This is coming out of Fuller. It is important to know that within the "evangelical" seminaries, there are those seminaries which lean left and right. There are red-state seminaries and blue-state seminaries. There are red-state and blue-state evangelical churchs. Something that comes out of a west coast seminary will mean very little to joe and jane church-goer in fly-over country. I'm a seminary prof's kid who who later entered the ministry. I can speak to the reality that some things that matter most in the seminary halls usually mean little or nothing to those of us who sit in the pews on Sunday. When it comes to ideologies and "the maturing of the evangelical mind", seminaries are greenhouses. Churches are gardens. "Groundbreaking frameworks for political action" are rare tropical orchids which only bloom in precisely controlled environments. Those who attend evangelical churches in fly-over country might be mildly interested in the rare tropical orchid, but their gardens are filled with daisies and petunias. They know what will take root and what won't. Carl Rove can relax a little.

In my dictionary, the term "evangelical" can be synonymous with protestant, but it can also be "marked by fundamentalism." So the term has a lot of elasticity.

I went to the NAE's website and found members which included baptist, episcopalian, methodist and presbyterian denominations, but not necessarily the one's with which I am familiar. No Southern Baptists. No United Methodists (Bush's church). These are two large denominations that are on the right and left of the political spectrum, which suggests that NAE might not be very representative.

After reading the first paragraph, I thought the post was going to be about Roy Moore. That's Karl's worst nightmare.

being familiar with Fuller, I live in Pasadena, and with a number of Southern Baptists, I used to live in the South, I am pretty confident that the impact in the short term will indeed be minimal. Fuller seminary is has a wide range of political leanings, while the southern evangelicals do not. As noted above, Fuller is on the "left" side of the evangelical spectrum and will have *very* little influence on the right, which comprises the majority of the republican support within evangelical circles.

> the framework says Christians in their devotion
> to country "must be careful to avoid the
> excesses of nationalism."

That boat sailed a long time ago.

Fascinating read, although I doubt any white paper will be able to offset the message being spread by Bush and his religious allies.

The religious right will get their red meat at the convention. The hard core social conservatives will be reminded about all the things getting them steamed, gay marriage, judicial appointments stymied, Clintons book. I doubt Rove is losing much sleep. What he should be worried about is losing the moderates over the war. Bush really needs to give a major policy speech at some point outlining his vision for the middle east (and the world). If the realists are truly in his ear and he take the Kerry 'stability line', I think he's in trouble. Kerry may get the nod if the goal is stability because he doesnt have Bush's baggage in Europe and the UN. Bush needs a Reaganesque vision of a democratic and free Iraq, as well as insisting on reform in other nations. Moderates understand the march of freedom and its a good distinction to draw with Kerry.

I wouldnt lose much sleep if I were Rove either. I think that political polarization has a lot to do with bias in information sources, and as long as the evangelicals are generally reading and watching right-wing sources, they'll get the smorgasboard of right-wing opinions drilled into their heads.
(which is not to say that the same thing doesn't happen on the left...)
It would take a evangelical leader of the stature of Falwell, preaching a very different line, in order for this to gain any penetration with the evangelical community IMO. Until then, we can expect the bright ones to read NRO and the dumb ones to watch FOX.

Wu

We saw in the Alabama tax referendum that appealing to evangelical conservatives’ sense of "social justice" is a loser, even when done by a fellow evangelic (such as the Alabama governor).

Yip yip yahoo. These people are as close to being "evangelical" as Barry Lynn is to being a real reverend.

"Bush really needs to give a major policy speech at some point outlining his vision for the middle east (and the world). If the realists are truly in his ear and he take the Kerry 'stability line', I think he's in trouble. Kerry may get the nod if the goal is stability because he doesnt have Bush's baggage in Europe and the UN. Bush needs a Reaganesque vision of a democratic and free Iraq, as well as insisting on reform in other nations. Moderates understand the march of freedom and its a good distinction to draw with Kerry."

Very good point. I completely agree. John Kerry makes me want to puke with his stability crap. This was also his attitude during the Cold War. Senator Kerry was a foe of President Reagan. I definitely expect more from President Bush---and I'm confident that this will be the case.

Seminaries generally tend left, because their identification with academia is often quite strong. This is true even of evangelical seminaries. They have almost no knowledge of business, economics, or science; their knowledge of history and the social sciences tends to be strongly dependent on the current academic fashions (I'm sorry, I mean "the results of modern research.")

I don't think Falwell is a big hitter anymore. There is a constellation of respected names, but each of them occasionally differs from the others on some point without denting the evangelical fabric much. And each has his own areas of interest, of course.