Vincent Harding died on Monday. One of my most important and dearest mentors is gone; there are countless other people across America -- indeed, around the world -- who are feeling the same as me.
Faith
5-27-2014
In a blistering editorial in the January 1978 issue of Sojourners, Jim Wallis castigated the president for failure to attend adequately to the needs of the poor. “The biblical demands for justice and compassion bring the harshest kind of judgment to the system of wealth and power upon which Jimmy Carter has built his presidency,” Wallis wrote. “It is these standards of social righteousness that our evangelical president has set aside during his first year in office.” John F. Alexander of The Other Side, another signatory to the Chicago Declaration in 1973, was almost flippant about the 1980 election. Although he acknowledged the moral rectitude of Carter’s policy on human rights—“we can be reasonably sure that fewer people are being tortured now than if Ford had been elected”—Alexander expressed doubts that an evangelical in the White House made any difference whatsoever. While he applauded Carter’s cancellation of the B-1 bomber, Alexander criticized the president’s approval of the MX missile. “Personally I see little point in not voting,” he concluded, although he suggested that his readers cast their ballots for Donald Duck.
5-27-2014
To the contrary, based on the early vision for evangelicalism developed by Carl Henry, it seems that true evangelicalism is more closely aligned with the work of organizations like Sojourners, The BioLogos Foundation, Red Letter Christians, and Evangelicals for Social Action than with The Gospel Coalition, Answers In Genesis, or Focus On the Family. Why? Because the evangelicalism that Henry and his peers envisioned was a movement of bible-believing Christians who engaged honestly with academia.
5-22-2014
In the 1970s, evangelicalism had not yet become tethered to conservative politics. Carter, a Democrat, received almost 50 percent of the evangelical vote (Nixon had received 84 percent in 1972). The evangelical left of Ron Sider and Jim Wallis took shape in the 1970s too. In that decade evangelicalism seemed noteworthy less for being conservative than for being cool.
5-22-2014
Editor’s Note: Rev. William Barber will speak atthe New Populism Conference on May 22. We share this piece by Rev. Barber that was originally posted at Sojourners. We will waive conference registration fee for people who want to attend starting after 2:30 p.m., to hear Sen. Bernie Sanders (at 4 p.m.), and Rev. William Barber (at 4:30 p.m.) who will close the conference.
5-22-2014
In Atlanta, Dr. Harding joined the department of history and sociology atSpelman College, becoming the department chairman. At the same time, he contributed speeches for Dr. King.
His most memorable, described in 2007 by Sojourners, the progressive Christian magazine, as “one of the most important speeches in American history,” was commissioned amid the United States’ escalating involvement in Vietnam.
5-22-2014
"Don't go left, don't go right, go deeper." This has been the longtime mantra of Jim Wallis and his organization Sojourners, a Christian social justice group that he presides over and helped found in the 1970s. Today Wallis is a leading voice on the intersection of faith and politics, one often known to counterbalance the religious right (though he himself doesn't identify as liberal).
5-22-2014
There was Obama press secretary Jay Carney’s daughter (Carney hitched a ride in the motorcade to catch the game). Jim Wallis’s (a former member of Obama’s faith council) son. On one team was senior Obama adviser David Plouffe’s son. And NBC’s “Meet the Press” host David Gregory’s son and daughter are teammates with Carney’s kid.
5-22-2014
Some of the most inspiring words in the entire Bible are found in the opening pages of Genesis. Here we are told that humans were created in God’s image and given a divine mandate to care for Creation (Gen. 1:26-31). Our vocation—our calling—is to partner with God in preserving and sustaining the earth with all the creatures and species that God has made. The word used in most translations is “dominion,” and the true meaning is what we would today call “stewardship.”
5-22-2014
The idea for Change the World started in 2010. Slaughter wrote a book called “Change the World: Recovering the Message and Mission of Jesus.” It challenged Christians to step outside the church walls and get out into their communities. Sojourners CEO Jim Wallis, in his forward to the book, wrote, “Mike’s challenge is simple and direct: Quit worrying about getting people into your church and start finding new opportunities to move people who are already there out into God’s service.”
Nils von Kalm 5-20-2014
Love and faith need to be verbs. oneinchpunch/Shutterstock.com
There is a line in the famous movie Ben Hur in which one of his relatives goes to hear Jesus speak. She comes back enthralled. The way she describes Jesus is by saying that he is like no one she has ever met before, that he speaks words of life. And so he did. The Gospel writers add that he spoke as one who had authority. The Message version interprets this as meaning he lived out what he spoke.
Our lives have the most impact when we live what we speak. Jesus of course is the perfect example of this. For 2,000 years he has captivated people of all races and colors. There is something about this man that is like no other. He speaks words of life and he lived those same words. He loved his enemies, he walked the extra mile, he denied himself, took up his cross and lived a life of obedience to the Father.
Our lives speak, whether we like it or not, and whether we think so or not. We are either speaking life or we are speaking death. We all have a worldview.
