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Younger Evangelicals Changing Their Minds about the Christian Right
The evidence is mounting that a growing percentage of younger evangelicals are beginning to distance themselves from the political agenda of the Christian Right. A recent Religion News Service article captures well this shift: |
According to the Pew Research Center survey in February, support for Democratic candidates jumped from 16 percent to 26 percent among white evangelicals under 30 between the 2004 and 2006 elections.
"Many people have become disillusioned by President Bush, but younger evangelicals have gone from being very enthusiastic supporters of the president to being markedly less so and their party IDs have also switched," said John Green, senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. [ ]
The DNC is also working with the College Democrats of America's faith caucus on outreach.
"We are broadening the discussion," said Melissa Roberts, a junior at Jesuit-run Boston College and chair of the College Democrats faith caucus. "People are realizing we can define our political beliefs by more than two issues. We can reach beyond abortion and gay marriage."
Emily Holmes, a senior at Bethel University, an evangelical school in Arden Hills, Minn., said a desire to expand the political discussion led her to form the evangelical school's first College Democrats club three years ago. Since then, she said, she has observed a change in
her classmates' political interest.
"Within the past three years, I've noticed a subtle change in our campus dynamics," Holmes said. "We are a Christian school and social justice tends to be the core of a lot of what we care about. It's just the way we want to go about taking care of it is what really separates the political parties."
At Calvin College, a moderate evangelical school in the Republican stronghold of Grand Rapids, Mich., there is no student Democratic organization,but several clubs have been formed to address issues traditionally associated with the left.
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