On the last Tuesday in March, Jim Wallis and other members of Call to Renewal met first with members of the Congressional Poor People's Caucus, then with a group of Republican Senate staffers, and finally with White House staff members involved with welfare reform.

"It was a very bi-partisan day pushing the agenda of poverty," says Wallis, the convener and president of Call to Renewal, a five-year-old effort to link Christians across the political and theological spectrum in anti-poverty advocacy.

In one of the meetings, conversation got bogged down in the language of "poverty reduction" vs. "self-sufficiency," Wallis says. "I looked around at all these faith-based leaders -- they're grassroots, on the ground -- and they're shaking their heads, you know, what the hell are we talking about, this is a Washington conversation.

"So we try to build common ground. We say, yes, we want self-sufficiency, we want sustenance for people who are poor -- not endless subsidy, because that doesn't end poverty, that just maintains poverty at some barely sustainable level. But how do you help welfare families and single moms? You've got to deal with child care and transportation and affordable housing and health care. Is work the way out of this? Yeah, but only if it works -- if you work and you're poorer than you were on welfare, something's not working."

Wallis feels that the greatest achievement of Call to Renewal has been "getting the warring factions of the churches together on this issue of poverty. It's the only thing we really can agree on -- we disagree on almost everything else. We have been able to bring together a wide spectrum of people. We really do have evangelicals deeply involved -- the National Association of Evangelicals is at the table and so is the National Council of Churches. The NCC and the NAE have been like the Crips and the Bloods -- they've been literally acting like rival gangs. We joke that when the NCC and the NAE are there we put a Mennonite between them at the table."

This constituency means that Call to Renewal has "access across the political spectrum where just a liberal group wouldn't," Wallis says.

In addition to Call to Renewal's national office in Washington, D.C., about a dozen local Call to Renewal "roundtables" are meeting across the country. Each works independently on local projects, but also participates in national efforts such as the recent "Pentecost 2002" mobilization on TANF (welfare reform) reauthorization.

"Our job is to help them connect with each other and then connect with the national agenda," Wallis says. "Springfield, Ohio, has a very active Call to Renewal roundtable, and their work has resulted in the construction of a new health clinic for low-income kids, which serves 5,000 kids a year. But they're also putting together a delegation of faith-based leaders to come to our mobilization in May to meet with their Senator on welfare reform."

Call to Renewal intends to expand its efforts to organize local groups, Wallis says.

"Wes Granberg-Michaelson, our board chair, said, 'We've shown that we can convene and inspire, now we have to show that we can organize.' So the task ahead now is state-by-state, community-by-community organizing. I think our vocation is to help local efforts to connect with each other across these chasms in the churches -- even within the churches -- and then to connect them together for a national agenda. It's a movement-building vocation on poverty."

Movement-building is a necessary component of social change, Wallis contends.

"Do you think we'd have a civil rights law and a voting rights act if there had been no SCLC? There was lots of local activity for years.The local activity, initiative, creativity, leadership -- all of that is the prerequisite for social, cultural change. You can't build a national anything if it doesn't have local feet. But at some point, that's got to be networked and connected and lead to some national agendas.

"What a social movement is is that people in Albany, Ga., and Raleigh, N.C., know that their struggles and their hopes and their dreams and their failures -- that others are going through it, too, in different places, and they feel connected to that. Mostly what I do, I think, around the country is I help people not to feel alone. It's not just them -- there are people like them in other places, and the more we can connect together and support each other and then come together on things we all care about, the more we can accomplish.

"We just saw a big victory on campaign finance reform. I had lunch with Scott Harshbarger, the head of Common Cause, and Scott is clear that this victory happened because for the first time all the campaign finance organizations who normally fight each other worked together on this. It was like networking the networks. And on poverty we have to do the same thing."

In addition to working with churches, Call to Renewal builds alliances with other groups working toward the same goals.

"There's this new group called the Campaign for Jobs and Income Support, and I think they have the best network around issues like welfare reform," Wallis says. "A lot of welfare moms' groups are in this, a lot of immigrants' rights groups, a lot of living-wage efforts. Just as we have a strategic alliance on welfare reform with the Roman Catholic bishops and with Bread for the World, we're also working with Campaign for Jobs and Income Support. They're organizing poor people's organizations, we're organizing churches and faith-based groups, and we're tracking the debate -- and we're going to impact the debate in a way that's allied to each other."

Wallis also met recently with Jim Hightower, who is working with Michael Moore and Molly Ivins on a project called "Rolling Thunder."

"They are going from city to city trying to have a big revival with speakers and music to get a whole new progressive movement going. They want a clear, strong, faith-based component in this, and that's why they want us to come in with them."

Wallis feels that Call to Renewal's Christian identity is helpful to its mission.

"If you go interfaith too quickly, you get all the liberals together who are interfaith. And that's fine, but we've done that, that's not new. Call to Renewal has succeeded where no one else has in getting evangelicals together with liberals and Catholics, and black and white churches. We've got to get our own act together. I think interfaith things are better when each tradition is the best they can be and then makes alliances."

-- Marianne Arbogast

More information on Call to Renewal can be found on their website, <www.calltorenewal.com>.