The Washington Post
The Washington Post Press Items
01/03/2010
One cold morning the week before Christmas, I found myself huddled with a group of homeowners and religious leaders on Pennsylvania Avenue, in the shadow of the White House and the Treasury building. The homeowners, who had all worked hard to buy their first homes, and most of whom had put enough money down to qualify for fixed-rate mortgages only to be persuaded into more exotic mortgages, were facing imminent foreclosure. We had come to stand with them.
12/05/2009
For some, the "Christian community lifestyle" means not raising their own food remotely with "other self-sufficient Christians" but rather moving to inner-city neighborhoods and sharing resources.
Groups such as D.C.-based Bread for the World and Sojourners are examples of a Christianity that is thriving and badly undercovered.
04/02/2009
The Rev. Jim Wallis, a left-leaning minister, spoke next. "We're at a rally!" he exhorted the participants, many in green AFSCME shirts. "We need some rally voices!"
02/21/2009
The brainchild of progressive evangelical leader Jim Wallis and Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for then-President George W. Bush who now writes a column for The Washington Post, the bipartisan alliance is made up of an "orgy of strange bedfellows," Gerson said at a news conference this week introducing the group's ideas.
02/05/2009
Three members of the council -- the Rev. Joel Hunter, the Rev. Frank Page and the Rev. Jim Wallis -- have heightened concerns among church-state separatists. Wallis persuaded President Bill Clinton to start his faith-based program, which opened the door to Bush's larger program. And Page is the former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, which strongly advocates that it is discriminatory for the government to prevent its members from sharing their faith with others.
02/05/2009
The group will do more than steer federal social-service funds to religious organizations, said the Rev. Jim Wallis, who expects to be named to the council. "This is a much broader mission than who gets funded," he said.
Wallis, who presides over Sojourners, a progressive Christian organization based in the District, said he expects that the council will advise the president on substantive foreign and domestic issues.
01/31/2009
Sojourners, a liberal evangelical group, intends to keep the pressure up with a march in April, the Mobilization Against Poverty, that will call on the president to cut the poverty rate in half within 10 years.
The organizations say they are only attempting to help Obama stay on the course he has promised.
Said Sojourners organizer Jim Wallis: "We're trying to help him fulfill his commitment and hold his administration accountable at the same time."
01/24/2009
Jim Wallis of the progressive evangelical group Sojourners praised Obama for not signing the order on the day of the march and instead marking the day by issuing his first presidential statement about abortion, which called on all sides to find common ground, such as working to reduce abortions.
01/18/2009
Through the Saguaro Seminar, Obama befriended the president of the Christian Coalition and Kirbyjon Caldwell, a Dallas area Methodist minister who became President Bush's closest spiritual adviser. Obama grew particularly close to Jim Wallis, an evangelical political activist from Washington who founded Sojourners magazine.
01/06/2009
Progressive evangelical leader Jim Wallis wrote in 1997 that the Church of the Saviour "has had more influence around the country than any other church I know about."
