[Vision2020] The New Evangelicals (an abstract) by Frances FitzGerald

[Tom Hansen]

The following is an abstract from:

Frances FitzGerald, Annals of Religion, "The New Evangelicals," The New 
Yorker, June 30, 2008, p. 28

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ANNALS OF RELIGION about pastor Dr. Joel Hunter and the waning power of 
the religious right within the evangelical movement. Writer discusses the 
2004 Presidential election in which George W. Bush took seventy-eight per 
cent of the white evangelical vote. (Evangelicals make up a quarter of the 
population.) 

This year, religious-right leaders could not unite around a candidate 
during the primary season. On Super Tuesday, a third of evangelicals voted 
for John McCain. Barack Obama has been putting considerable effort into 
winning over white evangelicals. 

Religious-right activists are no longer the only evangelical leaders 
speaking out. Since 2004, influential pastors have set a new national-
policy agenda. The movement has no single charismatic leader, no 
institutional center, and no policy goals. It doesn’t even have a name. 
But it is nonetheless posing the first major challenge to the religious 
right in a quarter of a century. 

Dr. Joel Hunter, the senior pastor of Northland church in Orlando, 
Florida, is one of these new leaders. He has lobbied Congress for 
legislation to curb global warming, pressed for comprehensive immigration 
reform, and denounced the anti-immigration rhetoric of the Republican 
primaries. He has also worked to establish common ground on such 
polarizing issues as abortion and the role of religion in public life.

Tells about the National Association of Evangelicals voting, in 2004, to 
accept a position paper that laid out principles for Christian political 
engagement. Discusses the actions of pastors Rick Warren and Bill Hybels, 
who have directed their congregations to address poverty and the global 
AIDS epidemic. Writer visits Hunter at his home in Orlando. 

Tells about Hunter’s childhood in Ohio, his social activism in the 
sixties, and his career as a pastor. In 2006, he was invited to become 
president of the Christian Coalition, but a month before he was to 
formally take office, they went their separate ways, citing “differences 
in philosophy and vision.” Hunter doesn’t preach pop psychology or self-
help messages. In 1996, he changed the emphasis of his preaching from 
individual faith and mutual service to the need to serve the community as 
a whole. Discusses the hold that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson had on 
evangelicals. 

Tells about attacks on Hunter and other pastors by “the enforcers” of the 
evangelical community. Of all the initiatives the new movement has taken, 
that on global warming has provoked the most fury from the right.

Discusses the recent difficulties faced by the religious right, including 
the death of Jerry Fallwell and the lack of a consensus choice among the 
Republican candidates in the 2008 primaries. Writer considers whether the 
era of the religious right is over. Hunter believes that the coalition of 
social, economic, and foreign-policy conservatives that made up Bush’s 
Republican Party cannot last. He claims to be undecided about whom he will 
vote for in November. “It’s going to get very nasty,” he says.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
 
"We're a town of about 23,000 with 10,000 college students. The college 
students are not very active in local elections (thank goodness!)."

- Dale Courtney (March 28, 2007)


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