Expanding Soul for the Future

Another intriguing article in the NY Times Magazine Sunday suggested that the American Evangelical movement is changing--moving away from obsession with gay marriage and God's Own Party to different and in some ways more traditional concerns. Though the issue of abortion continues to unite conservative Christians, some of the newer Evangelical leaders are also talking about poverty, health issues such as AIDS, and the chief illness of the earth: the climate crisis:

Members of the baby boomer generation are taking over the reins, said D. G. Hart, a historian of religion. The boomers, he said, are markedly different in style and temperament from their predecessors and much more animated by social justice and humanitarianism.

One example was the call to see the climate crisis as a moral issue which brought together some "mainstream conservative Christian leaders with prominent liberal evangelicals, such as the Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners and the Rev. Ronald J. Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, who have long championed progressive causes."

Though some observers caution that this is only the beginning of a shift (and one Evangelical leader was forced to step down because of his climate crisis advocacy) and that it may take a generation to become dominant, it does suggest there is less enthusiasm for automatic party line GOP politics, which includes climate crisis denial and contempt for "bleeding heart" efforts to address poverty, disease and injustice. Within the Evangelicals (roughly a quarter of the U.S. population), this new "centrist group" is roughly equal in numbers to the far right group (according to Pew Research) and it is the centrist group that is growing.