He has been in dialogue with George Bush, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Bono. Inspired at a young age by Martin Luther King, today he is one of the most respected and best connected evangelicals in the world. Pull up a chair and follow Jim Wallis’s chat with Tearfund’s Jon Stanhope about the world’s big issues. An abridged version of this interview appears in the latest issue of Tear Times.
JS: There’s widely held belief that Christians shouldn’t meddle in politics. Why should Christians get involved in something that often involves messy compromise?
JW: The gospel is not just for Christians; it’s for the world. It’s meant not just to change our lives, but the world. God is personal, but never private.
Look at what the prophets deal with: land, labour, capital, equity, justice, fairness. That’s what they talk about: the stuff of fairness. Who do they talk to? They talk to political leaders, rulers, kings, employers, judges. Who do they talk about? Widows, orphans, workers, poor vulnerable left behind people. This is the stuff of politics. Now we’re not to conform to the messy compromises. We’re to change politics, change the agenda.
That’s what social movements always do. Martin Luther King didn’t just accept the systems the way they were. He transformed American life by taking his faith public. I want to take our faith public, then you take on, you confront, you transform the messy compromise of politics. Wilberforce ended the slave trade. It took him 30 years. Martin Luther King was responsible for a civil rights law in 1964 that changed America. And the Voting Acts Right in 1965 gave the heirs of slaves the right to vote.
So we’re not into it to conform or compromise; we’re in it to transform politics. That’s what we do.
Jim Wallis has been arrested numerous times for non-violent civil disobedience in the cause of justice for people who are poor. Photo: Sojourners/Call to Renewal staff photographer Ryan Beiler
JS: A survey of Tearfund supporters suggested many of them disliked seeing politicians in our publications. How important is it for organisations like Tearfund to encourage evangelicals to engage with the world?
There is nothing more important. Jesus engaged with the real world.
I want you to realise how important Jubilee 2000 was for the rest of us. Here was a faith-inspired movement from Britain about debt cancellation that changed the whole global poverty debate. And Gordon Brown says we wouldn’t have cancelled this debt without the influence of that church - based and inspired movement. He says that openly. Gordon Brown says that the most important movement in Britain since Wilberforce and the slave trade was Jubilee 2000, so you’re having an influence on people like Gordon Brown, which he acknowledges.
So we’re not trying to idealise political leaders or politics; we’re saying we’re here to change the world. We’re really here to change lives and the world and so you engage with business people and political leaders and all kinds of people because you want to change the world. And you can’t compromise your integrity but you hold them accountable; that’s the important thing and you help them sometimes to do the right thing.
JS: Steve Chalke said recently God’s politics is neither left nor right. Is that accurate or would you argue that Jesus’ teachings have a socialist slant?
JW: I like the term ‘prophetic politics’; that’s more biblical. Prophetic politics has the capacity to challenge both left and right. I talk about the moral centre of our political discourse, which people are hungry for. Don’t go left or right, go deeper. I like the prophetic tradition in the Bible that always pushes the political leaders and doesn’t take sides. There’s much the left and the right have to learn from prophetic politics.
JS: So socialist isn’t a label you’re comfortable with?
JW: No, it’s a political and economic term. And in America no one talks about socialism. Nobody. Not even the left.
JS: Tearfund’s International President René Padilla said in Tear Times [Tearfund's quarterly magazine] recently that the world economic system was evil. Do you agree?
Well, that’s a strong thing for a Christian leader to say. But why wouldn’t you call evil an economy where half of God’s children live on US$2 a day, a billion on US$1 a day, and 30,000 children die every day? How could you not call that evil?
There are terrible things happening in our world, to poor people, to children. A global economy that says drugs that can save and enhance lives are only available in the rich places for rich people. Vaccinations that save the lives of children are only available in the wealthy countries. That’s a matter of justice. That is a matter of good and evil. There are structures and systems and habits that are evil, that are killing people. That doesn’t mean that you’re attacking everybody who’s caught up in the structures. I just think we’ve got to change those habits, those structures, those policies, which result in very evil things being done to people.
JS: So it’s the structures that are evil rather than those who make them?
