Jim Wallis is a bestselling author, public theologian, preacher, speaker, activist, and international commentator on ethics and public life. His latest book, God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It (HarperCollins, 2005), was on The New York Times bestseller list for four months. He is president and executive director of Sojourners/Call to Renewal, where he is editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine—whose print and electronic publication reaches more than 250,000 people—and also convenes a national network of churches, faith-based organizations, and individuals working to overcome poverty in America. Jim Wallis speaks at more than 200 events each year and his columns have appeared in major newspapers such The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe, among others. He appears regularly on radio and television programs, including Meet the Press, Hardball, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The O’Reilly Factor, and National Public Radio. In addition, Jim Wallis teaches a course at Harvard University on “Faith, Politics, and Society,” and is the author of eight books, including 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 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, Jim 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 Jim Wallis one of the “50 Faces for America’s Future.”
Jim lives in inner-city Washington, D.C., with his wife, Joy Carroll, one of the first women ordained in the Church of England and author of Beneath the Cassock: The Real-life Vicar of Dibley, and their sons, Luke (8) and Jack (3). He is a Little League baseball coach.
(September 2006)
