Impacting the Winds of Change

Jim Wallis can draw a pretty nice crowd for 4:00 p.m. on a Wednesday. Most guest speakers at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service can squeeze their audience into the school’s great hall, but if the ticket requests exceed capacity, more popular speakers are relocated to a room in Little Rock’s Statehouse Convention Center. Mr. Wallis was popular… demonstrably less popular than Richard Dawkins, with a less diverse audience, but enticing nonetheless.

I attended the lecture, promoting Wallis’ The Great Awakening, as both an admirer and a skeptic.

As a sociology and philosophy major at a Baptist university over ten years ago, I was introduced to the scandalous writings of John Perkins, Tony Campolo, Ron Sider and Jim Wallis. Their words helped to mold my social conscience. I had always been drawn to social activism but, when I became a Christian in high school, a wall was subtly built up between embracing Christ and engaging culture. These men took sledgehammers to that wall.

In 2006, I participated in the Emerging Leaders Track (just shy of the age limit) of the annual Sojourner’s Pentecost conference, lobbying congress for a budget that reflected a moral obligation to the poor. Already disenchanted with Washington and the political process in general, and despite the great speakers and new experiences, I left the conference feeling powerless.

In 2007, I chose instead to attend the Christian Community Development Association’s annual conference, and get a feel for the change agents at the grassroots level. I came home from that gathering with a head full of ideas and optimism, followed closely by attendance at LeadNow and a condition I have recently read described as “spiritual bulimia“.

2008 has been a year of allowing my soul to digest.

Unfortunately, 2008 is also an election year… a year for change… a year for action, and I am spent.

So it was with this spirit that I attended last night’s lecture, hoping to be refreshed or, at the very least, not overwhelmed by what I would hear.

I heard people think Christians ought to stand for the same things Jesus did (very weird).

I heard when politics fails to resolve, or even address, big issues in society, social movements rise up to change things.

I heard history suggests grassroots social movements change politicians more than politicians change history.

I heard politics is broken in America.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

In The Great Awakening, Jim Wallis is trying to make U.S. Americans aware that our political candidates can not bring about the changes needed in our world, that only movements pressing in from the outside can make an impact. Change is going to require revival and it is going to require commitment. Our revival can not be merely on the individual spiritual level, it must lead to change in society - or else it is not true revival. Getting past the individual transformation to societal transformation is going to require commitments on the personal, communal and public policy levels. All three commitments are necessary, and Mr. Wallis even went as far as to declare that if we can not make the changes on a personal level, then we need not dare lobby congress for changes on the policy level.

During the Compassion Forum last month, Senator Clinton was asked the following question:

Americans of all faiths and no faith at all genuinely believe in compassion and want to apply that in addressing global poverty and climate change. Can we do that without changing our standard of living?

She answered as any politician worthy of the title would:

Well, I believe there is so much we can do that we’re not doing that would not change our standard of living as an imposition from the outside, but which would inspire us to take action that would impact how we live. And I don’t think we would notice it demonstrably undermining our standard of living, but it would give us the opportunity to set an example and to be a model.

When the floor was opened up for questions, I took the opportunity to get Wallis’ take on the “lifestyle change” issue, asking him to expound upon what personal level commitments would look like. He reiterated that politicians respond to shifts in culture, rather than the belief that policy changes can create change in culture. He talked about changing people’s minds and hearts on a local level, and then went on to talk about many of the things we toss around here, like slow food and the monstrosity that is the Hummer. He recognized emerging generations as focusing on what impact our lifestyles will have on the world.

Finally, in response to an audience question about influences, Jim Wallis repeated something I heard him speak of back in 2006. A social activist can not be sustained for long unless they are also working to be a contemplative. He reminded us to take care of our faith, that if God wasn’t real to us personally, none of this would matter.

He laughed at me when I handed him my book for the book signing: Revive Us Again: A Sojourner’s Story, saying he hadn’t seen a copy of the book in a long time and was sure it was out-of-print. He asked me where I got it, and I explained that I’ve had it for ten years. Every now and then, I need a refresher in the lessons I have learned through it:

Those who pursue radical discipleship, however, face another problem. It is the tendency to seek justification in our life-style, our work, our protest, our causes, our movements, our actions, our prophetic identity, and our radical self image. It becomes an easy temptation to place our security in the things we stand for and in the things we do, instead of in what God has done. It is a temptation to depend on things other than God’s grace.

for further reading . . .

• Changing the wind?
• The New Christians’ Kool-Aid
• The Election and Our Election