Christ First Forum

Obama pastor: Occupiers on Wall Street 'stand with Jesus'
Suggests church members have 'potluck' at protests
Posted: October 09, 2011
2:28 pm Eastern

By Aaron Klein
© 2011 WND

Jim Wallis

A member of President Obama's controversial faith council has implied the Occupy Wall Street movement stands with Jesus, while asking church members to bring pizza and casseroles to the protesters.

"The occupiers' desire for change and willingness to take action to do something about it should be an inspiration to us all," wrote Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners, a ministry professing a devotion to the pursuit of "social justice."

Wallis was appointed to in February 2009 to the Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, a White House group replete with advocates for using religion to advance "social justice."

Wallis reportedly is a spiritual adviser to Obama and has known the president for years.

Here's the rundown on Obama's ties to "communists, socialists and other anti-American extremists" – all in "The Manchurian President."

Writing in the Huffington Post this week, Wallis compared the Wall Street protesters to Jesus.

Wrote Wallis: "Here are a few things I do know about the Occupy Wall Street protesters:

"When they stand with the poor, they stand with Jesus.

When they stand with the hungry, they stand with Jesus.

When they stand for those without a job or a home, they stand with Jesus.

When they are peaceful, non-violent and love their neighbors (even the ones they don't agree with and who don't agree with them), they are walking as Jesus walked.

When they talk about holding banks and corporations accountable, they sound like Jesus and the biblical prophets before him who all spoke about holding the wealthy and powerful accountable."
Wallis asked readers to "think of ways that you or your church can be Jesus to them."

Wallis recommended, "Bring them a covered casserole! Take your church potluck down to the occupations. Sit, eat and talk with the protesters. Offer them the sacred gifts of hospitality, company and friendship. Or a hot cup of coffee. Or send them a pizza. (Think of it as a peace-za.)"

Wallis wrote he was planning to visit the protesters at Wall Street.

He added it is OK to disagree with some of the protesters' actions or ideology.

"We will likely see images and hear things from Occupy Wall Street demonstrators that will offend us and some that will inspire," he wrote. "We'll hear demands that we agree with and some that we don't. And that's OK."

Obama's controversial pastor

Wallis is founder of the Sojourners ministry as well as a progressive magazine also titled Sojourners.

He is a socialist activist who has championed communist causes and previously labeled the U.S. "the great captor and destroyer of human life."

The Associated Baptist Press described Wallis as a "politically progressive evangelical and longtime advocate for the poor." The Huffington Post identified Wallis as a "Christian author and social-justice advocate."

Wallis, however, is a longtime socialist advocate whose Sojourners magazine has championed communist causes.

Wallis began his activism as a protester and then later Michigan leader of the Students for a Democratic Society, the 1960s anti-war group from which Bill Ayers' Weatherman domestic terrorist organization splintered.

Discover the Networks documented that as a theology student, Wallis founded an anticapitalism magazine called the Post-American, which identified wealth redistribution and government-managed economies as the keys to achieving "social justice."

In 1971, Wallis renamed his magazine Sojourners. He has since served as editor of the publication.

Sojourners' official "statement of faith" urges readers to "refuse to accept [capitalist] structures and assumptions that normalize poverty and segregate the world by class."

Sojourners has published a slew of radicals, including socialist activist Cornel West and James Cone, considered the founder of Black Liberation Theology, which spawned the likes of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor of nearly 20 years.

Wallis' magazine actively lobbied for communist regimes that seized power in Latin America in the late 1970s, including the Sandinista dictatorship in Nicaragua. Sojourners in the 1980s was a fierce opponent of the U.S. nuclear buildup, claiming the policy was "an intolerable evil" irreconcilably at odds with Christianity.

Discover the Networks notes how Sojourners originally formed a socialist commune in Washington, D.C., where members shared finances and launched anticapitalist activism.

In his 1976 book, "Agenda for Biblical People," Wallis called the U.S. "the great power, the great seducer, the great captor and destroyer of human life, the great master of humanity and history in its totalitarian claims and designs."

Wallis continues to openly support socialism. Along with socialist activist West, Wallis in 1995 founded Call to Renewal, a coalition of religious groups demanding the spread of U.S. wealth to promote "social justice."

White House pushing churches to be 'green'?

Other members of Obama's faith council write for Wallis' Sojourners magazine.

In January, Obama named to his faith council Lynne Hybels, a leader of Willow Creek Church, an inter-denominational, multi-generational megachurch located in a Chicago suburb.

The church is led by Hybels' husband, Bill, a social justice advocate who created the Global Leadership Summit, an international Christian group.

Lynne Hybels' official title at Willow Creek Church is Advocate for Global Engagement. She is also a regular contributor to the Sojourners magazine.

She has advocated for the "greenest" church on the planet, while discussing Scripture as it relates to the Palestinians and calling for a fight against American "racial injustice."

Also writing at Sojourners, as WND reported, is Eboo Patel, another member of the White House faith council.

Patel declared that everything he was taught about Christopher Columbus, Thomas Jefferson and American "fairness" and "equality" was wrong.

WND also reported Patel, a Muslim activist from Chicago, compared al-Qaida to what he called Christian "totalitarians" in the U.S. and Jewish "totalitarians" in Israel.

Earlier, WND reported Patel is deeply tied to Weatherman terrorist group founder Bill Ayers. Also, Patel blasted what he called the "myths" of America – describing them as beliefs that the country is "a land of freedom and equality and justice."


Read more: Obama pastor: Occupiers on Wall Street like Jesus http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=353857#ixzz1aYwuVkky