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Jim Wallis, a best-selling author, theologian and professor of faith and public policy, will give ECU’s 29th Distinguished Lecture on Religion and Culture on Oct. 19.

Presented by the Religious Studies Program and the J. Woolard and Helen Peel Distinguished Chair in Religious Studies, the lecture will take place at 7 p.m. in Wright Auditorium.

Wallis is a professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy and Founder Director of the Center for Faith and Justice at Georgetown University. The university says he is a globally respected writer, speaker, and founder and Editor of Sojourners Magazine.

His Georgetown University profile says Wallis “believes the gospel of Jesus must be transformed from its cultural and political captivities, and always be ‘good news’ to the poor and oppressed.”

Raised in a Midwestern evangelical family, as a teenager Wallis questioned the racial segregation in his church and community, which led him to the black churches and neighborhoods of inner-city Detroit, his GU page said. He spent his student years involved in the civil rights and antiwar movements at Michigan State University.

His books include America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege and the Bridge to America; God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get it; The Great Awakening; The Call to Conversion; and Christ in Crisis: Reclaiming Jesus in a Time of Fear, Hate, and Violence; and host of the popular podcast The Soul of the Nation.

Wallis served on President Obama’s White House Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships and he has taught faith and public life courses at Harvard and Georgetown, the GU page says.

He also serves as a Senior Fellow at the Georgetown University Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs.

Wallis has previously taught at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and was awarded an honorary doctorate in humane letters from Georgetown in 2007 when he gave the college commencement address.

He also served 22 seasons as a Little League coach for his two baseball playing sons.

Contact Bobby Burns at baburns@reflector.com and 329.9572.

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