The Voice Of One Crying Out In Suburbia

Is it Splits/ville in Red America?

The New York Times seems to think so.

Not that the NY Times has the pulse of evangelical, Middle America. But the article (which probably requires registration) does recognize the growing rift between old school Evangelical leaders and the younger believers who don't walk in lockstep. The Times does go too far, as do many other mainline news sources, in claiming that young evangelicals are granola eating, tree hugging social liberals but there is a sense in which a responsibility to our fellow man is more of a hallmark than in time past. The old guard is far too political, and while I am as anti-abortion as anyone there are times when we get so tunnel visioned on that issue that we exclude all other human suffering. The answer is not more government, but there is a real sense in which the church has lost both the Gospel message of repentance and the commandment to love one another.

Back in the day, evangelical Christians got their news from places like The 700 Club and Focus on the Family. Many still do, but for younger, more internet savvy Christians, blogs and webpages are replacing these mediums (I also attribute to the internet generation the resurgence of Calvinism among young evangelicals. No longer do they hear about Calvinism as some strange bogeyman or that men like Spurgeon were really Finney-ite semi-Pelagians.) We don;t have to, and in fact refuse to, wait to see what Pat Robertson or the late Rev. Falwell or Pat Robertson have to say about issues or candidates. We can discuss amongst ourselves, real-time, right now. Huckabee's nomination has exposed the rift, and the uneasy truce.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. If Rudy is the nominee will the Christian Right stay home, or will they begrudgingly go to the polls to keep Hillary or Obama out of the White House. Will the coalition survive if Huckabee gets nominated and the elite fiscal conservatives and neo-cons refuse to support him? If McCain gets the nomination, does he select Huckabee as his VP to gather in the evangelical vote? If Romney is the nominee....ugh, let's not even think about that...

Only two days until the Michigan primary!