Interviewee: Jim Wallis
Interviewer: Katie Couric
Date: 18 October 2007

Evangelical Jim Wallis is a faith-based activist, preacher and public theologian, and a renowned commentator on faith and politics. He was recognized as one of the “50 Faces for America’s Future” by Time in 1979.

Jim Wallis also formed in 1995 a nationwide federation of Christian denominations and faith-based collectives. Call to Renewal, as it has been called, aims to relieve the destitute.

Katie Couric approached one of the leading authorities on the subject of the political agenda of the Evangelicals in America. Couric asks Jim Wallis whether Evangelicals will vote as a block and more importantly, whether they will vote for Republican or Democrats in the upcoming presidential races. In the past, US evangelicals tended to vote for GOP. Wallis assures Couric that he does not endorse any presidential candidate. In fact, he suggests Evangelicals are ready to shift their allegiances to anyone who they think can provide the best moral direction for the country.

As President and Executive Director of Sojourners, he has edited Sojourners magazine, which is read by 250,000 people. Jim Wallis also penned eight books, including God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It, which was, in 2005, a New York Times bestseller. Other books include The Great Awakening, Faith Works, The Call to Conversion, Who Speaks for God?, and The Soul of Politics. He has written columns for The New York Times, Washington Post, and other leading newspapers.

As a speaker, Jim Wallis appears at over 200 functions annually. On radio and television, he makes regular appearances on numerous shows including O’Reilly Factor and the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

At Harvard’s Divinity School, he taught “Faith, Politics, and Society.” In the Kennedy School of Government, where he has been an Institute of Politics Fellow, he also taught the same course.