News Release
Reverend Jim Wallis speaks on faith, religion and politics 9/18 at 7:30 p.m.
"John McCain, Barack Obama and Religion in America"
Best-selling author, theologian, speaker, preacher and international commentator on religion and public life, faith and politics, Reverend Jim Wallis will be speaking at University of Detroit Mercy on Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 7:30 p.m. in Calihan Hall on University of Detroit Mercy’s McNichols Campus. The president and executive director of Sojourners magazine will discuss religion and politics and the upcoming presidential race. His talk is entitled “Faith in the Public Square.”
Wallis’ latest book is The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post–Religious Right America. His previous book, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It was on the New York Times bestseller list for four months. Wallis’ columns have appeared in major newspapers, including The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and both Time and Newsweek online.
He also 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."
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, he 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."
He 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.
Visit Wallis and Sojourners at their website www.Sojo.net and his daily blog at www.GodsPolitics.com .
The talk is sponsored by UDM’s University Ministry is free and open to the public. For more information on Rev. Wallis’ appearance, visit www.udmercy.edu/wallis/
Release date: September 05, 2008
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