Jim Wallis

from Talk to Action

As Rick Santorum, Hillary Clinton, Sam Brownback and Barack Obama packed to attend Jim Wallis' Pentecost 2006, some wondered about Wallis' true agenda.

The source of Wallis' appeal is his apparent moderation, both political and theological. His argument is compelling in its simplicity: An overriding commitment to social justice is more basic to Christianity than the issues championed by Christian fundamentalists. But to prevail he must avoid seeming too militantly progressive. "The country is not hungry, I don't think, for a religious left to counter the religious right," Wallis [said]. "The country is hungry for a moral center."

Before his elevation as an "evangelical progressive" celebrity, together with a Who's Who of the Religious Right -- Gary Bauer, Charles Colson, James Dobson, Robert George, William Kristol, Beverly LaHaye, Richard Land, Bernard Nathanson, Frank Pavone and Ralph Reed -- Jim Wallis signed a lengthy document that said plenty about his moral center, culminating in a call for a constitutional amendment to criminalize abortion entirely.

And to this day, Wallis has yet to repudiate a word of it.