The church has a serious image problem. A recent book, unChristian, by Barna pollster David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons reveals much about how Millennials, the emerging generation - both those inside and around the church - view Christianity. The results weren't good. An overwhelming majority of young people view Christians as hypocritical, too judgmental, too focused on the afterlife, and too political in the worst sense of the word. And that image is often particularly true of evangelicals. That's a lot of baggage we're carrying around.

But other studies show that when you ask people what they think about Jesus, you get answers like: compassionate, loving, caring, hung out with sinners and poor people, for peace. We have a serious image problem. People think that we should stand for the same things as Jesus did. So it's time to change the image.

A substantial group of evangelical leaders are trying to do just that. This morning, a new statement, An Evangelical Manifesto: A Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment, was released in Washington, D.C. The statement has two purposes - to address the confusion about who evangelicals are and to clarify a view on evangelicals in public life.

On the first point, the manifesto says:

Our first task is to reaffirm who we are. Evangelicals are Christians who define themselves, their faith, and their lives according to the Good News of Jesus of Nazareth. (Evangelical comes from the Greek word for good news, or gospel.) Believing that the Gospel of Jesus is God's good news for the whole world, we affirm with the Apostle Paul that we are "not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation." Contrary to widespread misunderstanding today, we Evangelicals should be defined theologically, and not politically, socially, or culturally.

It then goes on to identify seven "beliefs that we consider to be at the heart of the message of Jesus and therefore foundational for us." They are primarily theological affirmations, including:

We believe that being disciples of Jesus means serving him as Lord in every sphere of our lives, secular as well as spiritual, public as well as private, in deeds as well as words, and in every moment of our days on earth, always reaching out as he did to those who are lost as well as to the poor, the sick, the hungry, the oppressed, the socially despised, and being faithful stewards of creation and our fellow creatures.

On the question of public life, the manifesto recognizes that the political categories of left and right simply don't fit religion, and it is a big mistake to try to fit religion into them. The people I meet across the country are yearning for a moral center to our public life and political discourse, with a fundamental emphasis on the common good. They want to understand better the moral choices and challenges that lie beneath our political debates. More and more people want to see a common-good politics replace the politics of individual gain and special interests.

The manifesto affirms that:

We must find a new understanding of our place in public life. We affirm that to be Evangelical and to carry the name of Christ is to seek to be faithful to the freedom, justice, peace, and well-being that are at the heart of the kingdom of God, to bring these gifts into public life as a service to all, and to work with all who share these ideals and care for the common good. Citizens of the City of God, we are resident aliens in the Earthly City. Called by Jesus to be "in" the world but "not of" the world, we are fully engaged in public affairs, but never completely equated with any party, partisan ideology, economic system, class, tribe, or national identity.

I very much affirm the views expressed in the manifesto and was happy to accept an invitation to be one of the charter signatories. Click here to read the statement, a helpful study guide, and to see who the charter signatories are.

My dear friend, Ken Wilson, who pastors the Ann Arbor Vineyard, showed me a chart that I found very helpful:

What has happened in the last generation is that there has been border-blending among the four great movements in the church. So we find many evangelicals who feel very comfortable praying for the sick and casting out demons; and there are many evangelicals who engage in liturgical practices such as using the Anglican Book of Common Prayer in their devotional lives, etc.

But while there has been a huge move of border-blending, there are still many corner-dwellers, people who believe that it is entirely wrong for someone in their camp to engage in practices associated with one of the other three camps. Corner-dwellers get really mean and mad when we step out of our traditional boxes.

So, for example, some conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists get mean and mad when we claim to be evangelical, but we engage in border-blending with one of the other wings of the church. Like the Pharisees of Jesus'’ day, some angry corner-dwellers may set themselves up as the judge of what is biblical - like the Pharisees, they get really mad when we associate with “the wrong sort of people,” and, like the Pharisees, they are constantly looking for reasons to accuse border-blenders for our supposed theological errors.

I look forward to a day when an evangelical church that does a Justice Revival not only doesn’t create any controversy, but hardly raises an eyebrow. I look forward to a day when Christians who hear about a Justice Revival say: “So, what else is new? Of course, evangelical churches are involved in social justice. That is what Christian churches are supposed to do. We are supposed to follow Jesus, who is both the God of justification and the God of justice!”

Rich Nathan is the pastor of the Vineyard Church in Columbus, Ohio, which is the co-sponsor with Sojourners of next week's Justice Revival. Click here for more details.

In church one day, my pastor asked us to raise our hands if we believed in what the Bible said. The right answer seemed pretty obvious, and the whole congregation and I raised our hands. Then he asked us to raise our hand if we had read the Bible in its entirety. Touché, Pastor Sean. Touché.

