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Technorati“The strategy is completely different, it is moving from a zero sum game politics – where someone else has to lose in order for us to win – to a common good vision,” Cizik said.
NHCLC’s Rodriguez echoed the sentiments of the shift towards the evangelical center:
“The future of evangelicalism in America is brown and it is center,” he declared. “It is not right or left.”
Rodriguez, who has been highly courted by presidential candidates trying to reach Hispanic evangelicals, said that historically white evangelicals have focused on the issues of marriage and life, or “righteousness and piety” issues. Meanwhile, African-American evangelicals concentrate on social justice issues such as health care, education, and poverty.
“And you have brown evangelicals and they really want to reconcile and they don’t want to be either, or – but be right here in the middle,” Rodriguez said. “There’s a platform of both righteousness and justice…It’s life, it’s marriage, but it’s healthcare, it’s education, and the issue of poverty.”
He added that there is a generational shift and an ethnic shift that will lead to an evangelical center emerging as the majority in the next five to 15 years – “and if Latinos continue to grow by the grace of God, maybe even sooner,” Rodriguez joked, drawing laughter from the audience.
Gushee noted earlier in the discussion that evangelical centrists would consider voting for Sens. Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, but abortion “more than any other issue” still poses a problem for gaining their vote.
Evangelical centrists support a comprehensive view of Christian right agendas such as sanctity of life, which they see as going beyond abortion to include torture, poverty, racism, war, and environmental degradation.
“If a Democratic presidential candidate proposed a serious demand-side plan to reduce abortion by half over the next eight years, and invested real political capital in the effort, it would make a significant difference for centrist evangelicals,” the author said.
Gushee is part of the group of evangelical leaders that launched last year the “Come Let Us Reason Together” initiative, in which evangelicals and progressives seek to end the culture war between the two groups and find common ground on polarizing issues such as abortion, gay rights, and the role of religion in public life.
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