Sojourn to the Center
Has Religious-Left Activist Jim Wallis Gone Moderate?
by Mark Tooley
Six years ago I wrote about Jim Wallis and his then new movement, “Call to Renewal.” It was advertised as a coalition of religious activists that transcended old categories of left and right. But at that time it seemed a barely repackaged coalition of religious left fixtures from the National Council of Churches, left-wing Catholic orders, and the liberal fringes of the Evangelical world.
The emphasis of the Call has changed. The “prophetic” denunciations of capitalism are almost all gone. Republicans, and the Democrats who dare to seek alternatives to liberal orthodoxy, are no longer excoriated, at least not loudly.
Instead, Wallis and the Call have vigorously embraced President Bush’s faith-based initiatives proposal. John DiIulio, who first headed the White House initiative, was the featured speaker at the latest Call rally in Washington, D.C. DiIulio is in fact an endorser of the Call’s original manifesto and has been a Call board member.
Wallis, through the Call, has of late focused most heavily on church-guided anti-poverty programs in the inner city, with a special emphasis on black Evangelical clergy. Although his magazine, Sojourners, continues to espouse traditional liberal themes, Wallis himself has become more careful. “God doesn’t mind prosperity as long as prosperity is shared,” he told the Call’s “Poor No More” conference two years ago.
In my interview with him, Wallis said he found “encouraging” the Bush administration’s interest in listening to the “faith community” about issues relating to poverty. “My hope is that we will have a partnership,” he said.
A Radical Change
Has the now middle-aged former activist changed his stripes, perhaps moderated by age, marriage, and his recent entrance into fatherhood? Or is he simply shrewd enough to keep himself relevant and newsworthy by adopting a new image? Wallis enjoys the spotlight, and the Bush administration has shown interest in working with him and other Call participants. Wallis was included with a group of other clergy involved in inner-city ministry who met with Bush shortly before he took office.
Although professing to be an Evangelical, Wallis’s rhetoric and stances over the years have more closely resembled those of radical Catholics and far-left mainline Protestant officials. In the 1960s he was an activist in the radical Students for a Democratic Society. In the 1970s he established his Sojourners organization in the nation’s capital to enlist religionists of every theological stripe in the fashionable causes of the secular left.
The Call was founded by Wallis in 1995 to discard the “old political language and solutions of right and left.” But its opening salvos were clearly from the left. Its first event was a mass arrest of 55 religious activists, including Wallis, who performed acts of civil disobedience in the Capitol Rotunda in protest against the Republicans’ “Contract with America.”
Mark Tooley directs the United Methodist committee of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (www.ird-renew.org) in Washington, D.C.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more from the online archives
21.1—January/February 2008
John Chrysostom’s Discovery of the Blessings & Mysteries of Marriage by Mike Aquilina
34.1—January/February 2021
What the World Needs Now It Hardly Knows by Anthony Esolen
25.3—May/Jun 2012
Calls for Freedom, Democracy & Secularism End Up with None of the Above by Hunter Baker
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
