USA Today
USA Today Press Items
06/12/2012
Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners, a Christian social justice organization, said passing immigration reform was a "moral and biblical imperative" that requires a critical mass of Americans supporting it to sway a gridlocked Washington. "Big things don't change in Washington first. Big things change in Washington last," Wallis said.
05/28/2012
At Princeton, Land learned to get along with people who held different beliefs. That remains one of Land's strengths, said Jim Wallis, a progressive Christian preacher and author who founded Washington, D.C.-based Sojourners magazine. Wallis and Land disagree on politics but often speak together at conferences, such as the Q gathering of evangelicals in Washington, D.C., in April, where their talk was titled "What Can We Agree On?"
After they speak, they often go out to dinner and talk late into the night. By contrast, Wallis' television appearances with other leaders of the Religious Right, such as the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, were basically shouting matches. "We were always pitted against each other, like gladiators in the arena," Wallis said. "Jerry Falwell would never talk to me off camera."
05/06/2012
So Christians increasingly long for a substantive change in tone. This desire has led to efforts such as conservative Christian and Romney adviser Mark DeMoss' Civility Project and liberal Christian Jim Wallis' Civility Covenant, which was signed by more than 100 Christian leaders and denominational heads. Today's Christians are not seeking ways to "divide and conquer" but to "partner and achieve." Unafraid to collaborate with those they may disagree with on other issues, young Christians and their leaders are showing up throughout the public square and working on common-ground agendas.
02/27/2012
A similarly fruitless debate plays out among religious groups, even as both sides claim moral authority for their views. Some, such as Sojourners magazine editor Jim Wallis and the religious leaders who carried a golden calf (symbolizing the idolatry of wealth) through Manhattan as part of the "Occupy" movement, focus on condemning greed and achieving social justice. Others, such as First Things Web editor Joe Carter, argue that concern about income inequality is itself a form of greed.
10/25/2010
Thank goodness we have the DeMoss-Davis duo and people like Jim Wallis, leader of the progressive evangelical group Sojourners, to remind us that politics should be dedicated to the common good, not one's own party, and that civility lines the path to a higher place.
03/05/2009
There's no debate that faith has been used for good and misused for ill throughout history. That's why I was glad to see two men with faith backgrounds — one a liberal and one a conservative — getting together to address poverty in America. The Rev. Jim Wallis (the liberal) from Sojourners magazine and former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson (the conservative) put aside their ideological differences in order to focus on a problem that affects way too many people. I'm glad to see this latest example of what people can do if they focus on the problem and less on the politics.
02/20/2009
As the 86-year-old Lear often puts it, religion and the larger search for meaning "are the greatest conversation going — and I want in." He doesn't mean a "conversation" like the one we've been having, in which one side acts repulsed by any mention of the divine in the public square, while the other claims God as its mascot and wields religion like a political weapon. As progressive evangelical spokesman Jim Wallis of Sojourners puts it, the solution to "bad religion" is not secularism, but "better religion."
09/08/2008
Jesus is imprisoned — at least in the view of an increasingly vocal set of Christians spurred into action by some deeply troubling truths about America and our bursting-at-the-seams prison system.
Progressive Christian leaders such as Jim Wallis show what can be undertaken by believers moved by social injustices. Raising a prophetic voice, engaging in acts of moral suasion, calling people to conscience — surely these are not beyond the capabilities of committed Christians, whatever their political persuasion.
05/05/2008
With the deaths of prominent evangelical pastors Jerry Falwell and D. James Kennedy last year, funeral bells began tolling for the Religious Right. Political columnist E.J. Dionne wrote Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics after the Religious Right, and theologian Jim Wallis offered The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America.
04/17/2008
The writer, Benjamin Wallace-Wells, concluded: "Wright is not an incidental figure in Obama's life, or his politics. The senator 'affirmed' his Christian faith in this church; he uses Wright as a 'sounding board' to 'make sure I'm not losing myself in the hype and hoopla.' " He quoted Jim Wallis, a leader of the religious left, as saying, "If you want to understand where Barack gets his feeling and rhetoric from, just look at Jeremiah Wright."
