a mission from god

very interesting article in the new yorker about a schism in the evangelical movement.

essentially, the hard religious right and their implied and acknowledged marriage to the republican party has led to an image of the ‘average’ evangelical as ‘i hate abortion doctors and the gays and i love the bush administration so so much but i don’t believe in evolution or global warming or anything outside of america being important’.

and a growing number of more moderate evangelicals are getting tired of being assumed to be associated with that. so they’re speaking out in favor of other issues. such as fighting global warming. to preserve god’s creation. and to prevent the possibility of horrible consequences for the very poorest nations, as a result of the inaction of the richest.

… the movement’s leaders are theological conservatives who share the concerns of the religious right about sex outside of heterosexual marriage, the preservation of the family, and abortion. However, many leaders, such as Hunter, oppose government coercion on issues of private morality, and all have what Gushee calls a “consistent pro-life agenda”—one that accords with Catholic social teachings on war, poverty, and human rights. Moreover, they lack the cultural attitudes descended from the fundamentalist resistance to modernist thought, such as a distrust of science, a rejection of institutional solutions to poverty, and the notion that evangelicals are the saving remnant of Christianity and the American tradition. Religious-right leaders have perpetuated these attitudes and done their best to see that evangelicals continue to regard themselves as an embattled subculture. The new leaders, however, embrace pluralism. Unlike the right, they don’t engage in partisan politics, but many of the policies they espouse coincide with those of the Democratic Party. What they aspire to is nothing less than an end to the culture wars and the polarization of American politics.