In his latest book, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, A.J. Jacobs lives as a biblical fundamentalist so you don't have to. Jacobs describes himself as "Jewish in the way the Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant" and seeks advice from rabbis, pastors, church members, historians, and textbooks on his quest to live the "ultimate Biblical life." The book chronicles his attempt to conform to the myriad rules found in the Bible (Don't wear mixed fibers! Be fruitful and multiply! Stone adulterers! Forgive!), and the results are often pretty funny. Yes, Jacobs sets out to lampoon Biblical fundamentalists, but by the end of his experiment he finds himself changed - he reveres life more, he is a better father, and he has more respect for people of faith. I picked up this book for laughs, but was surprised when I ended up quite touched by it. A.J. Jacobs writes with the tone of a friend, and when I finished the book I felt I had found a fellow believer (he now calls himself a "reverent agnostic") walking by my side.

By day 264, you warm up to Christian literalists as embodied by Dr. Tony Campolo and the Red Letter Christians. How did your year-long experiment affect your perception of Christian "fundamentalists", especially in contrast to how they are portrayed in mainstream media?

It changed it drastically. Like many Americans, I used to have an embarrassingly simplistic view of evangelical Christianity. I thought it was this monolithic movement where everyone walked in lock step with Pat Robertson. I figured almost all evangelical Christians were focused on the issues of homosexuality and abortion. I hadn't heard of the Red Letter Christians and their focus on poverty and the environment. I missed the complexity of evangelical Christianity, as does much of the media. It's sort of the equivalent of saying, 'Oh, James Taylor and Kid Rock are both rock musicians, so they're pretty much the same.'

You call your book a "(gentle) attack" on fundamentalism, as you set out to show how absurd and impossible it is to live a literally Biblical lifestyle without dropping out of general society. Is there anything that especially surprised or delighted you about following the rules? How about anything that really scared you?

So much surprised and delighted me. I fell in love with the Sabbath. I enjoyed the ban on gossiping (not that I was totally successful; I live in New York and I work in the media, so gossip is about as omnipresent as air). And here's an odd one: I liked following the second commandment literally: No making images. I took this to the limit. No turning on the TV, no watching DVDs, no photos, no doodles. And it turned out to be really helpful. I think our culture is too much in love with images. Everything is image-driven, and we're forgetting how to read. And there's something sacred about reading.

What scared me? I guess how easy it is to become self-righteous. I had to fight it every day.

On day 14, you crib a line from "Chariots of Fire" about feeling God's pleasure as you tithe to charities. Have you managed to maintain any of the Biblical practices from your experiment so that you can continue feeling "the warm ember that starts at the back of [your] neck?"

I do still try to do good works. I don't do as much as I should. And I don't tithe as strictly as I should - I'm down from 10 percent to maybe seven or eight percent. But I try. Because my Bible year taught me something that I wish I had known for the first 38 years of my life.

If you want to be happy, you should pursue OTHER people's happiness. You should do good things for others. It's a paradox, but it works. Being unselfish leads to selfish fulfillment.

Who would OT God vote for? Who would NT Jesus endorse?

Wasn't it a wise man named Jim Wallis who said that God was not a Republican or Democrat?

I do remember that part of the Old Testament where God is choosing whom to anoint as the next king of Israel. And a man named Jesse parades all his sons before the prophet Samuel. And Samuel sees the tallest son, Eliab and figured he will be the new leader.

"But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."

Which is good news for Dennis Kucinich. Too bad he dropped out.

But it does remind us: Look beyond the superficial.

You've given a lot of interviews for this book, most of which are on the web somewhere. Tell me something about you that I can't google.

I'll tell you all the answers to my four-year-old son's favorite questions. My favorite color is green. My favorite animal is a zebra. My favorite candy is caramel. And my favorite Dora character is probably Boots the Monkey. You won't find that on the Internet!

Anna Almendrala is the marketing and circulation assistant for Sojourners. For more information on the book, click here.

Let me give you an illustration of the difference between the narrow focus of contemporary American evangelicalism and the big focus of the Bible.

D.L. Moody, the great 19th-century evangelist, described his calling and said that he essentially understood the world as being like an ocean liner that hit an iceberg. God had said to him, "Moody, it is your job to pull as many drowning people out of the water into lifeboats as you can."

Now, that may have been Moody's calling. I don't fault him at all for his understanding of his particular calling. But his "lifeboat theology," which claims that really the only thing that matters is evangelism -- pulling as many folks into lifeboats as you can -- has been both a blessing and a great curse for contemporary evangelicalism. On the one hand, it has created an evangelistic urgency. And it is evangelical churches that are growing because of this passion. On the other hand, by narrowing the focus simply upon getting people to say the Sinner's Prayer, we have had almost nothing to say about whole slices of life.

Let me suggest an alterative theology: "Ark Theology." Noah's Ark not only saved people, it preserved God's other creatures as well. The covenant that God made with Noah and his descendents was not only with humanity, but we read in Genesis 9:10 these words:

and with every living creature that was with you -- the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you -- every living creature on earth.

