Jim Wallis President, Sojourners/Call to Renewal Jim Wallis is president and executive director of Sojourners/Call to Renewal, progressive Christian movements founded to fight poverty and promote social justice. He also is the author of the best-selling God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It (2005). The “On Faith” panelist was raised in a Midwest evangelical family. 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, Wallis and several other students started a small magazine and community with a Christian commitment to social justice that has grown into a national faith-based organization and network. In 1979, Time magazine named Wallis one of the “50 Faces for America’s Future.” Wallis also is editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine and speaks at more than 200 events each year. Some of his other books 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 Call to Conversion. Jim Wallis President, Sojourners/Call to Renewal Jim Wallis is president and executive director of Sojourners/Call to Renewal, progressive Christian movements founded to fight poverty and promote social justice. He also is the author of the best-selling God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It (2005).

Evangelicals: A Tipping Point on the Environment? It already is. The “greening” of the Evangelicals, in particular is the major new development.

The religious right tried to prevent this from happening but they failed and, in so doing, lost control of the evangelical political agenda. Key establishment groups like the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), are now firmly committed to “creation care” and to the issue of global warming in particular. The best line in the last few years on this subject came from Richard Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs at the NAE, who said, “I don’t think God is going to ask us how he created the earth, but he will ask us what we did with what he created.”

In February 2006, a full page ad appeared in the New York Times heralding a new “Evangelical Climate Initiative” that was signed by 86 evangelical leaders, including 39 Presidents of Christian colleges. The statement was released over the objections of two dozen of the most prominent religious right figures in America (all the usual suspects) who said evangelicals should stick to abortion and gay marriage. The Times ad was headlined “Our commitment to Jesus Christ compels us to solve the global warming crisis,” and the statement said, in part, “Love of God, love of neighbor, and the demands of stewardship are more than enough reason for evangelical Christians to respond to the climate change problem with moral passion and concrete action.”

The concern over global warming, in particular, is even stronger among a new generation of young evangelicals who have made environmental stewardship a mainstream and virtually consensus issue among their peers. Evangelicals tell me that global warming is a “life issue” for them and a fundamental part of Christian ethics. I’ve spoken to many secular leaders of environmental organizations who are beginning to realize how the new evangelical environmental movement could perhaps provide a “tipping point” on our response to the urgent crisis of global warming. If both the scientists and the evangelicals made this a common cause, there’s no telling how much could happen.

Posted by Jim Wallis on February 7, 2007 2:01 AM

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/jim_wallis/2007/02/evangelicals_a_tipping_point_o.html