A coalition of liberal Christian leaders — including Jim Wallis, Shane Claiborne, Ron Sider, Joel C. Hunter, and Tony Campolo — took out a full-page ad that asks “What would Jesus cut?” in Monday’s edition of Politico.

Now most of the ad is non-offensive. It argues that Christianity tells us that the moral test of a society is how it treats the poor. It insists that our budget should not be balanced on the backs of the most vulnerable. And it defends programs fighting pandemic diseases. On some of these matters I happen to agree with the signatories; on others I don’t.

But where the ad crosses the line is with the campaign slogan itself: “What Would Jesus Cut?”

…The temptation of politically active people of faith is to simplistically connect dots, insisting that certain biblical principles self-evidently translate into particular public policies…

Scripture provides a moral framework through which people can debate particular public policies. On some matters, like the slave trade and genocide, the “right” Christian position may be obvious (though what policies one should support to oppose them isn’t always).

But in the vast majority of cases, and certainly when it comes to the federal budget, what we are talking about are prudential judgments about competing priority. And to pretend that the budget Jesus would bless just happens to be at the current discretionary spending levels rather than, say, what they were in 2008, is close to offensive.

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