Evangelicals and Campaign 2008

By David Kuo
[Excerpted from the New York Times, Feb. 24, 2008]

Evangelicals are still the largest single voting bloc in the country. Demographers and political scientists agree that 10 to 20 years from now, there will be more self-described "born agains" in the United States than there are today, for simple reasons: Evangelical Christians are more likely to have larger families and more likely to bring new converts into the faith.

But what will this new religious right look like? Among the issues most concerning evangelicals, in a July 2007 Belief.net online poll, were reducing poverty, improving health care and education, and stopping torture. Their progressivism, however, only goes so far. Seventy percent still said that ending abortion was important or very important; almost 50 percent opposed same-sex marriage.

The poll revealed that a third of all evangelicals now believe that Christian political activism is "damaging to Christianity." This isn't an isolated poll. As Christian pollster David Kinnaman writes, "The number of young people in our culture who now embrace unflattering perspectives about Christians and politics is astounding. Three-quarters of young [non-Christians] and half of young churchgoers describe present-day Christianity as 'too involved in politics.' "

Twenty percent of all evangelicals believe that adopting a conservative Christian political agenda has helped destroy the image of Jesus Christ. For a community of believers such as evangelicals, for whom sharing Jesus's life-giving message is an essential part of life, this is a shock. It's evidence of misplaced priorities, of focusing far more on the city of man than on the City of God.

David Kuo was formerly the director of the White House Office on Faith-Based and Community Initiatives