From my colleague, David Simmons, Rector of St. Matthias Episcopal Church, in Waukesha, WI on why he participated in the interfaith rally on Tuesday.

Two evangelicals, Brian McLaren and Jim Wallis on the larger issue of Christianity, morality, and budgets.

Wallis writes:

As Sojourners said in the last big budget debate in 2005, “A budget is a moral document.” For a family, church, city, state, or nation, a budget reveals what your fundamental priorities are: who is important and who is not; what is important and what is not. It’s time to bring that slogan back, and build a coalition and campaign around it.

The significance of Christianity in the actions of Governor Walker and among the protesters continues to be a matter of debate. Diana Butler Bass’s interprets Governor Walker’s actions in light of a talk he gave to Christian businessmen in which he said his motto was “Trust and Obey.” Walker is the son of a Baptist pastor and member of a non-denominationl church. Bass argues that absent the rich moral reasoning traditions of mainstream Christianity, Walker has developed a highly individualistic theology. To use her words:

His spiritual universe is that of 20^th century fundamentalism, in its softer evangelical form, a vision that emphasizes “me and Jesus” and personal salvation.

From there, she jumps to a comparison of Walker’s position with that of President Bush whose certainty led the United States into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Her complete remarks are here. My guess is, she did what I did. She googled Scott Walker and religion and found this.

I find this analysis unhelpful and misleading. Granted, I’m a relative newcomer to Wisconsin; I live in Madison, which is very different from other parts of the state, and I’ve relocated from South Carolina, where religion (Christianity) does play a prominent role in politics. Plus, I watch relatively little local TV, and get my news and politics (even local) from alternative sources. So, my perspective is quite limited. Still, I haven’t noticed the foregrounding of religious language or religious arguments, either from Walker or from his supporters.

I went back to earlier coverage of Walker’s campaign in Isthmus. In an early piece on him, there was barely a mention of religion. In fact, it seems to me that religion, Christianity, has been a bit player in the drama that is unfolding and that it entered only in the second or third act. For example, last week Dan Schultz wondered where the religious voices were.

I rather doubt that Walker’s refusal to negotiate has anything to do with his religious beliefs or religious certainty. If anything, I would suspect that his religious certainty is a product of his personal and political certainty, not the other way around as Bass would have it.

Updated. Here’s The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank on Walker’s rigidity.

On February 5, Wisconsin came together in a euphoric celebration of the Packers’ victory in the Super Bowl. In bringing back their fourth Lombardi Trophy to Titletown, we anointed a new Savior (Aaron Rogers) and finally laid to rest the ghost of Brett Favre. With a young quarterback and many important players who had been lost to injury, the future looked bright indeed.

The celebration that united all of Wisconsin a little over two weeks ago is not even a distant memory. The spontaneous community created by a major athletic championship has been shattered, deep divisions within our polity have appeared and the promising future of a new Packers dynasty has given way to fear and despair.

The small Midwestern town in which I was raised was profoundly shaped by the order imposed on it by Jefferson’s vision. The square-mile grid of townships, each with a one-room schoolhouse created both civic community and a sense of common purpose. There was relatively little disparity in wealth and what there was could often be blamed on the luck of the draw—the fertility of the land on which a family had homesteaded—or individual effort and talent. To be sure, there was poverty, but most of it was found either among the migrant workers who came each year to harvest vegetable crops, or in the city.

It wasn’t until I went south for the first time to meet my soon-to-be wife’s family that I encountered enormous disparity of wealth in small-town America. I remember vividly visiting one of my father-in-law’s farms and being greeted by the children who lived in the ramshackle house on the property. It seemed more like the Third World than America.

I remember vividly as well the “Poverty Tours” Deacon Steve MacDonald would lead in Greenville. A Vietnam Vet and recovering alcoholic, Steve was an ordained Episcopal deacon and worked for United Ministries. He was an in-your-face advocate for the poor and homeless. He knew where the homeless lived. He also took us to those areas of Greenville where walls divided neighborhoods. On side of the wall were houses that sold for upwards of $1,000,000. On the other side were hovels that lacked central heat, water, and often even electricity.

The Republican Party came to power in the South by using race to divide poor and working class whites from African-Americans, whose economic interests they shared. Politicians in the South continue to play off of division, competing with other states and regions of the country to attract manufacturing and other businesses.

Apart from everything else that is going on, it seems to me that what we are seeing in Wisconsin this week is a similar tactic of division. Instead of bringing people together as a community to come up with solutions and cooperate on solving our state’s problems, Governor Walker and other Republicans are seeking to consolidate power by creating division among our populace. Union members are vilified as freeloaders and undeserving of the wages and benefits they receive from their jobs in the public sector. The code words and rhetoric remind me very much of the language used in an earlier time to attack “welfare queens” and the like.

Among the calls in yesterday’s Interfaith press conference was a vision of shared sacrifice. As religious communities, it is our responsibility to hold up a vision of a common good, in which people of good will come together to solve society’s problems. Whatever our differences—class, race, even political views—we are all created in God’s image. As Christians, we need to do Jesus Christ’s work in the world, breaking down the barriers that divide us, being Christ’s ambassadors, offering reconciliation where others sow division.

There are a couple of things going around the web that put my move in 2009 from Greenville, SC to Madison, WI in perspective. One of them is somewhat misleading, if memory serves me correctly.

The first is the map that shows states allowing collective bargaining as opposed to those that don’t.

I’m grateful for the map because it confirmed what I had suspected. I recalled that there was some major conflict while we lived there when the state patrol attempted to organize, not even to begin a union, and were shut down.

The other is the statistic related to ACT/SAT scores which a number of sources have correlated to the collective bargaining map. It turns out, South Carolina ranks #50 on that list. This may be misleading because, if memory serves me correctly, the ACT is taken by all South Carolina High School students.

Whether or not the latter is true, what is true is that South Carolina schools are woefully underfunded and teachers underpaid. I was amazed to learn that universal public education didn’t exist in the state until the 1920s; that even then, transportation wasn’t provided. Much of that was due to racism and Jim Crow laws but it also reflected a different vision of the public good than that which was created in the old Northwest Territories by Thomas Jefferson, with the provision for a school in every township.

More surprising still was the revelation that as late as the early 1970s, school buses were driven, not by adults but by high school students who had demonstrated their maturity. Yes, that’s right (at least in Greenville County). I was sitting at a vestry dinner when I learned that. My jaw dropped. I was flabbergasted, but the Greenville County natives were shocked that I found this odd.

I know teachers and other public service workers in South Carolina who work incredibly hard for little pay and little respect. I also know that many of them struggle to make ends meet and struggle to maintain their self-respect. I am in awe of them. I am also in awe of all of those in Wisconsin and throughout the country who work hard to make our nation, our states, and our local communities better places.

One last thing. I can’t imagine protests like the ones taking place in Madison occurring in South Carolina. I remember all too well the vitriol which came about when Furman faculty members protested President Bush’s visit to commencement in 2008. But I hope that what is happening in Madison gives heart to public service workers across the country. You are patriots and we owe all of you a great deal.