A Cry For Change

THE LINES AT OUR LOCAL polling place stretched way outside, down the block, and around the corner. From the reports I've heard in the days after the election, that scene was repeated all across the country.

The pundits point to the now-famous sign at Clinton headquarters as defining the major single issue of this presidential campaign: "The economy, stupid." But the underlying themes and tensions during the election point deeper than the obvious reality of Bush's failed economic policies. During this election year, the word on most people's lips was "change."

That hunger for change among the American people may be the most important lesson to be learned from this election. This most unusual political season revealed a longing in the country for a new kind of politics that is more connected to people's lives and values. The public clamor for change set the stage for all the candidates' efforts to be elected—in Ross Perot's brash promises to end the "gridlock," in the populist rhetoric of Bill Clinton, and even in the desperate attempt of George Bush to pledge that things would be different.

In the end, most voters cast their ballot for the change that was easiest to make—to remove George Bush from office and end 12 years of Republican rule. The outcome was more a vote against Bush than for Clinton.

The media fascination with the new, younger administration and the change of generations doesn't alter the fact that Clinton faces a nation whose people are still disenchanted with politics as usual and will turn him out in four years if their longing for change does not begin to be satisfied.

Bill Clinton's campaign rhetoric conjured up the high-sounding language of vision, new covenants, diversity, and the politics of inclusion. Yet Clinton remains a mainstream politician with quite conservative views on the death penalty, business policies, military superiority, and foreign relations. A centrist Democrat won with a populist appeal, and now it remains to be seen whether the substance will follow the rhetoric.

The president-elect's first visit to Washington D.C. was a great success, featuring a walk up Georgia Avenue (just a few blocks from Sojourners community) that absolutely delighted local residents. The prospect of a president who seems to want to relate to ordinary people, and who stops into McDonald's for a cup of morning coffee, provides a very compelling symbol and stands in the sharpest contrast to the kind of presidential leadership most people are used to here.

More than a few people have remarked to me that some of Clinton's speeches seem to come right out of Sojourners. Can a Clinton administration be invited, pushed, and pulled to take the cry for justice more seriously than his predecessor? Perhaps. What the change of administrations provides is some "space"—a welcome breath of air after the long years of suffocation by the political and Religious Right, and a potential opening for some new possibilities.

But history and our biblical tradition reminds us that the alternative moral and political vision our social crisis requires is unlikely to come from the pinnacles of power. Prophetic visions almost never do. The task of "prophetic politics" is most often left to faith communities and movements of conscience working from the bottom up to change people's lives and redirect the country. That, indeed, is our task now, more than ever.

THE MISSING ISSUES in this campaign point to the need for a larger vision. The unraveling of the cities was seldom mentioned and, with no real plan to transform the urban landscape, our cities will further unravel. Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer remarked before the election that he almost never heard the word "poor" in the debates or during the campaign. Clinton's appeal was more to middle-class insecurity. Will his program directly assault the poverty that now imprisons 35 million Americans or, ironically, will he offer programs that depend on a new version of the "trickle down" policies he campaigned so hard against? The biblical prophets said that nations will be most judged by how they treat the poor and marginalized, and it may be up to the religious community to defend the cause of those on the bottom and hold the new administration accountable to that biblical standard of social righteousness.

The other word no one wanted to speak during this election was "racism." It simply wasn't going to attract the white votes Bill Clinton needed for victory. We should welcome Clinton's post-election promise to have his administration "look like America," but the demon of racism must be confronted and wrestled to the ground if America is ever to fulfill its promise and avoid the polarization that is again on the rise.

Shortly before the election, public television's Bill Moyers commented that none of the candidates had adequately spoken a "language that evokes the common bond of a diverse people." Moyers believes the American people have "a deep yearning to go beyond Left and Right, to go beyond the nostrums of both the conservative movement and the liberal movement as they have been manifested in our time."

WHAT'S NEXT for the churches? It appears that the Religious Right, having been swept from power, is already mobilizing for another takeover. The evangelical right wing has become so preoccupied with political power that it seems to have no capacity to take the opportunity to re-examine its own agenda.

For example, could the legitimate concern for human life be applied to more than the unborn? Could evangelical activists join with many others who seek to make abortions less necessary instead of criminalizing a desperate choice? And why couldn't all Christians nurture the strength of families without blaming gays and lesbians for all the country's problems? If conservative evangelicals are serious about a biblical agenda, politics and morality cannot be simply reduced to a litmus test on abortion and homosexuality. Despite the extreme post-election fomenting of our famous televangelist politicians, biblical faith creates a much wider and deeper moral vision.

Leaders of the more mainstream churches will now likely be afforded more invitations to the White House than they have enjoyed for many years. Their temptation will be to accept access with no content. But access without prophecy is as politically useless as it is spiritually dangerous. Liberal church leaders must not now become the chaplains of a new administration in the way that conservative church leaders have been for the past 12 years.

We can all do better than we've done. The churches, too, need a new paradigm—one that goes beyond the old categories that have divided us for so long. It may be time for another Christian alternativ—distinct from both the conservative and liberal dogmas that have dominated us. A progressive, inclusive, and biblically rooted Christian movement could demonstrate the hunger for justice that could bring us all together.

An independent voice of integrity for social justice and reconciliation is urgently required. The politics we most need is the "politics of community," and, in the birthing process, our churches—across the lines of race, class, and region—could be a midwife. The good news is that it's already begun.

Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners.