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| The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America | 
 enlarge | Author: Jim Wallis
Publisher: HarperOne
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  30 reviews
Sales Rank: 19584
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3
ISBN: 0060558296
Dewey Decimal Number: 269.0973
EAN: 9780060558291
ASIN: 0060558296
Publication Date: February 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Recycled Library Edition
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| Customer Reviews:
 Headed in the RIght Direction, But Still Doesn't Get It June 10, 2008
9 out of 15 found this review helpful
I tried really hard to read Willis' Book all the way through. I agree with his basic premise. I see signs that Christians from many different backgrounds are on the verge of a new consensus --- not just conservatives and liberals, but high and low church, Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant, liturgical and Charismatic, including different denominational traditions from across the entire spectrum. In fact, what I believe that when it comes this work of God will be more than just another awakening. The church is going to experience a fundamental transformation more significant than any since the Protestant reformation. I agree with Willis. The new consensus will not just be spiritual. It will give birth to a new prophetic political vision.
However, I could not struggle through the entire book. It is so permeated with unexamined liberal assumptions, that I just could not force myself to finish. Rather than promoting consensus, the book may actually hindrance the process. Willis promotes living with the poor as essential to developing a more effective and compassionate program for the elimination of poverty. (I agree with him.)
However, I wonder how often he has tried to live and worship with most genuinely passionate and evangelical Christians in our country. His understand seems to have been formed by academic dialogues with his conservative counterparts, rather than by living and worshiping with their conservative constituents. He appears to be totally insensitive to the concerns this segment of the Christian community. It is hard to find a page where he doesn't say something to offend them. He's not being prophetic, because it is obvious that he is so out of touch, that he is often not even aware when he is offending.
For example, he begins his chapter on climate change, by relating a discussion he had with his daughter. She asked him about Global warming. He told her it was a proven fact that the earth was getting warmer, primarily due to the activities of mankind. He is obviously not even aware that many Christians would find this assertion troubling. Not for the normal conservative reasons (which is often based on nothing other than corporate greed and denial), but for theological reasons. His unexamined acceptance of liberal thinking is a problem that gets in the way of consensus.
I don't deny that the earth is getting warmer. Most thinking conservatives (religious or otherwise) no longer deny that the earth is getting warmer. Likewise, I don't deny that our current level of technology and worldwide development is having a measurable impact on the environment. But to say man is primarily responsible is arrogant. It's hubris. It comes close to being idolatry. It offends on some level any Christian that takes seriously the proposition that God is still in control.
There is good archeological evidence that climate change has affected the rise and fall of civilizations over the entire history of mankind. Even where those civilizations had little or no impact on causing climate charge, there is evidence that human activity hastened the fall of several civilization because of their inability to change their agricultural or technological methods to adjusting to the changing climate.
If we encourage the notion that man is primarily responsible then it encourages the mistake notion that man can totally stop global warming. From a policy perspective, it falls into the trap of assigning blame, rather than promoting comprehensive solutions. Just eliminating certain despised forms of technology, will not stop global warming. We may have helped accelerate the coming crisis, but as of today there is no technological fix for climate change. It is short sighted to promote the unrealistic hope that prohibiting or limiting certain human activities will solve the problem.
There is no question that we need to change the way we generate power and significant portions of our transportation infrastructure. Yes, we need to limit emissions. But such changes are just scratching the surface of the broader problem.
An equally significant amount of time and energy needs to go into adjusting to climate change that we can not stop. We need to learn the lesson of King Canute. We have to start prohibiting development in areas that sometime in the foreseeable future will be under water. We have to start saying "no" to developers who insist on building in areas where it is going to become prohibitively expensive (if not impossible) to hold back the flood waters. We should have started 20 years ago. We need to rethink disaster relief. Some areas once flooded, we need to help people relocate, rather than automatically helping them rebuilt. This will not be politically popular. But as long as, we continue to think man has the answers and that man is in some way primarily responsible, we won't make the hard decisions necessary to adjust to climate change.
