{"id":1212,"date":"2007-08-15T14:11:12","date_gmt":"2007-08-15T14:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godspolitics\/2007\/08\/jim-wallis-is-a-commie-by-rand.html"},"modified":"2007-08-15T14:11:12","modified_gmt":"2007-08-15T14:11:12","slug":"jim-wallis-is-a-commie-by-rand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2007\/08\/jim-wallis-is-a-commie-by-rand.html","title":{"rendered":"Prof Caught Red-Handed Reading Jim Wallis by Randall Balmer"},"content":{"rendered":"

I guess we suspected it all along, but now we have proof: Jim Wallis is a left-wing, anti-capitalist.
\nThat\u2019s the apparent message behind the dismissal of Andrew Paquin from the faculty of Colorado Christian University. Until Monday, Paquin was a professor of global studies who also is executive director of something called the 10\/10 Project, a Colorado-based international advocacy organization that promotes development in Africa. Last year, Paquin, a popular teacher, had been named \u201cfaculty member of the year.\u201d
\nHis crime? According to the Rocky Mountain News<\/a>, the school\u2019s president, Bill Armstrong, former U.S. senator from Colorado, fired Paquin \u201camid concerns that his lessons were too radical and undermined the school\u2019s commitment to the free enterprise system.\u201d Specifically, Paquin had the temerity to ask his students to read books by Peter Singer, the animal-rights ethicist at Princeton University, and by our friend Jim Wallis.
\nThis whole episode could be a reprise of the Nixon-era \u201cenemies list,\u201d when people who did not make the list sent condolence notes to one another. In this case, if your book didn\u2019t appear on Paquin\u2019s reading list, somehow it missed the mark.
\nI guess I wasn\u2019t aware that capitalism was under siege \u2013 what with the collapse of the Soviet empire and China\u2019s headlong rush into a market-based economy. But the president of Colorado Christian University apparently feels otherwise. Capitalism, in fact, appears to be Jesus\u2019 preferred economic system.
\n\u201cI don\u2019t think there is another system that is more consistent with the teachings of Jesus Christ,\u201d Armstrong told the Rocky Mountain News. \u201cWhat the university stands for, among other things, is free markets.\u201d
\nArmstrong didn\u2019t specify exactly how the writings of Singer or Wallis contradicted his beloved free-market ideology. Paquin’s own non-profit actually offers mirco-loans to help Africans start small businesses, and he has plenty of nice things to say about capitalism. “But,” he told the Rocky Mountain News, “I’d stop short of deifying it.”
\nColorado Christian University, based in Lakewood, Colorado, adopted a set of \u201cstrategic objectives\u201d last year, one of which was the desire to \u201cimpact our culture in support of traditional family values, sanctity of life, compassion for the poor, biblical view of human nature, limited government, personal freedom, free markets, natural law, original intent of the Constitution and Western civilization.\u201d
\nArmstrong told the Rocky Mountain News that he was \u201cprobably\u201d part of the Religious Right.
\nTrust me, Bill. You qualify.
\n
Randall Balmer<\/strong> is professor of American religious history at Barnard College, Columbia University and a visiting professor at Yale Divinity School. He very much hopes that his book, Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America<\/em>, was on Andrew Paquin\u2019s reading list. His latest book, God in the White House: A History<\/em>, will be released in January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I guess we suspected it all along, but now we have proof: Jim Wallis is a left-wing, anti-capitalist. That\u2019s the apparent message behind the dismissal of Andrew Paquin from the faculty of Colorado Christian University. Until Monday, Paquin was a professor of global studies who also is executive director of something called the 10\/10 Project,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religious-right"],"yoast_head":"\nProf Caught Red-Handed Reading Jim Wallis by Randall Balmer - God's Politics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godspolitics\/2007\/08\/jim-wallis-is-a-commie-by-rand.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Prof Caught Red-Handed Reading Jim Wallis by Randall Balmer - God's Politics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I guess we suspected it all along, but now we have proof: Jim Wallis is a left-wing, anti-capitalist. 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