Sightings* 11/18/2010

Jenny Rae Armstrong

The recent GOP rebound has been regarded by many as a victory belonging to
rifle-toting, SUV driving, born-again Christians. But to oversimplify
evangelicals in this manner is to ignore a growing rift within their ranks.
Few mainstream evangelicals have attempted to link laissez-faire capitalism
with the teachings of Jesus. Even though some claim to base their vote on
issues such as abortion, single-issue voting doesn’t seem to be enough to
keep younger evangelicals within the Republican fold.

Dubbed “The Joshua Generation” by the Obama campaigners who courted them
vigorously, the voting practices of younger evangelicals have been shifting
steadily to the left. One third of white evangelicals between the ages of 18
and 29 supported Obama in the 2008 elections, compared to the 16 percent who
voted for John Kerry four years earlier, according to a *Newsweek* article
published on January 17, 2009. Increased evangelical concern for social
justice, coupled with growing discomfort with the “anti-gay, anti-poor, and
anti-environment” stance of the religious right described by progressive
Christian leader Tony Campolo, spurred many of them to vote for a democrat
for the first time in their lives. Jim Wallis, editor of
Sojourners magazine and author of the book
God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It,
expressed the growing discontent among his fellow evangelicals: “Many of us
feel that our faith has been stolen (by the religious right), and it’s time
to get it back… How did the faith of Jesus come to be known as pro-rich,
pro-war, and pro-American?”

Self-described “Red Letter Christians” (social activists who take Jesus’s
teachings on poverty, mercy, and justice literally) such as Campolo and
Wallis have been making an impact, not just on evangelicals’ voting habits,
but on their very self-image. A decade ago, if you asked an evangelical to
sum up her faith, she likely would have quoted Romans 10:9: “If you declare
with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised
him from the dead, you will be saved.” Nowadays, if you ask the same
question, you would be more likely to hear Micah 6:8: “He has shown you, O
mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly
and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

This cultural shift is well-illustrated by the recent publication of the
book *Radical: Taking Back your Faith from the American Dream *by David
Platt. Social justice manifestos penned from the fringes of evangelicalism
are hardly new fare for the Christian publishing industry (think Shane
Claiborne’s *Irresistible Revolution)*, but Platt is pastor of a Southern
Baptist mega-church in Birmingham, Alabama. As unappealing as his
hellfire-and-brimstone views may be to the less “radical,” it is difficult
for even the most conservative Christians to brush off his equally fiery
insistence on “taking up the cross” of sacrificial living and concern for
the poor as bleeding-heart liberalism. Social justice has become a
centerpiece of mainstream evangelicalism.
Ironically, the high-profile rise of economically-focused groups such as the
Tea Party could drive an even greater wedge between the GOP and
evangelicals, who were drawn to the Republican Party more as a reaction
against legalized abortion than an affinity for libertarianism. In fact,
evangelicals have always expressed concern for the less fortunate, and are
among America’s most generous givers, with almost 24 percent of them
donating at least 10 percent of their income to charity, according to the
Barna Group. But a growing number of young evangelicals are coming to the
conclusion that it is going to take more than a carefully calculated tithe
dropped into an offering plate to effect real, positive change for the poor
and oppressed, and are willing to think, act, and vote accordingly.

*References*

Tony Dokoupil, “Faith Beyond His Father’s,” *Newsweek,* January 17,2009.

http://www.newsweek.com/2009/01/16/faith-beyond-his-father-s.html

Barna Group, “Americans Donate Billions to Charity, but Giving to Churches
has Declined,” April 25, 2005.

http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/5-barna-update/180-americans-donate-billions-to-charity-but-giving-to-churches-has-declined

David Platt, *Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
*(Colorado
Springs: WaterBrook Multnomah, 2010).

Jim Wallis, *God’s Politics: How the Right Gets it Wrong, and the Left
Doesn’t Get It *(San Francisco: HarperOne, 2005).

*Jenny Rae Armstrong* is a freelance writer who writes about faith and
social justice for a variety of evangelical publications.

———-

*Sightings* comes from the Martin Marty
Centerat the University of
Chicago Divinity School.

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