James M. Wall is currently a Contributing Editor of The Christian Century magazine, based in Chicago, Illinois.  From 1972 through 1999, he was editor and publisher of the Christian Century magazine.  Jim launched this new personal blog April 24, 2008.

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Biography:

Journalism was Jim’s undergraduate college major at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. He has earned two MA degrees, one from Emory, and one from the University of Chicago, both in religion.

He is an ordained United Methodist clergy person.

He and his wife, Mary Eleanor, are the parents of three sons,  and the grandparents of four grandchildren. They live in Elmhurst, Illinois.

Jim served for two years on active duty in the US Air Force, and three additional years in the USAF (inactive) reserve. While serving with the Alaskan Command, he reached the rank of first lieutenant.

He has worked as a sports writer for both the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, was editor of the United Methodist magazine, Christian Advocate for ten years, and editor and publisher of the Christian Century magazine for 27 years, starting in 1972.

Time magazine wrote about the new editor, who arrived at the Christian Century determined to turn the magazine into a hard-hitting news publication.  

Time concluded its essay with this summary of what the editor had planned for the future.

He sees the mainstream churches at least as often foolish as they are wise. He believes that the Century, and liberal Protestants generally, must shift from pious approval of their churches to a more realistic and vigorous appraisal. Concludes Wall: “What we have to say about the church and the world will be gutsy and robust.”

The inspiration for Wall Writings comes from that mindset and from many other sources that have influenced Jim’s writings over the years, including politics, cinema, media, American culture, and the political struggles in the Middle East.

He has made more than 20 trips to that region as a journalist, during which he covered such events as Anwar Sadat’s 1977 trip to Jerusalem, and the 2006 Palestinian legislative election. He has interviewed, and written about, journalists, religious leaders, political leaders and private citizens in the region.

Wall Writings deals with all of these topics, and others, as they emerge, from within an understanding of the ambiguity of the human condition as perceived from a religious perspective.

Wall Writings was initially used by Jim as the title of his column in the Georgia Tech Technique, when he served as sports editor of that publication.

He often finds inspiration from cinema and from music and lyrics from songs, like this one, “Sound of Silence”: 

And the people bowed and prayed

To the neon God they made.

And the sign flashed out its warning,

In the words that it was forming.

And the signs said, the words of the prophets

Are written on the subway walls

And tenement halls.

And whispered in the sounds of silence.

This song addressed the uneasy mood that permeated a rebellious period, the 1960s, a mood chronicled in Director Mike Nichols’ film, The Graduate.

“The words of the prophets” come to us from different places, like subway walls, tenement halls, poetry, movies, novels, and surprise gifts of grace that break through the mists of secular creativity.

Such a moment comes to us when first we encounter the deadpan expression of Dustin Hoffman, as Benjamin, a recent college graduate, who has returned to his stultifying suburban home. At a family party, the most important advice a friend of his father’s can give him is “plastics”. The only meaning Benjamin can expect in a godless universe is to be found in a successful career that gives him a home in the suburbs with a swimming pool out back.

Read the signs wherever you can find them, and then act upon them.

Comments Are Not Free

Desert Peace, an excellent website, has posted guidelines for the Comment section of its site.

The guidelines set tough standards. 99 percent of the comments I receive are well within these guidelines, but I have discovered over the past two years, that the occasional comment will arrive that I do not wish to post.

So, for the record, here is my set of guidelines adapted from Desert Peace.

All comments that fail to meet these standards will not be posted. Here are my standards:

This blog will not tolerate any form of racism including (real) antisemitism. Comments equating being Jewish with being a zionist will not be tolerated.

Also not tolerated: Any zionist propaganda … any form of sexism… obscenities of any kind… personal attacks on myself or anyone that comments.

Comments not related to the topic will not be published, nor will comments advertising commercial products or personal blogs that do not reflect the views of this one.

Comments that go on and on having nothing to do with the topic will also not be published.

It is easy to get a Blog of your own, if  you have this much to say about anything.

Disagreements are welcome, discussions are welcome, but any of the above will not be published.

This is not censorship.  It is standard journalistic guidelines.

The Simon and Garfunkle video of Sound of Silence is from a performance at Monterey Pop Festival, in 1967

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