The Emerging Evangelical Center, Part 2

Here is a link to the Introduction of my paper entitled "Evangelical Centrists and Moderate Baptists: The Case For Incompatibility." You can read the entire paper here.

Tomorrow, I will post a section on Substantive Neutrality and Saturday I will post sections on the Baptist Joint Committee and the Texas Christian Life Commission.

The second section is below:

I. The Emerging Evangelical Center

A. David Gushee and the Emerging Evangelical Center

In his newly released book, The Future of Faith in American Politics: The Public Witness of the Evangelical Center, Baptist ethicist David Gushee identifies what he calls an “emerging evangelical center” that is neither left nor right.[1] While the “evangelical right” has long been represented by world renown fundamentalists such as James Dobson and the late Jerry Falwell, the “evangelical left” has in recent years come to be symbolized by lesser known but well respected religious leaders such as Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo.[2] But today, according to Gushee, there is “emerging a visible and increasingly powerful evangelical center”[3] that is “increasingly vibrant and promises to play an increasingly significant role within evangelical Christianity and the United States.”[4]

Throughout The Future of Faith in American Politics, Gushee attempts to “stake a claim” to this emerging evangelical center by contrasting it with the evangelical right and evangelical left.[5] Gushee offers strong criticisms of the evangelical right. He claims that the evangelical right has “given up its fundamental allegiance to Jesus Christ in aligning itself so tightly with the Republican Party.”[6] Gushee also laments the narrowness of the evangelical right’s political agenda. However, he stresses that there are a number of issues where the evangelical center is generally in full agreement with the evangelical right. These include opposition to gay marriage, Roe v. Wade, euthanasia, sex outside of heterosexual marriage, the creation-for-destruction of embryos and the harvesting of stem cells from existing embryos.[7]

Gushee also directs several criticisms towards the evangelical left and its leaders. He claims that leaders of the evangelical left such as Tony Campolo, Jim Wallis, and Brian McLaren tend to downplay issues central to the agenda of the evangelical right including abortion and homosexuality. Gushee chides the evangelical left for not addressing these issues as much as he would like.[8] However, Gushee notes that the evangelical center also shares many common characteristics with the evangelical left. Some of these include an emphasis on the plight of the poor as central to a biblical moral agenda, opposition to the routine resort to war, high priority given to the environment and climate change, a commitment to human rights which includes opposition to torture and a “constrained, critical patriotism rather than a nationalist ‘God and country’ stance.”[9]

Unlike the evangelical right and the evangelical left, Gushee explains that the evangelical center is more carefully committed to political independence and aims to avoid partisan entanglements. Where the evangelical left speaks of racial justice, the evangelical center prefers racial reconciliation. According to Gushee, the evangelical center rejects the “working pacifism” of the evangelical left and instead is willing to support wars that “meet a careful rendering of the just-war theory.” Gushee explains that the evangelical center does not resonate with the evangelical left’s tilt toward the Palestinians in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While mostly silent on issues of gender and public education, the evangelical center speaks more openly and extensively than the evangelical left on abortion and gay marriage.[10]

B. Moderate Baptists and the Emerging Evangelical Center

Greg Warner, editor of the Associated Baptist Press, asked in a recent article, “If the Religious Right is losing its influence, as many pundits predict, will it be replaced by the ‘other’ evangelicals – a center and left coalition with a broader social agenda and a kinder, gentler brand of cultural engagement?”[11] One month later, Warner came back to his readers with another interesting question. He asked, “If an ‘evangelical center’ emerges from the current shake-up in American politics, will moderate Baptists[12] be part of it?”[13]

In his opinion pieces as a guest columnist for Associated Baptist Press, David Gushee has repeatedly answered Warner’s two questions in the affirmative.[14] He believes that most moderate Baptists are also evangelical centrists.[15] “Most moderate Baptists are center or center-left evangelicals, they just don’t know it,” says Gushee.[16] He notes that “if you define ‘evangelicalism’ as core doctrinal beliefs, there’s no reason why Baptists would not be evangelicals.” Dating the roots of the evangelical movement to the Protestant renewal movements of the sixteenth century, Gushee defines an “evangelical” as one who holds that the final, ultimate authority is the Bible, believes that Jesus Christ died for the salvation of all, believes in the importance of evangelism and in “engaged orthodoxy” or applying faith to bear on culture.[17] Gushee believes that by this definition over ninety percent of white Baptists in the South and ninety-five percent of African-American Baptists are evangelical Christians.[18] According to Gushee, one of his goals is to help moderate Baptists “reclaim the term ‘evangelical’ and reassociate with other evangelicals who are kindred spirits, if they only knew it.”[19]

Gushee is correct to note that moderate Baptists share much in common with those whom he dubs “evangelical centrists.”[20] The recent New Baptist Covenant Celebration held in Atlanta, Georgia proves this true. Organized by mostly moderate Baptist leaders, including former United States President Jimmy Carter, President Bill Underwood of Mercer University and Jimmy Allen, the last moderate President of the Southern Baptist Convention, the New Baptist Covenant is an informal alliance of thirty Baptist organizations representing over twenty million Baptists in North America.[21] This informal alliance hosted an historic three-day celebration in January, 2008 which focused on many of the same issues that Gushee asserts “evangelical centrists” are concerned with. The special sessions of this celebration which attracted more than 15,000 Baptists addressed issues such as: poverty, criminal justice reform, respecting religious diversity, peacemaking, immigration reform, the intersection of faith and public policy, sex trafficking, race and racism, HIV/AIDS pandemic, and religious liberty.[22]

Indeed, evangelical centrists share much in common with moderate Baptists. However, most moderate Baptists and their organizations would differ strongly with evangelical centrists on issues pertaining to the separation of church and state. In his book, Gushee emphasizes that the evangelical center as a whole is committed to a “substantive neutrality” reading of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause rather than a “strict separationist” reading of that same clause.[23] He notes that this “substantive neutrality” interpretation of the Establishment Clause is a “consensus position” among evangelical centrists.[24]

Another “consensus position” among evangelical centrists deals with the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause. Gushee explains that the evangelical center supports the free exercise rights of evangelical churches and schools to “hire/admit according to religious and moral conviction tests appropriate to our faith tradition.”[25] According to Gushee, the evangelical center also supports the “equal access of faith-based organizations to government funds if their programs are effective in meeting social needs.” Gushee points out that evangelical centrists have been supportive of President Bush’s Faith-Based Initiative because they believe such programs “reflects a proper understanding of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.”[26] He notes that these religious liberty views are “rooted in the broad embrace of the ‘substantive neutrality’ interpretation of the First Amendment.”[27]

It appears that Gushee’s treatment of church-state issues has created a false dichotomy between substantive neutrality and strict separationism. Gushee does not have to limit the perspectives toward the interpretation of the Establishment Clause to two options. As renowned church-state expert Carl Esbeck points out in his widely read article entitled "Five Views of Church-State Relations in Contemporary American Thought," that there are more than two ways to interpret the Establishment Clause. Further, in his book, Gushee neglects to explicitly define what the term strict separationism actually means. Carl Esbeck's widely accepted definition of strict separationism asserts that a strict separationist desires an asbolute separation between civil affairs and religon even though they know that such is not presently possible in America.[28] Does Gushee accept this common definition of strict separationism? If the answer is yes, then surely Gushee knows that not all separationists are strict separationists. Or is Gushee really using "strict separationist" as a pejorative term to describe the average run of the mill separationist who opposes school vouchers and President Bush's Faith-Based Initiative?

---

[1] David Gushee, The Future of Faith in American Politics: The Public Witness of the Evangelical Center (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2008), xviii. In an opinion piece written after the publication of his book, Gushee explained that polling data led him to argue that “non-white evangelicals and younger evangelicals definitely skewed in a centrist or more liberal direction overall than did older white evangelicals.” This data led Gushee to project that generational change and increasing demographic diversity among evangelicals in America “would lead to the emergence of a strong and visible evangelical center, a more muscular evangelical left, and in some cases a center-left coalition representing half or more of American evangelicals.” See David Gushee, “Emerging evangelical center may decide 200 election,” Associated Baptist Press, February 19, 2008, under “Opinion,” http://www.abpnews.com/3037.article [accessed April 4, 2008].

[2] David Gushee, “Emerging evangelical center may decide 2008 election,” Associated Baptist Press, February 19, 2008, under “Opinion,” http://www.abpnews.com/3037.article [accessed April 4, 2008].

[3] Ibid.

[4] Gushee, The Future of Faith in American Politics, 3.

[5] Gushee defines the “evangelical right” as the “conservative evangelical activist community” which includes organizations such as the American Family Association, Christian Coalition, Concerned Women for America, Eagle Forum, Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, High Impact Leadership Coalition, Moral Majority Coalition, Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and the Traditional Values Coalition. See Gushee, The Future of Faith in American Politics, 23-55. Gushee notes that the “evangelical left” like most evangelicals roots their faith in the authority of the Bible. However, Gushee says the evangelical left is left because “it reads Scripture and interprets the demands of Christian discipleship to require what in our contemporary American and Christian contexts are considered left-leaning moral commitments.” See Gushee, The Future of Faith in American Politics, 58.

[6] Gushee, The Future of Faith in American Politics, 49.

[7] Gushee notes that only majority opposition exists among centrist evangelicals to the harvesting of stem cells from existing embryos. Gushee, The Future of Faith in American Politics, 88.

[8] Ibid, 88-89.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid, 90-91

[11] Greg Warner, “Will ‘evangelical center’ emerge to rival waning Christian Right?” Associated Baptist Press, February 21, 2008, http://www.abpnews.com/3044.article [April 15, 2008].

[12] Moderate Baptists trace their Baptist lineage through the Southern Baptist Convention. Most moderate Baptists are actually former Southern Baptists. Historically, moderate Baptists have repeatedly affirmed the centrality of biblical authority but they resisted inerrancy as dogmatism. To this day, moderates continue in their attempt to affirm what they consider the heart of the Baptist heritage: the authority of the Bible for religious faith and practice, soul competency, personal religious experience, the priesthood of all believers, religious liberty and the separation of church and state, local church autonomy, anti-creedalism, and unity in missions and evangelism amidst some theological diversity. Moderate Baptists cooperate together at the national level primarily through the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and to a much lesser extent the Mainstream Baptist Network. Some moderate Baptists in certain geographic areas have aligned themselves with the American Baptist Churches USA. At the state level, large numbers of moderate Baptists can be found participating in the Baptist General Convention of Texas, Baptist General Association of Virginia and the Baptist General Convention of Missouri. Moderate Baptists are also deeply supportive of the work of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and the Baptist World Alliance. In Texas, moderate Baptists turn to the Christian Life Commission to represent their social concerns at the Capitol in Austin. Though some “moderate Baptists” do not prefer being called “moderate,” this is the one adjective that has been used the most over the past thirty years to describe this particular group of Baptists. As a moderate Baptist myself, I hope the day will come when “Baptist” is no longer synonymous with “Southern Baptist” in American culture and the “moderate” qualifier will no longer be necessary.

[13] Greg Warner, “Will Baptists be counted among those in the ‘evangelical center’?,” Associated Baptist Press, March 13, 2008, http://www.abpnews.com/3081.article [accessed April 4, 2008].

[14] David Gushee, “Toward a truly evangelical Baptist future,” Associated Baptist Press, November 6, 2007, http://www.abpnews.com/2839.article [accessed April 4, 2008]; also, Greg Warner, “Will ‘evangelical center’ emerge to rival waning Christian Right?” and Greg Warner, “Will Baptists be counted among those in the ‘evangelical center’?”

[15] Gushee, “Toward a truly evangelical Baptist future.”

[16] Warner, “Will ‘evangelical center’ emerge to rival waning Christian Right?”

[17] For several decades, there has been debate as to whether Southern Baptists (and those Baptists with Southern Baptist roots) are actually evangelicals. In a 1976 Newsweek story, the late Foy Valentine who was then the Executive Director of the Christian Life Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention proclaimed “We are not evangelicals. That's a Yankee word." See Foy Valentine, quoted by Kenneth L. Woodward in “Born Again! The Year of the Evangelicals,” Newsweek, October 25, 1976, 76. Consequently, this issue of whether Southern Baptists are evangelicals was classically discussed in a book edited by James Leo Garrett, Jr., E. Glenn Hinson and James E. Tull entitled Are Southern Baptists "Evangelicals”? See James Leo Garrett, Jr., E. Glenn Hinson, and James E. Tull, eds., Are Southern Baptists “Evangelicals”? (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1983). Ten years later in 1993 this conversation was continued in a book edited by David Dockery (including contributions from Garrett and Hinson) entitled, Southern Baptists and American Evangelicals: The Conversation Continues. See David Dockery, ed., Southern Baptists and American Evangelicals: The Conversation Continues (Nashville: Broadman and Holman Press, 1993).

[18] Gushee, “Toward a truly evangelical Baptist future.”

[19] Warner, “Will ‘evangelical center’ emerge to rival waning Christian Right?” According to Gushee, Baptists in the South “remain extraordinarily fixated on Baptist identity rather than…international ecumenism.” He asks, “When will we (Baptists) discover the rest of the global Christian family?”

[20] Warner, “Will ‘evangelical center’ emerge to rival waning Christian Right?” Unlike Gushee and many evangelical centrists, moderate Baptists have been relatively silent on gay marriage and other issues relating to homosexuality. Moderate Baptists have also not articulated one view on abortion. Moderate Baptists generally have not been involved in the pro-life movement and few, if any, moderate leaders (unlike Gushee) have advocated for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. My experience growing up in Baptist life has taught me that most moderate Baptists would agree with fellow Baptist Jimmy Carter who is personally opposed to abortion and the Texas Christian Life Commission which has argued that abortion may be permissible in certain circumstances. This nuanced position would put most moderate Baptists at odds with many in the pro-life movement.

[21] Of the thirty participating organizations, seventeen can be described as “moderate Baptist” organizations or as organizations run by “moderate Baptists.”

[22] See the Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant website at http://www.newbaptistcelebration.com.

[23] Gushee, The Future of Faith in American Politics, 90-91.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Ibid. Referencing “substantive neutrality” proponent Stephen Monsma, Gushee also notes that while the evangelical center has been supportive of programs such as the Faith-Based Initiative, some are not happy with the motivations or implementations on the part of President Bush’s Administration.

[27] Ibid. Throughout The Future of Faith in American Politics, Gushee points to the centrist statement published in 2004 by the National Association of Evangelicals entitled “For The Health Of The Nations: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility,” which he describes as the most “careful, thorough, and balanced corporate statement of evangelical public witness that has yet to be offered.” According to Gushee, this centrist statement which characterizes the convictions of the evangelical center defends a substantive neutrality interpretation of the First Amendment. It reads, “when government assists nongovernmental organizations as part of an evenhanded educational, social service, or health care program, religious organizations receiving such aid do not become ‘state actors’ with constitutional duties.”

[28] Carl Esbeck, “Five Views of Church-State Relations in Contemporary American Thought,” Brigham Young University Law Review, no. 2 (1986): 379-385.

Evangelical Centrists and Moderate Baptists

Like last week, this upcoming week will be a light blogging period for me. I've got a paper to write and my last thesis chapter to finish. So, in light of that - I'm going to post a paper that I recently wrote. It's divided up into 5 parts with today being the Introduction. After I've posted all of the 5 parts, I'll link to the entire PDF.

The paper is entitled:

EVANGELICAL CENTRISTS AND MODERATE BAPTISTS

THE CASE FOR INCOMPATIBILITY

Introduction

Over the last two years, evangelical authors and activists have begun to argue that a coalition of irenic evangelicals has emerged as a bona fide constituency in American politics. These centrist evangelicals have embraced a broadened social agenda that according to a recent Beliefnet.com poll ranks poverty, the environment, health care, education, the economy, and ending torture and the Iraq war as more important issues than abortion and gay marriage, the two pet issues of the Religious Right's sex-and-abortion agenda.[1] Richard Cizik, Vice President for Governmental Affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals and one of the most prominent evangelical lobbyists in the United States, claims that "a historic shift is occurring." Cizik says this shift is the "equivalent to an earthquake in slow motion - people aren't sensing it."[2] Long time progressive Christian activist Jim Wallis describes this slow-motion earthquake as a new Great Awakening - "a revival of faith that is directly leading to new calls and commitments for social justice."[3]

Baptist ethicist and evangelical activist David Gushee sees hints of this new Great Awakening and can also feel the seismic waves. In his new book, The Future of Faith in American Politics: The Public Witness of the Evangelical Center, Gushee argues that an "evangelical center" is emerging onto the political scene which represents as many as one-third of America's evangelical community. According to Gushee, this "emerging evangelical center" may decide the 2008 Presidential Election in November.[4]

Meanwhile, another group of centrist Christians has re-emerged in recent months on the national scene. In January 2008, Atlanta played host to over 15,000 Baptists affiliated with organizations representing over a combined twenty million Baptists located in North America. This event, called the Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant, focused on many of the same social issues that the "evangelical center" is concerned with such as poverty, HIV/AIDs and immigration reform.[5]

Many of the organizers and participating organizations involved in the historic celebration are former Southern Baptists whom I describe in this paper as "moderate Baptists." In light of the emergence of an "evangelical center" in American politics, some have asked whether moderate Baptists will join up with this centrist coalition. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to analyze this important question and the possible ramifications for moderate Baptists if this important question is answered in the affirmative.

