I went to a reading and book signing by Jim Wallis last night. For those of you who don’t know him, Wallis is an evangelical pastor and political writer most well-known for his observations that the young generation of evangelicals are embracing a more worldly, social-justice oriented perspective. A friend of mine from childhood is currently working as Mr. Wallis’ assistant, and so I went to the reading to see him and meet Wallis.
Wallis’ perspective was interesting and heartening. As someone who doesn’t attend church regularly but ponders spiritual issues regularly, it was interesting to listen to an Evangelical who eschewed the far right perspective so commonly associated with Christians. Wallis has a good approach to the issues of social justice and the relationship of religion to politics. His perspective is that religion should drive grassroots social justice movements, and it’s these movements who should motivate and hold accountable political leaders. He also talked a bit about his experiences in South Africa (interesting, particularly given the Sharing Cultures program I’m a part of).
I particularly liked his message about hope, which gels nicely with Barack Obama’s slogans–namely that there can be hope. Wallis suggests hope as a necessary element in social change. Essentially, he says that in each “Great Awakening” for social justice, people have traveled this path:
- Recognizing a change that needs to be made,
- people are guided by their faith to believe that the change can be made.
- That faith provides hope and strength for people to pursue grassroots social action
- that provides the pressure necessary for politicians to become leaders
- and leads to change.
As someone who thinks about athiesm and agnosticism too, I’m curious about what would drive that power for social change in an athiest; does that faith come from a humanist perspective? From the belief in the power of altruism and human society and rationalism?
Anyhow, I’m excited to read his book, though I’ve got a couple other things on the docket first.
The Unincorporated Man
Why I Am Not a Christian & Other Essays on Religion & Related Subjects
Lingua Fracta: Toward a Rhetoric of New Media
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
The Ig Nobel Prizes 2: An All-New Collection of the World’s Unlikeliest Research
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Brendan,
The atheist/agnostic sources of change are all over the place in 18th and 19th century Utopian thought. Marx was an atheist. His faith in change came from his belief in dialectical materialism, which suggested that technology made changes in economic relationships inevitable. Some would suggest that dialectical materialism in Marxism is a secularized version of Jewish messianism.
Most optimistic Enlightenment thinkers utilized religious terminology in a secular manner. Enlightenment itself is a religious term. So, I don’t think there is an atheist form of political optimism that is entirely devoid of religious thinking, but one can secularize religious optimism.
I read an article in Harper’s a few months ago that argued that modern theories of political revolution had their root in the Reformation: particularly the idea that the new is a complete break with the past. The apocalyptic overtones of such a belief are probably obvious. According to the author, Protestantism’s idea of a break with the past (manifested in the church) made such theories of time available to modernity and shaped much of its sense of political change.
Thanks, Roger.
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