The rainbow was not just a sign between God and people, but we read in Genesis 9:12, 15 and 17 these words:

And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come. (v. 12)

I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. (v. 15)

So God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth." (v. 17)

The Ark Theology -- that God intends to restore all of creation, every realm, every creature, every part. Or as Abraham Kuypur, the great Dutch theologian and politician said nearly 100 years ago, "There is not a square inch of the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ who is sovereign over all, does not cry: 'Mine!'"

Lifeboat Theology: Jesus wants to be Lord of your life.

Ark Theology: Jesus is Lord over the universe.

Rich Nathan is the pastor of the Vineyard Church in Columbus, Ohio, which is the co-sponsor with Sojourners of next week's Justice Revival. Click here for more details.

Social justice is not a distraction from our commitment; it is part and parcel of the gospel of the kingdom. We read in Mark 1:15:

"The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!"

What is the message of the kingdom? Certainly the center of the message is the proclamation that through one's faith in Jesus Christ (the King), a person can be eternally saved. Thus my church regularly calls people to put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ in order to be born again and enter God's kingdom.

But that is not the circumference or totality of the message of the kingdom. The ultimate goal of the kingdom goes beyond the salvation of us as individuals (wonderful as that is) and involves the restoration and renovation of the entire universe. The message of the kingdom is a fulfillment of the prophet Isaiah's vision in Isaiah 65:17, 20-25:

"See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. ...

"Never again will there be infants who live but a few days, or older people who do not live out their years; those who die at a hundred will be thought mere youths; those who fail to reach a hundred will be considered accursed. They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit. No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the work of their hands. They will not labor in vain, nor will they bear children doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed by the Lord, they and their descendants with them. Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear. The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpent's food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain," says the Lord.

This message was echoed by all the prophets. So the prophet Micah says this in 4:1-4:

In the last days the mountain of the Lord's temple will be established as chief among the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and peoples will stream to it. Many nations will come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths." The law will go out from Zion, the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He will judge between many peoples and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid, for the Lord Almighty has spoken.

The apostle Paul speaks about the cosmic sweep of this message of the kingdom. He tells us that not only we, but the entire creation, will be freed from the curse of the fall (Romans 8:19-21). In Ephesians, the apostle Paul again enlarges the scope of the message beyond our individual salvation when he says in Ephesians 1:9-10:

[H]e made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment; to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ.

This enormous plan, involving the renovation and restoration of the entire universe, is what we pray for when we pray the Lord's Prayer, "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

So when we Christians feed the hungry in the name of Jesus, or heal a sick person in the power of Christ, or work for peace in this war-torn world, or help reconcile a marriage, or extend help to immigrants, or work for the responsible care of the environment, these actions are not a distraction from our commission to preach the gospel of the kingdom. Rather, we are living out our calling as kingdom people to partner with God in bringing about the healing of the entire universe.

Rich Nathan is the pastor of the Vineyard Church in Columbus, Ohio, which is the co-sponsor with Sojourners of next week's Justice Revival. Click here for more details.

On CNN’s The Situation Room, Jim Wallis and the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins talk about evangelical attitudes in the election. Watch it:

During the closing days of January, more than 15,000 Baptists from 30 different Baptist denominations gathered together at the Convention Center in Atlanta. Although all Baptist groups were invited to join in what was called The New Baptist Covenant, official representatives from the largest Baptist group in the U.S., the Southern Baptist Convention, were conspicuously absent. Although they were invited, the SBC officials chose not to attend. There were good reasons for that.

First, the plenary speakers at this gathering were not speakers who would have been welcomed at the annual meetings of the SBC. They included Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and John Grisham - all of whom would likely be treated as persona non grata by Southern Baptist leaders.

Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, the unspoken agenda of the New Baptist Covenant was to provide a Baptist alternative to the politics and practices of the Southern Baptist Convention. Those Baptists who did attend, representing denominations with a combined membership of more than 20 million other Baptists, were viewed by the leaders of the SBC as a kind of "in your face" demonstration that they were tired of being painted by the general public with the same broad brush that has wrongly allied them with many positions taken by the SBC.

Most of those in this New Baptist Covenant, unlike their SBC brothers and sisters, have no problem with women in the pastoral ministry, and are not necessarily fans of the Bush administration. Strong anti-war sentiment was easily discernable among those in attendance. Representing what they considered a moderate stance on such issues - in contrast with the overtly Religious Right commitment of the SBC - they went on to reaffirm historic Baptist principles. These included a belief that the local church should decide on what should be its practices (in contrast to the SBC practice that Baptist state conventions can lay down beliefs and practices that determine whether or not a given church is acceptable for membership in their respective fellowships); and the principle of "sole conscience," which abhors doctrinal conformity (in contrast to the SBC requiring the signing on to creedal statements by any who would be its missionaries or serve in its denominational seminaries or offices).

