02/23/16

America’s Original Sin (Brazos Press; ISBN 9781587433429; ebook ISBN 9781493403486; $21.99) by Jim Wallis has landed on the New York Times Best Sellers list, achieving the #5 spot on the February 2016 Race and Civil Rights list during its first month of release. This ranking reflects sales for January 2016 and is based on sales from thousands of nationwide venues where general books are sold.

Jim Wallis is currently conducting a national, multicity book tour, during which he is convening town hall–style meetings for candid and energizing conversations about racial issues at churches in cities such as St. Louis, Baltimore, Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and others. He has also received national media coverage from MSNBC, CNN, the Washington Post, the Tavis Smiley Show, NPR, and others. Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of Equal Justice Initiative and New York Times bestselling author of Just Mercy, states in the foreword, “This is a critically important time, when leaders of faith need to address issues of race more thoughtfully, prayerfully, and courageously. . . . Jim Wallis has been speaking truth to power for decades. This new work is timely, urgent, and necessary.”

In America’s Original Sin, Wallis offers a prophetic and deeply personal call to action in overcoming the racism so ingrained in American society. He speaks candidly to Christians—particularly white Christians—urging them to cross a new bridge toward racial justice and healing. Whenever divided cultures and gridlocked power structures fail to end systemic sin, faith communities can help lead the way to grassroots change. Probing yet positive, biblically rooted yet highly practical, this book shows people of faith how they can work together to overcome the embedded racism in America, galvanizing a movement to cross the bridge to a multiracial church and a new America.

Jim Wallis is an author, activist, preacher, teacher, and pastor. He is a bestselling writer, convener of faith-inspired movements for justice and peace both outside and inside politics, public theologian in a secular culture, renowned speaker in the United States and abroad, and international media commentator on ethics and public life. He is the founder and leader of Sojourners, a publishing platform, organization, and global network whose mission is to put faith into action for social justice. Wallis has written more than ten books, including The (Un)Common Good and the New York Times bestsellers God’s Politics and The Great Awakening. He has written for major newspapers, does regular columns for top digital news networks, and appears frequently on a wide variety of television and radio networks. Wallis also teaches at Georgetown University and has taught at Harvard University. He is husband to Joy Carroll, one of the first women to be ordained a priest in the Church of England, father to two teenage boys, Luke and Jack, and a decades-long Little League baseball coach.

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