Evangelicals are suffering from an image problem, with more younger people finding them "judgmental and hypocritical", not practicing what they preach, and lashing back against religion after a generation of culture war. The term 'evangelical' itself is getting to be a label of shame -- kinda reminds me of how the word "liberal" has become an insult. Reap what you sow, reap it.
And so an 'Evangelical Manifesto' released yesterday decries the transmutation from faith to ideology.
"That way faith loses its independence, the church becomes `the regime at prayer,' Christians become `useful idiots' for one political party or another, and the Christian faith becomes an ideology in its purest form," the document reads.
Naturally, there are critics of the document and some evangelical leaders have not signed on to it. Who might you expect, but the selfsame leaders who have pioneered the shift from faith to voting bloc.
Critics claim some key names -- including conservative evangelical leaders such as Focus on the Family founder James Dobson and Southern Baptist public policy executive Richard Land -- are missing from the statement.
"The select group drafting the manifesto apparently excludes traditional conservative, pro-life and pro-family evangelical voices," said Janice Shaw Crouse of Concerned Women for America, who also questioned the timing of the document's release at the end of the primary election season.
Never mind that this so-called 'select group' is pretty large. This document may do well to exclude these folks, however. They are, after all, the problem, not the solution. And the fact that the leaders who have signed on are interested in working with "people of good will, including those of other faiths or no faith" -- could this ever be accepted by the likes of Focus on the Family or CWA? What's more important to them, doing good or doing right (wing)? I think we know which it is.
With any luck, ideas like these will take over as the power of the religious right wanes, as evangelicals struggle to shed the ideological millstone round their neck and move on.