JW: Well, all of us struggle. Paul says, ‘I do that I wish I wasn’t doing’. Solzhenitsyn says that good and evil is a line that runs through every nation and through every human heart. So we’ve got choices to make all the time. But I don’t see it as one group of people is evil and one group of people is good. That’s the mistake that Americans make in their foreign policy. ‘There are evildoers out there and we’re the good ones in here.’ If you can’t see that evil is real in the face of September 11, you’re suffering from some kind of moral relativism. But to say ‘they’re evil and we’re good’ is bad theology, and that leads to bad foreign policy.
JS: René also doubted that change was possible at structural level – in the sense that concessions given to poor countries are likely to be clawed back some other way. Are you more optimistic?
René is right. We have a mountain to move here. Agricultural subsidies basically pay European cows US$2 a day, while 1.2 billion people live on less than US$1 a day. Bono said in Washington DC at a prayer breakfast [attended by George Bush] that a lot of people might rather be a cow so that’s evil, that’s wrong. West African farmers can’t sell their products to make a living for their families because of rules that tilt towards wealthy countries.
We’ve got a mountain to move but my Bible says if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move a mountain. So we’ve got to cancel the debt of the poorest countries – all of them. We’ve got to dramatically increase aid from the wealthy countries and make sure it is being used well in the poor countries. Then we have to move to trade justice. Debt, aid and trade – that’s the template; that’s the way forward. Can we do it? My faith tells me yes. Is it going to be easy? My history tells me no. But that’s why we need social movements that can move mountains in faith. It sounds like a job for faith to me.
JS: What’s your take on institutions like the IMF and World Bank? Do you think they are genuinely able or willing to reform in a way that would lift millions out of poverty?
JW: The jury is still out on that question. The IMF and the World Bank have imposed structural adjustments on poor countries that have made poverty worse. They also have people that I know, working for both, who care deeply about poverty. They are trying to make a difference. There is a battle going on within those institutions about whether they are focused on economic growth, which benefits the top end of societies, or on an anti-poverty agenda, which really benefits those on the bottom. A lot of things the World Bank has done have institutionalised and entrenched poverty further. Other things have probably helped and made a difference. We have to really put pressure on the World Bank and the IMF to change their policies so they assist poor countries to move out of poverty.
JS: A lot of young people in Britain are disillusioned with the political process, given that a million people marched about going to war in Iraq but Tony Blair carried on regardless. How do you encourage Tearfund supporters to make a difference?
JW: I just talked to an American reporter on the train about our budget battle in the US. We lost by one vote in the Senate and two votes in the House of Representatives. The budget that was passed was draconian. It cut services for poor people while increasing tax cuts for the wealthiest and deploying more and more money for war in Iraq.
He said, “Well, you lost that. So what does that say about the movement?” And I say, “We lost!” For the first time, the journalist caught me and said, “We have never had the religious community focus on a budget before” – and food stamps, and health care and education for poor children. Never before. They have always been focused on abortion and marriage. Now the word Christian or evangelical is placed alongside defending poor families from assaults by governments that are giving windfalls to the wealthy and taking food out of the mouths of children.
No, we didn’t win the battle, but we waged the fights – and those networks that exist around the country – and remember it took Wilberforce 30 years and he lost 20 times before he won. So the movement’s momentum was going in the right direction.
Same on the global issues. I think, when we went to war in Iraq, it wasn’t the failure of the peace movement; it was a failure of democracy. The world showed that it was against the war. The majority of Christians around the world were opposed to the war in Iraq. The majority of evangelicals around the world were opposed to the war in Iraq. In America the Baptists were for it; most of the rest of us were against it. And so millions marched, and George Bush and Tony Blair went to war anyway. That’s a failure of democracy to make a difference. George Bush ignored the wisdom of Christian leaders around the world and went to war despite opposition from most church bodies around the world. So did we fail? No. We didn’t stop the war but we demonstrated. I’ve never seen such unity in opposition to any war as we saw in the war on Iraq.
So you don’t win every skirmish and you are paying a heavy price in Iraq. The consequences are so awful for American and British servicemen and women and their families, for Iraqis – untold numbers of casualties. The world is not safer. The world is more dangerous now. The world hates America and Britain more now. And this was a mistake, a distraction. We said it would be and it has become worse than we had feared. But the churches did say so many of the right things and I am proud of the churches for standing up to the war in Iraq.
