Christian Post: Evangelicals, Progressives Seek to End Culture Wars
Leaders unite to find common ground on divisive issues.
WASHINGTON – The line dividing evangelicals from progressives blurred Wednesday as members from both parties joined in a new mission to erase long-held stereotypes of one another and seek commonality on polarizing issues such as abortion, gay rights, and the role of religion in public life.
Reading the intro to this article, I thought, "Wow, this is cool. Boy do we need something like this." So I read a little further. I read some quotes from Joel Hunter. And then I get to this point:
Evangelical and liberal leaders together held up their joint new paper, “Come Let Us Reason Together: A Fresh Look at Shared Cultural Values Between Progressives and Evangelicals,” as a model of how the two sides could cooperate and find a shared vision on divisive cultural issues.
“When we started this process, the progressive and Evangelical communities had begun to come together on issues like Darfur and the environment. We believed we could go further and talk with each other, and not at each other, even about the toughest cultural issues,” said Rachel Laser, director of the progressive think tank Third Way Culture Program and co-author of the paper. Laser was formerly the director of Planned Parenthood in the Washington, D.C.-area.
Amazing. A representative group of Evangelicalism got together with a progressive think tank and agreed. This is incredible! Concerning the paper presented:
Dr. Robert P. Jones, co-author of the paper and religion scholar, highlighted a key finding in the paper which helps people understand the diversity of the evangelical community.
The new formula shows evangelicals are roughly one-fifth progressive, one-third moderate, and one-half conservative.
Yet they got this whole mix of people to agree with non-Evangelical political progressives. Amazing!
But then we get to the end of the report. Here are listed the additional "Evangelical" contributors to the report.
Other supporters of the initiative include:
Dr. David P. Gushee, distinguished professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology;
the Rev. Brian McLaren, author, speaker and networker among innovative Christian leaders, thinkers, and activists;
Dr. Paul de Vries, president of New York Divinity School;
Jim Wallis, president and CEO of Sojourners/Call to Renewal; and
Tony Campolo, president of The Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education.
Suddenly all is cast into sharp focus. Out of these five, how many would you say are conservative or moderate? My count would be zero. This is not a meeting of Evangelicals and Progressives coming to terms with how to end the culture wars. Evangelical political progressives are talking with other progressives about how they might negotiate a powerful role for a new Religious Left. This is the Moral Majority and the Republican party thirty years ago. The more things change with Evangelicals, the more they stay the same.
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