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 Evangelical Group Seeks To Move Away From
Anti-Gay Focus
by The Associated Press
Posted: March 28, 2008 - 5:00 pm ET
(Columbus, Ohio) An evangelical group that wants
to reshape the movement's political reputation for being focused on opposing
abortion and same-sex marriage is hoping that a series of meetings stressing its
roots in women's suffrage and abolition will help it break out of the mold.
The stated goal of the first three-day
"justice revival," one of several to be held around the country, is to
tackle poverty in the city through a collaboration with Big Brothers Big
Sisters.
But the broader idea is to energize the
relatively small liberal end of the evangelical spectrum by linking religious
faith with social action as earlier American social movements did, its planners
say. Among the areas to be explored by participants are access to health care,
immigration, global warming and the war in Iraq.
"I have been very deeply moved by the
history of these great awakenings in our national life, where there was a
revival of faith that led to big change in our society," said Jim Wallis,
CEO of Sojourners/Call to Renewal.
The Washington, D.C.-based group will hold the
event April 16-18 in Columbus, with 30 of the city's largest evangelical
churches, representing 10,000 Christians.
"A whole generation of young evangelicals
believes that Jesus would probably care more about the 30,000 children who died
again today - as they did yesterday and they will tomorrow - from preventable
disease than he would about passing a gay-marriage amendment in Ohio,"
Wallis said.
The group's leaders seek to reverse the public
perception that all evangelicals are conservative Republicans whose top social
priorities are opposing abortion and gay marriage.
White evangelicals comprise about one-third of
the Republican Party.
"Our message is evangelicals aren't going to
be in the pocket of any party anymore, and they're going to evaluate all
candidates by their own moral compass," Wallis said. "This revival is
entirely nonpartisan.
"It's about faith and it's about issues,
it's not about Barack (Obama) and Hillary (Rodham Clinton) and John
McCain," he said, referring to the contenders for Democrats' presidential
nomination and the Republicans' presumptive nominee.
Sojourners/Call to Renewal has been trying for
years to make its voice heard.
But it has been boosted recently by growing
recognition within the Democratic Party of the importance of faith. In January,
former President Jimmy Carter led a meeting of thousands of Baptists, including
Southern Baptists who had distanced themselves from their conservative
denomination, who pledged to work together on social justice, as well as faith
concerns.
"We can disagree on the death penalty, we
can disagree on homosexuality, we can disagree on the status of women and still
bind our hearts together in a common, united, generous, friendly, loving
commitment," Carter said.
Recent surveys have found that younger
evangelicals are less tied to the GOP than their parents have been, even while
remaining deeply opposed to abortion. They are especially concerned about
environmental protection, leading many conservative Christians to reassess their
views on the issue. A group of Southern Baptist leaders issued a statement March
10 saying the denomination had been "too timid" on environmental
issues and has a biblical duty to stop global warming.
Wallis' detractors say he is trying to steer
religious conservatives to the Democratic Party - launching the effort in
Columbus, the capital of a state that swung the presidency to George Bush in
2004 by a just 2 percent margin. Bush's Ohio victory was attributed largely to
turnout among religious conservatives mobilized by a proposed gay marriage ban
that appeared on that year's ballot.
"I think this is part of a concerted effort
to try to reach out to the values voters and take them away from the pro-life
candidates," said Denise Mackura, executive director of the Chicago-based
Thomas More Society public interest law firm, which opposes abortion. "It's
an effort to say ... go ahead and vote for Barack or whoever because there are
these other issues, to convince people not to base their vote on the
right-to-life issue."
But Wallis and other activists say many
Christians don't need persuading.
"Lots of people feel that the evangelical
label has been taken captive by a very narrow political program," said the
Rev. Rich Nathan, senior pastor at The Vineyard Church of Columbus, which is
hosting the revival. "Folks don't feel that that represents them. Many of
the so-called evangelical leaders are saying, we didn't elect these people, they
don't represent us. How did they become our spokespeople? How did this narrow
agenda become our agenda?"
Besides Wallis, other evangelical leaders,
including Marsha Ford, have begun to tout a more bipartisan political view, said
Warren Smith, editor and publisher of the Evangelical Press News and other
Christian news publications.
"There are still many millions of religious
conservatives who believe that abortion and the sanctity of the family are two
of the most important political issues of our day," he said. "And we
can talk about other things, but at the end of the day those issues are likely
going to keep these religious voters from ever pulling the lever for the
Democratic party."
©365Gay.com 2008
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