In the third episode of this new season of The Soul of the Nation, the Rev. Jim Wallis interviews Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

Throughout this special season, Wallis will sit down with the 2020 presidential candidates to discuss the intersection of faith and politics. The candidates explain how personal faith has shaped their passion for public service and positive social change.  

"It is my hope that discussing faith, from many different religious backgrounds, can clarify how faith will play a role in politics moving forward and further discourage this myth that the right owns religion. From unapologetically faith-forward campaigns to campaigns without a connection to faith at all, the wide spectrum of religious affiliation among the 2020 presidential candidates makes way for rich conversations about religion’s role in 2020," says Wallis. "Whether it is addressing poverty, combatting racism, or solving the climate crisis, how does faith inform the moral leadership our electorate is seeking? This special series works to answer this question and many more."

 In one-on-one interviews, Wallis and the 2020 candidates try to envision how an open dialogue about faith will change our country's current political landscape and potentially embolden social action among churchgoers.

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In the second episode of this new season of The Soul of the Nation, the Rev. Jim Wallis interviews Secretary Julian Castro.

Throughout this special season, Wallis will sit down with the 2020 presidential candidates to discuss the intersection of faith and politics. The candidates explain how personal faith has shaped their passion for public service and positive social change.  

"It is my hope that discussing faith, from many different religious backgrounds, can clarify how faith will play a role in politics moving forward and further discourage this myth that the right owns religion. From unapologetically faith-forward campaigns to campaigns without a connection to faith at all, the wide spectrum of religious affiliation among the 2020 presidential candidates makes way for rich conversations about religion’s role in 2020," says Wallis. "Whether it is addressing poverty, combatting racism, or solving the climate crisis, how does faith inform the moral leadership our electorate is seeking? This special series works to answer this question and many more."

 In one-on-one interviews, Wallis and the 2020 candidates try to envision how an open dialogue about faith will change our country's current political landscape and potentially embolden social action among churchgoers.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In the first episode of this new season of The Soul of the Nation, Rev. Jim Wallis interviews Senator Cory Booker.

Throughout this special season, Wallis will sit down with the 2020 presidential candidates to discuss the intersection of faith and politics. The candidates explain how personal faith has shaped their passion for public service and positive social change.  

"It is my hope that discussing faith, from many different religious backgrounds, can clarify how faith will play a role in politics moving forward and further discourage this myth that the right owns religion. From unapologetically faith-forward campaigns to campaigns without a connection to faith at all, the wide spectrum of religious affiliation among the 2020 presidential candidates makes way for rich conversations about religion’s role in 2020," says Wallis. "Whether it is addressing poverty, combatting racism, or solving the climate crisis, how does faith inform the moral leadership our electorate is seeking? This special series works to answer this question and many more."

 In one-on-one interviews, Wallis and the 2020 candidates try to envision how an open dialogue about faith will change our country's current political landscape and potentially embolden social action among churchgoers.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It's always amazing to me how — somehow, apparently, mysteriously, and even miraculously — Jesus has survived all of us Christians.

And yet, it’s undeniable that the election of Donald Trump and the presidency that has followed — and the Christian response to all of it — have revealed how disconnected many American Christians have become from Jesus. In particular, the uncritical support Trump enjoys from many white evangelicals in the religious right, and the Faustian bargain they have made for power, are turning many Americans (and others) away from Christianity altogether.

While we’ve long known that institutional Christianity is in decline in the United States — especially among younger generations — the bottom is starting to fall out of evangelicalism, with people identifying with “no religion” surpassing evangelicals and Catholics for the first time earlier this year as the most common answer on a religious self-identification survey of Americans. Increasing numbers of Americans are “falling away from religion because they see it as so wrapped up with Republican politics.”

Here’s why I believe this is actually good news.

Recently, I spoke to a group of university students who are in Washington, D.C. doing internships this semester on the Hill, at the White House, the cabinet, and other agencies around the Capitol.

As I began to talk about this Jesus who we have all become disconnected from (especially in the churches), and how the questions he asked or prompted are so deeply connected to the moral and political crisis we now find ourselves in, they lit up. After I laid out some of those Jesus questions and their relevance to us today, including what they see and hear around them in the nation’s capital every day, hands came up from all over the room.

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This podcast explores the themes in Jim Wallis’ new book Christ in Crisis: Why We Need to Reclaim Jesus.

