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Seven Ways to Change the World

Reviewed by Alun Brookfield.

Jim Wallis is well known as the founder of Sojourners, a US network of progressive Christians working for justice and peace. He is also known to a different constituency as the husband of Joy Carroll, whose contributions as a script editor to the TV series, The Vicar of Dibley, ensured that many of those same issues of justice and peace found their way into the scripts of a comedy series, and thus found their way into Britain’s thinking.

Jim Wallis is a big hitter in the USA. He has access to presidents past and present and through them to national and international leaders in other parts of the globe. In this book, he speaks of how these leaders are telling him that they want the church of Jesus Christ to play a vital role in implementing solutions to the world’s problems. Apparently, for the first time in history, humankind has the knowledge, the information, the technology and the resources to end world poverty, but we lack to moral and political will to make it happen. That, according to Wallis, is where the Church can play a vital role.

Anyone coming to this book expecting a seven-point checklist of things to do without leaving our armchairs is going to be sadly disappointed! It’s a much better book than that. Nevertheless, a note of warning needs to be sounded: this book was written in and for America, so some of Wallis’ comments will read as being a little dated in a UK context. For example, when he says in the Introduction (p.1) that “faith is being applied to social justice in ways that we might never have imagined a few short years ago”, I wanted to respond that, here in the UK, we’ve been doing that for at least a couple of generations. True, it has gained a new momentum in the last 10 years or so, but it isn’t a new idea on this side of the pond as it seems to be in the USA.

The first two chapters of the book chart what Wallis sees as a sea change in American Christianity. He identifies the way in which people are leaving the Religious Right in a desire to establish a more just way of governing the world. He talks about a new agenda arising from changes in the ways people think, and he identifies these changes to be taking place among pastors and students in particular. He wants to drive home the point that the Religious Right and their political allies no longer control the debate or the agenda when it comes to defining moral values in the USA. He also notes that the new evangelicals and liberals of the Christian faith may have their political leanings, but they are in no party’s pocket, because none of the political parties are radical enough in addressing these issues.

Then Wallis moves on to list the rules of engagement (these are the “Seven Ways to Change the World” of the title) for us as Christians. Each is briefly expounded with biblical and theological support. These are the underpinning principles which, if we take them seriously, will shape the way we live our faith and impact the world around us. They are as follows:

1.      God hates injustice

2.      The kingdom of God is a new order

3.      The church is an alternative community

4.      The kingdom of God transforms the world by addressing the specifics of injustice

5.      The Church is the conscience of the state, holding it accountable for upholding justice and restraining its violence

6.      Take a global perspective

7.      Seek the common good

At one level, there is nothing new in those seven principles. What is remarkable about this book is the way in which Wallis anchors them in the practical stuff of living in a world dominated by American political religion (or religious politics).

The rest of the book unpacks these seven principles, although not quite in the systematic way I was expecting. Instead, it was a riveting read, a real page-turner, as my emotions soured with hope, only to be dashed to the ground again momentarily as Wallis showed me the size of the challenge ahead. Rarely has a book challenged me as much as this one did. It had a similar effect as Ronald Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, many years ago now.

Wallis has a big vision, a broad grasp on the political realities and a huge capacity for encouraging ordinary Christians to share his vision. My only small caveat is that I reached the end of the book still feeling unclear about who was to drive the agenda and lead the process: will it be the Church (and if so how?) or will it be the politicians (and if so how?)? Perhaps this omission is due to the reality that the role of leadership and actualization will be different in different countries and cultures.

If I could afford it, I would give a copy of this book (or an abbreviated form of it) to every Christian I know. To readers of Ministry Today, I say: buy this book, read it carefully, let it challenge and inform you and the way you lead your congregations. Having read it once, I have a feeling that my copy will be extremely well-thumbed before 2008 is ended.