Consensus is possible. But I believe it is going to be more radical than Willis has yet anticipated and it will start with a deep and profound acknowledgement of the sovereignty of God.
 For those hoping for change May 13, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
"God is not Republican"... a phrase in this book still reverberating in my mind, even though I have never declared myself in the GOP ranks. As a citizen not only of the US, but of the planet, I have always had issues with conservative america's approach to global warming, fair trade, poverty reduction, etc; issues widely overlooked and even aggressively resisted. Yet, if we claim to know and fear a "just" God, why must I give my vote to those who care nothing for these principles.
Enter "The Great Awakening", a book confronting not only economic and social poverty abroad, but bringing it home to American soil as well. The poverty many fellow Americans live in, as exposed in hurricane Katrina's aftermath, prevalent racism and sexism still rooted in our society and the passive attitude the body of Christ has had towards these, are but a few of the issues raised.
Social justice is a term that is not widely taught in Sunday church around the country. Yet it is something many Americans are beginning to come to terms with and which Wallis drives deep into the reader's conscience. He helps us realize that it is in God's own heart to see us take responsibility for helping those less fortunate, for proper stewardship of the planet and its resources and becoming increasingly aware of the world as a whole. Our God is personal, but not individual.
This is a Christian book, written by a Christian man. Yet I recommend it to all as a call to a higher level as citizens of the most privileged country on the planet.
The Revival of a Christian Conscience March 25, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America is an encouraging read for Christians with a social conscience. The long dark night of the Christian Right's dominance is drawing to a close. All across the land one can hear the clicking and clacking of Ezekiel's dry bones coming to life. Christians, especially young evangelical Christians, are rediscovering the historic connection between proclaiming the gospel of salvation, and the Bible's clarion call to believers to work for justice, i.e., to give a cup of cold water to the thirsty, whether or not they are a part of the Body of Christ.
Jim Wallis, long a prophetic voice within the Christian community, begins his recent book by highlighting the historic roots of the call for reform and justice in the great revivals of nineteenth-century Great Britain and America. He then points the reader to encouraging signs of evangelical Christians who are insisting that to be consistently Christian in today's world means more than simply opposing abortion on demand and homosexual marriages. A new breed of evangelical Christians are finding their call to witness to a broken world in the pages of Scripture rather than political ideologies. They are discovering, or rather rediscovering, that they can make a positive difference on such issues as the environment, race relations and diversity, social and economic justice, and the choice of peace over war.
The god of the Religious Right's making has been revealed to be an idolatrous patriotism that has put America in danger of losing its very soul. Tragically, well-meaning Christians have been misled into being "partners in crime" with those who seek false honors and hollow gains. But a new breeze is blowing through the slough of despond that has been the contemporary political scene in America for far too long. Christians are beginning to break free of their enchantment with the Religious Right and ask what it means to be pro-life, what it means to seek justice, in short, what it means to be salt and light in a fallen world. Posted over a bumper sticker that proclaims "My country, right or wrong," can be seen a new one that asks, "Who would Jesus torture?" The Great Awakening is for the thinking Christian, the Christian who would follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ.
The Great Awakening March 15, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book gives the best treatment I have seen of how both religious believers and politicians are regaining the proper focus on the true problems of the day - such as global poverty and AIDS, racial reconciliation, environmental destruction, the plight of women in the developing world, and related problems. Evangelicals and others are beginning to realize that such things are far more important, and more aligned with true religion, that judgmental debates over homosexuality and the right to birth (a more accurate term than right to life). Conversely, politicians are realizing that freedom of religion does not mean religious principles of our leaders are irrelevant; they have been a major factor influencing decisions throughout our history as a nation.
Timely March 14, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
If you are interested in the role of faith and politics, this is a must-read before the next election. It doesn't preach ... it reminds us that faith SHOULD influence our social action. While I'm not sure I see the religious right quite so silenced as Rev. Wallis, the surge in presence of other religious persons, accross religious lines, is an encouragement.
Read it. Show it to your friends. Bring it to your place of worship and encourage others to social justice, peace, and faith.
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