Founder of Sojourners, Jim Wallis, discusses his new book The False White Gospel, in which he confronts head on the danger of white Christian nationalism in this election year, emphasizing how it threatens both Christianity and democracy.
Eboo Patel is joined by American theologian, writer, and editor of Sojourners, Jim Wallis, to discuss his new book The False White Gospel. Wallis shares his belief that white Christian nationalism is an enemy of democracy and pluralism due to its exclusionary theology and emphasis on dominance. They discuss a vision for creating a new, multifaith American church that partners across differences and revitalizes religious communities in addressing social issues.
Guest Bio: Jim Wallis is the inaugural holder of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Chair in Faith and Justice at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, and the Director of its new Center on Faith and Justice. He served on President Obama’s first White House Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and is the author of multiple New York Times bestselling books, including God’s Politics; his latest book, The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy, was released on April 2nd, 2024, and is available wherever you buy books. In 2022 and 2023, Washingtonian magazine named Wallis one of the 500 most influential people shaping policy in DC. Wallis is also the founder of Sojourners.
[00:00:00] Eboo Patel: This is the Interfaith America Podcast, and I'm Eboo Patel.
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[00:00:12] Eboo: Welcome to the Interfaith America Podcast. I'm Eboo Patel. This week, I'm excited to talk to a prominent figure at the intersection of faith and social justice, one of my friends, mentors, and fellow travelers in this work, the Reverend Jim Wallis. Jim Wallis is not just a writer, teacher, and preacher, but also a passionate advocate for justice rooted in faith. He believes in the transformative power of the gospel of Jesus, emphasizing its relevance to the poor and oppressed. His influence extends far and wide as a New York Times bestselling author and a respected commentator on ethics and public affairs.
As the inaugural chair in Faith and Justice at Georgetown University, Jim is dedicated to shaping minds and fostering discussions. Washingtonian Magazine recognized him as one of the 500 most influential people shaping policy in DC, and there are thousands of young pastors and organizers who have been inspired and shaped by Jim Wallis. I am one of them. Raised in a Midwestern evangelical family, Wallis's journey took a critical turn in his teenage years when he confronted segregation in his church and community. The experience propelled him into the heart of civil rights activism, shaping his commitment to equality.
Jim Wallis founded Sojourners, a social justice community and a progressive publication. He led the entity for 50 years before moving on to Georgetown University. Today, I look forward to touching on his latest book, The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy. Hey, friend. How are you doing?
[00:01:57] Jim Wallis: Hey, old friend.
[00:01:59] Eboo: Nice to see you. Jim, this book's just come out. We're in an election year. It is a divisive and intense time. How are you feeling these days?
[00:02:09] Jim: The first thing is this book is about the faith factor that we have before us in this critical, urgent election year. I could go on. Most of your listeners, they know and feel the dire threat to democracy right now. They would know that, feel that. Greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime, and I'm a lot older than you, Eboo. I think greatest threat since the Civil War, really.
Yet, the book goes deeper than that political threat. This is a test of our democracy indeed, but it's also a test of our faith. There are two tests. How I'm feeling is I'm having to really go deeper and deeper into my faith because, in a crisis like this, we can't give in to fear and anger and even despair and cynicism, as many people are. We have to go deeper into faith. You and I have spent our lives trying to speak to what faith means.
[00:03:23] Eboo: One of the lines you are most closely associated with is don't go left, don't go right, go deeper.
[00:03:29] Jim: Right. I can't control all the politics in this election. I watch them, [chuckles] I listen to them, they surround me, and yet we can't control that. What we can do, though, is control our own choices, our own messaging, where we show up, what we say. This book takes six iconic biblical texts, which are familiar to many of your listeners, and tries to reframe and refresh them. Yes, it lays out the danger of white Christian nationalism, which, to speak to your passion, white Christian nationalism is a Christian problem. I'm dealing with it as a Christian. It must be critiqued from within. White Christian nationalism is against the pluralism that you are so committed to.
[00:04:29] Eboo: I want to get to that, but I want to first talk about the transition you've just been through from Sojourners to Georgetown. You led a nonprofit for 50 years, right?
[00:04:39] Jim: I did.
[00:04:40] Eboo: It is a powerful work. Now you're a professor. My listeners are going to know you, and they're just going to want to know how the transition has gone personally. How does it feel to be out of leading a nonprofit, especially one that's made the important difference that Sojourners has made, and being a professor? How's that lifestyle change been?
[00:04:58] Jim: You and I often talked about when you were starting your nonprofit, about nonprofits and how to be a good leader and how to deal with staff and fundraising and all that stuff. I remember all those conversations. For 50 years, I was doing that, co-founded with some other dear friends. I decided that at the 50th anniversary, I didn't want to be at my desk the morning after the party [chuckles] for the next 50 years. I turned to one of my-- he would call himself a mentee as well, Adam Taylor, to become the president for this next--
[00:05:40] Eboo: Great guy.
