This week, a select group of men (if there are any women involved, none have been identified) will issue a document they are calling “An Evangelical Manifesto: The Washington Declaration of Identity and Public Commitment.” We know just a bit about this embargoed document’s existence, not its content, because Warren Cole Smith, publisher of the Evangelical Press News Service, has written about the plan and process of producing the declaration that purports to represent American evangelical beliefs and values. Smith’s point in writing about the manifesto is that the timing of the release makes it a political document, and the closed group of people working on the content apparently excludes traditional conservative and pro-family evangelical voices.

Indeed, releasing the document appears to be staking a claim for new leadership with different emphases from the traditional, mainstream evangelical movement; the declaration’s authors appear to be making a power play to launch new public faces for evangelicalism. Perhaps they heard E.J. Dionne, Jr., a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, opine about what he perceives as a “waning influence of the traditional religious right” and hope to move into the perceived vacuum.

Likely, they also want to subtly shift the understanding of what it means to be “evangelical.” Several prominent self-identified “evangelical progressives” have written books and launched speaking and media campaigns in order to distance themselves from the issues of the religious right — painting themselves as more sophisticated and nuanced in their understanding of evil in the world. One branch created a “Deep Shift” to describe their “new paradigm” for making Christianity more palatable to the world. Others object to the “very narrow” depiction of evangelicals as conservative; they want the leftist social justice issues to be at the heart of “moral and political decision making.” While they object to the political activism of the religious right, their own “vocation” to use “political involvement as a vehicle for social change” is viewed as a mission and high calling.

“Progressives” criticize traditional evangelicals because they are overwhelmingly Republican, without acknowledging that the Republican platform, which has been consistently pro-life, is congruent with the moral values of evangelicals whereas the Democratic platform is not. “Progressives” criticize traditional evangelicals because they focus on individual sins and the two major moral issues of abortion and homosexual marriage, instead of focusing on what they call “structural sins” like poverty, war, oppression and destruction of the environment. Typically, when “progressives” talk about “broadening the evangelical agenda,” they mean making their so-called “structural sins” the priority instead of emphasizing the “personal sins” that concern traditional evangelicals.

Sadly, progressives often dilute the gospel message of salvation with their emphasis on so-called structural sins choosing to focus on the imperfections of American capitalism (which pale in comparison to those of every other economic system) and painting it as the ultimate evil (greedy corporations and underhanded bankers), and conspiracy theories abound. Though American capitalism has been the greatest engine for growth and human advancement in the history of the world, the United States, especially “Christian America,” is frequently blamed falsely for poverty and war, paternalism and exploitation, as well as racism and materialism. More recently, a presidential candidate leveled a charge of “legalized discrimination” against his country as an explanation for the long-term black poverty rates; he did not mention that economists agree that poverty in America can be attributed to “changes in family formation” because less than 40 percent of black children in America live in a married mom-and-dad family.

The “progressives” package their thinking in traditional Biblical rhetoric fusing traditional values with populist ideals and themes of the liberal left (like a Marxist-flavored version of social justice and racial reconciliation) and latching onto trendy secular causes like climate change, poverty, globalism, immigration and political correctness. If they talk about abortion at all, it is in the context of preventing the “necessity” for abortion. While they haven’t yet embraced homosexual “marriage,” they promote “civil unions” and condone “blessing” ceremonies in churches; like all evangelicals, they emphasize loving the sinner, but the leftists make no effort to distance their love for the sinner from the sinful lifestyle. In fact, instead of relying on Scriptural authority and theological clarity, one progressive has called for a five-year moratorium on pronouncements about homosexual behavior; instead, he wants dialogue, reflection and provisional comments until there is consensus.

The left is obviously targeting evangelicals by blurring the distinctions between liberal and conservative, producing an amalgam that will become as impotent and barren in the 21st century as most mainline protestant churches became in the 20th century. They criticize the religious right for thinking in terms of monologues instead of conversations; they decry absolutes and preaching, preferring instead, tolerance, narratives and communal interaction. Writing in Christianity Today, Amy Sullivan reported that in 2006, pro-choice and pro-gay rights gubernatorial candidates held informal listening sessions with evangelical voters and were able to garner almost 50 percent of the evangelical vote in their states. As a result, the major political candidates now have consultants to advise them on religious outreach to conservatives. Continued...