Last week I posted a short piece on the quarrel between Barack Obama and James Dobson. Dobson took offense to some comments that Obama made about Christians needing to appeal to things other than the Bible and our tradition when making moral arguments in the public square.

After the story made cnn.com, there was a flurry of comment from the Christian left, most notably Sojourners founder Jim Wallis. I’ve been familiar with Wallis for about three years now ever since I read his book God’s Politics. I didn’t really enjoy the book. In fact, to this day I’m not entirely convinced that it doesn’t attempt to persuade the world that God is a democrat on almost every issue. I say that tongue in check, mostly. I applaud Wallis for challenging Christians (especially evangelicals) to really examine issues and to do so from a thoroughly Christian perspective not simply a political philosophy baptized with God-talk. I don’t always agree with Wallis, but I respect him.

The ping pong match between red and blue Christians got me asking: where are the purple Christians? Francis Schaeffer once wrote that Christians may be co-belligerents with both parties over different issues, but never ultimately loyal to anyone other than Christ.

Are we anywhere close to that ideal? I don’t know for sure, but it doesn’t seem like it. It seems to me that Christians on the left and on the right are equally guilty of being uncharitable and attributing to the other the worst possible of motives for every legislative or policy decision. We’re polarized more than we care to admit, check out this dialogue as an example.

It seems to me that there needs to be a new day of dialogue and cooperation between Christians of various political persuasions. Perhaps Following Christ can be a place where some of those conversations begin. After all, we’ll be in Chicago together less than two months after a presidential election and day before the inauguration of a new president.

Jim Wallis likes to say that the monologue of the religious right is over. I hope so. In fact, I hope that all monologues within the Christian community are over and that we can move into tomorrow with frank, honest, and charitable conversation.