Politics & Power Quote by Jim Wallis

Wallis is doing a careful two-step that only sounds mild because he writes it in the language of fairness. Step one: defend religious groups from reflexive suspicion. The phrase "because they're religious" signals a frustration with a secular reflex that treats faith-based institutions as automatically tainted. He’s staking out a pluralist baseline: if a congregation is feeding people, housing families, or running a clinic, it shouldn’t be sidelined just for praying on Sundays.

Step two: draw a bright, legally charged line around the state. "Government can't subsidize proselytizing or worship or religious activity" is less theology than constitutional hygiene. Wallis is trying to preserve public legitimacy for partnerships with faith-based charities while insulating the arrangement from the charge that taxpayers are funding conversion campaigns. The repetition - "It can't" - functions like a gavel: not a suggestion, a boundary. It also hints at hard-earned experience; you can hear the arguments he’s trying to preempt from both sides: secular critics worried about church-state entanglement, and religious activists who want public money without public constraints.

The subtext is strategic: he’s protecting religion’s moral voice by refusing the state’s checkbook as a spiritual tool. In the American context of "faith-based initiatives" and culture-war fights over public funding, Wallis is pitching a coalition that’s broad enough to govern: yes to outcomes (good work), no to coercion (proselytizing). It’s a pragmatic ethic with a political aim: keep faith in the public square, keep the state out of the pews.