Landa Lecture Features Sojourners Editor on February 28

By Larry Becker

Jim Wallis is a bestselling author, public theologian, speaker, and international commentator on ethics and public life, will be featured speaker at the annual Paul Landa Memorial Lecture on Faith and Learning. Wallis will speak on Saturday, February 28, at 4 pm, in the La Sierra University Church.

Wallis is the tenth visiting lecturer to come to La Sierra University for the Landa series since its founding in 1999. The program was established in La Sierra University's School of Religion to honor the memory of Paul J. Landa, who taught at Loma Linda and La Sierra Universities for 26 years until his life was cut short by illness. A superlative teacher, Landa was also noted for his expertise in strategic planning for churches and educational institutions. In this way he helped local congregations, denominations and various Christian colleges position themselves for the future. In all of his work, Landa inspired others with his passion for intellectual integrity, faith commitment, and engagement with the world at large. His entire career was devoted to fostering a healthy conversation among church, campus and community.

Wallis's latest book is The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America (HarperOne, 2008), a New York Times bestseller. His previous book, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It (Harper Collins, 2005), was on the bestseller list for 4 months. He is President and CEO of Sojourners; where he is editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine, whose combined print and electronic media have a readership of more than 250,000 people.

Wallis speaks at more than 200 events a year and his columns appear in major newspapers, including The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Boston Globe. He regularly appears on radio and television, including shows like “Meet the Press,” “Hardball,” the “Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” the “O'Reilly Factor,” and National Public Radio. He teaches a course at Harvard University on “Faith, Politics, and Society.” He has written nine books, which include Faith Works: The Soul of Politics: A Practical and Prophetic Vision for Change; Who Speaks for God? A New Politics of Compassion, Community, and Civility; and The Call to Conversion.

Jim Wallis was raised in a Midwest evangelical family. As a teenager, his questioning of the racial segregation in his church and community led him to the black churches and neighborhoods of inner-city Detroit. He spent his student years involved in the civil rights and antiwar movements. While at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Illinois, Jim and several other students started a small magazine and community with a Christian commitment to social justice that has now grown into a national faith-based organization. In 1979, Time magazine named Wallis one of the “50 Faces for America's Future.”

Jim lives in inner-city Washington, D.C. with his wife, Joy Carroll, one of the first women ordained in the Church of England and author of Beneath the Cassock: The Real-life Vicar of Dibley; and their sons, Luke (9) and Jack (4). He is a Little League baseball coach.

PR Contact: Larry Becker
Executive Director of University Relations
La Sierra University
Riverside, California
951.785.2460 (voice)