[00:05:42] Jim: Great guy. He said yes. I was thrilled, but I didn't know what would happen next. I knew I was going to keep doing my work, but I got this wonderful invitation from Jack DeGioia at Georgetown. Jack's been an old friend for a long time, the president. He said, "Come in. We want this to be a chair." They wonderfully gave me the name of a dear mentor of mine. I am the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Chair, which I love to hear that, of Faith and Justice at the McCourt School of Public Policy and the director of this new center we have on faith and justice.
The best way to describe that is what my opening speaker on the first night said, who is my old friend, Raphael Warnock, formerly of Ebenezer. He's still a Reverend and also a US senator. Raphael came to talk about voting rights as a religious issue. I asked him a question and he says, "I'll answer your question, Jim." He looked around, "All these students, diverse students in every way," and he said, "This is really cool. I heard a rumor that you had retired. I see you just rewired."
[00:07:04] Eboo: Nice.
[00:07:06] Jim: [chuckles] That's how it feels.
[00:07:06] Eboo: Yes. It's an excellent demonstration of how religious identity and religious diversity often go hand in hand.
[00:07:14] Jim: They do it well here. Mormons have been here at the office at the table several times. I think they do that very well. They do multifaith very well, but the Jesuit values are still core. For me, this is a great fit, a great venue. I love the colleagues here. We have become, Eboo, a hub for talking about faith and public life because a lot of people here are doing the law school, public life or government or whatever, but in their bubbles, they often don't get to talk much about their faith. Our hub, our center is where they can come. Wonderful law professor Kristin Henning, the next Bryan Stevenson, she's called, she's law school. She's amazing, but she's also a AME churchwoman. [chuckles]
[00:08:07] Eboo: Yes, right. It goes hand in hand there.
[00:08:09] Jim: She can come and preach at our center. It's a great place to be. I feel very blessed to be here and to have it named after a dear friend and mentor of mine, who really Desmond Tutu in South Africa taught me my theology of hope. That's where I learned the differences between optimism and hope, for example. It's all applied now.
This book ends with this real urgent crisis we have, but it ends with the call for hope because hope isn't just, as he taught me, optimism, which is a mood, a feeling, a personality type. He wasn't always optimistic about things in South Africa. He was dealing with all the suffering as a bishop, but he hung on to that hope and went deeper to find it. He said, "Hope is a decision,-
[00:09:06] Eboo: Interesting.
[00:09:07] Jim: -a choice you make because of what we call faith." That's what we bring to this battle. This is all about racial grievance and all the rest, but it's really a battle between our better angels and our worst demons.
[00:09:25] Eboo: Jim, you like to say that social change needs spirituality. Tell us what you mean by that.
[00:09:31] Jim: I got kicked out of my church as a teenage kid in Detroit by a white evangelical church over the issue of race. I went very secular. I became a student activist around Vietnam, racism, poverty. I was reading Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara and Karl Marx like we all were in those days, and it wasn't satisfying. I realized I felt committed now being an activist to change things, but I needed a foundation for that. I didn't find it in those readings. In this text that became my conversion text, which I also talk about in the book, was when Jesus says in Matthew 25, it was me.
I was hungry. I was thirsty. I was naked. I was sick. I was a stranger. Stranger means immigrant there, is really what it means. I was in prison. "Where were you? Lord, we didn't know it was you. As you've done to the least of these, you've done to me." That was more radical than anything I ever read. That text converts me again and again and again to people on the margins. To me, that was a spirituality I needed for the social change that I believed in and still does.
I tell some stories in the book about how that text made a difference in the meeting at the White House or in the Congress. It's the economics of Jesus which turn our politics upside down. Underneath my love for justice is that spirituality. We are made in the image of God. We are in the likeness of God. We are bound together. We're not meant to be alone. We are meant to be a beloved community. The beloved community that our heroes talk about is the foundation for a multiracial democracy.
[00:11:42] Eboo: Jim, I got to go tell you, my story is so similar, diving headfirst into critical theory and then feeling like there's no love here and finding that love in religious texts. First, frankly, encountering it through you and Dorothy Day how close you all felt to the Good Samaritan story and the Matthew 25 story, and then ultimately returning back to my original tradition of Islam, but that is precisely my story. Thank you in the way you have lived that story and illuminated the path for others many have followed, and I am one of them.
[00:12:14] Jim: Now we're walking alongside through a very dangerous time. We have to realize we're not alone. We have to stay close to each other. I want this book to be a tool for people to use in a time like now for themselves, for their relationship, for what they're saying to others. We have a trajectory of politics, fear, hate, to violence. That's the trajectory. A politics of love is not just sentimental, it can heal. It can heal the politics of fear and hate and violence. All our traditions, all our faiths help us to get there.
