[Dialogue] A sign of hope

[KroegerD@aol.com]

By Michael Paulson, Globe Staff - February 5, 2005

SOUTH HAMILTON -- Evangelical Protestants, despite enjoying increasing
cultural influence as a result of their perceived electoral clout, have
sometimes ''lost their perspective" by paying too little attention to social
concerns such as the environment and poverty, leading evangelicals said
yesterday.

A top official of the National Association of Evangelicals told reporters
gathered at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary that the Moral Majority, a
1980s political movement dominated by Christian conservatives, was ''an
aberration and a regrettable one at that," even though it drew evangelicals
into the political process, because the organization was ''fatally flawed by
a hubris that made the movement condescending and more than a bit
judgmental."

''The Moral Majority lacked a servant heart of Christ born out of humility
and compassion for a fallen humanity," said the official, Robert Wenz, who
is vice president of national ministries for the National Association of
Evangelicals.

''Instead, it was all about making America a nice place for Christians to
live. This is not the kind of social involvement that we need or that
evangelicals espouse."

Instead, Wenz cited as a positive sign what he described as ''a reemergence
of the evangelical church in the inner city" with programs addressing
substance abuse, parenting, and ''healing ministries of all kinds." He said
those churches have emerged at a time when many of the more visible
evangelical churches, the so-called megachurches, have located in suburban
areas.

Wenz spoke at the first of a series of courses that evangelicals, basking in
attention following polls suggesting that moral values played a role in
President Bush's reelection, are holding in an effort to explain the
influential religious movement to news reporters. Organizers plan similar
sessions at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., next month, and
then at seminaries in Dallas and Los Angeles.

Wenz said it is important for evangelicals to be clear that they have no
allegiance to the Republican Party and that the GOP owes them nothing. In an
interview, he said evangelicals, for example, are increasingly concerned
about environmental issues, not an issue traditionally associated with the
Republican Party.

''Global warming is a reality and is not a bunch of liberal hype," Wenz said
in an interview.

John Jefferson Davis, a professor of systematic theology and Christian
ethics at Gordon-Conwell, said, ''The Democratic Party is now saying, 'We've
got to recover moral language,' but I would also like to see a Republican
Party whose Christian component has a more holistic understanding of moral
values. . . .

''Evangelicals are diverse in their concerns for moral values, abortion, gay
marriage, and stem cell research, but also an important part of tradition
says matters of race, poverty, and the environment are, or should be, part
of our ethic."


Dick Kroeger
65 Stubbs Bay Road
Maple Plain, MN 55359
952-476-6126