"The View from Sardis"

Joseph Wakelee-Lynch is a writer and editor whose writing focuses on the nexus of religion and politics. A contributing editor for The Witness, he has been published in numerous daily newspapers, including The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune and The Philadelphia Inquirer, and in magazines such as The Utne Reader, The Progressive, Commonweal, Fellowship, and Books & Religion. For six years, he hosted a weekly radio interview program, which featured interviews with writers, in the Los Angeles area on KSPC-FM, based at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif.

Joseph's involvement in anti-death penalty ministry led to the founding of a group working on capital punishment at St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Berkeley, Calif. Previously, he was a vestry member and senior warden at St. Ambrose Episcopal Church in Claremont, Calif. For most of the 1980s, he was a member of the Sojourners Community and worked at Sojourners magazine, where he wrote editorials and was book review editor. He was also a peace and justice organizer in the Sojourners Peace Ministry, helping to plan prayer services, vigils, and demonstrations at the White House, the U.S. Capitol building, and elsewhere. His writing on related justice and peace issues includes Called Forth from Jail: A Prison Seminarian Hopes for Ordination and Freedom, and The Language of War and the Theology of the Enemy.

Joseph received a bachelor's degree from the University of Delaware in international relations and a master's from the London School of Economics and Political Science, in international politics. He now lives in Long Beach, Calif., with his wife and daughter.