RICHMOND, Va. (ABP) — Abortion is the most pressing moral issue of the day, said Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, a Republican candidate for president, at a recent GOP debate. So much so, the Catholic senator continued, that he doesn't think his party can nominate anyone who isn't pro-life because that's “at our core.”
Not so, said former senator John Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidate from North Carolina at a Democratic forum hosted by a Christian group. The “great moral issue of our time” is poverty in the United States, said Edwards, a Methodist who was raised Southern Baptist. “As long as I am alive and breathing, I will be out there fighting with everything I have to help the poor in this country.”
Both are Christians. Both base policies on deep faith. Each arrives at a different place. What's an evangelical to do?
Evangelicals have long entered the political fray armed with Scripture, confident that commitment to its teachings offers a clear guide for political action. At least in the public mind, that's placed them squarely on the conservative side of most social issues, such as abortion and gay rights.
But increasingly, the nation's estimated 60 million evangelicals are finding that same commitment to Scripture is pitting them against each other, sometimes in very public ways.
This year that split has been intense in an unlikely quarter: global warming. Climate change has become a hot topic among evangelicals, who disagree over how prominent a role it deserves in their political agenda.
Richard Cizik, the environmentally minded vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals, has taken hits for his efforts to add global warming to the NAE's traditional pro-life and anti-homosexuality agenda.
That disagreement spilled over into a congressional hearing in Washington June 7, when Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said liberals have struck upon a “brilliant idea” to use global warming to “divide and conquer the evangelical community and get people [moving] away from the core values issues.”
Christian leaders like Cizik do “not represent the view of most evangelicals,” said Inhofe, who was echoed by other witnesses at the hearing, including Russell Moore, dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Southern Baptists and other likeminded evangelicals “are concerned that tying Bible verses to any specific legislation on global warming, especially when there are potentially harmful results, could serve both to harm the public interest and trivialize the Christian gospel,” Moore said.
That view coincides with a resolution passed at the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting this month, which urged “Southern Baptists to proceed cautiously in the human-induced global warming debate in light of conflicting scientific research.”
But Jim Ball, a Baptist who is president of the Evangelical Environmental Network, testified that recent polls suggest 70 percent of evangelicals think global warming poses a threat to future generations. Ball also pointed to the Evangelical Climate Initiative, which was signed by more than 100 Christian leaders “who believe that a vigorous response to global warming is a spiritual and moral imperative.”
“We're engaged on this issue because we care about the poor,” who would be hardest hit by the effects of climate change, Ball said.
There are other issues about which evangelicals are having an increasingly robust policy debate. The community's views on eliminating poverty, battling abortion and protecting gay and lesbian civil rights — subjects once thought settled in the evangelical community — are increasingly diverse.
Complicating the issue this year for many evangelicals who have looked to the Republican Party to champion their causes are the positions of some of the GOP's top candidates. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is vocal in his support of abortion rights, though he says he's personally opposed. And Mitt Romney, while governor of Massachusetts, endorsed civil rights for gay couples and fewer restrictions on abortion, although he has since modified his views on both issues.
Meanwhile, Democratic candidates have ratcheted up their appeal to evangelicals, talking unabashedly about their faith, especially in a recent forum sponsored by the progressive Christian social-justice group Sojourners. Edwards, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama sounded almost like they were testifying at a revival meeting when talking about how their faith affects their policy choices.
So, if Scripture is bottom line for evangelicals, why are they coming down on different sides of policy issues?
One answer is the priorities they set, said Barrett Duke, vice president for public policy at the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. “Very honest people read the same Bible and come out with different emphases.”
“People prioritize issues in different ways,” he said. “If your principal priority is concern for the poor, someone might actually support abortion rights because that person considers poverty a higher priority than concern for life. And if you have conflicting priorities just in light of the fact that you have to prioritize, you might have a deep concern for women in poverty who find themselves with an unexpected pregnancy, but don't think they should abort because of a higher concern for life.”
Robert Parham, executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics, says evangelicals' approach to Scripture is key to prioritizing.
“Some come to the Bible with a pre-existing ideological agenda. They hunt for a Bible verse that will justify their predetermined agenda,” he said. “Others approach the Bible with an undetermined agenda, letting the Bible shape their position on issues.”
“I would hope no one who is a serious reader of the Bible would let political affiliation set the priority,” Duke said. But, he acknowledged, “it's hard to imagine our life experiences don't color that to some degree. Sometimes we have to resist personal experience when we're trying to determine what God wants us to do.”
Differences in the interpretation of specific texts can also influence how Christians who take the Bible seriously come down on political issues, Parham said.
“For example, some evangelicals favor unfettered free enterprise as the God-ordained economic approach and oppose care for the earth,” he said. “They justify unlimited population growth and economic development with a proof-text from Genesis 1:28, which says, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion.'
“Other evangelicals understand that text should not be read literally. They know that the key word in that text, ‘dominion,' does not mean uncontrolled domination. Dominion means a just service over nature, like a just king rules for the welfare of his people. … They would read Jesus' commandment to love neighbor and understand that love for neighbor extends to future generations. They would understand that the only way to love a neighbor across time is to leave them a decent place to live.”
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— This is the second of a six-part series on religion and politics.