Garry Wills Is A Fool

Garry Wills, a month ago in the NYRB:

When [Martin Luther] King issued a call for religious leaders to join him in Selma for a renewed march on March 9, the outpouring of hundreds of clergy from many faiths clogged the airways. He had built up such a network of ecumenical religious trust that bishops and elders who had told their fellow believers not to take part in political activity declared this an exception. Rabbi Abraham Heschel, who first said he could not get there without violating Shabbat, consulted his teachings and found that one can work on Shabbat to save lives. On the march itself, Heschel said he "felt like my feet were praying." Seminaries and convents allowed eager young priests and nuns to join in. The theologian Robert McAfee Brown, then teaching at Stanford, flew in from California. Though Branch does not indulge in such contemporary references, I thought instantly of the difference between this outpouring of religious support for the beaten marchers and the eruption of right-wing religiosity that sent President Bush hurrying to Washington to block a court order on Terri Schiavo's condition. There was a time, not so long ago, when religion was a force for liberation in America.

Garry Wills, in Sunday's Times:

There is no such thing as a "Christian politics." If it is a politics, it cannot be Christian. Jesus told Pilate: "My reign is not of this present order. If my reign were of this present order, my supporters would have fought against my being turned over to the Jews. But my reign is not here" (John 18:36). Jesus brought no political message or program.

So which is it, Garry?