Face to Faith

by Mark Pinsky

American evangelicals are far more diverse than we think. And their politics are equally unpredictable

Mark Pinsky
Saturday September 2, 2006
The Guardian

When not amused, Europeans are mostly baffled by the political ascendancy of American evangelical Christians. It must appear a misplaced, spasmodic peasant rebellion from a distant century: mobs with pitchforks and torches storming the bastions of power and taking over a modern democracy.

Of course, here in the sunbelt suburbs, we understand it is nothing of the sort. Rather, it has been a methodical march, a largely white, middle-class movement, albeit one with rural and small-town roots. I know this for a certainty because for more than a decade I have lived among this strange tribe, writing about them. But I must confess I have learned as much about them outside my professional role, as a neighbour and a parent, as I have on the job. Without the filter of a reporter's notebook, I have come to understand their metaphors and read their body language. Frankly, the perspective I brought to this exercise, a leftwing Jew, raised in a blue, (heavily Democratic) north-eastern state, might not suggest sympathy. But despite this skewed viewpoint I have found much beyond caricature and conventional wisdom.

Chief among this is that there is considerable diversity within the evangelical movement. This extends to a range of issues, something often obscured when Christians must choose between just two candidates, as in 2000 and 2004. Survey after survey reveals that white evangelical Protestants express a spectrum of views on war, the death penalty, stem-cell research, the environment and, to a lesser degree, abortion and gay civil unions.

What I have read in the polls and have observed anecdotally is increasingly reflected just above the grassroots, by some younger, mega-church pastors who are the mandarins of the evangelical movement. The Rev Joel Hunter, of Northland Church in Longwood, Florida, a non-denominational congregation where 12,000 people worship on a weekend, has privately published a manifesto, Right Wing, Wrong Bird: Why the Tactics of the Religious Right Won't Fly With Most Conservative Christians. It is a frank, tough-talking self appraisal: "Christians have this image of just being raving lunatics; and in some respects, it is well-deserved."

Hunter was trained in a Methodist seminary, has authored numerous books and has a national radio ministry. When a group of more progressive evangelical leaders broke ranks with conservative figures over global warming, Hunter was chosen to narrate their television advertising campaign supporting environmentalism - which evangelicals call "creation care".

"For the most part, the religious right has been limited to the Republican party," Hunter writes. "A voice of biblical values cannot be in the pocket of one party. Christians can decide for themselves how God would want them to come down on any issue. There ought to be more than just gay marriage and pro-life issues, because the Bible is concerned with all life. We need to do everything we can to relieve poverty, to heal the sick and protect the earth."

As we approach the November mid-term Congressional elections a major question looms. Did the 2004 election of George Bush, a born again, politically fortunate son, represent the high water mark of evangelical influence in the White House and on America's political system? If so, will this success come at a price? Are Southern swing voters, including evangelicals, tiring of Christian conservatives throwing their weight around?

I wish I could say that, based on my experience, I know the answer, but I don't. Yet in June, the Southern Baptist Convention, America's largest Protestant denomination, elected a more moderately conservative, insurgent candidate as its president. In their diversity, and because of their diversity, American evangelicals can be unpredictable. Stay tuned.

· Mark Pinsky, religion writer for the Orlando Sentinel, is author of A Jew Among the Evangelicals: A Guide for the Perplexed (Westminster John Knox Press)