Jim Wallis, a fixture of the (admittedly small) evangelical left-wing, is preaching religious values to a Democratic Party increasingly receptive to his message in the face of Republican gains among “moral values” voters.
By Jason White
Coming out of an election in which values issues played a key role in growing Republican majorities in the U.S. Congress, Jim Wallis is finding receptive ears among Democratic leaders eager to hear how they might win back religious voters.
Wallis, one of the few prominent, left-wing evangelical Christians, comes bearing a simple message: Evangelicals care about more than abortion and gay marriage. He believes that Democrats could attract religiously conservative voters if they emphasized the religious roots of poverty relief and moderated their stance on abortion. Wallis recently delivered this message to Senate Democrats in a closed-door meeting.
“Whoever wins the battle over values is going to win the American political future,” Wallis, 56, said in an interview. “The Republicans are comfortable with the language of moral values, but then they narrow it to one or two issues, albeit important issues, like abortion and gay marriage and family issues. A serious moral values conversation will challenge an economic agenda that rewards wealth over work and favors the rich over the poor and sees war as the first resort, not the last resort.”
Wallis' passion is reaching out to the poor and the outcast, which he has done for much of his adult life in Washington. He knows firsthand what poverty means for people, having lived for nearly 30 years in D.C.'s Columbia Heights neighborhood, long one of the city's most segregated, poorest and dangerous areas.
Working out of this place, Wallis has become a nationally known expert on religion and politics. He's currently promoting his new book, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong, and the Left Doesn't Get It. Originally scheduled for release later this year, the publisher moved up the date to coincide with President Bush's inauguration. In its first month of release, the book has been a top seller on Amazon.com.
Wallis' progressive political vision derives from his conservative Christian faith. He believes the Bible is authoritative on political questions and that God came to this world in the person of Jesus to save it.
“In Jesus, God hit the streets,” Wallis said. “Who does Jesus hang out with? The poor and the outcast and those left behind. He talks about a new order and new kingdom. He will transform your life and because of that he will transform your neighborhood and your nation and the world.”
Wallis' fusion of religion and politics, and his equal-opportunity attacks against liberals and conservatives, is not without controversy. Those sympathetic to his political aims often question his religious means, while those who subscribe to similar religious beliefs don't necessarily think those beliefs translate into a liberal political agenda.
Elizabeth Castelli, an associate professor of religion at Barnard College in New York City, recommended Wallis' new book in a review for Slate, an online magazine. But she questioned Wallis' claim that progressive politics need a religious foundation.
“That leaves a lot of people out who don't share his theology,” Castelli said in an interview. “It conflates religion and politics in a way that concerns me. … There is plenty of political philosophy that is not religiously grounded that offers a profound portrait of justice.”
Michael Cromartie, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, shares many of Wallis' religious beliefs. But he doesn't subscribe to his progressive politics, favoring instead a more conservative approach to curing social ills.
“There are a lot of cultural problems out there that government can only do so much about,” said Cromartie. “Wallis' first reaction is always: We have a problem, and the government is not doing enough. My reply is: We have a lot of problems, and the government has been doing a whole lot.”
Wallis moved to Washington nearly three decades ago with a cadre of like-minded believers to form a community called Sojourners. They chose to live in a mostly African-American neighborhood that had been decimated by riots after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. Although the neighborhood is slowly gentrifying, it was an urban wasteland until just a few years ago.
“For me, living in that kind of place was a spiritual discipline as much as prayer, because it forced me to be conscious of what it means to live in a poor and violent neighborhood, even if in one sense I am never fully a part of it because of my options and choices,” he said. “So when I am having conversations at these national levels about these issues, I know this stuff at a feeling level, at a friendship level, at a painful level.”
That pain was manifest in the violence Wallis witnessed. He said that after one Clinton-era meeting at the White House to discuss youth violence, Wallis came home to yellow police tape strung across his street and news of yet another young person murdered. But the neighborhood also allowed Wallis to forge deep friendships with people he might otherwise never have met.
In God's Politics, Wallis writes about Mary Glover, a good friend from the neighborhood. Wallis considers this poor Pentecostal woman one of his chief mentors. He tells of her work in the church food pantry, handing out bags of groceries that she sometimes needed too. He tells of her looking out for new people in the neighborhood, trying to make them feel at home in a violent place. And in a recent interview, Wallis' eyes grew watery as he spoke of her words of advice.
“I was a young activist when we met,” said Wallis. “She would say to me, ‘You're doing it again. You're all worried about the harvest all the time, the harvest, about succeeding and winning everything. But you gotta sow the seeds, sow the seeds, sow the seeds. The harvest isn't always going to be yours.' ”
Religion News Service
Jason White writes for Religion News Service.