that say ‘God hates fags.’” Note that Claiborne, like Wallis and most on the Religious Left, will never deploy such harsh verbiage against even al Qaeda aligned Islamists. They evidently aren’t as threatening as conservative Christians.

Meanwhile, increasingly Evangelical Left friendly Messiah College in Pennsylvania is hosting radical New York City University professor Frances Fox Piven on Tuesday, October 11, in the wake of her incendiary “Days of Rage” Wall Street speech that denounced bankers as ”thieves“ and ”cannibals.” She has endorsed the Wall Street Occupiers and other demonstrators as part of what she hopes is a “popular uprising.” Once a quietly conservative evangelical college, Messiah has apparently been deluged with complaints from alumnae and others who don’t want their school to become an evangelical, 1960’s style Berkeley.

A defensive Messiah news release notes that Piven’s scheduled appearance has aroused “expressions of concern” and is “just one part of a broader campus conversation this fall exploring capitalism and its role in American society.” The news release boasted that Messiah will host a debate next month between the omnipresent Jim Wallis and American Enterprise Institute chief Arthur Brooks.

http://frontpagemag.com/2011/10/10/occupying-wall-street-for-god/