The Rev. Jim Wallis, the evangelical activist and author who has been trying for years to get the nation’s political parties to move toward a moral center, admits to feeling more upbeat these days about the country’s future.

“I think the whole landscape has changed so dramatically in the last couple years,” says the Soujourners magazine founder and editor, who two years ago authored the book God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It.

“The era of the Religious Right is over, and a new dialogue has begun,” he said.

Wallis — who is set to speak Monday at Central Congregational Church in Providence as part of that church’s on-going Darrell West Lecture Series — has long been an enigma to those on the extreme ends of the political spectrum.

For example, he shares the belief of a large number of conservative evangelical Christians that a way must be found to end abortion and to affirm “the sacredness of all life.”

At the same time, with the late Roman Catholic Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, who often called for a “consistent ethic of life,” Wallis insists that respect for life also must include opposition to capital punishment and unjust war and support for policies on the side of the poor and the needy.

At age 59, Wallis, who was born in Detroit and has spent several decades in Washington, has gained special prominence in recent years as an evangelical on the left who believes that religion may be personal but never private, and that one day there will be an accounting for the way we treat the poor.

HE SAID one of the problems that faithful Christians have often faced is what they have to choose from in the voting booth. All too often, he says, they must chose between a candidate who is “pro-life” on abortion but then pro-war, pro-capital punishment and not very concerned about issues of poverty or injustice, or a candidate who shares those broader concerns but then sees no problem with allowing abortion.

Or worse, he says, they would find themselves having to choose between one of those and a libertarian candidate who opposes programs that help the poor and the disenfranchised but at the same time opposes anything that smacks as a restriction on personal freedom.

But Wallis, in a phone interview last week, says he’s beginning to see a shift; the stirrings of a new faith-based social movement not tied to the selective moralities of the left and right but more concerned with following what Jesus really had to say

“The evangelicals are leaving the Religious Right in droves,” he declares. “They are tired of a partisan agenda that would reduce their faith to a couple issues. Young evangelicals may be the most global generation we’ve had. They have been on mission trips and know how poverty helps to make the world insecure. They want their faith to make a difference in the world.”

Likewise, he says, he sees a whole new generation of Catholics coming to find wisdom in Catholic social teaching.

Wallis is seeing a shift on the Democratic side as well — a willingness by at least some Democrats to “rethink” their party’s rigid pro-choice stand on abortion and to admit there’s a problem with the nation’s abortion rate.

“Right now I think there is a lot of learning and soul-searching going on, a lot of political math going on. Democrats are realizing that unless they connect their concerns with values they are not going to be successful.”

Wallis, who has been pushing for years for Democrats to be more attentive to the concerns of faith-filled Christians and others, said he’s been toying with the phrase “conservative radical” as a description of the kind of faith-based revival that America now needs.

It would be a revival rooted in faith and tradition, he says, but radical enough to seek to apply the words of Jesus to the world of today, the same way that Dorothy Day’s adherence to the words of Jesus inspired her to open a soup kitchen in lower Manhattan in the 1940s and turned her into an anti-war advocate.

There was a time when George W. Bush, before his election as president, went to Wallis to ask his advice on how to better understand the poor and reach out to them. Wallis said he later saw it as a hopeful sign when candidate Bush began using the phrase “compassionate conservatism.”

But in Wallis’ view the president never backed up his words with meaningful action.

And when it came to getting the president’s ear on a six-point plan that Wallis and several other religious leaders had developed prior to the onset of the Iraq War that proposed a way of removing Saddam Hussein from power without an invasion , Wallis found the door to the White House was closed. That was unlike the reception he received across the Atlantic, where British Prime Minister Tony Blair invited him in to talk about the plan, sparking discussion in Blair’s cabinet.

Among the elements of the plan: indict Hussein for crimes against humanity and set into motion the internal and external forces to have him tried at the International Criminal Court in The Hague; pursue coercive disarmament with greatly intensified inspections by a U.N. mandated multi-national force; foster a democratic Iraq through a temporary post-Hussein U.N. administration rather than U.S. military occupation; organize a massive humanitarian effort through the U.N. and other relief agencies to help the people of Iraq immediately rather than only after the war; commit to implementing the U.S.-backed “roadmap” for peace in the Middle East, with a timetable toward a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine by 2005; and reinvigorate and sustain international cooperation in the campaign against terrorism.

WALLIS SAYS he was later told by a British official that had the plan been implemented it probably would have worked.

“Funny you should ask,” Wallis commented in a phone interview the other day. Yes, he said, he was just putting the finishing touches on yet another six-point plan — outlining how the U.S. can deal with the threat from Iran and extricate itself from Iraq. But Wallis said that rather discuss the details over the phone, he and his “friends” are planning to release the document at a prayer vigil for peace set for March 16 at the National Cathedral in Washington. A procession to the White House will follow.

Wallis says he believes the nation is on the edge of a true religious revival. You will know the revival is real, he says, when you see it transforming society, much the same way that people of faith inspired the movement against slavery in the 19th century.

But Wallis, who unlike some who believe that there needs to be a strict separation between politics and religion and between church and state, says liberal mainline Christians who are overjoyed to see Democrats making a comeback need to realize that churches need to be on their guard.

“I think the churches make the mistake of putting themselves in the pocket of one party or other,” he says. That, he says, was what happened to the conservative evangelical leaders who, for the sake of access to those in political power, began to hold their tongue when they saw the president taking actions they would not have otherwise condoned or endorsed.

“If churches are too close to power, they lose their prophetic voice. The churches on the left need to heed the lesson and maintain their independent posture.”

The Rev. Rebecca Spencer, the minister at Central Congregational, said her church invited Wallis to speak largely because he is a well-known evangelical activist who believes that politics and religion must intersect.

Last fall the congregation invited as its guest speaker the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, a man who was and is deeply critical of the White House’s efforts to channel federal money into “faith based” initiatives and other projects that seem to mix politics and religion.

“Our goal is to invite thoughtful, provocative people from around the theological spectrum who have something to say,” she said.

The Rev. W. Scott Axford, the minister of Providence’s First Unitarian Church and a co-chairman of the Faith and Order department of the Rhode Island State Council of Churches, said the ecumenical leaders who attend the department’s monthly sessions are also interested in Wallis’ visit, given that they have been studying his book for several months.

Having just gone through an election, he said, “We thought studying his book was a good timely thing to do.”

Wallis is speaking at 7:30 p.m. Central Congregational Church is at 296 Angell St., Providence.

rdujardi@projo.com