JS: Is Tony Blair regretful about it? Or I suppose it is something he can never admit publicly.
JW: All I can say about Blair and the war is I really appreciate the fact that he welcomed American church leaders to talk to him. We had a very good, engaging moral, theological, political conversation for over an hour. President Bush wouldn’t talk to church leaders he disagreed with and I think that that was sad and a tragic mistake. Tony Blair did, and I respect that. We disagreed in the end. We have had conversations since on the G8, poverty and other matters. I respect him still and we disagree on the war on Iraq. All I know is what you know from what he says publicly. I’ve never heard anything different in private from what he says.
But a number of church leaders came back from that meeting and launched a six-point plan. If Clare Short and others had come a month earlier it might have been an alternative. It was a way of removing Saddam from power and disarming him of whatever weapons he had without bombing the children of Baghdad. That American six-point plan was being considered at the UN, the Vatican; it was being talked about in the British Cabinet according to Clare Short and even at the US State Department, where they were looking for some other way than fighting the war in Iraq at that moment in history. So, again, I learned from that: that protest is good but alternatives are better. If we’re interested in justice in Iraq, on economics, on the environment, we ought to not just be against bad stuff; we have to demonstrate a better way. A better way to find security. A better way to deal with real threats like Saddam Hussein. Better ways than the kind of war we fought. Better ways to take on the global economy. Better ways to ensure poor countries can trade and grow their way out of poverty.
JS: The Observer recently described you as Gordon Brown’s guru.
JW: That was ridiculous and sensationalised. Gordon Brown does not need gurus. I’m glad to be his friend and partner around the issue of poverty. I admire his political values. I admire his moral leadership on Africa and poverty and that is our point of connection. But that term is laughable. I smiled and I’m sure he laughed
JS: What is your assessment of Gordon Brown as a potential future prime minister?
JW: I agree with what Bono said at the World Economic Forum in Davos: ‘We’ve never had a finance minister like this.’ He is the Western leader who might care most deeply about global poverty. It’s in his gut; it’s a passion. I feel it from him; I admire it in him and I’d love to see a prime minister who really made ending extreme poverty his political legacy. I think we have a real chance for that in someone like Gordon Brown.
JS: Bob Geldof gave the G8 10 out of 10 on aid and 8 out of 10 on debt. What would you give them?
Less! I think Tony Blair really made an effort to get the wealthy nations to take more responsibility and I think he really persuaded them to do more in some important ways; but I think they fell short – particularly the United States. It has doubled aid to Africa, I’d give the Bush administration credit for that; but we started so far back and there is so much further to go. Tripled aid to healthcare: the US$15 million on HIV and AIDS. I applauded that when it happened. We have saved lives in Africa, for example around malaria – I’m glad for that. But we have so much further to go.
The response does not yet begin to match the crisis, so I think Gleneagles fell short. What many had hoped for – I am sure what Bob Geldof hoped in the Live 8 concerts – didn’t happen. I think they hoped for more. I hoped for more. I wouldn’t do 10 out of 10 and I wouldn’t do 8 out of 10; I think the numbers are lower. But progress was made. The world became much more aware. Promises were made that now must be monitored and those who made them held to account. So we are moving in the right direction but we have a long way to go.
JS: One criticism of Make Poverty History was that it became too celebrity-driven and that while Live 8 massively boosted its media profile it overshadowed efforts at grassroots level. Do you think that’s fair?
JW: I think Bono understands and he has been saying lately things that make me know he does understand; that celebrity won’t be enough to overcome poverty. We need a social movement. Bono is far more than a rock star who writes a few lyrics about poverty. He has become a serious, dedicated activist. He knows the issues. This is his primary commitment. This is his passion. This is what drives him. He is pretty unique in that way, I think, among rock stars and celebrities. Many of them come and sing in the concerts but to see that kind of commitment is pretty rare and yet he knows that his celebrity isn’t enough and he wants to put himself in the context of a movement.
The deeper he goes into this the more he talks about his faith. After the speech he gave at the Washington prayer breakfast I said, “That’s as religious as I’ve ever heard you speak.” He preached, basically. Bono said, ‘I am not a man of the cloth – unless leather counts.’ He talked about God as with the poor. We are with God when we are with the poor – and God is with us. So I think Bono is doing what he can. He’s working tirelessly around the clock on this; this isn’t just a sideline.
