New York Review of Books: The Evangelical Surprise (HT Denis Hancock)
Republican politicians, in other words, have come to believe that the religious right speaks for most evangelicals—or, more precisely, that religious right activists will continue to bring the great majority of white evangelicals to the polls. If one message of last year's election was that moderate voters rejected Republicans in part because they adopted the extreme positions of the religious right, Republican strategists face something of a quandary. But are they correct in assuming that the religious right now represents evangelicals generally? Much about the political future turns on the answer to this question.
This is a lengthy but fascinating article about the diversity that exists within Evangelicalism. I especially liked this stuff from Mark Noll:
Mark A. Noll, a distinguished evangelical scholar, writes of evangelicalism as a set of impulses: "Biblicism," "conversionism" (the emphasis on "new birth" as a life-changing religious experience), "activism" (concern for sharing the faith), and "crucicentrism" (a focus on Christ's having redeemed mankind on the cross). "But these evangelical impulses," he writes, "have never by themselves yielded cohesive, institutionally compact, easily definable, well-coordinated, or clearly demarcated groups of Christians."
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