From welfare reform to overcoming poverty. A strategy for action.
Hearts & Minds
Jim Wallis 1-01-1997
During the fall 1996 Call to Renewal tour, we had the opportunity to speak directly to thousands of people across the country, and to hear their questions and concerns.
Jim Wallis 11-01-1996
I'm beginning this column at about 30,000 feet, en route to Akron, Ohio. We're doing the Who Speaks for God?
Jim Wallis 9-01-1996
In deciding whether or not to sign the Republican welfare bill, Bill Clinton faced the most serious moral test of his presidency. It was, as several observers said, "a defining moment." He failed that test and more clearly than ever defined the character problem that has dogged his entire political career.
Clinton, smart but political, realized that this was a bad bill, but signed it anyway in a strategic retreat from previous principles. The results could be a disaster for poor families and children, but Bill Clinton did make it more certain that he will be re-elected. Since compassionate Christians care deeply about the former, many will care much less about the latter. Since Clinton has already offended many Christians on the issue of abortion, angering more of them on the treatment of the poor could prove significant.
Most in the religious community do favor a more decentralized, effective, and values-centered approach that would actually alleviate poverty. But the six-decade national commitment to provide a federal safety net for the poor was simply dismantled by this bill and replaced with block grants—of less federal money—to the states, without any uniform national standards or accountability. The poor of Mississippi must now trust their fate to the social conscience of their state's legislators and to Gov. Kirk Fordice—who cynically offered to buy each welfare recipient an alarm clock as his state's contribution to welfare reform.
Churches also support the transition from welfare to work, wherever that is possible. But the new system imposes a five-year lifetime limit on receiving benefits and requires most on welfare to find work within two years, without any new national commitments or funds to provide job training and job creation. Millions of mostly uneducated, untrained, and unskilled single mothers will now be forced to compete in a shrinking employment market for fewer and fewer jobs that provide a living family wage.
Jim Wallis 7-01-1996
If the opening campaign ads from the Democrats and Republicans are any indication, it could be a long fall.
Jim Wallis 3-01-1996
When we heard the weather report predicting another snow storm on its way to Washington, D.C., our hearts sank.
Jim Wallis 11-01-1995
Last spring, Sojourners helped to mobilize a broad group of evangelical, pentecostal, black, Catholic, and mainline Protestant leaders to offer a visible alternative to the Religious Right.
Jim Wallis 9-01-1995
In Oklahoma City, 168 people died because they were in the way of somebody's anger at the government.
Jim Wallis 5-01-1995
Europe once fought a war for 100 years. For the first 100 days of the new Republican-controlled Congress, another war took place on Capitol Hill, and now promises to continue.
Jim Wallis 12-01-1994
This fall's elections were indeed a political turning point. The Democrats who say their debacle was only a rejection of politics in general and whoever was in power are just wrong.
Jim Wallis 11-01-1994
What if, in front of the whole world, the U.S. pledged unequivocal U.S. support for the restoration of democracy in Haiti?
Jim Wallis 8-01-1994
The transformation of South Africa is one of the most significant events of our time. It therefore deserves serious reflection. The miraculous victory of South Africa's long freedom struggle was not inevitable and must not be treated as such. Things could have gone very differently; indeed, conventional wisdom expected a quite different outcome. The unraveling of that beautiful nation into a downward spiral of violence, hatred, chaos, and endless racial and civil war was a logical expectation. We have recently seen such horrendous social disintegration in too many other places.
How do we explain the triumph of both justice and forgiveness in South Africa? What are the lessons we can learn? What insights can be applied to our own struggles for social change?
Books could and should be written on this subject, but let me offer some initial reflections based upon a long-term involvement with the South African struggle and its people.
First, there was the power of persistence. The phrase one always heard in South Africa was "stay in the struggle." I have never seen a situation where there were more reasons to give up. But people never did. The sheer determination of South Africa's black majority and their few white allies was finally rewarded with victory. They always believed that, one day, they would be free. During so many periods of persecution, suffering, and despair, they were about the only ones who did believe. It was always easier for others to give up on South Africa.
Jim Wallis 7-01-1994
The miraculous events in South Africa made hope possible for me again. I was there for the transformation—the inauguration of a new South Africa—and will never be the same.
Jim Wallis 6-01-1994
A dream came to me. It was the mid-1990s. Most unusual things began to happen...
Jim Wallis 5-01-1994
The glare of the camera lights showed the anguish on Joseph Bernardin’s face as he arrived at the annual meeting of U.S. Catholic bishops last November in Washington, D.C.