JS: In terms of the US, do you think Make Poverty History has made inroads there?
JW: The equivalent to Make Poverty History in the US is the One campaign, which basically is asking for an additional one per cent of the US budget for overseas aid. Poverty as an issue is really capturing the hearts and minds of a new generation of US Christians. It is the issue, the driving force, the mobilising issue. On Christian college campuses these days – I go to all of them – there is standing room only; they’re sitting on the floor and they care much more about poverty, HIV and AIDS and the environment than they do about gay marriage and that kind of issue.
Gleneagles focused on debt and focused on aid, and what came out of that clearly was a need for more focus on trade. At Davos, in the conversations about Africa and about poverty, everybody – business people, political people, development people – was acknowledging that that trade is the issue that has to be resolved and we are a long way from it right now.
JS: You’ve met some of the world’s most powerful people, including George Bush. Does power always corrupt politicians, even those who say they are practising Christians?
JW: Power is always very seductive and I think it was very important for Martin Luther King that he was based in a movement outside the corridors of power. He navigated those corridors. He could speak to the people of power, but his base was outside. That is critical. Access to powerful people by itself can be seductive and unless you move outside of it you can be brought along and compromised and you can accept too little. In Washington DC access is the aim itself; to have access to people who have power. To drop their names; who you called; who called you back; who called you and who you just met with. It becomes its own reward and so people run around having access to each other – and nothing much changes.
Access without content, without change, doesn’t matter for very much. So who you talk to and who you know is a lot less important than how you are moving the agenda; how you are changing the climate; how you are making change and transformation more possible. If the access helps with that, then it can be a good thing. But yes, Lord Acton was right, power does tend to corrupt and absolute power can corrupt absolutely; there is truth in that. But you don’t remove yourself to be self-righteous and sit on some city on a hill and claim that you are pure. You’ve got to engage and you’ve got to fight to maintain your integrity, your independence, your prophetic edge. And the best way is to do it in a movement so that it isn’t just about you and who you know.
JS: You mentioned that Gordon Brown said that a lot of debt wouldn’t have been cancelled had it not been for Jubilee 2000. Is that passing the buck? In other words, can’t politicians follow a moral agenda rather than public opinion?
JW: There are three groups. One group will do the right thing, even if it costs them in the next election. I can count them on about one hand. The second group are those who would like to do the right thing, like Lyndon Johnson – but without the public support probably won’t. The third group are those who just want to be re-elected and that’s why it’s important to do what I call changing the wind.
I have this metaphor of politicians with their wet fingers up in the air seeing which way the wind’s blowing. We think that by changing one wet-fingered politician with another you change society. But King and Gandhi and the great leaders knew that you change society by changing the wind. Change the way the wind’s blowing and it’s amazing how many people come along.
JS: You often hold up Micah as one of the prophets most relevant to today. Why Micah?
JW: Because Micah had the insight that, as he says in chapter 4, ‘they will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks.’ Then it follows, ‘and everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree and no one shall make them afraid.’ It is making the connection between security on the one hand and on the other, poverty and resentment and anger and those things which make fear, resentment and hate so attractive.
If people have some patch, some little piece of the planet on which they can build a life for themselves and their family, they are much more likely not to be ruled by fear or by hate or by resentment. I think our security – as the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams says, there is no security today apart from common security. Pope Paul VI said: if you want peace, work for justice. That was Micah’s insight.
That doesn’t mean that poverty causes terrorism in a simplistic way; there are cultural, religious, ideological issues as well. There are deep political grievances like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; like foreign troops in Saudi Arabia; the support of the West for feudal, dictatorial regimes that oppress their own people and make democracy impossible. There are legitimate grievances that lead to inexcusable terrorism. But how do we deal with the grievances to cut down on the inexcusable terrorism? That is an insight that I wish more political leaders would make and I think Micah makes that clear.
JS: You also admire Martin Luther King. What special qualities did he have?
JW: He was a person of faith. He was a Baptist pastor and yet he convened a moral discourse on politics that everybody got invited to. He is the archetypal example of how to bring faith into politics, I think; he just did it so well. The descendent of former slaves taught American democracy by invoking the names of Jesus, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Micah. It was an amazing thing to see.
