Jim Wallis Quotes

We can find common ground only by moving to higher ground.

Our calling is not only to pull people out of the river, but to go upstream to find out what or who is pushing them in.

Anyone can love peace, but Jesus didn't say, "Blessed are the peace-lovers." He says �peacemakers.� He is referring to a life vocation, not a hobby on the sidelines of life.

More than just a moral issue, hope is a spiritual and even religious choice. Hope is not a feeling; it is a decision. And the decision for hope is based on what you believe at the deepest levels - what your most basic convictions are about the world and what the future holds - all based on your faith. You choose hope, not as a naive wish, but as a choice, with your eyes wide open to the reality of the world - just like the cynics who have not made the decision for hope.

Two of the greatest hungers in our world today are the hunger for spirituality and the hunger for social change. The connection between the two is the one the world is waiting for, especially the new generation. And the first hunger will empower the second.

Last year, Americans spent $450 billion on Christmas. Clean water for the whole world, including every poor person on the planet would cost about $20 billion. Let's just call that what it is: A material blasphemy of the Christmas season.

But what does it mean to be on God's side? I believe it starts with focusing on the common good - not just in politics, but in all the decisions we make in our personal, family, vocational, financial, communal, and, public lives. That old but always new ethic simply says we must care for more than just ourselves or our own group. We must care for our neighbor as well, and for the health of the life we share with one another. It echoes a very basic tenet of Christianity and other faiths - love your neighbor as yourself - still the most transformational ethic in history.

The disciplines of prayer, silence, and contemplation as practiced by the monastics and mystics are precisely that - stopping the noise, slowing down, and becoming still so that God can break through all our activity and noise to speak to us. Prayer serves to put all parts of our lives in God's presence, reminding us how holy our humanity really is.

At times I think the truest image of God today is a black inner-city grandmother in the United States or a mother of the disappeared in Argentina or the women who wake up early to make tortillas in refugee camps. They all weep for their children, and in their compassionate tears arises the political action that changes the world. The mothers show us that it is the experience of touching the pain of others that is the key to change.

Faith reminds us that change is always possible.

Hope is believing in spite of the evidence, and then watching the evidence change.

You change society by changing the wind. Change the wind, transform the debate, recast the discussion, alter the context in which political discussions are being made, and you will change the outcomes... You will be surprised at how fast the politicians adjust to the change in the wind.

The Christian doctrine is one that is both about individual spirituality and a parallel commitment to social justice.

The world will not change until we do

You can't be evangelical and associate yourself with Jesus and what he says about the poor and just have no other domestic concerns than tax cuts for wealthy people.

The kingdom of God, which Jesus came to inaugurate, is meant to create an alternate reality in this world, and ultimately to transform the kingdoms of this world.

Hope unbelieved is always considered nonsense. But hope believed is history in the process of being changed.

I believe in the separation of church and state, absolutely. But I don't believe in the separation of public life from our values, our basic values, and for many of us, our religious values.

To dig our heels in and say no to a present madness is a good thing, but to walk a new path and say yes is a better thing.

It's hope as a decision that makes change possible.

Faith can cut in so many ways. If you're penitent and not triumphal, it can move us to repentance and accountability and help us reach for something higher than ourselves. That can be a powerful thing, a thing that moves us beyond politics as usual, like Martin Luther King did. But when it's designed to certify our righteousness - that can be a dangerous thing. Then it pushes self criticism aside. There's no reflection.

But when we place God on our side of things, that we are now ridding the world of evil - that's very dangerous, that one nation has this role to rid the world of evil. What about the evil we have committed, that we are complicit in?

The media seems to think only abortion and gay marriage are religious issues. Poverty is a moral issue, it's a faith issue, it's a religious issue.

Sometimes it takes a natural disaster to reveal a social disaster.

I think it's a good thing for a president or political leaders to want to put their values or their faith into action. Desmond Tutu did that in South Africa. Martin Luther King Jr. did that here. This is a good thing.