Will the not-so-moderate "New Evangelicals" (Neo-Religious Right) out-maneuver religious progressives in the Democratic Party?

"Who is Joel Hunter, and Why is Obama Praying with Him?" asked Time magazine two days after the November 4th General Election.

The answer is that he's "a bona fide megapastor in Orlando, Fla., and a longtime mover in the Evangelical world," as Time aptly sums up. He prayed with Barack Obama by phone on Election Day, along with "Otis Moss II, the retired pastor of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland."

But he's also one exemplar of what is often termed a New Evangelical, a leader of the religious "value voters" who are often deemed politically moderate--relatively speaking. But who deemed them such? The answer, according to Sarah Posner in her article, "Battling For the Soul of the Democratic Party," is a "constellation of organizations and initiatives"--dubbed the "Religious-Industrial Complex" by Dan Schultz of Street Prophets--that has "cropped up inside the Beltway" in the last few years. They might also be termed the Neo-Religious Right

This constellation is "cultivating the public personae of a new generation of religious leaders," a public personae of a "values voter" who is "no longer shackled to a 'narrow agenda' of abortion and gay marriage, and [is] voting on a 'broader agenda,' including poverty, the environment, and global HIV/AIDS." The constellation is also claiming that Democrats need New Evangelicals in order to win elections.

But the New "moderate" Evangelicals are ultimately...conservative. They still oppose reproductive choice. They still oppose full civil rights for gay Americans. Consider, alongside Joel Hunter, two other leaders of the "broader agenda," New Evangelical, conservative Christianity. Rick Warren of Seattle's Saddleback church denies the simple scientific fact of evolution, and Jim Wallis of Sojourners, as Schultz points out, has actively combated the idea of an organized religious left.

The only thing new about New Evangelicalism is how it's a conservative Christian movement that's made inroads into the Democratic Party.

This is shaking up genuine religious progressives, who like the Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, an associate minister at Middle Collegiate Church, do not see the "prophetic tradition of social justice" alive in New Evangelicalism.

Recently, several religious progressive wrote about that prophetic tradition in a new book, Dispatches From the Religious Left. As Bill Berkowitz pointed out in "RDBook: Whither the Religious Left?" Dispatches represents an attempt by religious progressives to enhance their a place at the table. Not only do they have to contend with the attention-getting narrative of the so-called moderate Evangelicals, but, also with what Frederick Clarkson, Dispatches' editor, sees as a movement

about marginalizing the role and voice of religious progressives, which is to say those who in past decades played decisive roles in stopping the war in Vietnam, pushing for African American and women's rights, and much more.

Comments

[Corey]

Two Reasons Why Rick Warren Should NOT be invited to Obama's Inauguration!

These two stories are from the first two weeks of December this year in the USA!!!

Woman with Rainbow Flag on her car gets gang raped:

Cops offer $10,000 reward to solve gang rape of lesbian attacked in Richmond
12/19/2008

http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/nationalbreaking/ci_11273543

Two brothers hugging get called anti-gay names are attacked and one now is very critical condition, on life support systems and in a coma after an operation for skull fractures and extensive brain damage:

Attack on Ecuadorean Brothers Investigated as Hate Crime

December 9, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/nyregion/09assault.html?ref=nyregion

[L.D. Turner]

It absolutely amazes me that an author would use the statement "...the simple scientific fact of evolution." I am not a right wing Creationist, far from it. But I do know that evolution, taught as fact, is so full of holes as a theory that it couldn't hold enough water to support even the simplest form of life.

It's time we started calling evolution what it is - a theory and not a very sound one at that.

If we keep advocating evolution as truth, we will never discover truth. Again, I am not advocating Creationism, but instead, science. To call evolution fact is bad science at best.

[S. Isebrand]

L.D. Turner, I think you unfortunately have fallen victim to misunderstandings about evolution.

Two things:

1. As a theory, evolution is such in the formal sense of the word. I refer you to notjustatheory.com. I explain further below.

2. And as a theory in the formal sense of the word, it is *by definition* based on very sound science indeed. I refer you to the website Evolution 101 as one place where you might begin an examination online.

To expand on point #1. I suspect that you're unaware that in the formal language of science, which is not everyday usage (not even really for most scientists), theory is a status to be achieved; it is not a status of subordination. You can see this demonstrated in designations such as the Germ Theory of Disease and the Theory of General Relativity. A theory (or theories)--again, in the formal sense of the term as demonstrated above--can have within it entire sets of related laws, observations, and phenomena.

To enlarge point #2. The above-cited theories are deemed such because they are based on sound practice of the scientific method by many scientists. Evolution, for instance, is a theory precisely because it is based on excellent science (verification, falsification, creating new experimental data, et cetera) performed by literally 100,000s of biologists, geneticists, geologists, paleontologists, botanists, virologists, and experts in several other fields over the course of 150 years. Consider that the entire arena of genetics is one of the great buttresses of evolutionary theory, yet was not even known of by the first generation of scientists to realize evolution’s reality. Genetics has since added enormous amounts to knowledge to our understanding of just how evolution works, because of the work of many scientists, most entirely unsung.

That brings me to a final thing that I wish to point out. Many who share your misunderstandings about evolution--misunderstandings that may not be entirely your own fault--seem often to also fail to consider the dimension of human integrity that is part of science, including evolution. One doesn't just pick or not pick evolution as opposed to some other thing as if it were, say, a political ideology or which vegetable to have tonight for supper. Frankly, to adhere to your misapprehensions regarding evolution--as a proper theory and as (therefore) science--would be to *hold cheap* the immeasurably large, critical, and self-critical labors that were and are being practiced by literally countless dedicated scientific professionals past and present. One ought not to willy-nilly dismiss as “not sound” that which scientists innumerable have determined *by the sweat of their brows* to be sound in the main. To do so is at best immodest and at worst nefarious.