God's Politics - Jim Wallis blog, faith blog, religion, christian, christianity, politics, values

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Here's some of Krista Tippet's introduction to her interview with Jim:

I've resisted interviewing Wallis as he's risen to a new kind of fame, in part because he has had so much exposure in major media - from Hardball to Fresh Air. But now I've come to see in Jim Wallis' rise not just a story of an individual activist becoming a leader, but of the world changing around us. ... There is plentiful evidence that younger people, including younger evangelical Christians, share Jim Wallis's concern for the poor and the dispossessed, for inequities in global economy and ecology. Half of his audiences across the country these days, as he tells it, are under 30. He does not claim to represent a majority of American evangelicals in his views and positions, but he does draw packed crowds of young evangelicals at Christian colleges. He urges them to emulate the 19th-century evangelicals who inspire him, some of whom founded today's Christian colleges — abolitionists and social reformers who took their Bibles and their God with the utmost seriousness.
After the rise of the Religious Right in the early 1980s, and again after the 2000 and 2004 elections, some prophesied that the U.S. was headed for "theocracy" — a takeover by conservative religious ruling elites. What is happening instead is what Time magazine has called the leveling of "the praying field." Conservative Christianity hasn't disappeared, but it is increasingly met, and measured, by progressive and liberal religious voices in politics and beyond.

There are also conservative evangelicals with a broadened political and social agenda and a willingness to form coalitions with diverse religious and secular others to combat urgent human crises.

Comments

I get so tired of this storyline (what is written by Tippet); and I really wonder if Jim Wallis believes it or is just using it?? I can accept and affirm either--but would like to know.

Posted by: letjusticerolldown | November 29, 2007 3:01 PM

Where did Jim's blog on Huckabee go? Why was it taken down?

Posted by: blake | November 29, 2007 5:46 PM

I just finished listening to the whole show, and I think this is exactly what the American Left needs to hear about Evangelicals. For several years, I was one of those naturalistic, ivory tower, secular "liberals", blaming the Christian Right and therefore Christianity for all the nation's problems. After Bush was re-elected, I grew jaded and bitter...

...until I rediscovered Jesus' message, and saw that Christian faith could revolve around more than supreme court justices and moral elitism. Since then, I have been cultivating my faith, re-learning the Bible I abandoned so long ago, and have been rewarded in so many ways. Most surprising, however, is that a powerful need for social justice has found its way back into my heart. The message is clear - "...what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" Micah 6:8.

God bless you, Jim. I agree completely that we are entering a Great Awakening, and that any great social change rests on a backbone of faith.

Posted by: Elliot | November 29, 2007 8:58 PM

Elliot:

I had a similar experience. For years, I was an ivory-tower secular liberal, indifferent if not hostile to Christianity, until a professor friend suggested I read John Howard Yoder's "The Politics of Jesus." That sent me back to the gospels, and I was able to see in them more than I had before. I had to give up the secular part, but the ivory tower liberal part fit right in.

W.F.

Posted by: William | November 30, 2007 12:05 AM

I was blessed by your words (Jim Wallis) when you were speaking about your experience in your own church as a child and talked of the very evangelical preacher came into town and all of the "unsaved" had to sit in the front row. The preacher began preaching and pointed at you saying that if Jesus were to come back today your parents would be gone and you would be alone. wow! But the response that your Mother gave you after that was like a breath of fresh air. She said "God's love, not His wrath." (quoted, but I believe that is correct if my memory serves me right.)

I learned to fear God. Unhealthy fear. Didn't even know what was going on. It's damaging for someone like that preacher you heard to get behind a pulpit and spread fear into hearts.

Your Mother is an example of what leaders/everyone needs to be spreading. Love not wrath. Wrath to me equals and manifests itself into fear so that you can't even experience the true love and tenderness of God. I still get sick to my stomach walking to the front of the church. puke. ( in a good way I guess?...hope that's not too graphic. sorry)

But thank you. I needed to hear your words (your Mothers) this evening. Love not wrath. That's good leadership to spread, model, and communicate. God is Love. Thank goodness He continues to work on me....$%*#I'm a piece of work. I continually push God away....intentionally! and He just won't go! It does get frustrating. I can't get rid of this God! And I say no a lot.

Grace to you,

Posted by: Tracy | November 30, 2007 3:01 AM

Audio: Jim Wallis on 'Speaking of Faith' with Krista Tippett

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