JS: And you were part of that movement?
JW: I was a kid. I was 14 and this minister came along, so I got in on the tail end, but read or listened to all the speeches, and read the stories and the history and it was very informative in my life – what happened during that civil rights’ movement.
JW: Who stands out for you today who is engaged in social action?
JS: René Padilla in Latin America, my friends Tony Campolo, Ron Sider and John Perkins in the US. In Britain John Stott legitimised for a whole generation of evangelicals the connection between evangelism and social justice. Now I see a whole new generation coming of age and they are following the footsteps of Martin Luther King, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador.
Desmond Tutu is a contemporary example of a prophet in South Africa. I learnt more about hope in South Africa than any place I’ve ever been – the power and promise of hope. Desmond used to say ‘as people of faith we are prisoners of hope’ and I love that. I think we have plenty of examples of people who put faith into action and now it’s our turn to become one of those – I call it ‘cloud of witnesses’, that wonderful image from Hebrews. I have all these pictures in my study at home: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jr, Desmond Tutu and Dorothy Day of the Catholic worker movement from my country – so many people who have influenced me. They are my cloud of witnesses, my family tree.
I love the image in Hebrews where they are kind of cheering for us. It is said that their faith won’t be fulfilled except through us. They have a big investment in us. Vincent Harding, who was a disciple of King, says it so well: “It’s like we’re all in this field and in the mud and the fight is getting dirty, and they are up in the stands and they are cheering for us, like the cheerleading section: “Don’t give up. Keep going. Stay strong. I’ve got a lot invested in you.” – is kind of what they are saying to us. So they are very much alive in my heart and in my mind – all those people.
JS: You often refer to the 19th century evangelicals. Why do you aspire to be like them?
JW: Because they got it! They were revivalists and reformers, evangelists and abolitionists. They connected faith and justice. Charles Finney, who I love most of all, was the Billy Graham of his day; the father, they say, of modern evangelism in America. He invented the altar-call to sign his converts up for the anti-slavery campaign. It was a powerful connection: come to Christ and join the battle against slavery. He made a direct connection between the two. I want to take poverty: come to Christ and enlist in the battle to overcome poverty; that’s what Finney I think would be doing today.
JS: Since we published an interview with René in Tear Times, we have had a lot of letters from supporters saying they feel uneasy about the gospel being portrayed as being more about social action than the forgiveness of sins. What would you say to that?
JW: I would say read the gospels. And in the black churches I have not found this separation of personal salvation and social justice. People came to Christ and they fed hungry people and they housed the homeless and they fought for civil rights.
Jesus came to bring a new order of things. He didn’t come just to save our souls. He said, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.’ He didn’t say, ‘Repent, I’m about to save your souls.’ A whole new order is about to break in. If you want to be a part of that new order that he talks about in Matthew, Mark and Luke, you’ve got to have the kind of rebirth that John talks about. You will be born again so you can be quick to participate in a whole new order of things.
Then he gives the Sermon on the Mount that tells us how we behave in the kingdom. This is how we live. This is the new order. This is the Magna Carta of the kingdom. That’s what the Beatitudes are. ‘Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are those who are weak. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice. Blessed are the peace-makers.’ This is our constitution. This is the new order we signed up for and this is how we live – in the world. It’s about changing individual lives so that we can participate in the changing of the world.
JS: A lot of Tearfund’s supporting churches that got involved in Make Poverty History found it a good way of getting people who weren’t Christians along to events and services.
JW: Exactly, because the more credible we are, the more we stand for what Jesus stood for, the more people are drawn to the gospel. The two hungers in the world today are for spirituality and social justice. The connection between the two is the one the world is waiting for. Spirituality without justice in an affluent society can turn easily into consumerism and narcissism. But the fight for justice without spirituality can lead to despair, bitterness, anger and burn-out. That’s why spirituality and the fight for justice, they need each other.
JS: How important is prayer to your work? Do you really believe it can make a difference in really dark situations like Darfur, in northern Uganda? And for instance prayer for leaders like Mugabe – do you think there is a realistic chance that you are going to change his heart?
