Jackson Free Press

Jim Wallis isn't your typical evangelical. Imagine Jimmy Carter, but scratch the accent. Thirty years ago, he founded Sojourners magazine, which covers issues on faith, politics and culture. In his time as editor, he has become a Christian force for activism, peace, and justice throughout our country and across the globe. Rev. Wallis has, according to his biography, "led more than 250 town meetings, bringing together pastors, civic and business leaders, and elected officials in the cause of social justice and moral politics."

Wallis' Midwestern background and his long-time questioning of the conventions of racial segregation led him to take on this platform. As a student, he was heavily involved with the Civil Rights Movement and protesting the Vietnam War. While at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Illinois, he and several other students started a magazine and community with a Christian commitment to social justice. In 1975, Sojourners moved to the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington, D.C., and initiated several projects to stem the tide of poverty within the area. He lives there now with his wife and children.

Wallis is promoting his new book, "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It" around the country. In the week leading up to Easter, he is appearing on many national media programs including "Hard Ball" on MSNBC, and he will appear on "Meet the Press" on Easter Sunday.

Jackson Free Press columnist John Sawyer interviewed Jim Wallis by telephone Tuesday.

How do you respond to the idea that many Southerners vote against their own economic interests because of Republicans' perceived moral authority?

There is a story beginning in Chapter 6 of my book that says there is a discussion between a Republican operative who said that they get the working class to vote against their economic self-interest because of two moral issues, and that is how they win. So, I asked him what would happen if there was a candidate who talked about parenting, kids, doing something about the abortion rates, economic populism and putting Catholic social teaching into politics. (That candidate) would win every time. But there are powerful interest groups that prevent those candidates from winning. I am saying that there is nothing wrong with not voting your economic self-interest—Jews have done that for a long time—but what I am saying is that there are not just two moral values – abortion and gay marriage—and that's where the Right has it wrong.

Evangelical conservatives are often focused heavily on saving one's soul from hell and leaving it at that; how can Christians get beyond conversion and onto social justice issues?

God is personal, but never private. I am a 19th-century evangelical born in the wrong century. There were evangelicals like Charles Finney who was the Billy Graham of his day. He invented the altar call, and he did that to sign up those people for the abolition movement in order to enlist the new faithful in God's Call. So, in our view, the privatizing of faith is the great evangelical heresy of our day . Again, God is personal and never private. Let's talk about a public God who cares about the world.

Should the drive by many homosexuals for equality in American society have implications for progressive Christians?

The gay marriage issue became the surrogate for caring about family—that's the wrong surrogate. I am a dad with two boys, and a ball coach—I care deeply about parenting. How do we be the pro-parenting people? Democrats should be pro-family because kids are being assaulted by hostile values, and those of us that care about our kids should stand up against those values. Most of those in a democratic society believe in some type of legal protection for same-sex couples. You can be pro-family and pro-gay civil rights at the same time.

How do Christians and politicians who fit the "progressive and pro-life" stance fit into American politics?

There wasn't a pro-life candidate running in (the 2004) election; both were inconsistent with Cardinal Bernardin's "Seamless Garment." George Bush is a vocal supporter of the death penalty, and if John Kerry had a consistent position on the war in Iraq, he could have asked George W. Bush about his defiance of the Holy Father in Iraq and on the death penalty. But, there are candidates who are pro-life Democrats, and they are beginning to run. There are people thinking these thoughts and running for office.

Obviously race has been an issue in Southern politics. Can you get poor whites to realize that their fate of better education, universal health care and such is not tied to the wealthy conservatives, but to a progressive agenda often supported by blacks in the Deep South?

The answer is yes, and progressives have in the past. But the wealthy conservative white people play the race card over and over again in order to split working-class white and black people. We see a Republican "southern strategy" that has won in the South by the code language, which always comes down to talking about race. Every major social movement in this country's history has been fueled or driven in part by religion—abolition of slavery, child labor, women's suffrage. We have a long progressive and prophetic tradition. We cannot cede values to Republicans who use it as a wedge issue to divide and destroy. I see people who want to have religion as a bridge and not a wedge, and that is what is important.

Why don't conservative evangelical churches see Christ in the poor and downtrodden? How can we make this a reality?

The steps are Bible study, Be Jesus, Matthew 25, same as (Catholic activist) Dorothy Day. A whole generation of evangelicals do see poverty as central to the heart of God. I go to Christian colleges that talk about the environment, sex trafficking, HIV-AIDS, even the ethics of war, which are matters of concerns to evangelicals. The religious right does not represent all or even most of evangelicals. There is a progressive and moderate voice of evangelicals rising and is definitely contrary to the religious right. Then there are Catholics who don't feel represented by bishops who tell them to vote on one issue and ignore the rest of Catholic social teaching. I am an evangelical Christian who has been converted to Catholic social teaching. So, all kinds of people want a different conversation.

John Sawyer is a senior political science major at Millsaps College. He plans to enter the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in the fall to become a priest dedicated to social justice concerns. He is also a JFP columnist, writing about religion and social justice.