c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) It’s time for an election-year primer on how to address Christians.

In the world of lazy labeling and media shorthand, terms like “evangelical,” “Christian” and “Word” are assigned meanings that aren’t helpful or true.

Thus, an “evangelical Christian” is assumed to be a conservative Republican who favors war, opposes abortion, loathes homosexuality, yearns for a former era in family life, and tends to be a white suburbanite attending an unusually large church.

By this logic, a politician who wants the “evangelical Christian” vote must visit Southern Baptist and non-denominational churches, invite conservative preachers to consult on policy, and mention code phrases like “pro-life,” “family values,” and “born again,” as if “Christian” positions on critical issues were settled and clear.

“Liberals,” meanwhile, are portrayed as biblically illiterate or uninterested and as ethical modernists who ignore God’s commandments, and any politician who courts those votes should ignore subjects like faith and values and talk instead about government programs.

None of that is true.

While many “evangelicals” do hold conservative views in theology and partisan politics, many don’t. Many whose faith is grounded in the Bible and the need for conversion come to quite different conclusions about life, ethics and politics.

Instead of reading the Law of Moses and focusing on its commandments concerning, say, sexuality, they read the Law’s portrayal of a God of mercy and changeability, a God who journeys on with his people. They go on to read the prophets and their call for justice and humility, their condemnation of greed and hubris, their promise of new life through new creation.

Instead of centering on Paul and his conservative views on women and sex, liberal evangelicals read the gospels and see Jesus as moving away from the Law, grounding himself in the prophets, and behaving in ways that were breathtaking in their newness, such as his embracing of women and his venturing outside the box of orthodoxy.

Instead of claiming that every word of Scripture is literally true and a directive from God, liberal evangelicals study the depth, diversity, and subtlety of Scripture. They care how Scripture was formed and where meaning has been obscured by politics.

Neither camp has sole claim to truth. Faithful persons can read the Bible and come to different conclusions about virtually everything, from the nature of God to the ethics of sexuality. That shouldn’t be surprising, as the Bible was written over some 1,300 years to express experiences ranging from the exodus to the settling of Canaan to grappling with exile to rebuilding Jerusalem to establishing Jesus-centered communities in Jerusalem, Asia Minor, Greece and Rome.

Liberal evangelicals know their Bible as well as conservative evangelicals. They preach from it every Sunday, study it every day, and they, too, believe that the salvation drama calls for personal conversion and being “born from above.”

In fact, I think conservative and liberal evangelicals have a lot in common. If we could ignore politicians and preachers who are building careers on dividing us, we would discover that we are all troubled by the state of modern life, perhaps seeing different issues but sharing a common concern for the future of our nation. We would discover that we all yearn for faith, for God’s tender care, for courage to face challenging days, and for community grounded in something deeper than class, greed or hatred.

We read the same Bible, sing the same hymns, recite the same creeds and want our children to know God’s love. We know ourselves as sinners needing forgiveness, as exiles in a strange land, as people whom God wants to draw near.

If politicians and ambitious preachers truly cared about people, faith and nation, they would join us in that quest for common ground and stop using faith as a weapon.

MO/LF END RNS

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, consultant and leader of workshops. His book, “Just Wondering, Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask,” was published by Morehouse Publishing. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C. His Web site is http://www.onajourney.org.)

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