This paper is divided into four parts. Part I will examine David Gushee's argument for an "Emerging Evangelical Center." Part I will address the characteristics of this "Emerging Evangelical Center" with an emphasis on the church-state views of this coalition. Attention will also be given to the relationship between moderate Baptists and this new evangelical center. Part II will focus exclusively on the legal theory of "substantive neutrality” which Gushee emphasizes is the theory that evangelical centrists use to interpret the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. Part III focuses on two moderate Baptist supported organizations, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and the Texas Christian Life Commission, which have consistently opposed all efforts to fund religious education and finance pervasively religious organizations. Part IV will offer a few concluding thoughts on any potential relationship between the evangelical center and moderate Baptists.

---

[1] Greg Warner, “Will ‘evangelical center’ emerge to rival waning Christian Right?,” Associated Baptist Press, February 21, 2008, http://www.abpnews.com/3044.article [accessed April 4, 2008].

[2] Ibid.

[3] Jim Wallis, The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2008), 3-4.

[4] Warner, “Will ‘evangelical center’ emerge to rival waning Christian Right?”

[5] See the Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant website at http://www.newbaptistcelebration.com.

David Gushee & Frank Page Question Sen. Obama

On Sunday night, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama participated in CNN's Compassion Forum held on the campus of Messiah College in Pennsylvania. John McCain - the Baptopalian - was a no show. You can read a summary of the shindig over at CNN.

You can also read the transcript here.

I'm posting the transcript of the questions posed to Senator Obama by both Frank Page of the Southern Baptist Convention and David Gushee of Mercer University.

DAVID P. GUSHEE, MERCER UNIVERSITY: Senator Obama, recently yet another disturbing memo emerged from the Justice Department. This one said that not even interrogation methods that, quote, "shock the conscience" would be considered torture nor would they be considered illegal if they had been authorized by the president.

Senator Obama, this kind of reasoning shocks the conscience of many millions of Americans and many millions of people of faith here and around the world. Is there justification for policies on the part of our nation that permit physical and mental cruelty toward those who are in our custody?

OBAMA: We have to be clear and unequivocal. We do not torture, period. We don't torture.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: Our government does not torture. That should be our position. That should be our position. That will be my position as president. That includes, by the way, renditions. We don't farm out torture. We don't subcontract torture.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: And the reason this is important is not only because torture does not end up yielding good information -- most intelligence officers agree with that. I met with a group -- a distinguished group of former generals who have made it their mission to travel around and talk to presidential candidates and to talk in forums about how this degrades the discipline and the ethos of our military.

It is very hard for us when kids, you know, 19, 20, 21, 22 are in Iraq having to make difficult decisions, life or death decisions every day, and are being asked essentially to restrain themselves and operate within the law.

And then to find out that our own government is not abiding by these same laws that we are asking them to defend? That is not acceptable. And so my position is going to be absolutely clear.

And it is also important for our long-term security to send a message to the world that we will lead not just with our military might but we are going to lead with our values and our ideals.

That we are not a nation...

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: ... that gives away our civil liberties simply because we're scared. And we're always at our worst when we're fearful. And one of the things that my religious faith allows me to do, hopefully, is not to operate out of fear.

Fear is a bad counsel and I want to operate out of hope and out of faith.
........................................................................................

FRANK PAGE, SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONVENTION: Thank you, Senator Obama. Thank you for being here at Messiah College for the Compassion Forum. Southern Baptists have been very active for years in sub- Saharan Africa in the HIV/AIDS relief ministries. Sometimes orphan care, sometimes educational activities.

But we also are involved in a ministry called True Love Waits, which has been credited by the government of Uganda from lowering the AIDS infection rate there dramatically from 30 percent to 6 percent. But we also teach a part of that, that faith has a role in the issue of HIV/AIDS. Do you concur with that and would you elaborate on that, please.

BROWN: Can I just clarify, true love waits is an abstinence program.

PAGE: Abstinence based and faith based, yes.

OBAMA: Well first of all, congratulations to those who have been involved in that work. I think it's important work. And I think you may know my father came from this part of the world. I visited Kenya multiple times. I have been working with a group of grandmas who were helping AIDS orphans in Kenya.

OBAMA: Michelle and I, when we were traveling there, took an AIDS test before thousands of people to encourage the importance of them getting clear on what their status was and hopefully reducing infections.

And, by the way, this is an area where -- this doesn't happen very often, so everybody should take note -- where I compliment George Bush. I actually think that...

