In evangelical world, a liberal view steps up

Alex Johnson Reporter • Profile

When thousands of Southern Baptists gather later this month in Nashville for the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, former President Jimmy Carter, one of the world’s most famous Baptists, will not be there. He broke with the convention several years ago, distressed at its takeover by conservative Christian fundamentalists beginning in 1979.

In an interview last year with Newsweek, Carter bemoaned the “melding ... between the Republican Party and the more conservative Christians,” saying: “This is not only an anomaly, but I think is contrary to the best interests of our democratic principles.”

The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest evangelical Christian denomination in the world. Its alliance with political conservatives is just one part of the American evangelical community’s popular identification with the Republican Party, whose rise has been fueled by its identification with the religious right.

The Rev. Jerry Falwell, perhaps the most widely recognized conservative religious spokesman, is also an important evangelical figure, preaching from the pulpit of a Southern Baptist church in Virginia. So is the Rev. Pat Robertson, whose network gave birth to the Christian Coalition. So is James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, who is considered the most influential evangelical figure in America.

Most famously, President Bush, whose own religious story has never been fully told, has long targeted his message to conservative evangelicals.

“People like Karl Rove and people like Ralph Reed have done a brilliant job of wedding the evangelical community to the Republican Party,” said Tony Campolo, a spiritual adviser to President Bill Clinton in the White House. “And so when you begin to think about evangelicals, you begin to think in terms of the values of the right wing of the Republican Party.”

Finding evangelicals outside the box
Like Jimmy Carter, Tony Campolo is a tireless campaigner for social justice, especially for the poor, for the environment and for oppressed populations in the Third World. Like Carter, he is also an evangelical Christian — a Baptist minister, in fact.

Although many Americans see evangelicalism as a monolithic construct, “in reality, there are a whole lot of us evangelicals who think differently,” said Campolo, who founded the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education.

Campolo puts the proportion of “progressive” or liberal American evangelicals at 35 percent to 40 percent. Other scholars say that is probably too high; the leading authority on religious populations in America, John Green of the University of Akron in Ohio, puts it closer to 20 percent.

Whoever is correct, one thing is clear: There are millions of progressive evangelicals. And yet, the conventional wisdom resolves to a very simple equation: “Evangelical” = “religious right.”

That may gall progressive evangelicals, who are proud of their heritage at the forefront of  campaigns for civil rights, racial justice and religious diversity, but the turnout of religious voters for Bush exemplifies the attraction they feel to core Republican principles, said Paul Hetrick, vice president of Focus on the Family.

“‘Evangelical,’ along with ‘moral’ or ‘values’ voter and voting surged into the lexicon and consciousness in expanded ways in 2004,” he said in an e-mail interview, “most especially as such voters were seen to have significantly influenced and impacted the November election results.”

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