The Santa Barbara Independent interviews Jim Wallis, author of The Great Awakening about the role of faith in major societal changes, such as the abolition of slavery. Wallis argues that there is reason to hope for another Great Awakening that will help change the world because it has happened before:

I almost end up in a pastoral mode where I’m just calling people to choose hope, to side for hope because that’s what faith does in these critical moments. It’s not optimism, it’s a choice and because of faith we choose hope and that’s what changes big things. So it feels to me very, very palpable. The kind of feeling in the air, for example, at Parks Street Church, which is a historic evangelical church in Boston. I knew that but what I didn’t know was that William Lloyd Garrison gave his first abolition speech there when he was 23 years old and that George Whitefield during the first great awakening spoke there and that Charles Finney, my favorite second great awakening evangelist and abolitionist, on weeknights was preaching there, calling people to Jesus Christ and then enlisting them into the anti-slavery campaign. He used the altar call. He used the method of the altar call to sign up his converts for the anti-slavery campaign, and there I was on a weeknight again and the church was just packed with 20 something evangelicals who think they’re new abolitionists now and you can feel the electricity in the room.