(APPLAUSE)

I actually think that the PEPFAR program is one of the success stories of this administration. We've seen a drastic increase in funding. And terrific work is being done between the CDC, the NIH, local AIDS organizations, NGOs.

My view is, is that we should use whatever the best approaches are, the scientifically sound approaches are, to reduce this devastating disease all across the world.

And part of that, I think, should be a strong education component and I think abstinence education is important. I also think that contraception is important; I also think that treatment is important; I also think that we have to do more to make antiviral drugs available to people who are in extreme poverty.

So I don't want to pluck out one facet of it. Now, that doesn't mean that non-for-profit groups can't focus on one thing while the government focuses on other things. I think we want to have a comprehensive approach.

I do think that -- and I've said this when I was in Kenya -- that there is a behavioral element to AIDS that has to be addressed. And if there is -- if there's promiscuity and we are pretending that that's not an issue in spreading AIDS, then we're missing part of the answer.

But I also think that -- keep in mind, women are far more likely to be infected now between the ages of 18 and 25 than are men. And that's why focusing, for example, on the status of women, empowering women, giving them microbicides, or other strategies that would allow them to protect themselves when they sometimes in certain situations may not be able to protect themselves from having unprotected sex, all those things are going to be just as important, as well.

Both good answers. Gushee's question reminds me of an excellent quote from his book. He wrote, "Many Christian conservatives of this generation have been unable to say no to torture because they are more conservative than Christian."

Perhaps that's President George W. Bush's problem as well.

David Gushee On The Evangelical Left

In Chapter 3 of his new book - The Future of Faith in American Politics - Dr. David Gushee answers the question Who is the Evangelical Left?

Gushee argues that the most visible voices of the evangelical left include Tony Campolo, Jim Wallis, Brian McLaren and in the black evangelical community Jesse Jackson and Obery Hendricks. Gushee also lumps Jimmy Carter, Richard Pierard and Randall Balmer into the evangelical left.

Here's Gushee's description of the Evangelical Left:

The evangelical left generally reflects the heavily biblical methodology and theology of other evangelicals. Like most evangelicals, their primary source of authority is the Bible...For better or worse, they tend to move directly from their interpretation of biblical passages and motifs to moral exhortation and policy advocacy. They do not stray from the categories of orthodox Christian theology. They reflect the characteristic evangelical emphasis on evangelism and conversion to faith in Christ and they draw on evangelical piety by calling on their readers to "follow Jesus" in committed discipleship, iwth the particular lifestyle and ethical configurations that ocrrespond with their reading of the scriptures.

The evangelical left is left because it reads scripture and interprets the demands of Christian discipleship to require what in our contemporary and American and Christian contexts are considered left-leaning moral commitments. Characteristically, the evangelical left argues that the teachings of the Bible, especially the prophets and Jesus, require Christians to be concerned about poverty, war, racism, sexism, and the environment.

What's right with the Left?

According to Gushee, the E-left is best at stating what it is for, rather than what it is against. Gushee traces the origins of the E-left back to Dr. King. In his famous 1967 speech against the Vietnam War, Dr. King referred to poverty, racism and war as the "triple evils" of American society. These are the three issues that remain at the heart of the moral vision of the evangelical left.

So, what's wrong with the Left?

Gushee claims that te E-left seems reticent to take on the issues of abortion and homosexuality. He notes that Jim Wallis "never actually articulates a position on what the legal status of abortion should be...but there is no evidence in his writings that {Wallis} would support the overturning of Roe v. Wade." Gushee suggests that the leaders of the E-left do not take "fully seriously the sanctity of ALL human life, including those lives developing in the womb." "Evangelical left authors proclaim that they are pro-life, but this does not seem to cash out in a real significant way on the abortion issue." Gushee believes that such leaders as Wallis & McLaren may risk forfeiting their prophetic voice because they make every effort to steer clear of taking a definitive position on the homosexuality issue. Gushee also criticizes the leaders of the E-left for basically being closet pacifists who cloak their opposition to virtually every war in just-war language.

I personally rarely use the word "evangelical" to describe myself (more on that in a later post) but as a Jimmy Carter-kinda Baptist my theology would likely place me in the E-left camp. First, I appreciate that Gushee acknowledges that these evangelicals like Campolo do root their faith in the authority of the Bible. And we do believe that social justice and evangelism are but two sides of the same coin.

Unfortunately, those in the E-left may have allowed the Right to claim the abortion issue for themselves. That's a dialogue that more left-leaning evangelicals need to be having. How can we reduce the abortion rate? Thankfully, some evangelical and Catholic Democrats in Congress have already moved forward on that issue.