JW: I believe that prayer first changes us. We pray, it’s not like we’re telling God something He doesn’t know. ‘Aunt Lucy is sick, Lord.’ ‘Oh my goodness, I hadn’t heard!’ It’s like – stop talking. Prayer is first of all listening to what God might say to us and then making our pleas, putting our lives before God. I think prayer is powerful; prayer is political; prayer changes things.
Desmond Tutu once said he was told by a group of nuns who were living somewhere in Austria or South America, that they get up at 5 o’clock every morning and pray for him. He said “the strength that I felt every day in South Africa knowing that these faithful women, in a cloistered convent, were getting up and praying for me. I meet with people on the road who tell me they are praying for me and they are almost embarrassed to say it, or it’s like “I’m sure you’re too busy”. It means so much to me to know that people are praying for you. I think it is very powerful and prayer changes us. It is meant to change us. But activism without prayer can become bereft after a while, and prayer without taking in the world can lose its integrity. You know it’s for the sake of the world that we pray.
JS: We talked about Micah. Who are the false prophets of our time?
JW: I don’t want to name too many names but we have too many television preachers who don’t sound much like Jesus when they call for the assassination of foreign leaders and the wiping out of towns in Pennsylvania that don’t work the way they think they should. Or when they blame God for the heart attack of the Israeli Prime Minister because he turned over the Promised Land to the Palestinians. I mean, I am embarrassed by that kind of talk. It’s really offensive. It’s not becoming.
It’s not faithful to the gospel. I am embarrassed by Britons and others thinking that people like this speak for most American Christians. They do not. They have loud voices. They do not speak for most American Christians.
JS: Tearfund made climate change a key focus while campaigning. Do you think this is an area where Christians can make a realistic impact?
JW: Yes, and I think making this a religious issue is critical. There’s an evangelical climate initiative now just launched in the US. It’s very hopeful, crossing political lines, Republicans and Democrats, but people of faith think this is an issue of creation care and they are right. So it is a critical issue on a global scale and making this a spiritual imperative is a helpful thing. This is one of the issues a new generation of young evangelicals most gravitate to.
JS: You don’t think that while China is going through an industrial revolution that whole thing is out of control anyway?
JW: I never want to say that any problem is too big. There are mountains, but they are not too big to move. We don’t give up. God hasn’t given up on his world and neither should we. There are issues there. How do you really make sure economic growth is possible for poor countries when they don’t pay the price of the wealthy nations probably becoming environmentally sensitive? There are issues of justice there. But you know, refitting the world ecologically; refitting the world for a new energy transformation could create all kinds of jobs and economic sustainability. So how do we ensure economic growth for poor countries and yet respect the earth at the same time? It isn’t easy. But again, faith can move mountains.
JS: Do you have a message for Tearfund supporters who have given and prayed and increasingly taken to the streets about justice issues?
I think the movement in the churches is really one from charity to justice. When I read the Bible, God doesn’t call us to charity. God calls us to justice. We are generous people and we want to give. We want to adopt kids and we want to sponsor kids. But the Bible doesn’t talk about poor people; it talks about poverty and the causes of poverty. The word oppression was a biblical word, a word of prophets, long before Karl Marx wrote anything down. This is a biblical word – hardness of heart, structures, policies, the way things are arranged.
The Bible takes these things on and when you hold children hostage to the unpayable debt that is imposed on them by dictators and the elites of their country and they have to pay the price for it in lack of education, health care, nutrition – it’s a justice issue. When drugs that could save lives aren’t available because of where they live, that is a justice issue. When you can’t trade your goods because of subsidies from wealthy countries that control the market, that’s a justice question. So Tearfund supporters – show them the generosity, the compassion, the care, but sometimes you can’t just keep pulling bodies out of the river; you’ve got to send somebody upstream to see what or who is throwing them in.
JS: Yes, and you don’t think the term evangelical is tarnished beyond redemption?
JW: No! I want to take it back. It’s a good term. I want to claim it. I’m an evangelical. Nineteenth century, born the wrong century! But now we see a bunch of 19th-century evangelicals for the 21st century. That’s my hope. That’s my prayer. That’s what I want to be part of.
Jim Wallis is the founder and executive director of Sojourners, a US Christian initiative that calls for the integration of spiritual renewal and social justice. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Tearfund.