Janel Bakker, 28, a graduate student at Catholic University who attends Washington Community Fellowship on Capitol Hill, an evangelical church affiliated with the Mennonite denomination, said she grew up in a "relatively conservative religious home" where "the big issue was considered to be abortion."

But Bakker, who has attended several rallies against the Iraq war, said she now regards poverty, peace and the environment as important spiritual issues ignored by the religious right. "The religious right has assumed that capitalism is the way to go and is the most moral way to organize society," Bakker added. "Young people are questioning that."

Thanks to Laryn, Janel's husband, for sending a link to his wife's post (Janel and Laryn operate together a terrific website) where she writes a comprehensive background to the quote she gave for the article. Janel's insights are valuable because I think they give us a glimpse towards the future, a future where hopefully the political influence of today's Christian Right will significantly diminish. Janel also shows how mainstream journalists often fail to pick up on the  subtleties that are so crucial in trying to understand contemporary religious practice in the United Sates. Some excerpts from Janel's post:

The most interesting part of the conversation, for me, was our discussion about terms such as "liberal,""conservative," "religious left," "religious right" and "evangelical." Those familiar with my academic agenda will not be surprised by this; I'm always game to hash out the definitions of these terms, especially with someone else who cares. It's been my hunch for a while now (a hunch I'm hoping to explore in my dissertation) that such terms are largely outmoded and that a new contingent of North American Christians is rising up who simply cannot be placed in any of these categories. Many North American Christians who take their faith seriously, both Protestant and Catholic, don't fit into either the "liberal" category or the "conservative" category, both politically and theologically. I explained to Ms. Murphy that while people like me are certainly not fans of the religious right, we don't fit into the religious left either. The very fact that I disagree with a woman's "right to choose" removes my welcome in the Democratic Party. Considering my impression that Ms. Murphy understood and even resonated with what I was saying, I was a little disappointed that she used the culture war motif in her article anyhow. She didn't challenge the assumption that those who baulk at the idea that "moral issues" consist of abortion and same-sex marriage are card-carrying members of the religious left. Her article perpetuated the idea (popular among scholars such as Robert Wuthnow and James Davison Hunter) that religious left and religious right are engrossed in hurling bombs at each other from either side of an ever widening chasm.

On the topic of terminology, I also explained to Ms. Murphy that while people in my contingent are not theological liberals, we don't fit into many people's definition of "evangelical" either. While we take the Bible seriously, we aren't biblical literalists. We affirm the apostle's creed, but we aren't propositionalists. Looking for a footing, she asked me to name a few institutions and/or figures claimed by the contingent I was describing. I mentioned the obvious flagships of Sojouners (with Captain Jim) and the Emerging Church (with Captain Brian) and the not-so-obvious voices of Culture is Not Optional, International Justice Mission, Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat, and even Laryn's website. I should have also mentioned Christian Community Development Association and John Perkins, Evangelicals for Social Action and Ron Sider, World Vision, Bread for the World, and others that didn't come to mind then (or now). Thus, I'm not too keen on Ms. Murphy's introduction of me as a "theologically traditionalist Christian," but I can't say I blame her because I'm not sure what terminology I would use instead. Theologically moderate? Post-evangelical? Nineteenth-century-esque evangelical? Emerging? Creedal? Orthodox? None of these seem quite right either.

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