After Secretary of State Kerry announced a nuclear deal between the P5+1 countries and Iran, I was wading through a sea of editorials and thought pieces by foreign policy experts and conservative evangelicals when one headline caught my eye: “The Iran Deal is a Good Option- and a Christian One.” In a post on the Sojourners website and Huffington Post, Sojourners President Jim Wallis argued that the agreement on the table was the only moral and practical way to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Wallis, Ron Sider, Tony Campolo, and other progressive evangelical leaders had already convened an ecumenical group of supporters in favor of a deal with Iran, laying out a theological framework in the“Hope but Verify” statement issued in April 2015. Signatories argued that Christians had a “moral obligation” to pursue peaceful negotiations, but also to acknowledge evil in the world by pushing for strict inspections and controls. In his July article, Wallis celebrated the deal’s inspection framework, saying it was “critical to those of us who ascribe to ‘Christian realism.’”
Source: Religion in American History | Michael Limberg