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In evangelical world, a liberal view steps up Following Carters lead, progressives work to transform movement JIMMY CARTER Themba Hadebe / AP file Former President Jimmy Carter helped build low-income housing in Durban, South Africa, in 2002. Carter, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, left t he evangelical Southern Baptist Convention several years ago, fed up wit h its domination by the religious right.
Click for profile When thousands of Southern Baptists gather later this month in Nashville for the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, former Presid ent Jimmy Carter, one of the worlds most famous Baptists, will not be t here. He broke with the convention several years ago, distressed at its takeover by conservative Christian fundamentalists beginning in 1979.
In an interview last year with Newsweek, Carter bemoaned the melding ... between the Republican Party and the more conservative Christians, saying: This is not only an anomaly, but I think is contrary to the be st interests of our democratic principles.
Click Here The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest evangelical Christian deno mination in the world. Its alliance with political conservatives is just one part of the American evangelical communitys popular identification with the Republican Party, whose rise has been fueled by its identifica tion with the religious right. Jerry Falwell, perhaps the most widely recognized conservative r eligious spokesman, is also an important evangelical figure, preaching f rom the pulpit of a Southern Baptist church in Virginia. Pat Robertson, whose network gave birth to the Christian Coalition. So i s James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family, who is considered the most influential evangelical figure in America.
whose own religious story has never be en fully told, has long targeted his message to conservative evangelical s People like Karl Rove and people like Ralph Reed have done a brilliant j ob of wedding the evangelical community to the Republican Party, said T ony Campolo, a spiritual adviser to President Bill Clinton in the White House. And so when you begin to think about evangelicals, you begin to think in terms of the values of the right wing of the Republican Party.
Newsweek: When Dobson talks, Washington listens Finding evangelicals outside the box Like Jimmy Carter, Tony Campolo is a tireless campaigner for social justi ce, especially for the poor, for the environment and for oppressed popul ations in the Third World. Like Carter, he is also an evangelical Christ ian a Baptist minister, in fact. Although many Americans see evangelicalism as a monolithic construct, in reality, there are a whole lot of us evangelicals who think differently , said Campolo, who founded the Evangelical Association for the Promoti on of Education. Campolo puts the proportion of progressive or liberal American evangeli cals at 35 percent to 40 percent. the leading authority on religious populations in America, John Green of the University of Akron in Ohio, puts it closer to 20 percent. Whoever is correct, one thing is clear: There are millions of progressive evangelicals. And yet, the conventional wisdom resolves to a very simpl e equation: Evangelical = religious right. That may gall progressive evangelicals, who are proud of their heritage a t the forefront of campaigns for civil rights, racial justice and relig ious diversity, but the turnout of religious voters for Bush exemplifies the attraction they feel to core Republican principles, said Paul Hetri ck, vice president of Focus on the Family. Evangelical, along with moral or values voter and voting surged in to the lexicon and consciousness in expanded ways in 2004, he said in a n e-mail interview, most especially as such voters were seen to have si gnificantly influenced and impacted the November election results.
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