The New York Times
The New York Times Press Items
04/10/2009
Melody C. Barnes, Mr. Obama’s domestic policy director, is a member of Peoples Congregational. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, who is friendly with Mr. Obama, has prayed at Nineteenth Street Baptist. And Rev. Jim Wallis, a left-leaning evangelical and a friend of Mr. Obama, has had good relationships with the clergy at National City Christian.
03/14/2009
President Obama has been without a pastor or a home church ever since he cut his ties to the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. in the heat of the presidential campaign. But he has quietly cultivated a handful of evangelical pastors for private prayer sessions on the telephone and for discussions on the role of religion in politics. All are men, two of them white and three black — including the Rev. Otis Moss Jr., a graying lion of the civil rights movement. Two, the entrepreneurial dynamos Bishop T. D. Jakes and the Rev. Kirbyjon H. Caldwell, also served as occasional spiritual advisers to President George W. Bush. Another, the Rev. Jim Wallis, leans left on some issues, like military intervention and poverty programs, but opposes abortion.
01/22/2009
The Rev. Jim Wallis, a liberal evangelical who is president of Sojourners, a magazine and grass-roots organization based in Washington, said that he and other religious leaders were preparing for a dual role: to challenge the president on policies, and “to clear the way” so people will be prepared to accept the changes he institutes.
“I think Barack Obama understands that big changes won’t happen unless there are social movements pushing from the outside,” said Mr. Wallis, who has known Mr. Obama for 10 years. “Our job is to change the wind.”
07/02/2008
Mr. Obama’s proposal was met with praise from leaders like the Rev. Jim Wallis, a prominent spokesman for more liberal evangelicals. Mr. Wallis applauded the fact that Mr. Obama, as a Democrat, was willing to talk about his Christian faith and “wants a faith-based program that’s even better than the Bush program.”
04/14/2008
Mr. Obama, in response to a question from an audience member, Jim Wallis, the president of Sojourners, a progressive religious group, said he would seek to cut poverty in America in half within 10 years, although he said circumstances could undermine his good intentions.
03/18/2008
“What better way to try to undercut the way he integrates faith and political vision than to say we should all be secretly afraid of his church?” said Jim Wallis, a left-leaning evangelical who has had longstanding relationships with both Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, and who says that Mr. Wright has been unfairly caricatured in recent portrayals.
03/17/2008
“What better way to try to undercut the way he integrates faith and political vision than to say we should all be secretly afraid of his church?” said Jim Wallis, a left-leaning evangelical who has had longstanding relationships with both Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, and who says that Mr. Wright has been unfairly caricatured in recent portrayals.
02/16/2008
On every side, one can read obituaries for the religious right. Jim Wallis’s new book, “The Great Awakening,” carries the subtitle, “Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America.” E. J. Dionne Jr.’s book, “Souled Out,” is subtitled “Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right.” The subtitle of David P. Gushee’s new book, “The Future of Faith in American Politics,” poses “The Public Witness of the Evangelical Center” against that of the religious right.
02/10/2008
10 THE GREAT AWAKENING, by Jim Wallis. (HarperOne, $25.95.) How religious faith can be a force for fighting social problems like poverty and global warming.
02/03/2008
“Evangelicals are going to vote this year in part on climate change, on Darfur, on poverty,” said Jim Wallis, the author of a new book, “The Great Awakening,” which argues that the age of the religious right has passed and that issues of social justice are rising to the top of the agenda. Mr. Wallis says that about half of white evangelical votes will be in play this year.
