Torch, Fall/Winter 2010

10 TORCH | Fall–Winter 2010 Dr. Olasky: Sure, there is a role for the government to make sure there are equal rights — voting acts, for example. What the Civil Rights Movement accomplished in the 1950s and ’60s were very powerful and necessary things. But what we’re talking about these days and especially in the last 40 years is not political; it is primarily economic. It is trying to redistribute income from rich to poor, or the way it actually comes out in practice, from the politically poorly connected to the politically well-connected. We see this trend decade after decade, so why do we think that we’re going to get some new salvation from adding another layer of government to try and redistribute income? It doesn’t work that way. That’s not what happens in Washington. Rev. Wallis: I’m against pork and abuses. We’re talking about checks and balances, accountability, fairness, and changing direction. Jubilee is a biblical tradition, a periodic leveling of things. In England, there was a movement of Christians called Jubilee 2000. It was a debt cancellation movement led by churches, saying the poor countries will never be able to lift themselves out of poverty as long as they are incurring this crushing debt from the wealthy countries, often imposed unjustly. It took a movement. It will take social movements to make government accountable. Mr. Moll: To what extent should Christians try to address disparities of wealth? Rev. Wallis: A church where I preached recently sent 40 teams to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast to help in reconstruction. That’s terrific, but churches can’t rebuild levees. They can’t provide health insurance for 40 million people. So let’s lead the faith-based organizations and ask the government to do the things it needs to do. Let’s create a partnership and allow these groups to do what they do best. That’s the way it ought to work. Dr. Marvin Olasky is provost of The King’s College in New York City and editor-in-chief of World Magazine . A graduate of Yale University, Olasky has been a provocative, yet respected, voice among American conservatives. He is considered the intellectual architect of “compassionate conservatism,” arguing that government can better improve the lot of those in poverty by harnessing the armies of compassion among faith-based institutions. He is the author of a number of books including The Religions Next Door , Telling the Truth , and the influential book The Tragedy of American Compassion . He has been published in The New York Times , The Wall Street Journal , and The Washington Post . Olasky is a fellow at the Acton Institute and also an elder in the Presbyterian Church of America. Rev. Jim Wallis is a best-selling author, public theologian, speaker, preacher, and international commentator on faith, public life, religion, and politics. He is the president and CEO of Sojourners and editor-in-chief of its magazine. He has taught at Harvard’s Divinity School and Kennedy School of Government and has written eight books including Faith Works , God’s Politics , and The Call to Conversion . Wallis was raised in a Midwest evangelical family, and there he questioned the racial segregation in his church and community and was led to the black churches in the inner-city neighborhoods in Detroit. He spent his student years in the civil rights and anti-war movements at Michigan State University and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. While at Trinity, Wallis and several other students started a small magazine and community with a Christian commitment to social justice, which has now grown into an international organization.