In seeking unity among the many Baptist participants, those who planned this get-together selected Concern for the Poor as their theme for the conference. Recognizing that there are more than 2000 verses in Scripture that call upon the people of God to care for the poor, the organizers of the New Baptist Covenant decided that there would be no argument among those attending this gathering, given this focus of attention.

It seemed to work! There was a sense of joyful oneness pervading each and every session. In this respect, the New Baptist Covenant was in harmony with the defining mission of Sojourners. This movement lent support to the work of Jim Wallis, who has zeroed in on eliminating poverty as the primary concern of Sojourners.

The negatives of this meeting of Baptists included the absence of significant representatives from African-American denominations, even though the gathering was planned to follow the meetings of two of America's largest African-American denominations, and was held in the very same convention hall. It was reported that many of the members of these two large groups of Baptists were unable to finance staying in Atlanta for an extra three days, which attending the meeting of the New Baptist Covenant required.

Another shortcoming of this gathering was that there was no clear-cut vision of what the next steps should be. There were important questions that were not answered. Is the New Baptist Covenant supposed to function as some kind of new informally-organized denomination? Is the call to care for the poor, so eloquently prescribed in the speeches, going to be translated into some specific programs? Will there be a team of leaders to give direction and some kind of organization to this New Baptist Covenant? It should be noted that the executives of the represented Baptist groups have an upcoming meeting planned, at which time these and other questions probably will be answered.

Whatever might have been the shortcomings and critiques of what transpired in Atlanta, however, there emerged clear evidence that this New Baptist Covenant could be the beginning of something very significant for Baptists. It could represent a movement that could transcend the partisan politics, too often evident among Southern Baptists, and could be a major step in moving Baptists into being a visible and viable partner with other mainstream denominations.

Tony Campolo is founder of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education (EAPE) and professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University.

Jim Wallis talks with Tony Perkins (Family Research Council), Harry Jackson (High Impact Leadership), and Sammy Rodriguez (National Hispanic Leadership Conference) about the broadening evangelical agenda. Watch it:

As the nation's second largest denomination (after the Roman Catholic Church), Southern Baptists have been given much, so their potential to do good is considerable - as is the danger of missing opportunities to do good. Sadly, until now, constituents and leaders of the 16-million-member Convention have tended to lag behind other large Christian communities when it comes to addressing the issue of environmental stewardship in general and climate change in particular. But that may be changing.

In 2007, the Convention took the positive step of passing a statement affirming the need for Baptists to care for creation, but a new group of Southern Baptists - including many notable Baptist leaders - have said the statement was too timid: it could be interpreted by "the world," they said, as "uncaring, reckless and ill-informed." Through the new declaration, "A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change," these leaders are calling Baptists to keep moving forward in care and healing for God's precious planet. Jonathan Merritt, a young leader who helped inspire the new declaration, expressed his motivation in language that resonates deeply with Southern Baptists: to trash this beautiful planet - which is God's handiwork and declares God's glory - is like tearing out pages from the Bible.

True, many SBC notables have not yet signed the new statement. But current Convention president Frank Page did, along with 43 other exemplary SBC leaders including Ed Stetzer, Larissa Arnault, David Clark, Timothy George, John Hammett, Darrin Patrick, Jonathan Merritt, and two previous Convention presidents, Jack Graham and James Merritt. Their website (www.baptistcreationcare.org) has room for additional signatories, so we may see the center of gravity shift further toward environmental responsibility in the coming days and weeks.

This step is important for a number of reasons. First, and most obviously, when a group as large and influential as the SBC accepts increasing moral responsibility for better care of the planet, the birds of the air and flowers of the field will benefit, as will all our children and grandchildren. Not only that, but by taking more seriously what I call the prosperity crisis (that our kind of prosperity is unsustainable in relation to the planet, thus reducing the prosperity of future generations), the SBC helps shift the larger evangelical community toward greater environmental responsibility. This shift has been gaining momentum in recent years in large part due to the good work of Jim Ball and the Evangelical Environmental Network (LINK).

Building on this momentum, evangelical Christians, with obvious influence in the Republican party and growing participation in the Democratic party, can increasingly join other Christian communities in being strong advocates for better environmental policy in the U.S. at large, whoever is our next president and whichever party controls the next Congress. By further shifting public opinion in the nation that consumes disproportionate amounts of resources and produces disproportionate amounts of greenhouse gases, members of the SBC can play a greater role in helping our nation move from being a global laggard to a global leader in this important moment of danger and opportunity.

I frequently hear from young Southern Baptists who express deep frustration with the ethos and image projected by some of their leaders in recent years: they want their denomination to rise above the old polarities of left and right, choosing transcendent Biblical values over ideological and partisan alignments. The current and future signatories of this statement will give young Southern Baptists something to be proud of - and that's no small thing.

Brian McLaren (brianmclaren.net) is board chair for Sojourners. He writes and speaks about the intersection of faith and global crises.

Watch it:

On this Super Tuesday, there will no doubt be a lot of discussion (again) about the role of religion – and especially evangelical religion - in the election cycle. I wish more of them had the intelligence of a recent piece by NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof.

Speaking of evangelicals, Kristoff said:

Liberals believe deeply in tolerance and over the last century have led the battles against prejudices of all kinds, but we have a blind spot about Christian evangelicals. They constitute one of the few minorities that, on the American coasts or university campuses, it remains fashionable to mock. ... Bleeding-heart liberals could accomplish far more if they reached out to build common cause with bleeding-heart conservatives.

Kristof quotes The Great Awakening, where Jim Wallis says, "Evangelicals are going to vote this year in part on climate change, on Darfur, on poverty." Kristof then adds that, according to a CBS News poll, this year white evangelicals consider the fight against poverty to be the top moral issue, displacing abortion to a distant second.

I could see this shift in action a few weeks ago in Davos at the World Economic Forum. I got to see Rick Warren in action, motivating business and political leaders to put poverty, disease, and peace-making higher on their agenda. Kristof tells a story about Warren, who for many years didn't pay much attention to these issues of social justice and compassion. Then, during a 2003 visit to Africa, Rick came into a ramshackle tent where a little church was caring for 25 AIDS orphans.

Rick said, "I realized they were doing more for the poor than my entire megachurch. ... It was like a knife in the heart." Kristof recounts how Rick turned this heartbreak into action: mobilizing his church to constructive action in 68 countries, recruiting 7,500 members to pay their own way to serve poor people around the world – experiencing a transformation in their own values and priorities in the process.

Kristoff quotes CARE's Helene Gayle about evangelicals' work against global poverty: they "have made some incredible contributions … We don't give them credit for the changes they've made." Similarly, Environmental Defense president Fred Krupp said, "Many evangelical leaders have been key to taking the climate issue across the cultural divide."

Kristof concludes, "In parts of Africa where bandits and warlords shoot or rape anything that moves, you often find that the only groups still operating are Doctors Without Borders and religious aid workers: crazy doctors and crazy Christians."

As an evangelical, I occasionally watch late-night religious broadcasting and the word "crazy" comes to mind in a different way. But thankfully, Kristoff is right: there's a new kind of craziness spreading among evangelicals. It's the belief that the impossible can happen – that yes, we can stop global warming, yes, we can redirect the economy to benefit the poor majority, and yes, we can build bridges of peace instead of razor-wire-topped walls of distrust.

It will be interesting to see how that craziness manifests itself in today's elections.

Brian McLaren (brianmclaren.net) is board chair for Sojourners. Click here to see some of his video blogs, and learn about his Everything Must Change tour at deepshift.org.

On Wednesday, Sojourners and Beliefnet, in collaboration with the National Association of Evangelicals Christian Student Leadership Conference, hosted a panel discussion on "Choosing a president: What do evangelicals really want?" I joined Steve Waldman and David Kuo of Beliefnet, Rich Cizik of the NAE, Bishop Harry Jackson of Hope Christian Church and the High Impact Leadership Coalition, Lynne Hybels of the Willow Creek Community Church, Rev. Joel Hunter of Northland Church and former president of the Christian Coalition, Rev. Sam Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Leadership Conference, and Rev. Cheryl Sanders of the Third Street Church of God and Howard University School of Divinity in a 90-minute conversation.

I was honored to be part of the group, and found the discussion informative and inspiring. I encourage you to listen to the entire conversation, but here are my favorite quotes from each of the panelists:

Rich Cizik: "An historic shift is occurring, it's equivalent to an earthquake in slow motion, but people aren't sensing it, the national media hasn't picked up on it … We are no longer single issue voters, and we're not going to blindly follow prominent leaders in the Religious Right, or otherwise, who are telling us what we have to believe."

Harry Jackson: "It's impossible, though, to be a conscience to the entire nation and be partisan as well. So, at some point we've lost our ability to be an impartial conscience to the entire nation."

Lynne Hybels: "It took a very unlikely prophet named Bono to shake me up. It really was a challenge from him that sent me to Africa and really turned my life upside down. It's a shame that it took an Irish rock star to call the church to task on this, but I'm really glad he did. … [In] many of the great global issues like poverty, AIDS, and refugees, women are disproportionately impacted by all these great social global tragedies, and I would like to see women become disproportionately engaged on the solution side. Personally, that is my call to evangelical women – to pay attention to what's going on in the world and get involved."

Joel Hunter: "There is now a maturing of the movement. Any movement starts out with a negative, you're against something. It's kind of like the middle-school years. You define yourself by what you hate, what you're not. And as you grow up, you have to start defining yourself by who you are and what you want to build. That's where we are right now."

