Scholars say evangelicals and their votes are shifting

Posted: 10/19/07

Scholars say evangelicals
and their votes are shifting

By Heather Donckels

Religion News Service

WASHINGTON (RNS)—The face of evangelicalism is changing, two authors at the Pew Research Center said, and with that change comes uncertainty about who evangelicals will vote for in next year’s presidential election.

Using the AIDS crisis as an example, Michael Lindsay, author of Faith in the Halls of Power, said the present generation of evangelicals has a broader, more international perspective than their forebears.

While many evangelical leaders in the 1980s denounced AIDS as “God’s scourge on the homosexual community,” evangelical Michael Gerson—President Bush’s former speechwriter—was the man who brought AIDS back to the forefront 20 years later, Lindsay said.

“That is a really big change in the evangelical community,” Lindsay said. “The amazing thing is that once that initiative was announced, some of the very same evangelical movement leaders who had denounced” the crisis “praised the White House for being bold and courageous.”

Hanna Rosin, author of God’s Harvard, a book about Patrick Henry College in Virginia, hopes that in 20 more years, evangelicals will have examined their traditional stance on the environment and made similar changes.

Lindsay and Rosin attributed part of this change to a heightened appreciation for Reformed theology, which recognizes the problems in the world while at the same time compelling people to do something about them.

Lindsay also sees the change as “a maturing of the evangelical movement.” As evangelicals have moved into positions of influence, they have become more optimistic about changing the world. He sees “the mantle of leadership” passing from evangelicals like Billy Graham—who focused primarily on saving souls—to people like megachurch pastor and author Rick Warren, who believes social justice and saving souls go hand in hand.

These shifting views cause Rosin and Lindsay to wonder who evangelicals will vote for in the coming presidential primaries and election. Gone is “the idea that evangelicals are in the back pockets of Republicans,” Rosin said.

Some of the “most extensive outreach” from evangelicals is directed at Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, not Republicans Rudy Giuliani and Sen. John McCain, she said.