Pre-order at Book.Sojo.Net

In recent weeks the hashtag #antichrist trended on Twitter for nearly 24 hours in response to presidential tweets. And in response to the mass-shooting in El Paso, perpetuated by a white nationalist who invoked Christian theology, evangelical leader Beth Moore said in a tweet:  

Any “Christ” that can be invoked in support of white nationalism is a false Christ of the highest, most hellish order. An anti-Christ. A wholly-opposite christ. No such christ is the Christ Jesus of Scripture who taught His followers a love that sacrifices life & limb for others.

Anti-Christ is a very big word, very evocative of our deepest spiritual realities and feelings, and is seldom invoked without controversy. It’s been abused by those promoting bad “end times” and “left behind” theology. But it’s also a profoundly biblical concept, one we must take as seriously in our day as Jesus did in his. Jesus warned his followers to be on the lookout for “pseudo-christs,” those that claimed his name but were far from the true heart of God, and said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”

There seems to be a clear choice, a real and stark choice, going on in this country and even in the churches, between the politics of Jesus and anti-Christ politics. I believe that the fear of the other, the hatred of the other, and violence against the other are the core of anti-Christ politics. And the love of the other, calling the other your neighbor, is at the heart of the politics of Jesus.

Jesus said eight different times, “Be not afraid ...” Anti-Christ politics says, “Be afraid. I'm going to make you more afraid.” Jesus says that leadership is about service. Anti-Christ politics says it’s about wealth and power — it's about winning and losing. The Bible says we are all made in the image of God, but anti-Christ politics says, “No, some people are more valuable than other people.” In Jesus politics, how we treat the “least of these” is the test of our politics. In anti-Christ politics, the “least of these” are the least important. So this isn’t about left or right, liberal or conservative, but goes deeper — this is about “What did Jesus say?” And I think to love our neighbor, the one who is different than us, is the most key question or choice for America's future; that will most determine the soul of this nation going forward.

But what we see from the White House now is merely the latest example of what has beset us as a country from the beginning. We must face the reality that anti-Christ politics have been used and manipulated by this president ever since he descended that escalator in Trump Tower, launching his presidential campaign by labeling those who God calls “beloved," murderers and rapists.

When presidential narcissism turns to blasphemy, it’s time to name that as #antiChrist. And when we decide to study the gospels again and learn the politics of Jesus, it’s time to speak out and stand up for that by #ReclaimingJesus. My prayer is that this book will help in that study of Jesus and our rejection of anti-Christ politics.

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In his first Inaugural Address, President Abraham Lincoln appealed to “the better angels of our nature.” That is what our political and religious leaders should always do — appeal to our best angels. But at the other end of the moral spectrum, political and even religious leaders now often appeal to our worst demons: fear, anger, resentment, greed, prejudice, division, and hatred. And the danger we are discovering is that our demons in America have been lying just below the surface and have been aggressively brought forth in the past few years. We see white supremacists marching openly with torches aloft in Charlottesville and elsewhere, and a growing white nationalism feels emboldened by the White House. We see children in cages and families torn apart at the southern border because of policies made in the same building where they call immigrants “invaders.” We now see the worst elements of America’s history rekindled by some who see these elements as their plan for this nation’s future, often with the language of Christianity painfully deployed in defense of that.

The dangerous political crisis we now find ourselves in has revealed how disconnected from Jesus many Christians in America have become. Closing the gaping distance that presently exists between Christians and the Jesus that too many Christians desperately try to avoid often seems a daunting challenge — where can we even begin? Are there fundamental truths of Jesus’s ministry that can help us find our way back to him, even and especially amid this fearful moment? Yes, I believe there are and that some of the key questions Jesus asked or provoked would help show us the way forward.

That is what my new book Christ in Crisis: Why We Need to Reclaim Jesus is all about.

We are asking you to help us in two ways:

• 1. Pre-ordering Christ in Crisis: Why We Need to Reclaim Jesus ( https://book.sojo.net/) will help the book break into and even change the national conversation going on right now. You can directly help change that conversation by reading the book, sharing it, and using it as a tool and guidebook in your congregations, small groups, schools, and local communities. We have also created a 10-week study guide with videos and resources for small group and congregational and school study; and
• 2.Inviting me and other voices to come and speak in your community, so we can go deeper into conversation together about what these questions mean in your community and our country and world more broadly. We are already in contact with diverse local leaders in many places who are going to participate in those conversations. If you build the events, we will come.