Gushee chides the E-left for not pushing to overturn Roe. But perhaps overturning Roe v. Wade is not the solution - if such a solution was even possible or practical. Is it even reasonable to believe that Gushee can work to overturn Roe and meet his other objectives? The types of originalist Supreme Court justices that would need to be appointed to overturn Roe would likely (VERY LIKELY) not be sympathetic to Gushee's more liberal social justice concerns!

I do agree with Gushee that Wallis & McLaren risk forfeiting the opportunity to speak prophetically by more or less avoiding the homosexuality issue. Pardon the sexist language, but these guys need to "man-up" and be more open and honest about what they really believe. Some have done so but others have not.

My next post will focus on The Emerging Evangelical Center. I also have a few church-state concerns to address.

This is post #3 in a series on David Gushee & The Emerging Evangelical Center

Dialoguing With David Gushee, Part 1
The New Evangelicalism & The Evangelical Centrist

Dialoguing With David Gushee, Part 1

"Just as many Christian liberals of a previous generation were unable to say no to abortion-on-demand because they were more liberal than Christian, many Christian conservatives of this generation have been unable to say no to torture because they are more conservative than Christian." - David Gushee

Randall Balmer, Professor of American Religious History at Columbia University, writes that David Gushee's new book, The Future of Faith in American Politics, "challenges Jim Hightower's famous maxim that the only things in the middle of the road are yellow stripes and dead armadillos. Gushee offers here a cogent and balanced agenda for evangelical activism, a most welcome addition to this important conversation."

I agree with Balmer. Thus far, The Future of Faith in American Politics, is one of the best books on evangelicals that I have ever read. And as a graduate student in the field of Church-State studies, I have read more than a handful of books on the subject of evangelicals and American politics! If you plan to read one such book in the upcoming months, do yourself a favor and put down Jim Wallis' The Great Awakening and pick up David Gushee's The Future of Faith in American Politics. I'm reading both and frankly Wallis won't tell you anything that you don't already know. Gushee's a real scholar (with a well-developed thesis) and his contribution is quite unique. Check him out.

The following is my attempt to dialogue with the first two chapters of Gushee's book.

On the first page of Chapter 1, Gushee states that the purpose of The Future of Faith in American Politics is to stake a claim to an emerging evangelical center in American public life and to describe the moral witness of that evangelical center by contrasting it with its right-leaning and left-leaning alternatives." Throughout the book, Gushee argues that among the 60 to 80 million evangelicals living in America, one can identify a political center which he describes as "increasingly vibrant" that "promises to plan an increasingly significant role within evangelical Christianity and in the United States."

So, what are the characteristics of an "evangelical centrist"? Here are a few:

Gushee writes that centrist evangelicals are concerned about the deterioration and deinstitutionalization of marriage. Centrist evangelicals oppose abortion-on-demand and Roe v. Wade. Centrist evangelicals oppose the creation-for-destruction of embryos for their stem cells and are uneasy about the harvesting of stem cells from already existing embryos. Centrist evangelicals oppose euthanasia-on-demand and "seek a full and open national debate on the best way to rewrite laws related to abortion that might respect the dignity of all affected by this tragic practice."

Before arguing for an "emerging evangelical center," Gushee offers a descriptive look into the world of the "evangelical right" whose activist community is built around a network of independent but interconnected churches and parachurch organizations customarily built around charismatic leaders. Organizational members of the evangelical right community include Don Wildmon's American Family Association, Beverly LaHaye's Disturbed Women of America, Phyliss Schlafly's Eagle Forum, Tony Perkins' Family Research Council, James Dobson's Focus on the Family and Richard Land's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (plus several others).

Gushee offers a brief but informative overview of each of the leading "evangelical right" organizations and their leaders. What Gushee does with this one chapter overview of the Christian Right is much more helpful and useful than what Clyde Wilcox's Onward Christian Soldiers? (3rd ed) does in over 200 pages.

Interestingly, Gushee notes that Richard Land's ERLC is set apart from many of the other conservative activist groups due to the ERLC's willingness to address traditionally "left" concerns such as race, human rights, and world hunger. Although this may be true to an extent, clearly Land spends much more time flirting with Presidential candidates than he does lobbying the government to give a slice or two of bread to the world. Gushee claims that Land's recent book, The Divided States of America?, is a move toward the centrist evangelicalism that The Future of Faith in American Politics advocates. While Land does indeed distinguish himself from the hard-right Dobson/Kennedy types in his book, I definitely wouldn't describe his approach to religion in the public square as "centrist" or moving in that direction.

