The Reverend Jim Wallis is the founder of Sojourners, a Christian community in Washington, D.C., as well as editor of a magazine of the same title that covers social justice issues. He is also the convener of Call to Renewal, a religious ecumenical organization committed to, according to their mission statement, overcoming poverty, dismantling racism, affirming life, and rebuilding family and community. A charismatic speaker and prolific writer about religion and politics, he is often hailed as the voice of the religious left

Marshall, Joanne

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Marshall, Joanne M.

Iowa State University Computer Science Technical Reports

Jim Wallis

The Reverend Jim Wallis is the founder of Sojourners, a Christian community in Washington, D.C., as well as editor of a magazine of the same title that covers social justice issues. He is also the convener of Call to Renewal, a religious ecumenical organization committed to, according to their mission statement, overcoming poverty, dismantling racism, affirming life, and rebuilding family and community. A charismatic speaker and prolific writer about religion and politics, he is often hailed as the voice of the religious left.This is a chapter from Marshall, J. M. (2007). Jim Wallis. In G. L. Anderson & K. G. Herr (Eds.), Encyclopedia of activism and social justice (pp. 1447-1448). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. For more information, click here. Posted with permission.</p

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WALKER, ALICE (1944-) The African American novelist, essayist, poet, short story writer, and political activist Alice Walker was born in Eatonton, Georgia, on February 9, 1944, the eighth child of parents who earned a living as sharecroppers. As a child, Walker was blinded in one eye during an accident. She focused her energy and attention on her schoolwork, graduating as valedicto-rian of her high school class. She won a scholarship to Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, which she attended from 1961 to 1963. After leaving Spelman, Walker moved to New York, where she attended Sarah Lawrence College, also on a scholarship, and had the opportunity to travel to Africa in her junior year. She graduated with her bachelor's degree in 1965, at the height of the civil rights move-ment. She quickly became involved, participating in many demonstrations and other activities. She also wrote poetry during those years; her first book, the poetry collection once, was published in 1968. In 1967, she was awarded a McDowell Fellowship, which offered her the financial support she needed to work on a novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, which was published 3 years later. The novel tells the stories of three generations of the Copelands, a south-ern black family, and explores their social relation-ships and the cycle of violence they perpetuate. She especially focuses on how black women suffer at the hands of black men, a depiction for which she was later criticized. All the same, she further developed the theme in two short-story collections, In Love and Trouble (1973) and You Can't Keep a Good Woman Down (1981). She also completed a second novel, Meridian (1976). Her masterpiece, The Color Purple, appeared in 1982 and marked her as one of the most talented novelists in America. The protagonist, Celie, is a young southern African American woman who recounts years of abuse and violence at the hands of black men, including her father and husband, in a series of letters. Celie struggles against this oppres-sion and emerges personally liberated, aided by the strength of her relationships with other black women. Wallis, Jim C1948- l 1447 Walker won both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award in 1983. That year, she also published an important essay col-lection, In Search of Our Mother's Gardens, in which she discusses feminism. She calls herself a womanist rather than a feminist, defining the term as a person who appreciates the strength and social bonds of women and who is concerned with the equal rights of men and women. In addition to women's rights movements, Walker actively supports environmental and social jus-tice causes. She continues to write prolifically in all gen-res, including a poetry collection, Absolute Truth in the Goodness of the Earth (2003). -Susan Muaddi Darraj See also Feminism; Literature and Activism Further Readings Bates, G. (2005). Alice Walker: A critical companion. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. White, E. (2004). Alice Walker: A life. New York: W.W. Norton . WALLIS, JIM (1948-) The Reverend Jim Wallis is the founder of Sojourners, a Christian community in Washington, D.C., as well as editor of a magazine of the same title that covers social justice issues. He is also the convener of Call to Renewal, a religious ecumenical organization committed to, according to their mission statement, overcoming poverty, dismantling racism, affirming life, and rebuilding family and community. A charismatic speaker and prolific writer about reli-gion and politics, he is often hailed as the voice of the religious left. Wallis grew up in a white middle-class suburb of Detroit. He became socially active against the Vietnam War and for civil rights at Michigan State University, before attending Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He and fellow seminarians founded the Sojourners community in Chicago, in 1971. Jn 1975, the 1448 warren, Earl C1891-1974l community moved to Washington, D.C., where they lived together, worshipped together, and were active in neigh-borhood and national activism ranging from after-school programs to protests for peace and against poverty. The Sojourners community has since dispersed from shared households to an international commu-nity of believers associated with the Sojourners magazine and its stated mission to integrate spiritual renewal and social justice. Recent issues of the mag-azine include articles about fighting poverty in Africa, raising children in the United States, profiles of activist churches, poverty in America, and com-bating child prostitution. Wallis writes regular edito-rials about topics such as religion in U.S. politics, global and domestic poverty, the immorality of war, the need to protect the environment, the need to maintain a consistent ethic of the sanctity of life, and the importance of sustaining family relationships . In 1979, Wallis was named one of 50 faces for America 's future by Time magazine. In 1995, he and other religious leaders founded Call for Renewal, based on a document called Cry for Renewal, which called for nonpartisan political action to eradicate poverty. A sample of Wallis's books show their range of topics: Abortion: What Does It Mean to Be Pro-Life? (1980), Waging Peace: A Handbook for the Struggle to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (1982), Soul of Politics: A Practical and Prophetic Vision for Change (1994 ), Who Speaks for God? An Alternative to the Religious Right: A New Politics of Compassion, Community, and Civility (1996), Faith Works: Lessons from the Life of an Activist Preacher (2000), and God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It (2005). Wallis refers to himself as a 19th-century evangel-ical, affiliating himself with progressive religious activists of that time period, including the abolition-ists. He often cites biblical passages such as Matthew 25 and James 2-"faith without works is dead"-and prophets such as Micah and Amos, as well as modern activists such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, and Desmond Tutu. In December of 2005 , Wallis and members of Sojourners and Call for Renewal were arrested by Capitol police for their protest of what they believed to be an immoral national budget. Wallis has appeared on National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting System's Frontline, and Jon Stewart's The Daily Show and his writing has appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post. He is admired by those who agree with his activist message and powerful rhetoric and criticized by those who believe his solutions for entrenched social problems are simplistic. - Joanne M. Marshall See also Protestantism; Public Theology; Relig ious Activism; Spirituality and Peacemaking Further Readings Call to Renewal. Retrieved February 15 , 2006, from http :// www.calltorenewal.org/ Gross, T. (2005). Rev. Wallis : Sojourners and politics [Radio interview]. Fresh Air [Radio series]. Philadelphia: WHYY. Sojourners. Retrieved February 12, 2006, from http://www .sojo.net Walli s, J . (2005). God's politics: Why the right gets it wrong and the left doesn't get it. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco. WAL-MART See ANTI-WAL-MART MovEMENT WARREN, EARL (1891-1974) Earl Warren's term as chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1953 until 1969 overlapped a remarkable period of social change in the United States. The deci-sions of the Warren Court helped propel the civil rights movement, which experienced a rebirth during the three decades after World War II. The court and the movement worked in tandem to outlaw Jim Crow segregation, redefine the right to due process, and assert the power of the federal government over the peculiarities of state law. The wrathful opposition Warren inspired testified to the novelty of his court's approach to the law. 

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