Jim Wallis is a bestselling author, public theologian, speaker, and international commentator on ethics and public life. He recently served on the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships and currently serves as the chair of the Global Agenda Council on Faith for the World Economic Forum. His latest book is Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street -- A Moral Compass for the New Economy. His two previous books, The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post–Religious Right America and God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It were both New York Times bestsellers. He is president and CEO of Sojourners where he is editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine, which has a combined print and electronic media readership of more than 250,000 people. Jim frequently speaks in the United States and abroad. His columns appear in major newspapers, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe . He frequently appears on radio and television, as a commentator on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News – on shows such as Meet the Press, Hardball, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The O’Reilly Factor, and on National Public Radio. He teaches a course on “Faith, Social Justice, and Public Life” at Georgetown University and has also taught at Harvard University. He has written 10 books, which include Faith Works: The Soul of Politics: A Practical and Prophetic Vision for Change; Who Speaks for God? A New Politics of Compassion, Community, and Civility; and The Call to Conversion.
Jim Wallis was raised in an evangelical family in the Midwest. As a teenager, his questioning of the racial segregation in his church and community led him to the black churches and neighborhoods of inner-city Detroit. He spent his student years involved in the civil rights and antiwar movements. While at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Illinois, Jim and several other students started a small magazine and community with a Christian commitment to social justice which has now grown into a national faith-based organization. In 1979, Time magazine named Jim Wallis one of the "50 Faces for America's Future."
Jim lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife, Joy Carroll, one of the first women ordained in the Church of England and author of Beneath the Cassock: The Real-life Vicar of Dibley, and their young sons, Luke and Jack. He is a Little League baseball coach.
Sojourners magazine is a voice and vision for social change. Founded in 1971 by Jim Wallis, Sojourners provides an alternative perspective on faith, politics, and culture. Ecumenical and progressive, Sojourners lifts up the biblical connection between social justice and spiritual renewal.
On the Road
Come hear Jim speak in the coming months on behalf of Sojourners:
Jim Wallis regularly offers commentary and analysis for radio and television, and writes guest columns for national newspapers. Recent media clips include:
The Great Awakening: Seven Ways to Change the World
What would it take to change the world? What would it take to end extreme poverty, to address climate change, to create peace? For too long, a narrow religious agenda has been used like a wedge to divide people. But a wider and deeper vision of faith and values is emerging. It's a renewal of faith – a great awakening – that combines personal faith with social justice. A new social movement is on the rise. The Great Awakening is upon us.
God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It God's Politics offers a clarion call to make both our religious communities and our government more accountable to key values of the prophetic religious tradition. Our biblical faith and religious traditions simply do not allow us as a nation to continue to ignore the poor and marginalized, deny racial justice, tolerate the ravages of war, or turn away from the human rights of those made in the image of God. These are the values of love and justice, reconciliation, and community that Jesus taught and that are at the core of what many of us believe, Christian or not.
The Soul of Politics: Beyond 'Religious Right' and 'Secular Left'
Jim Wallis responds to signs of cultural breakdown and political impasse with a resounding and highly moving call to reintegrate politics and spirituality - a call for a new political morality combining social justice with personal responsibility.
The Great Awakening: Seven Ways to Change the World
God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It
Faith Works: How Faith-based Organizations are Changing Lives, Neighborhoods, and America
The Soul of Politics: Beyond 'Religious Right' and 'Secular Left'
The Call to Conversion: Recovering the Gospel for These Times