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Evangelical liberals put priority on poverty, environment

A group of evangelicals seeks to redefine the faith's political reputation as more than a fight against abortion and same-sex marriage with a three-day "justice revival" focused on its historical roots in women's suffrage, abolition and civil rights.

The stated goal of the gathering, which kicks off Tuesday, is to tackle poverty in the city. But the broader idea is to energize a new movement that links religious faith with social action as earlier American social movements did, said its planners. Among the areas to be explored by participants are access to health care, immigration, global warming and the war in Iraq.

"I have been very deeply moved by the history of these great awakenings in our national life, where there was a revival of faith that led to big change in our society," said Jim Wallis, CEO of Sojourners/Call to Renewal.

The Washington, D.C.-based liberal evangelical group that is holding the event with 30 of the city's largest evangelical churches, representing 10,000 Christians.

"A whole generation of young evangelicals believes that Jesus would probably care more about the 30,000 children who died again today, as they did yesterday and they will tomorrow, from preventable disease than he would about passing a gay-marriage amendment in Ohio," Wallis said.

The overtones are clearly political, as the group's leaders seek to reverse the public perception that all evangelicals are conservative Republicans whose top social priorities are abortion and gay marriage. But leaders say they hope the result will not be an anti-Republican shift as much as a shift to nonpartisan freedom of thought.

Wallis said there will be no political speeches, endorsements, or candidate references.

"Our message is evangelicals aren't going to be in the pocket of any party anymore, and they're going to evaluate all candidates by their own moral compass," Wallis said. "This revival is entirely nonpartisan.

"It's about faith and it's about issues, it's not about Barack (Obama) and Hillary (Rodham Clinton) and John McCain," he said, referring to the contenders for Democrats' presidential nomination and the Republicans' nominee.

Wallis' detractors say he is not trying to be bipartisan, but to steer religious conservatives to the Democratic party _ intentionally launching the effort in Columbus, the capital of a state that swung the presidency to George Bush in 2004 by a slight 2-percent margin. Bush's Ohio victory was attributed largely to turnout among religious conservatives mobilized by a gay marriage ban that appeared on the ballot.

"I think this is part of a concerted effort to try to reach out to the values voters and take them away from the pro-life candidates," said Denise Mackura, executive director of the Thomas More Society pro-life public interest law firm in Chicago. "It's an effort to say ... go ahead and vote for Barack or whoever because there are these other issues, to convince people not to base their vote on the right-to-life issue."

A recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that about a quarter of Americans are evangelical. Several recent polls have found self-identified evangelicals trending toward the Democratic party.

But information on evangelicals' political might is difficult to quantify. Wallis said that's partly because political pollsters have all but assumed that evangelicals were Republican and have not collected adequate data.

Just last month, a letter signed by 9,000 people was delivered by FaithfulAmerica.org to the polling directors of The Associated Press, CNN, Fox, ABC, CBS and NBC, asking them to collect religious information on all voters, not just Republicans.

"Lots of people feel that the evangelical label has been taken captive by a very narrow political program," sad the Rev. Rich Nathan, senior pastor at The Vineyard Church of Columbus, which is participating in the revival. "Folks don't feel that that represents them. Many of the so-called evangelical leaders are saying, we didn't elect these people, they don't represent us. How did they become our spokespeople? How did this narrow agenda become our agenda?"

Besides Wallis, other evangelical leaders, including Marsha Ford, have begun to tout a more bipartisan political view, said Warren Smith, editor and publisher of the Evangelical Press news service.

"There are still many millions of religious conservatives who believe that abortion and the sanctity of the family are two of the most important political issues of our day," he said. "And we can talk about other things, but at the end of the day those issues are likely going to keep these religious voters from ever pulling the lever for the Democratic party."