115 Quotes by Jim Wallis

I think it’s a good thing for a president or political leaders to want to put their values or their faith into action. Desmond Tutu did that in South Africa. Martin Luther King Jr. did that here. This is a good thing.

For people of faith and conscience, these issues about implicit racial bias and the realities of white privilege in our society are not just political matters; they are moral and religious questions.

Martin Luther King Jr. really understood the role of the churches when he said, ‘The church is not meant to be the master of the state.’ We don’t sort of take power and grab the levers of government and impose our agenda down people’s throats.

I believe in the separation of church and state, absolutely. But I don’t believe in the separation of public life from our values, our basic values, and for many of us, our religious values.

But when one believes that you’ve been appointed by God for a particular mission in history, you have to be very careful about that, how you speak about that. Where is the self-reflection in that? Where is the humility in that?

No historic presidential election, no athlete or entertainer’s success, no silent tolerance of one another is enough to create the truth and reconciliation needed to eliminate racial inequality or the presumption of guilt. We’re going to have to collectively acknowledge our failures at dealing with racial bias. People of faith are going to have to raise their voices and take action. Reading this extraordinary new work by Jim Wallis is a very good place to start.

And when it comes to the dangers of political autocracy and the rise of authoritarian behavior, people in the faith community must be among the first to raise the challenge. Our “Reclaiming Jesus” declaration concludes its proposition on our commitment to “Christ’s way of leadership” with this commitment: “We believe authoritarian political leadership is a theological danger threatening democracy and the common good – and we will resist it.

Trade is now clearly designed to favor the wealthiest and most powerful corporations at the expense of the rest of us. The three wealthiest people on earth now control more assets than the combined incomes of 600 million people in the world’s 48 poorest countries.

If evil in this world is deeply human and very real, and religious people believe it is, it just doesn’t make spiritual sense to suggest that the evil all lies “out there” with our adversaries and enemies, and none of it is “in here” with us – embedded in our own attitudes, behaviors, and policies.