[00:12:56] Eboo: Yes. Jim, I want to ask you something. This gets right back to the book. I want to say that one of the things that strikes me is that in your previous books, you don't really name enemies. You're not the kind of person who wants to name an enemy, but you do that in this book, right? Using the language of battle, that's not natural to you, but you think there's an enemy. White Christian nationalism is an enemy. You use language like it's idolatry, it violates both your Christian commitments and your commitments as somebody who believes in democracy. Just define it for us. Define what you mean by white Christian nationalism being the enemy.
[00:13:41] Jim: Yes. The name spells the problem. First, white. Now, I believe the gospel of Jesus is the most inclusive, welcoming message in the world, and yet this is white. Then Christian, but they don't mean service or sacrifice or love, they mean control, dominance. It's really the old dominionist theology. It's not new, it goes back a long time. They're nationalists, my goodness. Jesus said at the Great Commission-- I'm an old guy, but I wasn't there, but I read about it. He said, "Go in all the world, make disciples in every nation teaching them to observe whatever I have commanded you." Nationalists, really? It's a problem at the core of its meaning.
For what you do and what I believe in so deeply, working together as people of different faiths and people of no faith at all, but they are motivated by something larger than themselves and they're trying to find their way, we're all needed, all of us. All of our faith and non-faith traditions, we're all needed for this crisis that we face, this deep, deep danger of losing democracy. I do think this isn't about Republican or a Democrat or a liberal or a conservative. I don't believe any of that. It's about, theologically, our better angels and our worst demons. It is a battle for the soul of the nation. I think dictatorship and racial autocracy is an evil, it's wrong, it's an enemy.
I have in the book this line that-- I'm sure it's going to become controversial, but it says, "Every movement has to decide who they can persuade and who they must defeat. I mean non-violently, I mean at the ballot box. I didn't write this book because I didn't feel like there were persuadable people who are stuck, who are lost, confused, captive, but also there are people who are militant religiously and politically for a vision of society that is contrary to what my faith and your faith costs. It's incompatible with our faith.
I want this book to help interrogate faith. I want the faith factor to be something more and deeper than white Christian nationalism as the faith factor or the selection. The autocracy coming at us is undergirded by a theocracy, theocracy undergirding autocracy, and both are enemies, to me, autocracy and theocracy.
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[00:17:05] Eboo: After this short break, more with Jim Wallis. Jim, one of the things that you and I talked about over the years, and you actually hosted an event around this, our transition from Interfaith Youth Core to Interfaith America. One of the things I talked about was how a previous era's white Christian nationalism gave rise to a better idea, a better chapter in American history, which is Judeo-Christian.
Actually, the way that that phrase comes about, Judeo-Christian, is as a civic invention of the 1930s as a response to the white Christian nationalism of the KKK of the 1920s. Do you think that a similar turn could happen now that basically as people stare into the ugliness of the 21st-century version of white Christian nationalism, we have an opportunity to present them with a different, more inspiring vision, a different way of being Christian, but also a different idea of America that we call Interfaith America?
[00:18:15] Jim: That's my hope for this work. This is just my two cents, it's my contribution to the battle. My hope is just that. Eddie Glaude who wrote the foreword to the book, I quote him in the book saying, "Everything is collapsing and everything is possible both at the same time."
[00:18:37] Eboo: Uh-huh. Right.
[00:18:39] Jim: "We may be in this moment that if we can defeat these enemies of autocracy, of racism, of theocracy, the dominion of one religious group over all the others, if we can defeat that, we may see open up for us new possibilities at a deeper level than we've ever seen before. You've got to save democracy to transform it, for sure. We're up against that in a few months, but I think there's a chance here. Talking to a young generation, which I do every day, as you do too, I have a profound sense of them being willing to stand up and to change things. I feel that all the time.
We can't just protect [unintelligible 00:19:31], but that kind of old, white Christian nationalism is fighting for its life, it's making a last step by any means necessary, including violence. If we can defeat that enemy, but then call for a deeper love, really, I think things you and I fought for for years could be more possible than they've been for a long time.
[00:20:02] Eboo: I love this notion of everything is collapsing and everything is possible. It's a molten moment and we can shape things. That is the purpose of this book. I want to ask you, Jim, what do you say to a religious person who believes that America has a God-given purpose on Earth? Is that a dangerous notion?
[00:20:23] Jim: It's bad theology. [laughs] It's both a dangerous notion and it's bad theology. Literally, when Jerry Falwell Sr. was alive, he and I would debate on TV. He once actually said that God would need America's nuclear arsenal at the battle of Armageddon. [chuckles] That's why you mentioned the word idolaters, idolatry. Worship of a nation is idolatry, worship of a false God. The idea of loving our country, I love this country in so many ways, and the idea of finding our better angels, every nation has better angels and worse demons. I think the worship of a nation is an idolatry and should be named as such. I even use a word that is even scarier for people, it's a heresy.
