An elder statesman of the social justice movement in the church, Jim Wallis is as widely read and respected outside of the US as in his home country. Or perhaps more so. The US church is very polarised, and many evangelicals would never countenance voting anything other than Republican, which makes Wallis’s theological and social positions on welfare and collective responsibility unpalatable. They’re much more recognisable to Christians in Europe, where his 2005 book God’s Politics: Why The Right Gets It Wrong And The Left Doesn’t Get It is widely considered seminal in inspiring the church to understand mission more broadly than solely proselytising.
He’s not a fan of Trump. He told us that the white evangelicals who voted for him will live to regret it, and that they owe an explanation to their black brothers and sisters who are alienated by his Presidency. Condemning the privileged “rightness of whiteness”, he points out that the black church were way ahead of white evangelicals in engaging in political and civic life when they helped lead the civil rights movement.
Hear more of his forthright opinions and warnings to the church in our cutting room floor interview.
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