Jim Wallis at Davos last year

Jim Wallis, at Sojourners, walks a tightrope that gains him many critics. He is probably the best known “left” evangelical Christian in America, and yet he eschews the term “left.” He prefers to use the word “moral” and wants to see a moral politics, a moral federal budget, moral business, etc. And when he says “moral” he means primarily following the Bible’s injunctions to help the poor, the prisoner, the sick. What’s not to like about that? Progressive critics say he pulls his punches: e.g., on the healthcare debate he joined those who said we need healthcare for all but stopped short of arguing for any particular program that would actually make it happen. As I wrote at the time, the result was less than prophetic.

Wallis clearly makes a great effort not to lose his evangelical base. He can’t bring along the hardcore haters and punishers, but there is a vast middle ground of evangelicals whom he and other leaders like Richard Cizik are leading towards empathy for the poor and oppressed, and towards environmental sanity. I assume he goes at the pace he feels enough of them can keep. He talks against abortion but argues that it should be legal and safe. He doesn’t rock the evangelical boat by reneging on key doctrines (particularly the “substitutionary atonement“) even if many other Christians don’t think they are key doctrines. Though I understand the frustrations with him that have been expressed to me, I am happy that he is doing his thing. As Theo Hobson wrote in the piece I linked to yesterday, one of the chief points of hope in America today is the gradual shift of younger evangelicals towards a politics of caring.

On this blog you may have noticed a persistent tension between those who argue primarily for empathy and nonviolence, and for whom conflict is often a bad word, and those who are much more oppositional and want to put the conflict back into nonviolent conflict. This is a major unresolved tension in the spiritual progressive world. Most people seem to agree that Gandhi and King successfully combined the two, but following their example seems hard. Jim Wallis specializes in being in conversation with people who are much more middle of the road than he is. I guess you would say he veers to the empathy side. That’s all by way of introducing his latest blog post from Davos, where he is trying to turn the real rulers of our world on to moral values. Tell us what you make of it. Some quotes from his post, which can be read in full here:

Values At Davos

by Jim Wallis

Yesterday was the first day of the World Economic Forum in Davos, a little mountain village in Switzerland, where each January corporate CEOs, heads of state, and leaders of nonprofit organizations from around the globe gather to reflect upon the state of the world.

I had been to Davos before the financial crisis of 2008, as part of a group of religious leaders who came to discuss interfaith cooperation, but who also began to dialogue with the other participants at Davos about moral values and the economy. Quite honestly, these conversations about moral values and the economy often felt like an extra-curricular activity — with sessions at 7 a.m. on the third floor. But after the economic crisis hit, our values conversations felt more like a necessity, and we were quickly moved to prime time in the main hall…

This week at Davos 2011, new metrics like “human flourishing” and “the common good” are being lifted up. Again, I have had many personal conversations with business executives who feel alone in their soul-searching for values. Furthermore, business ethics professors at some of the country’s leading business schools have also told me that their courses are over-subscribed, yet they still feel marginal to the curriculum.

All day yesterday, in many of the sessions here at Davos, we wrestled with feeling “stuck” in trying to implement values-change at big corporations and banks. We are now moving from just a conversation on values to a conversation on behavioral change. For example, we had a session yesterday on “Defining Shared Norms.” We spoke of the need for both external regulation and self-regulation; both external accountabilities and the internal moral compass which comes from embedding values in a business. This is all good news to Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of Davos who, as a young Swiss economist many years ago, wrote about the need for business to not only take into account the interests of shareholders, but also of the many other stakeholders — including employees, consumers, the poor, the environment, and future generations.

That Davos would take these issues very seriously, and would turn to faith community leaders for help, is good news to me. But the headline in yesterday’s International Herald Tribune — “The Super-Rich Pull Ever Farther Ahead” — indicated we still have a long way to go. Many of those super-rich are at Davos, and I indicated yesterday that the only people whose lives seem to have got back to “normal” since the financial crisis began are those whose behaviors caused it in the first place. They are back to record profits, while a seminar I attended yesterday showed how dramatic and devastating unemployment still is around the globe — especially for young people.

But the conversations here lasted far into the night, and I woke up this morning with a full day of more work before us, including one session where I will speak on “Mindful Leadership.” Indeed, leadership — moral leadership — is clearly the issue now, and our session today is already overbooked. And that’s a good sign. I find myself spending time at Davos every year now with an exciting group of about 50 young entrepreneurs called the Young Global Leaders, who are asking some of the most important questions that are before us.

The snow keeps falling here, but there are signs and hopes for spring.