While the Right in America has hijacked the language of faith to prop up its political agenda — an agenda not all people of faith support — the Left hasn't done much better, largely ignoring faith and continually separating moral discourse and personal ethics from public policy. While the Right argues that God's way is their way, the Left pursues an unrealistic separation of religious values from morally grounded political leadership. The consequence is a false choice between ideological religion and soulless politics.

The effect of this dilemma was made clear in the 2004 presidential election. The Democrats' miscalculations have left them despairing and searching for a way forward. It has become clear that someone must challenge the Republicans' claim that they speak for God, or that they hold a monopoly on moral values in the nation's public life. Wallis argues that America's separation of church and state does not require banishing moral and religious values from the public square. In fact, the very survival of America's social fabric depends on such values and vision to shape our politics — a dependence the nation's founders recognized.

God's Politics offers a clarion call to make both our religious communities and our government more accountable to key values of the prophetic religious tradition — that is, make them pro-justice, pro-peace, pro-environment, pro-equality, pro-consistent ethic of life (beyond single issue voting), and pro-family (without making scapegoats of single mothers or gays and lesbians). Our biblical faith and religious traditions simply do not allow us as a nation to continue to ignore the poor and marginalized, deny racial justice, tolerate the ravages of war, or turn away from the human rights of those made in the image of God. These are the values of love and justice, reconciliation, and community that Jesus taught and that are at the core of what many of us believe, Christian or not. In the tradition of prophets such as Martin Luther King Jr., Dorothy Day, and Desmond Tutu, Wallis inspires us to hold our political leaders and policies accountable by integrating our deepest moral convictions into our nation's public life.

We've become great at pursuing our individual "spiritualities," but in the process may have lost sight of the power of religious belief for motivating social reform. What we need is something akin to the social politics of Jesus: speaking out for peace, justice, the poor and disenfranchised, while speaking out against oppressive government and rampant commercialism.

Drawing on his experiences with the poor, with preachers, and with presidents, Wallis points a way for every person to draw on their faith and spiritual tradition to do their part, offering practical tips for how one can enact the spiritual ethic in their own public lives.

Wallis finds the current conservative, liberal, and libertarian options out-of-step with the desires of most Americans untenable. Wallis offers a fourth option, "The Common Good," that would represent those who are traditional on issues of moral character, personal responsibility, sexual integrity, and family values (without scape-goating any group like single parents or homosexuals), while being very progressive on issues like poverty and racial justice. This option affirms good stewardship of the earth and its resources, supports gender equality, and looks first topeacemaking and conflict-resolution when it comes to foreign policy questions. At the spiritual heart of this option is linking one's personal ethics to social justice.

A prophetic book, it provides a scathing indictment of American society and the skewed values our government seems to endorse and implement. A hopeful book, it offers a platform for bringing the spiritual and political together, offering an alternative to the conservative, liberal, and libertarian options currently available to Americans.

Jim Wallis is a public theologian, nationally renowned preacher, faith-based activist, and the founder of Sojourners, a nationwide network of progressive Christians working for justice and peace. Once named by Time magazine as one of the "Fifty Faces for America’s Future," Wallis is the author of eight books including the New York Times bestseller God’s Politics.