Today, I received my e-mail alert from the The New York Review of Books. There is a timely article investigating the Christian evangelicals in politics titled The Evangelical Surprise. I suggest giving it a read. Here is its conclusion:
What Cizik calls "below the belt issues"—plus a lot of talk about faith and values—have brought many centrist evangelicals into the Republican camp; but they have other concerns, including economic security, peace, and a clean environment, that the Republican Party, under the influence of the religious right, has not served well. Persuaded to consider these as moral issues on a par with, say, opposition to gay rights, centrists might make new demands on the Republican Party—or question their allgiance to it. Global warming may well be an important issue in the 2008 elec-tion campaign. Immigration policies—about which the evangelical right and center are completely divided—will surely be an issue, too. In any case, if centrist leaders continue to challenge the religious right's agenda in public, they will eventually convince politicians—Democrats as well as Republicans—that the religious right does not speak for all evangelicals and by doing so diffuse "the culture war." This is in essence what the religious right fears.
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