Fraces FitzGerald's article in The New York Review of Books, "The Evangelical Surprise," is an examination of areas of disagreement and tension within the evangelcials of American "Christian right politics," particularly between the majority of evangelicals and so-called "Centerist" evangelicals. But in describing these "Centerists," FitzGerald shows us that there's no real surprise at all: the "Centerists" are conservatives, too.
FitzGerald cites some facts: American evangelicals "make up a quarter of the [US] population—around 75 million people." In 2000, 68% of them "voted for George Bush; in 2004, 78 percent of them did." And:
Last summer, polls showed that the war in Iraq, corruption, and the administration's response to Hurricane Katrina had brought the evangelicals' approval ratings for Bush and the GOP down by twenty points in just two years. But on the last Election Day they turned out in their usual numbers, and over 70 percent of them voted for Republican congressional candidates. White evangelicals have, in other words, become the GOP's most reliable constituency, and they normally provide about a third of the Republican votes.
FitzGerald writes of these "traditionalist" evangelicals, but also, briefly, the statistically insignificant "modernists," too, before delving deeply into the "Centrists." The "modernists" are "defined as those who go to church infrequently and don't hold to a literal interpretation of the Bible.
But, here are the so-called "Centerists" for you: the likes of
Rich Nathan, for example, the senior pastor of the Vineyard Church of Columbus, Ohio [who] preaches that the Christian message cannot be reduced to issues of sex or private morality, and that the emphasis should be on Jesus' teachings about the poor and about peace-making.
And this is Centerism: no changing of the mind about issues of sex or private morality, but that perhaps Christians' focus ought to be on things Jesus of Nazareth seemed to consider comparatively more important.
We're offered the examples of Reverend Gregory Boyd and Dr. Joel Hunter. They also preach that evangelicals should spend energies on helping the poor. And then there's Rick Warren, leader of Saddleback Church in California. He cares about the poor, too, we're told. But he's also a Creationist, as he's stated at least once recently, in a Newsweek.
In the end, the surprise is underwhelming: divisions exist within evangelicaldom...except, of course, where they don't. And the implications of the divisions for the religious right are basically nil. This is a reality that FitzGerald notes: "The defection of the centrist leaders from the religious right's agenda has thus far had no obvious effect on the evangelical vote."
There are disagreements over political tactics, even theology, and new (for evangelicals) issues like the environment, but there is no disagreement on women's reproductive rights (opposed to it), on rights for gay Americans (opposed to it), or--especially--on which political party is the one to vote for (Republican).
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