In the Christian language, heresy is what draws us away from Christ. As Christians, we're drawn away from Christ by heresy. When Jesus says, "You'll know the truth,-" one of my other texts in the book, "-and the truth will set you free," He's not saying you'll know the truth and you should lie less often. He's saying the opposite of truth is captivity. Truth and freedom are indivisible. We see a lot of people who are captive. They're just captive. We live in two parallel universes of information and news, and we're not listening to anything together. Captivity is the result of losing the truth. Truth-telling is fundamental not just for democracy, but restoring the integrity of our faith.
[00:22:23] Eboo: Jim, talk about the remnant church and the faith you have in the remnant church.
[00:22:28] Jim: Let me just say, as a white Christian, there's a minority of white believers out there but a lot of younger ones who are ready and hungry to join alongside Black and brown leaders in the churches to create literally a new American church, and one that will be in vital relationship with other faith traditions right in their convenience. Right now, I'm involved in Faith United to Save Democracy and we're in 10 battleground states, Barbara Williams-Skinner and I. The book talks about this. Black clergy led in every state, but rabbis have joined, imams are joining. It's multi-faith, it's multiracial, and multi-generational. I got Steph Curry to do a video for us about why vote,-
[00:23:30] Eboo: Awesome.
[00:23:30] Jim Wallis: -which helps reach out to multi-generational. This remnant church would be in vital spiritual relationship with other faith communities right there in their own parishes, neighborhoods around fundamental issues like violence, like guns, like the threats, like doing better in housing, doing better on employment, education.
What if we had synagogues and mosques and congregations and people of other faith traditions joining together and people walk by one of our congregations and they would say, "I'm not sure I believe everything they believe in there, but that's where we have our town meetings on gun violence. That's where we get together and talk about how our different faiths can restore, protect our communities." This remnant church would be deeply around revitalizing the teachings of Jesus.
One of the first things they would do is reach out to the other people or people around them in their communities. This book is not just, "Here's what's wrong, here's what we should defeat, here's what's to have to be against," it's about, "Here's a whole new vision of religion and faith in America that is an alteration, that is multi-faith, and brings a new generation back into the conversation." If we fall down on the wrong side of history at this moment, and churches in particular, they're the ones who are being seduced, distorted, captive, if we fall down on the side of aristocracy and dictatorship and theocracy, a whole lot of young people will never come back to church.
[00:25:22] Eboo: Yes, that's an excellent point, that it all goes together. If Christianity is somehow blamed for ushering in an era of autocracy, then it will have a lot to answer for and people are going to turn away. That's powerful. Jim, leave us with a Bible verse that is giving you hope and calm right now.
[00:25:46] Jim: There's a Bible verse in Hebrews that says, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." I have a paraphrase of that which says, "Hope is believing in spite of the evidence, then watching the evidence change." I talk in the book about the Good Samaritan text which says your neighbor probably doesn't live in your neighborhood. The Galatians text says there should be no race, class, and gender divisions in the earliest church, which they were overcoming. I talk about the peacemaker text in a polarized time.
He didn't say blessed are the peace lovers or the peacekeepers, but blessed are the peacemakers, the conflict resolvers. Finally in the end for me, it's believing that faith can go beyond the polls, go beyond how things look today and tomorrow. Did you like the State of the Union? Now, look, all that stuff that we deal with every day. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. That will be my text for you today.
[00:27:05] Eboo: I love it. Friend, mentor, fellow traveler, Jim Wallis, thank you for the leadership you've given America, thank you for the contributions you've made to the church, thank you for your friendship all these years. Thank you for the time in this podcast.
[00:27:18] Jim: Thank you, brother. I am very grateful for you.
[00:27:20] Eboo: Thank you, friend.
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[00:27:23] Eboo: I'm thrilled I got a chance to talk to one of my old friends and mentors, Jim Wallis, about his new book and about his vision for America. I also feel the threat of white Christian nationalism. I also think of it as an idolatry, but I with Jim view this moment as deeply hopeful. What can we do to stare this current ugliness in the face and to build something more beautiful? What Jim says is it's time to be loving truth-tellers, it's time to challenge people but also encourage them, it's time to build new faith communities that can partner across faiths and races and ethnicities to lead people to the beloved community. It is time to shift from the politics of fear to the politics of love.
We'd love to hear your reaction to this podcast with Jim Wallis and any podcast on the Interfaith America with Eboo Patel series. Message us in the comments or wherever you live on social media. You can find us on Twitter @InterfaithUSA and Instagram @IntefaithAmerica. To read more about this conversation and to find resources and stories about bridge building in our religiously diverse nation, visit our website, interfaithamrica.org. I'm Eboo Patel.
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