Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing is a wonk-world of pure imagination. It’s compelling, intelligent, fast-paced, and seductive.

NBC’s new Wednesday night poli-drama has the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) up in arms in response to episode two, when fictional president Josiah Bartlet (played with ego-centered magnanimity by Martin Sheen) wants to bomb Syria off the map for downing an unarmed U.S. Air Force jet. Says ADC president Hala Maksoud, "By creating a fictional story that blames a real nation and people for such a heinous crime, NBC has slandered an entire nation in the most unfair manner possible."

This episode, titled "A Proportional Response," shows the impact of Just War theory in limiting the military response of the powerful. The president is finally talked down by his chief of staff (played brilliantly by John Spencer), who reminds Bartlet that a more reasoned response "is what our fathers taught us." While it is a far cry from active nonviolence (activist-celeb Sheen’s preferred mode), it is nonetheless a sharp new architecture in the exurbs of network TV.

Sorkin, the creator of another talk-box hit, Sports Night, is known for his frenetic literary dialogue, quick quips, and tight emotional maneuvering. Perhaps his swill of choice, Yoo-Hoo chocolate drink, gives him the edge.

Emmy-winning director Thomas Schlamme sparks the small screen with a rich visual field. The Oval Office (thanks to visual consultant Jon Hutman) looks like the real thing. When Air Force One isn’t really Air Force One (and it often is), it’s a very good Virgin Atlantic 747 imitation. The deputy chief of staff Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford) totes Elizabeth Drew’s current Beltway bible The Corruption of American Politics: What Went Wrong and Why under his arm.

A century and a half ago, a young congressman from Illinois became unpopular with his home constituency and was forced to leave office. It had been rumored that he had little respect for the church or religion; furthermore, he was obviously unpatriotic for opposing the U.S. war with Mexico.

A decade later the same man returned to political life, became a vociferous critic of slavery, and was eventually elected president of the nation. This is the man who in his second inaugural address made one of the most explicitly biblical statements in the annals of the American presidency:

Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war might speedily pass away. Yet, if God will that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether" (Psalm 19:9).

The life of Abraham Lincoln reminds us of two things about religion and American political life. First, they have always been mixed together. Second, church people do not have infallible political judgment.

As citizens of what the historian Sidney Mead called "the nation with the soul of a church," most Americans have thought from the colonial period on that their religious convictions had something very important to do with their political choices. The present highly visible involvement of Christian and other religious groups in political life, including presidential campaigns, is hardly novel.

The bitter name-calling, hostility, and rancor that have been so much a part of recent election campaigns have only deepened the popular hunger for a significant reform—if not a complete re-creation—of the way Americans do politics. In his forthcoming book Who Speaks for God?: An Alternative to the Religious Right—A New Politics of Compassion, Community, and Civility (Delacorte, 1996), Jim Wallis challenges the role the Religious Right has played on the American political scene and lays the groundwork for a new politics shaped by three spiritual tests: compassion, community, and civility. The following excerpt is from the chapter on civility.
—The Editors

In the midst of his fight for India's independence, Mohandas Gandhi remarked, "My first fight is with the demons inside of me, my second fight is with the demons in my people, and only my third fight is with the British." There were times in India's long march to freedom that Gandhi would actually call off the movement for years at a time, much to the frustration of his colleagues in the Congress Party. The great Mahatma would say that they weren't ready for freedom yet and that more work on social, economic, and spiritual development was necessary, often including periods of fasting.

If you ask people what they find most offensive about politics today, they will often cite the bitter rhetoric and attack campaigns of modern political warfare. "All they do is shout back and forth and call each other names," said one disgusted citizen after an early 1996 primary debate. Gandhi's self-examination and political introspection contrasts dramatically with our Democratic and Republican partisans today. Across the political spectrum, we suffer from a loss of civility.

"Civility" is really about two things: the quality and integrity of our public discourse, and the level and depth of citizen participation in the political process. The two are deeply connected.

In deciding whether or not to sign the Republican welfare bill, Bill Clinton faced the most serious moral test of his presidency. It was, as several observers said, "a defining moment." He failed that test and more clearly than ever defined the character problem that has dogged his entire political career.

Clinton, smart but political, realized that this was a bad bill, but signed it anyway in a strategic retreat from previous principles. The results could be a disaster for poor families and children, but Bill Clinton did make it more certain that he will be re-elected. Since compassionate Christians care deeply about the former, many will care much less about the latter. Since Clinton has already offended many Christians on the issue of abortion, angering more of them on the treatment of the poor could prove significant.

Most in the religious community do favor a more decentralized, effective, and values-centered approach that would actually alleviate poverty. But the six-decade national commitment to provide a federal safety net for the poor was simply dismantled by this bill and replaced with block grants—of less federal money—to the states, without any uniform national standards or accountability. The poor of Mississippi must now trust their fate to the social conscience of their state's legislators and to Gov. Kirk Fordice—who cynically offered to buy each welfare recipient an alarm clock as his state's contribution to welfare reform.

Churches also support the transition from welfare to work, wherever that is possible. But the new system imposes a five-year lifetime limit on receiving benefits and requires most on welfare to find work within two years, without any new national commitments or funds to provide job training and job creation. Millions of mostly uneducated, untrained, and unskilled single mothers will now be forced to compete in a shrinking employment market for fewer and fewer jobs that provide a living family wage.