BOOK REVIEWS
153
written, well organized, and quite comprehensive in its treatment of the subject. Andrews University
Wallis, Jim.
Change.
STEVENP. VITRANO
The Soul of Politics: A Practical and Prophetic Vision for Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994. 304 pp. Cloth, $19.95;
paper, $12.00. The unpleasantness of this book for white middle- and upper-class Christians in the U.S. will only be matched by its prophetic importance. To avoid this book is to continue to ignore the unjust social systems that plague this nation and make our cities so dangerous. Such behavior also runs the risk of ignoring an opportunity to explore the cure of our social sicknesses and to participate in the healing of the nation. Jim Wallis is known as one of the major prophetic voices of the latter part of the twentieth century. The editor of Sojourner magazine, he is one of the leaders of the Sojourner Community that moved into Columbia Heights during the 1960s. This neighborhood is twenty blocks from the White House in the District of Columbia and is one of the more serious pockets of poverty, hunger, and crime in the nation's capital. This book, as a serious alternative to the Christian Right of the Pat Robertsons and other Protestant fundamentalists, is not a rallying cry to seize power, but rather a call for a renewal of deep spiritual and moral values that must undergird the believing and practicing Christian community in what Wallis refers to as "islands of hope." The book enables Americans to look closely at their world and their worldview and evaluate both from a biblical, social-ethical perspective. Politics, to Wallis, is more than the party - machinations "within the beltwayn; it is the practical outworking of our social behavior, our social practice. This book is an explicit call for large-scale socially-responsible behavior on the part of all peoples, all citizens. It calls Christians to escape from their walled-in, cocoon-like existence, characterized by individualism and spiritual privatization, and to reenter the public square as the socially transforming agent that Jesus called us to be. One of the ramifications of all this is the need for this socially responsible behavior to be demonstrated within the various Christian communities. Too often the polarized behaviors of political conservatives and liberals are mirrored within the Christian comLunities, whether the polarizations be over doctrine or practice. Basic to the ability of the church to be an agent of social transformation (yeast, salt, light) is the imperative for the church to practice inclusiveness rather than exclusiveness, compassion instead of divisiveness, and community rather than