Sam Rodriguez: "The major difference between Latino evangelicals and white evangelicals is that many white evangelicals take their marching orders from Bishop Rush Limbaugh, Prophet Sean Hannity, and Apostle Lou Dobbs; and Latino evangelicals still listen to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John."

Cheryl Sanders: "Martin Luther King made this point in his writing and his speeches – he was a Christian, he was a gospel-preaching Christian – and he brought that evangelical message – the social gospel, if we want to call it that – to bear on civil rights, his center of concern, but it included economic justice, health care, and so many of the other things we're concerned about today. … In the history of African Americans and the church, there hasn't really been a time when it was detached from the social and political message."

I am now beginning a 20-city tour to talk about my new book, The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in A Post-Religious Right America. The conversation at every stop will be about how real and deep change could happen in this country and around the world—and is already beginning to. And that change begins with our own lives, our congregations and communities, and the kind of social movements that finally move politics. I invite you to come to one of our events, here is detailed city-by-city information on the tour. I'm looking forward to meeting people all around the country to talk about the "revival" that is already occurring and could bring the change and the hope that so many people are clearly longing for in this critical election year and beyond.

I commend Pastor Nathan for the courage and commitment to truth required to publicly reconsider what has strangely become status quo in parts of the U.S. evangelical world - an almost "biblical immunity" and unconditional support granted to the modern nation state of Israel. I especially appreciated the way he offered a lens for even the most serious adherents of scriptural authority to theologically unravel Christian Zionism.

As he showed, the way forward depends neither on tossing certain passages aside, nor on citing them individually, but on viewing them in light of the overarching meta-narrative of the Bible and the general direction of God's redeeming history.

Although there is more that I said amen to than questioned in this sermon, I'll offer (humbly) some things he may want to consider as he continues, or expands this dialogue:

1. The role of the U.S. and Great Britain in helping establish the fledgling Zionist state. Many Americans just don't realize where Arab anti-American sentiment stems from because they're unaware of how their own country has operated (and continues to operate) in foreign affairs.

2. That Middle Eastern Christians, or "Arab" Christians, are not monolithic in their opinions on the creation of modern state of Israel. There are a great deal (probably most, actually) who did NOT support the initial establishment of an Israeli nation state, however limited in its borders, and even if they now support its security. This is often confused as anti-Semitism though it has more to do with the above point (about the assistance of Israel by western powers) and that Christian Arabs have lived side-by-side with their Muslim and Jewish brothers and sisters for millennia without national separation. Many may also not view biblical justice as necessitating land ownership via a newly created nation-state.

3. That biblical justice is also linked to the idea of restitution, in the sense that he who commits the crime is the one expected to pay for it. The part in the sermon about biblical justice can also acknowledge that the horrendous mistreatment and annihilation of the Jews was not done by the Arabs of the East but by the Europeans of the West. Again, this doesn't necessarily mean that their homeland does not belong in the East, but there may be a rub (for Arabs) in implying that biblical justice would demand Easterners to pay (in land and lives) for the sins of Westerners. Of course, no ethnic group is ever totally innocent, but the presumptuousness of Western nations in applying solutions is a part of the problem for Arabs of all religious faiths.

4. Finally, under the last heading "What Christians should do" – I would add that one of the main things is for American Christians to get connected with the Palestinian church. One of the most powerful paradigm shifters is the realization for many U.S. Christians that Arab Christians (if they recognize their existence at all) are not a small fringe group who have been persecuted by Muslims. In the case of Palestinian Christians, there are (or were) hundreds of thousands. Christians blindly supporting U.S. foreign policy can take credit for shooting themselves in the virtual foot of Christ. For example, wouldn't it surprise most congregations to know that until recent years, in areas such as Bethlehem, Christians were the majority?

Deanna Murshed is director of integrated marketing for Sojourners

During the South Carolina Republican debate, Mike Huckabee garnered greatest applause when defending his views of wifely submission as part of his evangelical faith. The questioner quizzed Huckabee about being one of 131 signers of a 1998 USA Today ad by the Southern Baptist Convention that asserted, "a wife is to graciously submit herself to the servant leadership of her husband." Huckabee responded by saying "I am not the least bit ashamed of my faith." He joked that his own wife was not submissive and appeared to temper his original statement by affirming the idea of mutual submission in marriage (a view, by the way, specifically rejected by the Southern Baptist Convention).

Some evangelicals might find this acceptable, but many more do not—not to mention the American public as a whole. Over the last decade, the Pew Research Center has tracked a steady decrease of the impact of conservative religion on views of gender. In 1997, 28 percent of Americans strongly disagreed with the idea that women should return to "traditional roles." In 2007, 42 percent strongly disagreed with the same statement. One wonders how many Protestant Christians—evangelical and otherwise—are included in that 42 percent.