In his critique of the "evangelical right," Gushee explains that he "refuses to demonize the evangelical right." I don't advocate demonizing either. But in our criticisms, we shouldn't come across as SOFT. At times Gushee plays too nice with the evangelical right. And sometimes he takes off the gloves. See below:

"I am claiming that the most important thing that is wrong with the evangelical right is that it has given up its fundamental allegiance to Jesus Christ in aligning itself so tightly with the Republican Party....it is impossible both to represent 'the church' and to function as a bloc within a national political party."

In addition to shacking up with the GOP, Gushee notes that the second fundamental problem with the evangelical right is the narrowness of its agenda. Gushee argues that it is when the evangelical right tackles issues other than abortion and gay marriage (i.e. tax cuts for the rich and hating on the U.N.) that they are most transparently partisan.

The third primary problem that Gushee has with the evangelical right is their "mood of angry nostalgia." He writes:

"As a fellow evangelical, speaking within the family, I would begin by saying that neither nostalgia nor anger is the mood most appropriate or constructive for a Christian stance toward culture. We should look forward rather than backward, both because there is no way that twenty-first century American society will ever turn the clock back to the 1950s and because the politics of nostalgia does not prepare us well to engage the realities of the moment."

If only certain Southern Baptist leaders would heed the advice of this self-described "Southern Baptist ethicist".....

My next post will tackle Gushee's chapter on the Evangelical Left.

David Gushee, Race, and The New Baptist Covenant

David Gushee, a well-known ethics professor at Mercer's McAfee School of Theology, has an article over at Christianity Today about his involvement in planning the Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant, racial reconciliation, and his experiences at McAfee.

Check it out.

UPDATE (Link fixed)

Ethicist David Gushee To Teach At Mercer University

From Johnny Pierce of Baptists Today....

MACON, Ga. - Prominent ethicist David P. Gushee has been appointed as distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University. He comes from Union University in Jackson, Tenn., where he has been the Graves professor of moral philosophy and senior fellow of the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Christian Leadership.

At Mercer, Gushee will be based in the James and Carolyn McAfee School of Theology in Atlanta and teach interdisciplinary ethics courses throughout the university.

McAfee Dean R. Alan Culpepper said that Dr. Gushee stands in the tradition of great Baptist ethicists and social activists such as T.B. Maston, Henlee Barnette and Glen Stassen.

“Dr. Gushee is widely recognized among Baptists and evangelicals for his prophetic voice on such vital issues as creation care, torture and human rights,” Culpepper said according to a media release. “We look forward to the consciousness-raising that he will bring to McAfee and the recognition that his work will bring to Mercer.”

Mercer President William D. Underwood called Gushee “one of the country’s leading voices in the field of Christian ethics … (who) is frequently called upon by the popular press to comment on contemporary ethical and moral issues facing our country and our world.”

Gushee is a graduate of the College of William and Mary, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and Union Theological Seminary in New York where he earned a Ph.D. in Christian ethics. A columnist for Christianity Today, Gushee has written or edited nine books, and has published scores of articles, book chapters and reviews.

His career began with groundbreaking work on Christian behavior in Europe during the Holocaust. His first book, The Righteous Gentiles of the Holocaust, is based on his doctoral dissertation and was translated into German.

Gushee’s 2003 book with Glen Stassen, Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context, was named Theology/Ethics Book of the Year by Christianity Today. His most recent book, Only Human (2005, Jossey-Bass), offers a Christian theology of human nature for a general audience and was named one of the top-10 books in Christianity for 2005 by Amazon.com.

It is the first book in a series he is editing for Jossey-Bass called “Enduring Questions in Christian Life.” His other upcoming books will include an analysis of evangelical engagement in American politics (Baylor Press, January 2008), a major examination of the sanctity of human life (Eerdmans) and a Christian interpretation of Western moral philosophy (Chalice).

“I am very excited about joining Mercer at a pivotal point in its long history as a Baptist university…” said Gushee, an ordained Baptist minister. “I look forward to helping enhance the ethics offerings at McAfee and in the university in general … I believe Mercer is a place where I can continue to serve the evangelical world through my teaching, writing and activism while also engaging in significant interfaith dialogue.”

This is definitely great news for Mercer University, students of McAfee and all Baptists who still revere Barnette, Maston and care about Christian Ethics.