"James Talarico and Adam Hamilton... draw on the Hebrew scripture, especially Micah 6:8..."

"... where the prophet says the Lord requires us 'to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.' They draw, too, on the New Testament: the parable of the Good Samaritan and the Sermon on the Mount; on the two great commandments to love God and to love your neighbor; and Matthew 25, where Jesus says that whatever we did for the least of these we did for him. There are Christians all across America who may not agree with Talarico and Hamilton on every issue but who are deeply grateful these men won, because they offer an ethic and a disposition profoundly different from those of MAGA world. The senators-elect from Texas and Kansas believe that statecraft is soulcraft, that words should heal rather than wound, and that mercy is not weakness. They take seriously Isaiah’s invitation: 'Come now, and let us reason together.'"

Writes Peter Wehner, in "A Good Night for the Christian Faith/A pair of victories may do much to help the Democratic Party—and even more for the evangelical world" (The Atlantic)(gift link).

"Statecraft is soulcraft" — is that a standard phrase? Apparently, it is. There's a 1984 George Will book called "Statecraft as Soulcraft: What Government Does." He says things like "I say statecraft is soulcraft. Just as all education is moral education because learning conditions conduct, most legislation is moral legislation because it conditions the action and the thought of the nation."

Will is not mentioned in the Atlantic article, and I'll take that as a sign that Will's idea caught on. Checking my 22-year archive — because I didn't remember ever seeing the phrase before and I felt sure if I ever saw it, I would blog about it — I had to laugh when I found a post titled "Soulcraft," from October 1, 2021:

Soulcraft.

I don't remember ever noticing the word "soulcraft" before today, when I saw it in a David Brooks column. Writing about "the cultural transformation" that could be achieved through the Democrats' $4 trillion in spending, he declared: "Statecraft is soulcraft." I blogged that — with disapproval — here. 

But what is "soulcraft"? If "statecraft" makes sense, it must mean the work of the state, so shouldn't "soulcraft" mean the work of the soul? But, in context, it seems to mean the state's work is to work on the soul. I think he's saying that the state ought to engage in massive spending with the aim of shaping the soul of the people who live under the power of the state, and the lack of parallelism in the use of the ending "-craft" is disturbing.

I try to think of other "-craft" words. "Witchcraft" is the work of witches, not the shaping of witches. It's done by witches, not to witches. It fits with "statecraft," not "soulcraft."

In the comments to my post, Lloyd W. Robertson and Peter Spieker independently bring up George Will, and Quaestor writes: