Last night on a new program called Deep End, the attorneys conspired to have Congress pass a law for one individual–the Chinese widow of a American soldier killed in Afghanistan. My wife Debbie, who worked for some time for Congressman John Linder of Georgia, recalled that they dealt with these kinds of requests–and advanced them–from time to time.

That got us March 2005 there was high drama when the lights of the Capitol were on past midnight Sunday for the Congress to pass a bill and the President returned to Washington to sign it at 2 a.m., allowing the federal courts to consider the Schiavo case.

I was involved in a similar action in 1989: the Elizabeth Morgan case.

I was working at the time as chief of staff for Chuck Colson at Prison Fellowship Ministries. Our staff working at the District of Columbia jail had met a woman there who stood out in a number of ways. Dr. Elizabeth Morgan was a tall, white, affluent plastic surgeon from northwest DC in a jail full of almost entirely poor black women from east of the river.

She was already a heroine in the jail. She has been there for nearly two years for contempt of court because she refused to allow her six-year-old daughter to go on court-ordered overnight visits to her ex-husband. She accused her husband of sexual abuse of the child, hidden the child, and went to jail rather than tell the court where the child was.

The imprisoned women, the large majority of whom had been abused (you find this in most women’s prisons in the country), loved Morgan for her courage in protecting her daughter from abuse.

Judge Dixon of the District court could not be persuaded that Morgan’s ex-husband, Virginia oral surgeon Eric Foretich, had been abusive. He would not budge, he cited Morgan for contempt, sent her to jail—-and left her there.

When Morgan and this case came to our attention, we were amazed by her fortitude and by length of time an unconvicted individual had spent in prison. When we studied the evidence, it, and the witness of Morgan’s action, persuaded us that there had been sexual abuse.

Colson wrote an article calling for Morgan’s release, for which he was condemned and praised. Interestingly, it was our natural allies, the conservative Christians, who were outraged, and our usual adversaries, the liberals and women’s rights activists, who were supportive.

(Both Morgan and Foretich were professed Christians, but he was of the more conservative variety and a member of a prominent northern Virginia evangelical church).

We began lobbying our conservative Christian brethren. I went to visit with James Dobson and presented our large file of evidence. He agreed to have Colson on the Focus on the Family radio program. Our campaign picked up steam.

At the same time, we talked with our local Virginia congressman, Frank Wolf, about the case, as well as a few Senators. I remember one strategic lunch in the Senate Dining Room with a Senator from Tennessee, whose influence was necessary to create and move a piece of legislation to free Dr. Morgan.

Within a couple of months, our efforts were successful. The U.S. Congress passed a bill specifically for the release of Dr. Elizabeth Morgan. She was freed from prison after serving the longest detention for civil contempt in American history–25 months.

In February 1990, the daughter was discovered living in New Zealand with her maternal grandparents. A New Zealand court gave Morgan sole custody, but the visitation requirement by the U.S. court remained in effect, meaning that if Morgan returned to America with her daughter she would still have to allow her ex-husband to see their daughter. That wasn’t going to happen. Morgan remained in New Zealand with her daughter.

In 2003, a federal appeals court ruled that the law passed by Congress to help the mother was unconstitutional because it applied to one person. By that time, the daughter was 21 and safe from the harm which a mother spent two years in jail to protect her.

Eighteen years ago, a bright and confident young woman in Evansville, Indiana, discovered a personal issue that would cause her high school education to be disrupted and would result in her mother kicking her out of the house. She’d made some bad choices, and she was pregnant. She had one more choice to make, and she wasn’t sure what to do. Should she quietly have an abortion and get on with life quickly, or go through the ridicule and embarrassment of her classmates, the scorn of her mother, the hard months of pregnancy, and the pains of child birth?

To my great joy, this young woman had lunch with a friend of her friend who worked at a local church’s adoption program, and after many hours of talking and crying and hand-wringing, she decided to bear the beautiful little baby girl who would become a member of our family through adoption. It wasn’t easy or convenient, but through the love and counsel of this new Christian friend, a fine teenager made the right choice. She chose life.

Although my oldest daughter will not win the Heisman Trophy, she is bright, confident, and beautiful in her own right. As the country agues over the propriety of the Focus on the Family Super Bowl ad featuring Tim Tebow, I think about that Evansville teenager who choose life, as well as another young woman three years later who made the same choice and gave birth to my oldest son, who we adopted through the same agency.

Thousands upon thousands of women make the same choice that Pam Tebow and these teenagers made, facing a battery of conflicting counsel, hardships, pains and dashed dreams.

I don’t believe the legality of abortion is an issue of choice but of the strongest moral necessity, but this Super Bowl ad (from what we’ve heard), and my own experience is not about the legality of having a choice, but the morality and ultimate joy of making the right choice.

[I am working on a project that may become a book on the most influential evangelicals leaders of our generation, since 1976, and the impact they’ve had on the church and their times. I will introduce them briefly on this blog from time to time.  Who do you think should be on the list?].

Steven Curtis Chapman. Lyricist and Musician b.1962

If anyone in Christian music could accurately say “I wrote the songs” it would be Steven Curtis Chapman, the most honored songwriter and one of a handful of the genre’s dominant performers in the last 20 years.

Chapman received Christian music’s Dove Award for Songwriter of the Year every year from 1989-1995, and again in 1997 and 1998. He was also honored as Male Vocalist of the Year in 1990, 91, 95, 97, 98, 2000, and 2001; and Artist of the Year in 90, 91, 93, 95, 97, 2000, and again last year, 2009.

In fact, Michael W. Smith and Steven Curtis Chapman are the most honored artists in Dove Awards history.

I met Steven Curtis Chapman on the way to prison. In 1994 I had negotiated an agreement with Chapman’s representatives for Prison Fellowship Ministries to be main sponsor of his “Heaven in the Real World” national concert tour. [Heaven in the Real World was one of two albums to go platinum (sold more than a million copies) for SCC.]

Steven had become interested in Chuck Colson and his prison ministry work and call to faithfulness, and had included a Colson voice over on the album Heaven in the Real World’s title song. As part of the sponsorship agreement, Steven would perform in several Prison Fellowship in-prison outreach programs, PF would gather names of mostly young people at concerts and get promotional space in the CDs, a concert hand-out and other places, and the SCC team would receive a sizeable amount of sponsorship money—six figures—from PF.

It was fairly revolutionary for a conservative organization such as PF, and although it was difficult to measure the impact on the organization, it was probably helpful all around—particularly providing more youthful names for the organization’s aging donor list.

It was on the way to one of the prison programs that I met Steven, flying to the area together, sharing a van. It was the first of many visits with a young musician who seemed to get younger with every passing year to stay popular with young audiences.

While stardom has had a bad influence on numerous Christian music stars, Chapman has always impressed with his authentic and consistent life and work. I found that to be true as he sang and spoke with energy and compassion to both arena crowds of tens of thousands adoring fans and to a few hundred often-stone-faced prison inmates—some of whom shared the faith and others who were just looking for a few hours outside their cell blocks.

It was a trip into the belly of one of the nation’s prison beasts—I believe it was in Indiana—that led to Chapman’s striking and inspirational song: “Free.”

Back in the news in the last year with the tragic death of his youngest child, who was hit by the family car in their driveway. He’s handled it was characteristic honesty and class, and some of the passion of the time is evident in his new album, Beauty Will Rise. He spoke about the tragedy and the album recently on Good Morning America.

[I am working on a project that may become a book on the most influential evangelicals leaders of our generation, since 1976, and the impact they’ve had on the church and their times. I will introduce them briefly on this blog from time to time.  Who should be on the list?].

Bill Bright. Evangelist (1921-2003)

The call came into the public relations firm late one afternoon in early 1999, and although Campus Crusade was not my account, the account executive wasn’t in, and I was the ranking executive on duty, so I took the “important call from Crusade.” The director of communications, our contact, was on the line; he breathlessly asked me to hold for Dr. Bright.

Campus Crusade founder and president Bill Bright was on a mission. As the end of the millennium loomed, he was increasingly burdened with the challenge to bring millions more people to faith in Christ. While it seemed as though every church and Christian group in the world had a campaign to fulfill the Great Commission before 2000, Bright also had a personal plan.

“Let’s find Noah’s Ark,” Bright said, and I stammered some agreeable words, uncertain of what he actually meant. He meant just that. His conviction was that the people in the villages of Turkey knew the whereabouts of the remnants of the ark; all we needed to do what make it worth it to them to tell us. Bright had decided that we’d run ads in the major newspapers of Turkey and offer $1 million to the person who would provide us with inconvertible evidence of the ark’s location and remnants.

Bright had the same reason for this long shot scheme that compelled him through decades as head of Campus Crusade—to provide evidence that would bring millions of people to faith in Jesus Christ. He figured that if we could provide failsafe modern evidence of one of the Bible’s best know stories, it would convince skeptics around the world that the Bible is an accurate historical record. And that would result in their trust of Scripture and their commitment to the biblical Jesus.

And so we did. Our PR firm was the only contact because Bill Bright and Campus Crusade were to remain anonymous. We wrote and designed a compelling ad with the help of our friends at The Puckett Group, who found a Turkish translator and tapped into the international advertising services necessary to place ads in the newspapers of Turkey.

This earnest effort brought drawers full of packages with long descriptions of places and proofs, with grainy pictures and even video. We couldn’t produce any more certainty than many other teams of filmmakers and authors and researchers could throughout the centuries. The project deadline arrived without conclusive evidence and all that remained to be done was to continue writing polite responses to dozens of wishful treasure hunters in Turkish villages for months that followed.

Perhaps the best result was another glimpse into the hopeful and sincere heart of one of evangelicalism’s most energetic and respected champions of mass evangelism. Bill Bright introduced not only the massive college evangelism effort, Campus Crusade, but also tools and campaigns that—although sometimes derided as simplistic and incomplete—nonetheless brought millions of people to Christ. These campaigns became pervasive symbols of evangelical marketing of the time—such as the Four Spiritual Laws (1965), the I Found It campaign (1976), and The Jesus Film (1979).

Bright, born in Coweta, Oklahoma, described himself as being a “happy pagan” in his youth. He graduated from Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma with an economics degree. In 1944, while attending the First Presbyterian Church, Hollywood, Bright became a Christian. He immediately began intensive biblical studies which led him to graduate studies at Princeton and Fuller Theological Seminaries. It was while he was a student at Fuller that he felt what he regarded as the call of God to help fulfill Christ’s Great Commission (Matthew 28:19) by sharing his faith, beginning with students at UCLA. This gave birth to the Campus Crusade for Christ movement.

During the decades to follow, Bill Bright and his wife, Vonette, remained faithful to this work, and the ministry expanded greatly. Campus Crusade now has more than 27,000 full-time staff and over 225,000 trained volunteer staff in 190 countries.

I am working on a project that may become a book on the most influential evangelicals leaders of our generation, since 1976, and the impact they’ve had on the church and their times. I will introduce them briefly on this blog from time to time.  Who do you think should be on the list?

Bill McCartney. Man’s Man. b.1940

In October 1997, well over a million Christian men crowded onto the Washington Mall to sing, pray and listen to inspirational and emotional charges to lead godly lives as fathers, husbands, and leaders. Promise Keepers’ Stand in the Gap (SITG), perhaps the largest religious gathering in American history, was a historic phenomenon and the high water mark of Promise Keepers and the career of its president, Bill McCartney.

There are millions of men and families who benefited from McCartney’s courage and the unwavering biblical teaching in the masculine stadium settings and from in–your-face teaching of the Promise Keepers stadium events. There had never been anything like 50,000 men gathering in a sports stadium to celebrate their faith and hear hard teachings about the way they should lead their lives as Christian men. SITG was the culmination of these events; like 100 stadium events at once.

In many ways, Bill McCartney was the personification of PK, and its dramatic history is a reflection of the red-hot persona of the former high-level football coach and his stubborn single-mindedness. The heights to which the PK movement soared and the speed of its ascent may be without parallel, the drama of which is matched only by its nearly total collapse within two years of the Washington gathering.
Promise Keepers is a symbol of evangelical conquest of one of its greatest problems—the failure to reach and persuade men—and a sad symbol of bad management based on careless theology.

A few days before the great SITG gathering, I took Bill McCartney to Washington television studios to do network television interviews, including a memorable time at ABC News. The sheer size of SITG made it impossible for media to ignore, although they were clearly inclined to dismiss a religious gathering on the Mall, where dozens of groups hold large rallies every year. Since McCartney was the straight-talking founder of the group and a former coach of the national champion Colorado football team, there was strong interest in interviewing him.

One interview was on ABC Nightline with Ted Koppel, which was taped in the afternoon and aired at late night. While the interview was fine and fair, the memorable part of the visit was prior to the taping. We arrived well in advance of the interview and we were relaxing in the comfortable chairs of the green room. McCartney was reading his Bible when Koppel entered the room and greeted us warmly. “What are you reading?” Koppel asked, and McCartney reviewed the passage that he was studying. Koppel listened thoughtfully, then added: “Let me share with you a little of my daily reading in the Torah.” At which point he pulled a copy of the scripture from his briefcase, read a few passages and had a brief discussion with McCartney about spiritual truths.

I’d taken Christian leaders into hundreds of news offices and green rooms over the years, and I’d never had a mainstream news anchor sit for a personal discussion, open the scripture and discuss spiritual things. I’d always found Koppel to be a serious, fair, quality newsman. This experience gave me a new level of respect.

It was part of a remarkable week in Washington for McCartney, Promise Keepers, and the evangelical movement in America.

After reading a list of oxymorons, beginning with George Carlin’s famous “jumbo shrimp” and “military intelligence,” I got a minor laugh in a college course I taught on writing for public communication by introducing as the next oxymoron, Media Ethics. It introduced a section on the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics and I suggested the following list of ten ways the national media could restore its reputation.

1. Accuracy: Attention to detail; accuracy at all costs.

2. Thoroughness: Emphasize thoroughness over speed; getting the story right is more important than getting it first.

3. Humility: demonstrate humility through preparation, broad and vigorous research, and by seeking out experts.

4. Real Affirmative Action in news operations: ideological, religious, regional, and socio-economic, as well as racial and ethnic.

5. Journalism not Opposition: Reaffirm journalists as reporters of news, not the opposition party.

6. Historic Values: Reflect traditional values of the nation—ethics, historic teachings of faith groups.

7. Thinking: Recover the serious and critical mind—beyond the sound bite.

8. Rediscover Shame: wrongdoers should not be honored, they should be dishonored.

9. Self Cleansing: Restore credibility by cleaning up your own house so that journalists are trusted to present news fairly and professionally.

10. Leave NYC: Build national media competence and presence outside New York City and Washington, D.C. It would be good if the major networks moved to Des Moines, or Kansas City, or perhaps Indianapolis.

These were my thoughts for one group of future journalists.

Millard Fuller. Builder. 1935-2009

[I am working on a project that may become a book on the most influential evangelicals leaders of our generation, since 1976, and the impact they’ve had on the church and their times. I will introduce them briefly on this blog from time to time].

On February 17, 2009, I received a letter from heaven, and while it certainly seemed odd, it was the news that an old friend had died that shocked and saddened me. I grieved for the dear wife and family of a truly great man.

Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity and the Fuller Center for Housing, died Feb. 3 at the age of 74. It appears it was a heart attack, which was a surprise for a razor thin man of drive and energy. I didn’t see any news stories on his passing; perhaps you didn’t either.

I had sent Millard a letter about the new ministry we’re involved in called Flourish, an effort to energize Christian churches around the right priorities of creation care. He received my letter on January 27 and dictated a gracious response (remember when people routinely exchanged letters; how quaint). His secretary transcribed the letter and mailed it to me on February 5, with the notation: “dictated by Mr. Fuller and transcribed after his death.”

Our firm, Rooftop MediaWorks, worked with Millard and Linda Fuller soon after a late-in-life crisis, when Millard was forced out of his position as the leader of Habitat, the organization he and Linda had begun, by the board he had chosen. [When you spend much of your life in the public relations business, as I have, you often meet people at times of crisis.]

It was an ugly parting, and I first talked with Millard about it when I wrote a news piece for Christianity Today on the separation. My research left me troubled by the board’s rough treatment of Millard, so when I saw that he and Linda were continuing the ministry of providing low cost housing through a new organization, the Fuller Center for Housing, we offered to provide public relations services—which we did for the next several months, introducing the new group to the world.

When I learned yesterday of Millard’s passing in this odd and unexpected way, my first thought was that when he was pushed out of Habitat at the age of 70 he should have stepped back and enjoyed his accomplishments and bounced some grandkids on his knee. Maybe that would have prolonged his life. But instead he chose to continue serving people who suffered because of substandard housing. He believed in serving his God and his neighbors in this way, which he called the Theology of the Hammer.”

So Millard died, figuratively, with a hammer in his hand, and although his life could have been longer, I doubt that it could have been much richer.

People like Millard Fuller are great not because they are flawless or all-wise. Great people like Millard Fuller do great things by challenging themselves to do ever more, by motivating everyone in their path, and by trusting in a Greater God.

We owe Millard much and we do well to emulate him. At very least, in his honor we should pick up a hammer this year and help some folks who cannot help themselves.

As climate change skeptics yearn to make bad behavior by some scientists into ClimateGate, and climate change pessimists try to look the other way in the face of bad publicity, my friend and colleague (a Christian, economist, and scientist) Rusty Pritchard, the president of Flourish, provides a clearheaded and even humorous analysis of the stolen-yet-troublesome email scandal.

Pritchard writes:

As a Christian, it is easy to see that the whole arena needs to be more infused with grace. Climate scientists shouldn’t feel attacked for trying to build the best understanding they can of how the climate system operates. Those scientists who are skeptical about the mainstream science should be recognized for their important role in asking hard questions. Political operatives who pretend to be more certain than scientists about whether people are or aren’t contributing to climate change need to stop fomenting antagonism.

On the 30^th anniversary of its writing, Flourish magazine is publishing Wendell Berry’s The Gift of Good Land, a penetrating examination of the Christian stewardship of God’s creation.

It is a wonderful counterpoint to much of the silly politics and commentary leading up to the Copenhagen summit, and it is a profoundly spiritual challenge that provides deep questions about the faithful and responsible life, questions that serve the Christian far more than anything we will read in the papers and blogs in the days of Copenhagen. 

In The Gift of Good Land, Berry writes: 

The difficulty but also the wonder of the story of the Promised Land is that, there, the primordial and still continuing dark story of human rapaciousness begins to be accompanied by a vein of light which, however improbably and uncertainly, still accompanies us. This light originates in the idea of the land as a gift—not a free or a deserved gift, but a gift given upon certain rigorous conditions.

It is a gift because the people who are to possess it did not create it. It is accompanied by careful warnings and demonstrations of the folly of saying that “My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:17). Thus, deeply implicated in the very definition of this gift is a specific warning against hubris which is the great ecological sin, just as it is the great sin of politics. People are not gods. They must not act like gods or assume godly authority. If they do, terrible retributions are in store. In this warning we have the root of the idea of propriety, of proper human purposes and ends. We must not use the world as though we created it ourselves.

I’ve never been a Michael Vick fan and I think the Falcons are in a much better place without him, but I’m a believer in second chances, including a clean slate for lawbreakers who pay the price, complete their sentences, and demonstrate remorse. And if Dungy is counseling Vick, he’s in good hands. I wish Vick well in his return to work, except on the days he plays against Atlanta.

If you love baseball and you love God, or if you just love baseball or just love God, you have to read a great post at Mere Comments  by  Anthony Esolen on the historically amazing St. Louis first baseman, Albert Pujols.  A sampling:

I caught Albert saying that he did not want to be remembered as a baseball hero. . What he did want to be remembered as, I’ll tell you in a minute.  But first let me affirm that Albert Pujols is going to retire as either the greatest or the second greatest (to Lou Gehrig) first baseman ever to play the game.  If he retired tomorrow, he’d be in the top five or six, easy.  The man is not only a hitting machine.  He is intensely focused on whatever he can do to help his team win a game. 

It’s what moves his heart that interests me.  He said to the SI reporter, “I only want to be remembered as a man who loved the Lord.”  That is how he talks, when he talks.  And it occurs to me that even if you considered it only as a social phenomenon, the love of Christ — Christ’s love for us, and our love for Him — is the most remarkable thing in the history of the world. 

There’s much more.  Read it.  Trust me on this one.

Don’t believe what you hear about the decline of the evangelicals. 

There isn’t a more potent force in American life and society than active, believing evangelical Christians, marked by their vibrant faith, clear expression of their beliefs, biblically informed habits, and selfless and life-altering ministries.  Where can you find these believers?  They’re everywhere–in every town; nearly on every block.  Their numbers are increasing and their involvement in all aspects of national life and policy is growing and morphing and infiltrating like a viral storm.

Are evangelicals in decline, as posited by Rodney Clapp in Christian Century?  He writes:

[Evangelicalism is in] deep trouble because it faces a significant cultural and generational shift. Identifying itself with the wedge tactics of the political right, which is now falling (at least for a time) out of power, the movement cannot easily shake the image of being primarily negative and destructive. Indicators show that it is losing attractiveness not only among unconverted fellow Americans, but among its own young.

More significantly, evangelicalism is in deep trouble because the gospel really is good news, and reactionaries are animated by bad news, by that which they stand against. Undoubtedly Jesus Christ faced and even provoked conflict. But he embraced conflict as a path or means to the health and liberation—the salvation—of the world. And he hoped for salvation even, perhaps especially, for his enemies. If evangelicalism is innately reactionary, then it can follow Christ only by being born again.

Clapp pretends that the evangelical church is the same as the vocal evangelical politic whose public voice has been dominated by its most conservative leaders.  As a former senior writer at Christianity Today, he knows better; but the feigned confusion serves his purposes here.

The faithful and vibrant American Christian church that is evangelical in its beliefs, either as defined by Barna or by Gallup is very different from the evangelical politic.  While the two configurations align theologically and indeed in some key areas of public concern [Clapp calls them wedge issues], they are very different and the thriving church at worship, at life, and in service transcends and routinely ignores the residents in the White House and on Capitol Hill.

I have learned in 31 years consulting with Christian ministries and causes that while many activists wish that local evangelical churches and their members would be politically active, the vast majority of them are not.  Although they vote in high numbers, evangelical Christians are not particularly political and their churches rarely use facilities and services to advance any political positions. 

I know this is extremely difficult to believe for people whose understanding of evangelicals comes only from mainstream media, which portray evangelicals as heavily involved in partisan and issue politics.

There are evangelicals who are very active in politics. My wife, Debbie, and I have been quite active in partisan and cause-related political action.  But we are the exception, and friends and family often turn to us for readings on the political environment.  Our level of political involvement is extremely rare among our church friends and our strongly evangelical families.

The levers of institutional power and notably the microphones and gateways of communication of the evangelical politic have been controlled by politically oriented conservative evangelicals for some time (often to good effect, in my opinion, but certainly not always).  

The power of these leaders is waning as they age—many are in the 70s and 80s–and as the next two generations begin to be heard.  These new generations are open to many new areas of public concern, and yes they are generally more open to at least a new tone on issues such as gay rights.  I agree that if the NAE board was dominated by one generation removed from the present leadership, Rich Cizik would still be working the halls of power for the association. 

But to suggest that young evangelicals are politically and socially to the left of their forebears on most issues is wishful thinking by those who would benefit from that shift.  It’s much more complex than that, and on abortion, polls show that young evangelicals are more pro-life than their parents.  

While young evangelicals are more concerned about the environment than the previous generation, this is hardly a swing to the left.  As I have said previously, a green evangelical does not a liberal make. 

For a number of years the public relations firm I was with represented Jerry Falwell as public relations counsel.  We saw over and over how Falwell was featured and interviewed by mainstream media about topics on which he clearly was not the most qualified evangelical spokesman.  Jerry never met a microphone he didn’t love, and media loved to portray him as the face and voice of American evangelicals.

Of course he wasn’t, nor are many of the current common voices of the evangelical politic.  But they are presented as such, even as writers such as Clapp portray their declining influence as evangelical decline. 

In the recent national survey that found a decline in the number of people who call themselves Christian, the reach of evangelical belief spread.  One in three people in the country now consider themselves to be evangelical Christians.  But note the following from the study itself (I couldn’t find this in any media reports)–

[The study] “reveals the dimensions of a significant trend in “belief” among the 76 percent of contemporary Americans who identify as Christians. These respondents were specifically asked “Do you identify as a Born Again or Evangelical Christian?” No definition was offered of the terms, which are usually associated with a “personal relationship” with Jesus Christ together with a certain view of salvation, scripture, and missionary work. As the table shows, 45 percent of all American Christians now self-identify in this manner and they account for 34 percent of the total national adult population. What is significant is the recent spread of Evangelicalism well beyond Christians affiliated with those groups that are members of the National Evangelical Association so that millions of Mainliners and Catholics now identify with this trend.”

The CNN story on the study said:

The survey also found that “born-again” or “evangelical” Christianity is on the rise, while the percentage who belong to “mainline” congregations such as the Episcopal or Lutheran churches has fallen.  One in three Americans consider themselves evangelical, and the number of people associated with mega-churches has skyrocketed from less than 200,000 in 1990 to more than 8 million in the latest survey.

If there is national evangelical leadership, it has shifted to the megachurches, but it is largely pastoral, not political

Certainly, all is not well. There is work to do on the image of evangelical Christians, as explored by Gabe Lyons and Dave Kinnamen in UnChristian.  Their introduction: 

Christians are supposed to represent Christ to the world. But according to the latest report card, something has gone terribly wrong. Using descriptions like “hypocritical,” “insensitive,” and “judgmental,” young Americans share an impression of Christians that’s nothing short of . . . unChristian.

Groundbreaking research into the perceptions of sixteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds reveals that Christians have taken several giant steps backward in one of their most important assignments. The surprising details of the study, commissioned by Fermi Project and conducted by The Barna Group, are presented with uncompromising honesty in unChristian.

But those who follow Christianity closely know that the true heartbeat of evangelicalism isn’t behind microphones or plying the halls of Congress.  If you pay attention, you hear the heartbeat of evangelicalism:

• In the villages of Angola, where Christians involved with Living Waters International have provided clean water to thousands of people in recent years in a country where 56 percent of the people don’t have clear water.
• In an abandoned building that now serves as a school and clinic for rescued child soldier girls just north of Gulu, northern Africa, where young woman and their babies born in captivity are given the basic building blocks of new lives they never thought they’d see by a group of Christians operating under the name ChildVoice International.   
• In a series of gers—round teepee-like structures—in northern Mongolia, where Christians in a group called LifeQwest houses hundreds of orphans that they swept off the brutally frigid streets of Mongolian cities to literally save their lives and give a future vision to children of an ancient people.   
•  In the homes of staggering Atlanta neighborhoods, where Christians in the Charis Community Housing group help families purchase and care for homes in ways that will help them recover from the foreclosure crisis that has hit the inner cities far worse than the cushy suburbs.   
• In a large churchyard garden in Boise, Idaho, where a retired Christian farmer helps dozens of church volunteers grow fruits and vegetables, “producing and giving away over 20,000 lbs. of produce, feeding approximately 1281 families, representing around 4108 individuals.” 
• At an unimpressive building on New York Avenue in Washington, D.C., Christians at The Salvation Army’s Harbor Light Center take in down-and-out drug addicts and rather than just getting them off drugs, they get them into a new relationship with Jesus Christ—and the recidivism rates are dramatically better than run of the mill recovery centers.

The heart of American evangelicalism beats in places and ministries such as these, and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of other places in this country and around the world. 

We see faithfulness in small group meetings in the homes of millions of Americans that are opening their Bibles and searching together for the way God wants them to live their lives.  Yes, the heart beats in worship in churches blanketing the country—most small, 75-200 members, and in some very large.  People eschewing an extra hours sleep on Sunday morning to point to their Creator and give praise and to listen to a minister trying to help them in their walk with God. 

Don’t believe that evangelicalism is fading.  It’s changing to be more relevant to the problems of a new time, just as it has for millennia.  And its political power rises and falls and stagnates.  But bellicose commentators and lobbyists are not the church, and they never have been.  Prescient observers know that.  Many just won’t tell you.

Although the majority of evangelical Chrisians voted for John McCain in 2008, Christian leaders I’ve talked to said that it was the Obama campaign that did a far better job courting the evangelical community.  Obama seemed to better understand and relate to evangelicals, and indeed, far more voted for the Democratic ticket than in previous presidential elections. Now, writes evangelical ethicist David Gushee of Mercer Univeristy, Obama’s action on life issues has disappointed the evangelicals who supported him.

Gushee writes in USA Today:

What has occurred are a series of disappointingly typical Democratic abortion-related moves:

 First, the new president followed precedent by overturning the so-called Mexico City policy, which basically had withheld U.S. Agency for International Development funding from any organization that discusses, advocates or provides abortion as a method of family planning. Republicans withhold the money; Democrats provide it. Not great, but predictable. I stayed quiet on this one.

 Next, Obama revoked the “provider refusal” rule that President Bush promulgated by executive order very late in his presidency. The stated aim of this rule was to protect medical professionals from being forced as a condition of employment to provide health care services or information about services, such as abortion or contraception, that violated their consciences. Provider-conscience exceptions related to abortion are not new; the concern from the pro-choice side was that Bush’s version of that rule had become too broad. Concluding that the basic idea of conscience exceptions was probably safe, I stayed quiet again.

Then the president nominated Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to be head of the massive Department of Health and Human Services. The nomination of Sebelius, a Catholic whose bishop has condemned her stance on abortion, has gotten entangled in both national and Catholic abortion politics. Her opponents argue that she is a pro-choice extremist; her allies say she is a conscientious Catholic who has reduced abortion by 10% in Kansas. I signed on to a statement that was viewed as offering uncritical support for Sebelius. What I meant to say was that given the inevitability that Obama would choose a pro-choice HHS secretary, it seemed positive he would pick one with an abortion-reduction track record. I wish I had stayed out of this one, too.

 Finally, last week Obama signed his long-promised reversal of Bush policies on embryonic stem cell research. Again, this was not a surprise, either politically or, sadly, morally. A country that is willing to permit the destruction of a fetus at five months, when that destroyed fetus can provide no conceivable utilitarian benefit to society, is certainly going to permit the destruction of a leftover frozen embryo on the promise that it can contribute to medical breakthroughs someday.

He adds:

My understanding of the majestic God-given sacredness of human life tells me that a society that legally permits abortion on demand is deeply corrupt. It pays for adult sexual liberties with the lives of defenseless developing children. That practice, in turn, desensitizes society to the implications of paying for prospective medical cures with defenseless frozen embryos, which themselves are available because our society pays for medically assisted reproductive technology by producing hundreds of thousands of these embryos as spares. And yes, that same commitment to life’s sacredness has grounded my opposition to paying for national security with torture, or paying for today’s affluence with tomorrow’s environmental destruction.

Gushee is a thoughtful and principled evangelical centrist who is profoundly disappointed in a politician who appealed on the possiblilities of compromise producing some movement on life issues, but has not only failed to deliver on promises, but advanced policies that are totally contrary to the protection of life. 

Hope unfulfilled. 

My friend John Murdoch, a conservative writer who is also concerned about climate change,  has written a perceptive critique of his interchange with Al Gore at a Climate Project training.  As I have written, the development of a total life ethic, recognizing the threats to life of both abortion and environmental degradation, is elevating to our Christian witness and could effectively batttle both offenses. 

John confronted Gore about the disconnection of the these life issues.  He writes:

Face to face with Al Gore, the meaning of life was on my mind as well. I raised the credibility gap created by invoking the plight of future generations to advocate global warming legislation while elsewhere lauding Roe v. Wade which blocks protections for the unborn of today. 

Gore stated that abortion “is best dealt with in a way that leaves the principle responsibility to those most affected by it.” (The developing child was notably absent from his “most affected” list.) Stressing that disagreement “doesn’t keep [him] from seeking common ground,” Gore closed by expressing hope that many would be willing to “join together to address global warming, a common threat to born and unborn.” 

Gore’s batting one for two. The life issue extends beyond the womb, but it certainly extends to it as well.