Religious Conviction vs. Political Dogmatism

[RedEarth]

By E.J. Dionne

WASHINGTON—Evangelical Protestantism in the United States is going through a New Reformation that is disentangling a great religious movement from a partisan political machine. This historic change will require liberals and conservatives alike to abandon their sometimes narrow views of who evangelicals are.

The reformers won an important victory this month when the board of the National Association of Evangelicals faced down right-wing partisans and reaffirmed their view that healing global warming was an important moral cause. In so doing, they also expressed confidence in the Rev. Rich Cizik, the NAE’s vice president for governmental affairs.

Cizik, who combines opposition to abortion with a firm commitment to human rights, the poor and the environment, came under attack from a gang of ideologues who would freeze evangelicals on a political course set more than a quarter-century ago. “This tussle over the issue of climate change is part of a bigger tussle over the definition of evangelicalism and who speaks for evangelicals,” Cizik said in an interview.

Calling upon evangelicals to “return to being people who are known for our love and care for our fellow human beings and the Earth,” Cizik warned that “if you put the politics first and make it primary, I believe that is a tragic and fateful choice.”

Since 1980, white evangelical Christians have been seen primarily as a Republican voting bloc. They delivered more than three-quarters of their ballots to President Bush in the 2004 election. This is no accident. In 1979, a group of conservative activists led by Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation and Morton Blackwell, a Republican national committeeman from Virginia, went to the Rev. Jerry Falwell, urging him to organize what became the Moral Majority.


http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070316_religious_conviction_vs_political_dogmatism/