" If we could ignore politicians and preachers who are building careers on dividing us "

Tom Erich: Labeling voters as 'evangelical' is easy; unfortunately, it's also meaningless
01:13 PM CST on Friday, February 3, 2006
By TOM ERICH / Special to The Dallas Morning News
It's time for an election-year primer on how to address Christians.
In the world of lazy labeling and media shorthand, terms are often assigned meanings that aren't helpful or true.
An "evangelical Christian" is assumed to be a conservative Republican who favors war, opposes abortion, loathes homosexuality, and yearns for a bygone era. He or she is most likely a white suburbanite attending an unusually large church.
So politicians who want the "evangelical Christian" vote must visit Southern Baptist and nondenominational churches, invite conservative preachers to consult on policy, and use 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. They're ethical modernists who ignore God's commandments. And any politician who courts the liberal vote should avoid the subjects of faith and values and talk instead about government programs.
None of this is true.
While many evangelicals do hold conservative views about theology and politics, many don't. There are millions upon millions of Americans whose faith is grounded in the Bible and the need for conversion, and they don't all come to the same conclusions about life, ethics and politics.
Instead of reading the Law of Moses and focusing on its commandments concerning, say, sexuality, they read its portrayal of a God of mercy, a God who journeys on with his people. They read the prophets who call for justice and humility, who condemn greed and hubris, and who promise a 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 embracing a role for women in his ministry.
Instead of insisting 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 a span of 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 do. 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, 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 concerned to different degrees about different issues but sharing a common concern for the future of our world and 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.
Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest in Durham, N.C. and the author of Just Wondering, Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask (Morehouse Publishing, $16.95). His Web site is www.onajourney.org.
source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/religion/opinion/stories/020406dnrelguestcol.1f8093ee.html