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June 16, 2006

Dionne sees a shift in evangelicals

In today's WaPo, E. J. Dionne writes:

The mellowing of evangelical Christianity may well be the big American religious story of this decade. The evolution of the evangelical movement should not be confused with the rise of a religious left. Although the margin of the Republican Party's advantage among white evangelicals is likely to decline from its exceptionally high level in the 2004 election, a substantial majority of white evangelicals will probably remain conservative and continue to vote Republican.

But the evangelical political agenda is broadening as new voices insist on the urgency of issues such as Third World poverty and the fights against AIDS and human trafficking.

Dionne points to some examples of these topics getting play beyond the usual evangelical agenda of gay-bashing, prayer in schools, controlling women's reproductive activities, tearing down the church-state wall, and so on. I don't dispute that they're out there, but if he finds a trend there, not just a couple of blips, he sees a lot more than I do.

Comments?

Side note: Concerning the upset at the recent Southern Baptist Convention, at which the "staunchly conservative" slate of candidates was defeated by a merely "conservative" candidate from outside the power structure (an event Dionne considers proof of "mellowing"), he writes:

One other force was at work in this year's Baptist voting: the rise of the blogosphere.

Over the past several years, an active network of Baptist bloggers has opened up discussion in the convention and given reformers and moderates avenues around what Parham called "the Baptist establishment papers" and other means of communication controlled by the convention's leadership. Thus may some of our oldest and most traditional institutions be transformed by new technologies.

Posted by Nothstine at June 16, 2006 07:29 AM