Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, November 5, 1994 TAG: 9411080077
SECTION: RELIGION PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CODY LOWE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: FERRUM LENGTH: Medium
Wallis told students and faculty that "faith has implications" for the political process, but that most Christians "are not represented by the Religious Right."
Wallis is the leader of the Sojourners community of Washington, a religious community working to provide food programs and anti-gang youth activities in the inner city. He also is editor of the community's nationally circulated magazine, also called Sojourners.
He has written a new book, "The Soul of Politics," that he has been promoting on a nationwide lecture tour for the last month. He was this year's speaker for the Staley Distinguished Christian Scholar Lectures at Ferrum College earlier this week.
Though he shuns the label "liberal," and criticizes the religious left as well as the religious right in his addresses and interviews, Wallis has been seen as one of the most articulate spokesmen for the Christian social action for almost two decades.
In his book and his speeches, Wallis calls for a new politics of vision and what he describes as "biblical hope" - "the energy of transformation."
"Politics has been reduced to the selfish struggle for power among competing interests and groups, instead of a process of searching for a common good," he wrote in his book.
He finds the Oliver North candidacy for the U.S. Senate to be the consummate example of the misuse of religion in politics.
North is "cultivating the politics of resentment," Wallis wrote in an op-ed piece prepared for the Los Angeles Times. Calling North and the Religious Right "more nationalist than truly evangelical," Wallis contends that "Polarizing, not peacemaking, is the political tactic. ... In an already divided country, they would divide us further by pointing their fingers at everyone they don't like - the homeless, the urban underclass, immigrants, feminists, liberals, homosexuals and, of course, the Democrats."
Wallis is scornful of North's description of the Nicaraguan Contras as "freedom fighters," whom Wallis calls "barbarous ... terrorists" who massacred women and children. However, Wallis also was critical of the Sandinista government's "racist" mistreatment of the Mosquito Indians.
Wallis said the publishers of his book, The New Press/Orbis Books, tried to set up a debate with North on Christian faith and politics, but that North declined.
Wallis characterizes himself as an evangelical Christian - one who seeks to share Christianity with others - but says he is frustrated by the "misrepresentation" that all evangelicals are members of the "right wing."
His brand of evangelicalism, he said, blends traditional Christian emphasis on piety and traditional family values with a dedication to action on issues of social justice.
"In the 19th century, evangelical Christians were leaders in the abolitionist movement to end slavery, they were tireless advocates for the poor and the dispossessed, and they were in the forefront of the struggle for women's rights. What happened?"
Racism, which Wallis calls America's original sin, is particularly disturbing.
Wallis spent a considerable portion of his talk criticizing "The Bell Curve," a new book linking intelligence to race.
The book amounts to a "policy assault on poor blacks," with its contentions that government spending on programs such as Head Start wastes money because programs cannot change genetic predispositions.
"Racism in academic robes rather than hoods and sheets gets attention. Some of us prefer it in hoods and sheets because at least the enemy is clear." Though the authors contend the book is not racist, "the uses and consequences of the book will be decidedly racist," Wallis said.
He called on whites to shoulder some of the responsibility for denouncing the book's contentions and to question its conclusions about the relative value of "intelligence."
"By what value system does intelligence justify a difference in reaping the rewards of society? What about the values of honesty, integrity, compassion, service, love?"
Wallis sees plenty of room for improvement for conservatives and liberals.
"Conservatism still denies the reality of structural injustice and social oppression," Wallis writes. "Liberalism is unable to articulate or demonstrate the kind of moral values that must undergird any serious movement of social transformation."
"The destruction of structures is caused by systematic social, racial and economic injustice; the destruction of self by the lack of character, family and community. Very few are making the crucial connections between the two."
In his community, Wallis said, where children go to sleep by the sound of gunfire almost every night, he talks about "the need for jobs, but also for the need for 13-year-olds not to have babies. We've got to talk about both."
by CNB