If the media thinks that Huckabee's views represent evangelical Christianity, they are wrong. Wifely submission is only one interpretation of scripture and not without significant criticism by biblical scholars and theologians. American evangelicalism has a long and conflicted record about its views of women, with egalitarianism as the alternative to submission. This week's other major news story—Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire primary victory—provides an instructive historical lesson about that evangelical alternative.

Hillary Clinton is not, of course, an "evangelical" using the current definition. She is a mainline United Methodist. However, she graduated Wellesley College. Although few would think of contemporary Wellesley as in any way evangelical, the school's 19th century heritage was that of evangelical feminism.

Henry and Pauline Durant founded Wellesley in 1871 (first classes held in 1875) as a distinctly evangelical institution. Henry, a wealthy lawyer, had become a lay-evangelist with a vision for a women's college that "will be Christian in its influence, discipline, and course of instruction." At the groundbreaking of Wellesley's first building, Mrs. Durant gave every workman a Bible as a gift before she placed another Bible in the cornerstone. The cornerstone prayer reads:

This building is humbly dedicated to our Heavenly Father with the hope and prayer that He may always be first in everything ... that His word may be faithfully taught here; and that He will use it as a means of leading precious souls to the Lord Jesus Christ.

All of Wellesley's early professors were required to teach the Bible along with their regular subjects; all trustees were obligated to be active members of evangelical churches. Revivalist Dwight L. Moody served as a trustee and ardently supported the school and his friends, the Durants, in their endeavor.

The Durants not only preached the gospel—they were equally committed to the "cause of God's poor." They believed that universal childhood education was the key to alleviating poverty and that medical care needed to be widely available to the indigent. The Wellesley evangelicals believed that women were as capable as men in every field, with one exception: religious matters. When it came to religion, they believed that women were superior to men. In 1880, Noah Porter, Yale College president, addressed Wellesley women praising that superiority while warning them that such giftedness exposed them to "unreasoning fanaticism and tenacious bigotry."

Wellesley women took this all quite seriously. Submitting to no one, these young evangelical women became scholars, professors, theologians, pastors, missionaries, teachers, doctors, and lawyers across the globe. Although the Wellesley of Hillary Rodham Clinton's day had become secularized, the feminist legacy of 19th century evangelicalism continued to influence its priorities—full equality for women, quality childhood education for all, universal access to health care, and a passion for the poor.

Diana Butler Bass (www.dianabutlerbass.com) holds a Ph.D. in American Religious History from Duke University. She is the author of six books, including Christianity for the Rest of Us (Harper One 2006).

The upcoming primary in South Carolina will be critical for both the Democrats and the Republicans, say the media pundits. And South Carolina is full of evangelicals, they also say. But they have absolutely no clue about what that means.

For example, the exit polls in the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary have asked departing Republican voters if they are "evangelicals," but they don't ask the same question of exiting Democrats—therefore assuming there aren't any evangelicals voting for Democrats, an assumption that is demonstrably not true. The leading Democrats in the race—Obama, Clinton, and Edwards—speak explicitly and articulately as Christians and their campaigns have reached out as much to faith communities as the Republicans have.

The media experts on religion then go on to explain to us that evangelicals care mostly or only about abortion and gay marriage, and not about other issues. That is even more mistaken. The issues that most concern evangelicals today, especially a younger generation, include poverty, the environment and climate change, human rights, and the morality of a foreign policy where war is the first resort. This year those issues are drawing a growing number of evangelicals to consider the Democratic candidates.

Along with a number of other evangelical leaders, I just signed a letter to the media outlets in the National Election Poll, which says:

By omitting the question of evangelical/born-again identification from the Democratic polls, you prevented the public from seeing the full picture of how the bipartisan courtship of evangelical voters affected the outcome of the first contest of the 2008 campaign and perpetuated the misperception that all evangelical Christians are Republicans. No party can own any faith. Evangelicals have broadened their agenda to include care for the planet, the poor and the stranger, and as a result are increasingly diverse politically.

One of the leading Republicans, of course, is Mike Huckabee, who is also an outspoken evangelical. Huckabee recently spoke to Reuters about the broadening evangelical agenda:

Unquestionably there is a maturing that is going on within the evangelical movement. It doesn't mean that evangelicals are any less concerned about traditional families and the sanctity of life. It just means that they also realize that we have real responsibility in areas like disease and hunger and poverty and that these are issues that people of faith have to address.

Yet the media, which is paying such close attention to Huckabee, doesn't seem to pay any attention to that. You might conclude that the media still just doesn't understand much about religion and the enormous changes taking place among evangelicals in particular. So far, the media analysts and prognosticators about South Carolina are about as accurate and credible as their insightful and confident predictions about the expected results from the New Hampshire primary. Will the media celebrities ever really listen to the American people or just tell us how we are going to vote? Religion could, indeed, play a major role in the outcome of the South Carolina primary, on both sides of the aisle. But our non-stop talking heads in the media parallel universe and the professional polling truth inventors haven't got a clue about how.