The good news is that we will not be alone; we can take that journey with our brothers and sisters in our congregations, our families, and our communities; a pilgrimage — a sojourn — of prayer, study, discernment, and action.We may not all have the same answers to the questions Jesus asked and prompted, but they must be asked; and perhaps it is our conversation about them together that could help heal a broken nation. In the midst of the painful, shameful, and embarrassing examples of religion selling its soul for power, more and more of us will make clear that we are reclaiming Jesus.

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Racism is a sin that has been biblically established. It was and is America’s original sin. Racism is notoriously both implicit and explicit, but covert and overt racism must be acknowledged and repented. When racism is made explicit and overt in the public arena, it must be named and called out for what it is — especially when the comments come from the president of the United States. Donald Trump’s tweeted and spoken racial assaults on four women of color, duly elected to the U.S. Congress, are a public sin that must be called out. Who will do that and who will not?

Trump’s tweets and comments telling the four members of Congress — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rep. Ilhan Omar, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, and Rep. Rashida Tlaib — to go back to the countries they came from is painfully reminiscent of what people and families of color have been told from the moment they arrived in America by far too many white people — all of whom were also immigrants at some point or were white settlers who stole the lands of Indigenous Peoples and tried to wipe them away.

There is one thing from Donald Trumps’ tweets I agree with. It was when he said, “[see] you at the ballot box!” He’s right. And that asks all of us where the moral courage will come from among faith leaders, business leaders, and political leaders across the political spectrum before the ballots are cast in 2020. What will Christians say and do and how will they vote? Silence in the face of public evil is a fundamentally moral issue — and is a matter of faith.

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After yet another mass shooting, this time in Virginia Beach where 12 people were killed, many of us had the same painful reactions of grief for the families, fear that this could happen to someone I love one day, anger at the gun manufacturers whose influence through the NRA makes them complicit in both the mass shootings and the daily epidemic of gun violence. As a parent, I’m heartsick and angry that our society now traumatizes even our youngest children by making them do active shooter drills at school. I’ve written about all of this many times before given the terrifying frequency of mass and daily shootings in the U.S. and the scale of the overall gun violence epidemic.

I think it’s impossible to tell the story of this movement’s progress without looking at the impact of Sandy Hook where 20 6- and 7-year-old elementary school children and six adults were murdered. An oft-circulated 2015 tweet from political pundit Dan Hodges lamented, “In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.”

But in many ways the reverse is true. Many parents of children lost at Sandy Hook rose up and came together with other gun violence victims’ fathers and mothers — and have dedicated the rest of their lives to the gun safety movement — precisely because Sandy Hook was unbearable to them. The enormous traction, energy, and funding they’ve gotten to expand that work and make steady progress is due in no small part to the fact that the senseless killing of children has become unacceptable to a whole generation of parents.

I don’t believe that senseless, stupid, murderous gun violence will ultimately be accepted as normal. Rather, a new generation of parents, a new insistence for change from coming-of-age voters, and a new network of urban activists committed to making their neighborhoods safe for black and brown bodies will ultimately prevail. That must be our hope and our commitment.

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Donald Trump is, and always has been, a consummate liar, an amoral human being, a completely selfish man with no concern for any others, an ultimate wealth and power-seeking megalomaniac, and the kind of leader who always has and will always want to be a tyrant and dictator. Removing him from power is, therefore, a task central to the soul of the nation — and to the integrity of faith.

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“Life” issues have once again become extremely politically divisive. Claiming to be either “for the women” or “for the babies,” turns empathy for only one life into single-issue voting on both sides of the political spectrum.

It always astounds, and to be honest, angers me how the same legislators who focus only on abortion pay little or no attention to lives and needs of women and children: They are usually the first to cut programs and protections that benefit poor families, limit access to contraception, and oppose workplace policies that would support parents.

Of course, it doesn’t help our polarization on abortion when some Democratic state legislators seek to relax restrictions even on late-term abortions or when the extreme left refuses to acknowledge the existence of “pro-life Democrats” and refuses to embrace the “safe, legal, and rare” approach to abortion that the party used to embrace.

We have to move beyond judgment and recrimination. Rather, we need a time of dialogue and understanding — for reconsideration of what it means to be deeply committed to “abundant life.”

In John 10:10, Jesus says "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."

Jesus wants our lives to flourish. What does it mean to be committed to that kind of life? Not just for woman or child, for one or the other, but for all. In seeking after the truth and striving after consistency on this issue, we will come face to face with the need for reconciliation between battling ideological forces.

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