by Jim Wallis

The following is excerpted from Jim Walls’ address at the Sojourners/Call to Renewal Pentecost 2006: Building a Covenant for a New America conference.

(You may gave heard a lot about Sentatoer Obama’s statement at this same conference, but I doybt you will hear or see much covergae of THIS soeech!!)

We are gathering here in the season of Pentecost, as we have done now for 10 years. It is the season when we celebrate the church coming down from that upper room into the streets with the power of the Spirit to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ. The good news that he proclaimed in his opening mission statement in the little town of Nazareth: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.”

To a church whose mission statement hasn’t always reflected his, we are here simply to say this: whatever else the gospel of Jesus Christ is able to change about our lives – overcome our sinful habits and addictions, save our marriages and families, make us responsible people – IF the gospel that we preach does not “bring good news to the poor,” well then, it is simply not the gospel of Jesus Christ – and it is about time that we said that.

To the political leaders of this capitol city, and from the places you all live across this country, we are here to say something else: the days when you could win the support of the religious community by merely speaking the language of family values and the sacredness of life while ignoring the desperate plight of poor people in this wealthy nation and around the world are over. Because for a growing number of people of faith across the political spectrum, you will now be held accountable for how the leadership you offer and the policies you support impact the lives of those whom Jesus called “the least of these.” You see for many of us, poverty is also a life issue and as our bumper sticker says “Poverty is NOT a family value!”

We need a new moral logic that merges personal and social responsibility – a more honest assessment of both the individual decisions and social systems that trap people in poverty. And that is the aim of our “Covenant for a New America.”

We need a new grand alliance between liberals and conservatives to create effective cultural, political, and economic strategies. We need a moral renewal of our priorities and a commitment to advancing the common good. We can overcome poverty, but only if we act together, and only if all sectors of society do what they do best.

We covenant together here, before God and our neighbors, to work and pray for a new America:

An America where everyone able to work is working and able to support a family.

An America where those who are unable to work are compassionately supported.

An America where no child lives in poverty and goes to bed at night hungry.

An America where every person has a roof over their head.

And an America that opens its heart and its budget to our neighbors around the world.

A new America – where all of God’s children have the life and dignity they deserve.

Our message in Washington this week is an invitation.

We invite the churches and the wider religious community to reach beyond our divisions and our differences in order to make a profoundly moral appeal to the nation. The very soul of the nation is at stake in whether America’s promise will truly extend to all of God’s children and whether Americans will recognize that all the world’s children are also God’s and, ultimately, our own.

We invite the nation’s political leaders to set party divisions and rivalries aside to address this fundamentally moral issue and challenge. We implore them to heed the message of the prophets that the nations will be judged not by their military might or gross national product but by how we treat the most vulnerable in our midst, “the least of these,” and we appeal to them to fulfill the American dream of opportunity and the credo of “liberty and justice for all.”

While the world fears American domination, it still looks for American leadership. And the very best defense against terrorism would be the example of the world’s strongest nation leading the world in the moral battle against poverty, disease, intolerance, and oppression.

God bless you for the work you do, and for joining together this week to begin the campaign that will change the American conversation on poverty.