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Wallis: 'It's Time to Take Our Theology Back'

By Stan Friedman

CHICAGO, IL (February 5, 2005) - "Ideology is a principality," Jim Wallis told the audience gathered for breakfast Friday morning during the closing address of the Midwinter Pastors Conference of the Evangelical Covenant Church.

Wallis is the editor-in-chief and executive editor of Sojourners magazine. He also has published several books related to Christianity and political life. His latest is God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It.

Wallis describes himself as a nineteenth century evangelical born in the wrong century. In the earlier century, he explained, the church was the wellspring of the abolition and women's suffrage movement as well as the fight for child labor laws. One of the most noted revivalists of the century, Charles Finney, was the person who started the altar call because he wanted to be able to get the names of addresses of people so he could enlist them in the fight against slavery.

But politics has poisoned the well. In the national capital, Wallis said, "You take a problem and you figure out who to blame it on." He jokingly asked the audience, "Did you know that every issue has two sides?" We have reduced to "narrow political parties," Wallis said, arguing that "religion doesn't neatly fit into the categories of left and right." Wallis received "Amens" when he declared, "Ideology has trumped theology. It's time to take our theology back."

A reporter one time suggested to Wallis that the activist must be disappointed at the presidential election outcome because his candidate lost. Wallis responded by saying, "Mine wasn't running." Republicans, he said, have reduced moral values to the two issues of abortion and gay marriage. Wallis said even officials at Focus on the Family said they agreed with him that gay marriage is not the cause of the decline of heterosexual marriage. "Let's talk about family for real," Wallis said. "Parenting has become a counter cultural activity in America." He added that "marriage is an anti-poverty measure."

Democrats have failed to give a theological basis for the other moral issues, he believes. A pro-life activist, Wallis says he constantly is telling Democrats that they are supporting the wrong side of the issue and should allow pro-life Democrats roles in the upper echelons of the party.

Wallis was adamant in stating that moral values also include the issues of war, poverty and the environment. "Telling the truth about going to war is a moral value," Wallis said. "In the end neither political party is going to be happy about having a real conversation on moral values."

He criticized the political "right" for using their political in a crass and narrow manner, and argued that liberals have been dismissive of religion, or suggesting that it should at least be kept private. "I say to the Dems', where would we be if Martin Luther king kept his faith to himself?"

"The privatizing of faith is the great heresy of the 20th century," Wallis declared. "This God is a public God." Young people are beginning to be able to cross the great divide and combine biblical faith with a social conscience that transcends political ideology, Wallis said. They are seeing past the "selective moralities of political ideologies." Wallis said the challenge to the church is "to create the moral and political will" to speak to the principalities of the ideologies of the left and right so that justice and mercy across the moral values spectrum can be achieved.

Wallis criticized those who would be cynics, who are always saying that the problems are too big and the resources too small. Speaking again of King, Wallis said, "We hail him and then use him for an excuse as to why we don't do anything."

Speaking of the Covenant during his opening remarks, Wallis said, "I really think that this is the most interesting and intriguing denomination now in the country, because you are genuinely evangelical – genuinely so – and you have a genuine social conscience." In concluding his remarks, he suggested that the Covenant is the one to pick up King's mantle and to lead the fight to throw away the ideologies and "testify to what's right and what works."

Pastors, he said, should encourage people "not to seek career advancement and give the edges of their lives – which is the lifestyle of most – but to live out of the vocations at the center of their lives." Vocations, he said, are at their best when giftedness is used to meet the evils of the world. "Challenge your people to do something big with their faith."

(Editor's note: to read more of Wallis' remarks about the Covenant and its president, please see Wallis Praises Palmberg.

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