Wallis: Don't rely on politicians to solve your problems

People need to stop relying on political parties to solve all their problems, the country's woes and society's evils, prominent evangelical Jim Wallis said Friday.

Elections are important, said Wallis, CEO of faith-based Sojourners, but they aren't the sole answer.

"It is always ordinary people come who come together in a social movement with spiritual values that change society more than politicians do," he said Friday morning at the Wheaton Leadership Prayer Breakfast.

Sojourners, a group founded in 1971 by Trinity Evangelical Divinity School graduate Wallis, claims as its mission articulating a biblical call to social justice. Their magazine addresses faith, politics and culture from a biblical perspective.

Wallis said he jokingly tells first-time visitors to Washington D.C. that it's easy to identify politicians: they're the ones walking around holding one finger in the air to test which way the wind blows.

But the problem isn't politicians -- or even political parties themselves -- Wallis cautions.

"You don't change a country by replacing one wet-fingered politician with another," he said. "You change the wind."

The leadership breakfast began more than two decades ago as a way to provide spiritual guidance to Wheaton's leaders.

Wallis encouraged those leaders to start effecting social change at home before they looked to the national stage.

"If we are not making the changes in our own lifestyles, if we are not doing it ourselves," he said, "then don't write your members of Congress."