5-19-2014
Jo Ellen Green Kaiser is the executive director of The Media Consortium. Passionate about mission-driven independent media, Jo Ellen has worked for a succession of independent magazines, including stints as executive director and editor-in-chief of Zeek, managing editor and associate publisher of Tikkun, and publisher of LiP: Informed Revolt. She is driven by a belief that democratic societies thrive only when their members have access to accurate information and informed opinion. She is the co-editor of Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Response to Justice (Jewish Lights) and co-led the Righteous Indignation Project. She has written about Jewish social justice publications including the Jewish Daily Forward, Sojourners, Tikkun and Interfaithfamily.com. She is ZEEK’s board chair.
5-14-2014
The group include civic society leaders and includes Robert George of Princeton University, Jim Wallis of Sojourners, George Weigel of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, journalist Kirsten Powers, George Marlin, chair of Aid to the Church in Need-USA, Lynne Hybels of Global Engagement of the Willow Creek Church and Mark Tooley, President, Institute on Religion and Democracy.
5-13-2014
This post was co-authored with author and consultant, Dalia Mogahed.
The brutal abduction of several hundred Nigerian schoolgirls has stunned and outraged the world. A violent organization called Boko Haram, and its leader Abubakar Shekau, took credit for the kidnapping more than 300 female students from their classrooms at gunpoint, from a government-run school in Chibok, on April 14. In his subsequent video, the smiling terrorist leader told the world they would sell the teenage girls "into the marketplace" or forced marriages; in his latest, he claims the girls have converted to Islam. Shekau has claimed that God told him to do all of this. That is a lie. It is an abomination. It is a blasphemy against God, and people of faith from all traditions should denounce his words.
5-13-2014
As Murdock writes,
A standard Q tactic is to pair apparent opposites together and have them talk about something on which they can agree. Two years ago in Washington, Moore’s predecessor, the conservative Richard Land, was seated next to the left leaning Jim Wallis of Sojourners to tag-team immigration reform. The odd couples this year included the state’s Republican Governor Bill Haslam and Nashville’s Democrat Mayor Karl Dean who traded compliments and discussed public education. A Jewish Israeli mother who had lost a son and a Muslim Palestinian father who had lost a daughter shared the emotional stories that brought them together to work for peace. Theologians Matthew Levering and Timothy George summarized the unity achieved through twenty years of work by Evangelicals and Catholics Together, an effort begun by Gabe Lyons’s mentor Chuck Colson and First Things’s own Richard John Neuhaus.
5-12-2014
Columbia, Mo. — Religion Newswriters Association today released the list of finalists in its 17 contests. The finalists are listed below by medium rather than contest category: Books, Broadcast, Multiple Media, Print. Winners will be notified by June 10 and made public at the RNA Annual Banquet Sept. 20, 2014, in suburban Atlanta.
The announcement is also available here…
5-12-2014
Other lead signers included David Beckman of Bread for the World, Richard Killmer of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, Sayyid Syeed of the Islamic Society of North America, David Saperstein of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and Jim Wallis of Sojourners.
Sarah Pulliam Bailey 5-12-2014
Pulitzer-prize winning author Marilynne Robinson spoke at Union Seminary in March 2014. Photo by Kristen Scharold
Pulitzer-Prize winning author Marilynne Robinson draws a wide fan base that spans lovers of serious literature, including many conservative Christians. This fall, she will release “Lila,” a follow-up to her earlier novels “Gilead” (2004) and “Home” (2008) about a 1950s-era Iowa town that won her many accolades.
Robinson’s diverse fan base was described in The American Conservative as “Christian, not Conservative.” As the author noted, Robinson is far from holding up ideals put forward by the religious right. But that doesn’t stop conservative Christians from engaging with her writing.
Before giving an address at Union Theological Seminary this spring, Robinson spoke to Religion News Service about a variety of social issues. In the interview, Robinson explained why she thinks Christians are fearful, why she loves theologian John Calvin and whether she’ll join Twitter.
5-12-2014
Beyond the NAE, signatories included Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church; Charles Chaput, archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia; and Metropolitan Methodios of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. Other prominent supporters include James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family; Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Church; Johnnie Moore, senior vice president of Liberty University; and Jim Wallis of Sojourners Magazine.
Eric Barreto 5-12-2014
Heaven is a home. Courtesy Odyssey Networks
When I was a child, my vision of heaven was riddled with roller coasters and populated by Disney characters. Let me explain.
Growing up in Puerto Rico, the American “mainland” to our north was for me a dreamland of sorts. You could catch a glimpse of it on television show depicting Main Streets lined with impressive trees. And of course, there was Disney World. As a five-year old visiting Florida for the first time, I imagined that the rest of the country was just like that particular corner of Orlando that we tourists saw.
That was heaven on earth for the five-year-old version of me. Heaven was earthly and joyful and fun and sweet. But as we all know Disney is no paradise. I don’t expect long lines, lots of sweat, and expensive but mediocre food in heaven.
When I was five, Disney was my vision of heaven. As I grew up in the church, my vision turned upward. Heaven was an eternal destination deferred until the moment after you die. Heaven was a place of reward and eternity. Heaven was an ethereal experience, something so otherworldly that the best we could do was speak in metaphors and images about it. Heaven, in short, had very little to do with the world as we knew it.
Neither vision gets it quite right.