James Wallis

Jim Wallis is a bestselling author, public theologian, speaker, preacher, and international commentator on religion and public life, faith and politics. His latest book is The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post–Religious Right America (HarperOne, 2008). His previous book, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It (Harper Collins, 2005), was on the New York Times bestseller list for 4 months. He is President and Chief Executive Officer of Sojourners; where he is editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine, whose combined print and electronic media have a readership of more than 250,000 people. Wallis speaks at more than 200 events a year and his columns appear in major newspapers, including The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and both Time and Newsweek online. He regularly appears on radio and television, including shows like Meet the Press, the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the O'Reilly Factor, and is a frequent guest on the news programs of CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and National Public Radio. He has taught at Harvard's Divinity School and Kennedy School of Government on "Faith, Politics, and Society." He has written eight books, including: Faith Works, The Soul of Politics, Who Speaks for God?, and The Call to Conversion.

Jim Wallis was raised in a Midwest evangelical family. As a teenager, his questioning of the racial segregation in his church and community led him to the black churches and neighborhoods of inner-city Detroit. He spent his student years involved in the civil rights and antiwar movements at Michigan State University. While at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Illinois, Jim and several other students started a small magazine and community with a Christian commitment to social justice which has now grown into a national faith-based organization. In 1979, Time magazine named Wallis one of the "50 Faces for America's Future."

Jim lives in inner-city Washington, D.C. with his wife, Joy Carroll, one of the first women ordained in the Church of England and author of Beneath the Cassock: The Real-life Vicar of Dibley; and their sons, Luke (9) and Jack (4). He is a Little League baseball coach.