Quotes from Jim Wallis

When religion is manipulated for political gain, faith loses its prophetic stance.

How do we nurture both families and communities, promote a civil discourse, and approach problems with solutions and hope instead of fear and blame?

the principle of always seeking an alternative applies to nonviolence as well. It is this: If nonviolence is to be credible, it must answer the questions that violence purports to answer, but in a better way.

Wealthy Christians talk about the poor but have no friends who are poor. So they merely speculate on the reasons for their condition, often placing the blame on the poor themselves.

The religious conviction that challenges us to see the image of God in every person is an absolute barrier to the practice of torture.

In recent years, when conservative white Christians began to construct their political agendas, a recognition of racism's reality was absent from the issues list of abortion, homosexuality, tax cuts for the middle class, and, yes, opposition to affirmative action.

Our foreign policy has become an aggressive assertion of military superiority in a defensive and reactive mode, seeking to protect us against growing and invisible threats instead of addressing the root causes of those threats.

As Jane Lampman, who wrote the Monitor article, put it, "The Gospel, some evangelicals are quick to point out, teaches that the line separating good and evil runs not between nations, but inside every human heart."20

Instead of imposing rigid pro-choice and pro-life political litmus tests, why not work together on teen pregnancy, adoption reform, and real alternatives for women backed into dangerous and lonely corners?

I have always learned the most about the world by going to places I was never supposed to be and being with people I was never supposed to meet.

While precise numbers from the FBI's antiterrorism efforts aren't available regarding white-power violence specifically, it's instructive and disturbing that of 5,000 currently open terrorism investigations, only 900, or less than 20 percent, are focused on domestic terrorism.18 This clashes with the recognition by ADL and many others that right-wing terrorism, especially of the white supremacist variety, is the most deadly terrorist threat in the United States.

Oh, then you must be the religious Left." No, not at all, and the very question is the problem. Just because a religious Right has fashioned itself for political power in one utterly predictable ideological guise does not mean that those who question this political seduction must be their opposite political counterpart.

How does allegiance to the Christian Prince of Peace or the God of the Hebrew prophets square with a national security policy that still relies on threatening the use of nuclear weapons—something all of our religious traditions abhor?

Exclusively private faith degenerates into a narrow religion, excessively preoccupied with individual and sexual morality while almost oblivious to the biblical demands for public justice. In the end, private faith becomes a merely cultural religion providing the assurance of righteousness for people just like us.

It was one of the best examples I have seen of the church stepping up to be the church.

One megachurch pastor told me, "I only have our people for two hours per week, if I am lucky, and Fox News has them 24/7.

Fundamentalism is essentially a revolt against modernity. It is a reaction usually based on profound fear and defensiveness against "losing the faith.

The Confederate flag had been raised above the South Carolina statehouse in 1962—in direct defiance of racial integration and the civil rights movement3—and has been used as an emblem of white hate and violence against black people ever since. It is therefore an anti-Christian flag that helped inspire the murder of black Christians on June 17, 2015.

If white Christians acted more Christian than white, black parents would have less to fear for their children.

The lack of vision in public life and the emptying out of values that visionless leadership creates lead to a politics of complaint.

White privilege is a sin of which we must repent, and the best way to show that is by changing practices and policies—and by helping to create new communities that provide for another way.

he reminds us of Christ. When he asks, "If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?"9 he reminds us of Christ.

The heart of racism was and is economic, though its roots and results are also deeply cultural, psychological, sexual, religious, and, of course, political. Due to 246 years of brutal slavery and an additional 100 years of legal segregation and discrimination, no area of the relationship between black and white people in the United States is free from the legacy of racism.

Living in faith is knowing that even though our little work, our little seed, our little brick, our little block may not make the whole thing, the whole thing exists in the mind of God, and that whether or not we are there to see the whole thing is not the most important matter. The most important thing is whether we have entered into the process.