For much of the last century, America\u2019s evangelicals have been the whipping boy of progressives and intellectuals of all sorts. Ostensibly, they use government to impose their interpretation of Scripture on the body politic and \u2013 paradoxical to this heavy use of the state \u2013 champion neo-liberal economics and Tea Party style small government.<\/p>\n
This was never quite the story, and is even less so since 2005, when America\u2019s religio-political landscape has been undergoing what evangelical theologian Scot McKnight called \u201cthe biggest change in the evangelical movement at the end of the twentieth century, a new kind of Christian social conscience.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNew evangelicals\u201d (as Richard Cizik, President of The New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, calls them) have shifted away from the religious right \u2013 moving towards an anti-militarist, anti-consumerist focus on poverty relief, environmental protection, immigration reform, and racial\/religious reconciliation.<\/p>\n
The religious right remains, but where there was the appearance of a seemingly monovocal movement there is now robust polyphony.<\/p>\n