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Home > 2008 > MayChristianity Today, May, 2008  |   |  
Where Jim Wallis Stands
The longtime activist on abortion, gay marriage, Iraq — and biblical orthodoxy.



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Jim Wallis wants you to know he's not a liberal. Yes, he's been a chief critic of the Religious Right since its inception, gave the Democratic weekly radio address after the 2006 midterm elections, and has been an often-controversial voice for social justice since his early-'70s days at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. But, he says, his chief critics these days are liberals, not conservatives. "There is a Religious Left in this country, and I'm not a part of it," Wallis said when he stopped by Christianity Today's offices during his February tour for his latest book, The Great Awakening. Meanwhile, he says, theologically conservative evangelicals (especially young ones) are flocking to his message and are "deserting the Religious Right in droves" because it attempted to "restrict the language of 'moral values' to just two issues—abortion and gay marriage."

"For years I have been called a progressive evangelical, but people said that was a misnomer," says Wallis, who turns 60 in June. "The misnomer is becoming a movement."

The Great Awakening is full of prescriptions on the broader social agenda: poverty, genocide in Darfur, global warming, the Iraq war, and other issues widely covered in Wallis's Sojourners magazine and his previous books. But The Great Awakening contains public-policy positions Wallis promotes less often: abortion and gay marriage, those two pillars of the Religious Right. He discussed these issues, and others, in further detail with CT's editors.

You repeatedly cite William Wilberforce as someone who did Christian political engagement right. But aren't your views on abortion—"protecting unborn life in every possible way, but without criminalizing abortion"—fundamentally at odds with Wilberforce's efforts to totally abolish slavery? He felt that "protecting slaves" without criminalizing slavery was unjust.

The abortion debate has really gotten very stale. It's a symbolic legal battle that takes place mostly only in election years. And it's a litmus test on the Left and the Right. No one seems to care about the abortion rate. The Republicans want a constitutional amendment banning abortion. That's just symbolic. It's never going to happen in America. And even if you do ban it, you're still going to have a huge problem in the culture.

But the abortion question is real. It's a moral issue. The number of unborn lives that are lost every year is alarming. It's a moral tragedy. And I want Democrats to say it's a tragedy, and to take it seriously. Whichever Democrat wins, Barack or Hillary, I'm going to work very hard to make abortion reduction a central Democratic Party plank in this election. It never has been before. Their plank is simply a woman's right to choose. That's not adequate. The Democratic Party is not going to call for criminalization, but they can call for serious abortion reduction. And I want Republicans to not have only a plank that they trod over every four years to win elections. I want them to try and actually help reduce the abortion rate.

After I spoke in Chicago, a father came and said, "I'm a father of a Down syndrome child. You know that test that everybody wants you to take to make sure you don't have a Down syndrome child?"

I said, "Yeah. Joy and I were pressured by our doctor to take that test because we're older parents and the chance of Down syndrome is greater. But we wouldn't take it." There was no reason to take it because we wouldn't abort our child. But the pressure was really enormous, and we just finally said, "Hey, we're not taking it. End of conversation."

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Displaying 1 - 3 of 59 comments.See all comments
jj   Posted: April 29, 2008 7:46 PM
I tried to give kk the benefit of the doubt but he has proven to be just another Republican mouthpiece. What makes him think that abortion is a bigger deal than poverty? How could some things be more important than other things? Quite hypocritcal in my view.

Brian   Posted: April 29, 2008 1:50 PM
Wallis aint fooling me, he claims to be against abortion yet supports radical abortionists, claims to be for the poor yet supports socialism, a system proven to hurt the poor, opposed to gay marriage yet supports politicians that will use the courts to impose it by judicial fiat.

Silence Dogood   Posted: April 29, 2008 10:45 AM
Finding himself ordained, Jim Wallis has beaten the drum for the Second Greatest Commandment for many years. He lives and speaks in terms of the Horizontal. Yes, Jesus and Moses encouraged all believers to attend to the needs of their brothers/sisters. However, Moses and Jesus articulated a higher priority embodied in the First and Greatest Commandment. Jim Wallis is silent with regard to that crucial, Vertical, Relationship as well as how much more important Christ/Moses/David emphasize that it is. Why would the interviewer give Wallis a pass on the Vertical topic and permit him to stay in the area he finds so comfortable? While many can fabricate a "construction" that somehow links the second to the First and Greatest Commandment, they know that Moses and Christ used the word "Heart" as the very first thing that must be given to God...then the "Mind"....then our hands and feet "Strength." Challenge Wallis on his exclusion of emphasis of the First and Greatest Commandment!

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