WHY EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS HAVE LEFT THE RIGHT

For much of the last century, America’s evangelicals have been the whipping boy of progressives and intellectuals of all sorts. Ostensibly, they use government to impose their interpretation of Scripture on the body politic and – paradoxical to this heavy use of the state – champion neo-liberal economics and Tea Party style small government.

This was never quite the story, and is even less so since 2005, when America’s religio-political landscape has been undergoing what evangelical theologian Scot McKnight called “the biggest change in the evangelical movement at the end of the twentieth century, a new kind of Christian social conscience.”

“New evangelicals” (as Richard Cizik, President of The New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, calls them) have shifted away from the religious right – moving towards an anti-militarist, anti-consumerist focus on poverty relief, environmental protection, immigration reform, and racial/religious reconciliation.

The religious right remains, but where there was the appearance of a seemingly monovocal movement there is now robust polyphony.

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