Adam Taylor has been named the new president of Sojourners, the national Christian social justice advocacy organization founded and led by the Rev. Jim Wallis since the 1970s.
Wallis will continue working with Sojourners through July 2021, when he will join the faculty of Georgetown University as director of a new center focused on “faith, public life, and the common good.” He will retain the title of founder and ambassador for Sojourners.
The move was timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the organization’s founding.
The new role for Taylor was approved at a meeting of the Sojourners board of directors on Nov. 12 and is effective immediately.
“Rev. Adam Taylor brings a depth of commitment from the roots of his Christian faith and a breadth of national and international experience to this role that is truly unique,” said the Rev. Dr. Alexia Salvatierra, vice-chair of the Sojourners board in a statement.
‘Critical transition’
“We are so grateful that he has agreed to serve at this time of critical transition in Sojourners and in the world.”
Taylor, who grew up in Washington state, is the son of a Black mother and white father who married in 1968, a year after a Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia had made interracial marriage legal nationwide.
He knew early in adulthood that his faith called him to work on issues of justice.
One Sunday, while a college student at Emory University, he recalled attending Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King Jr. had once served as pastor. He ended up responding to an altar call after a sermon that connected the redemptive work of Jesus with a call for social justice.
‘Just clicked’
“It just clicked,” he told Religion News Service in a phone interview. “I walked down the aisle and in a more public way, proclaimed my faith.”
Taylor said that as president of Sojourners he will focus on equipping and mobilizing people of faith to work for justice. In the past, he said, the organization has sometimes done a better job of articulating the call to justice than it has in equipping the church to work for it.
“To me, the real battle ahead is, will our country truly embrace multiracial democracy that is committed to liberty and justice for all?” he said. “To put it in a spiritual sense: to building the beloved community?”
Taylor said that his long relationship with Wallis — and several years of intentional planning by the board — will help make the transition successful.
Wallis told RNS he is grateful for the many friendships he made during his work at Sojourners and for the impact that work had on the church and the wider world.
“The legacy of Sojourners, in the end, is not going to be just the work we do,” he said. “It is what we have inspired other people to do with their lives.”
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