The Nov. 27 Annapolis meeting on Israel/Palestine has launched us into a momentous one-year process to seek a permanent peace agreement between Israel and its neighbors. What is at stake is whether after more than 50 years of ghastly conflict and widespread bloodshed, genuine peace can come to one of the most dangerous areas and most divisive problems in our world.

Important steps were taken at Annapolis. The leaders of Israel and Palestine publicly pledged to negotiate a permanent peace before President Bush leaves office. They have promised to meet personally every two weeks. And the U.S., especially Condoleezza Rice, is committed to working vigorously to use America's enormous influence to facilitate the process.

Not everyone is pleased. Christians United for Israel totally oppose any plan in which Israel gives up any land to a Palestinian State (an essential component of a final peace). CUFI has already publicly protested the Annapolis meeting and will certainly organize a segment of the evangelical world to oppose a two-state solution.

Fortunately, CUFI represents only a minority of American evangelicals. I am sure that a majority of evangelical leaders agree with the new "An Evangelical Statement on Israel/Palestine," released on Nov. 28, signed by more than 80 evangelical leaders who endorse a two-state solution and call on evangelical Christians to encourage, pray for, and support all the leaders working to reach this historic goal (go to ESA's website to read the statement and add your signature).

CUFI is already bombarding the White House with letters opposing this peace effort. We must mobilize those evangelicals (a majority of the evangelical world, I am sure) that do support a two-state solution to make its voice known now.

On Friday, Nov. 30, I was on Bill Moyers' Journal (Public Affairs Television) to talk about what evangelicals think about a two-state solution.

Clearly some initial important steps have been taken. But genuine programs will only happen if the U.S. vigorously pushes both Israelis and Palestinians. I believe Condoleezza Rice wants to do that.

Now is the time to tell the president you want him to redouble his efforts to promote a permanent peace between Israel and Palestine. Sign the new statement, write the White House, and tell your congressional representatives to push hard for peace in the Holy Land.

Ron Sider is president of Evangelicals for Social Action, a professor and director of the Sider Center on Ministry and Public Policy at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and a member of the Red Letter Christians.

In what may be the defining moment of his campaign, Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and a Mormon, addressed the issue of faith and its bearing on his pursuit of the presidency. Pundits inevitably compared Romney's speech in College Station, Texas, with the speech that John F. Kennedy gave just down the road at the Rice Hotel, Houston, on September 12, 1960.

The parallels are unmistakable. Both men felt compelled to address what was openly discussed as the "religious issue" in 1960. Both men were reared in a tradition different from Protestantism, which claims the allegiance of at least a plurality (if not a majority) of Americans.

But the parallels end there. Unlike Mormonism, Roman Catholicism was well known to most Americans in 1960, although many Protestants had a jaundiced view of the Roman Catholic Church. Many Americans, by contrast, know little about Mormonism, officially named the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Many Americans see Mormons as strange and secretive; their temples, for instance, are closed to "gentiles" (non-Mormons). The Mormon notion of God as both male and female, baptism for the dead, and even the practice of wearing Mormon underwear (thought by many to have protective powers) strike many as unorthodox, if not downright bizarre.

For evangelicals, some tenets of Mormonism are particularly troubling. Mormons accept the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and the New Testament as divinely inspired, but they believe that the Book of Mormon, discovered by Joseph Smith in Palmyra, New York, in 1827, is similarly inspired. And Mormons believe that the president of the Latter-day Saints is the conduit for continuing inspiration. Evangelicals, on the other hand, view the Bible (Old and New Testaments), as the "word of God" and their sole religious authority. For another religious group to add to the canon of scripture strikes most evangelicals as utter blasphemy.

These suspicions do not augur well for Romney. Politically conservative evangelical voters are a core constituency for the Republican Party. In order to win the Republican nomination, Romney needs the support of conservative evangelicals, especially in Iowa.

Throughout the early months of the campaign, Romney sought to downplay his faith, protesting that he was not a spokesman for Mormonism. But many voters, evangelicals especially, have not been mollified – which led him to the dais of the George Bush Library in Texas this morning to deliver his "JFK speech."

Two of the most compelling arguments central to Kennedy's speech in 1960, however, are not available to Romney. Kennedy unequivocally affirmed his "absolute" support for the separation of church and state, and he also foreswore government support for religious schools. Romney cannot echo those positions. Leaders in the Religious Right preach that the First Amendment separation of church and state is a "myth," and seek taxpayer support for church-related schools.

So in the end, Romney was reduced to bromides about religious liberty and "family values." (Mormons are good at "family values.")

Ironically, Romney missed the opportunity to make his best case for a Mormon to be president. Mormons believe that America's charter documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, are actually divinely inspired. After seven years of an administration that views the Constitution as a nuisance, many Americans, I suspect, would welcome a president who sought to defend the integrity of the Constitution rather than subvert it.