An Election Year Campaign: Take Back Our Faith
by Jim Wallis

I've only asked you to do this once before - to send an e-mail alert to everybody you know. The last time was to help us get out the "6-point plan," which was a concrete alternative to war with Iraq offered by American religious leaders at the midnight hour. That plan had an enormous impact and was heard at the highest levels of the U.S. and U.K. governments, even as the leaders of both countries were bent on war.

This campaign is to raise the voice of Christian conscience in Election 2004, and to challenge the theologically outrageous claims of the Religious Right that George W. Bush is God's ordained candidate and that good Christians can only vote for him. As incredible as those statements are, it is indeed what people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson are saying. They must not go unanswered. Faithful Christian citizenship demands that the Religious Right be challenged.

Sojourners is offering an alternative voice and giving thousands of Christians an opportunity to make their voices heard. On Monday, we sent you a petition to sign that sends a clear message to the Religious Right, to the candidates, and to America that the Falwells and Robertsons don't speak for us, and that we will hold all the candidates accountable to a wide range of Christian ethical and biblical principles. If you have not yet signed the petition, click here. And then forward it to your family, friends, and others.

This petition will also be turned into a full-page ad in The New York Times and other key newspapers around the country. We are also planning an extensive online campaign to reach out to people around the country who care about faith and politics. By doing so, we hope to change the debate on the "religious issues" in this campaign. Instead of a narrow media focus on abortion and gay marriage, we will also raise the religious issues of poverty, the environment, war, truth-telling, human rights, a moral response to terrorism, and a consistent ethic of human life as the criteria that people of faith ought to bring to this election.

I've consistently said that religion could be a key factor in this election. You can help us make sure it's being discussed in a fuller and deeper way than the leaders of the Religious Right have. Listening to them, it feels like our faith has been stolen. As I said in my column last week, it's time to take back our faith. That indeed is the name of this campaign - "Take Back Our Faith."

I believe that the era of the Religious Right is coming to an end, and the time of progressive prophetic faith has arrived. Let's make that clear in Election 2004. If this petition speaks for you, please sign it. Send it to friends and family, to people in your church, to your whole e-mail list! Donate to help place ads in The New York Times and other newspapers around the country, along with our online campaign. Help us change the debate. In the first 24 hours, more than 10,000 people already signed the petition! That's a great start to what could be a very important campaign for America's future. And you can help make that possible.

Mr. Wallis represents Sojourners

TurnOut Florida Campaign Off to Great Start
Your Help is Needed for 9 City Election Canvass

Equality Florida and the rest of the TurnOut Florida coalition have been hard at work making tremendous progress toward our goal of mobilizing 350,000 lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and supportive (LGBTS) voters. We've built the nation's largest coalition of LGBTS organization's ever brought together to make our voices heard.

Equality Florida is spearheading this historic effort because Floridas LGBT community has a unique opportunity to be the deciding factor in Florida. A strong TurnOut for this election will have a major impact not only on our future, but also the future of our nation and our world.

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an editorial comment by Hal Crowther
Mr. Crowther is a former writer for Time and Newsweek, the Buffalo News and the North Carolina Spectator before parking his column at the weekly Independent in Durham, N.C., and The Progressive Populist, among others. He won the H.L. Mencken Award for column writing in 1992. Write him at 219 N. Churton St., Hillsborough, NC 27278.

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