Jerry Falwell post-script
I heard an uplifting tangent related to Jerry Falwell's death on NPR last night. It mentioned that many young evangelicals look up to Bono more than Falwell, and want to focus their political and social action on issues like disease, poverty, and the environment rather than sex-based "morality." I don't think any majority of evangelicals are going to switch to the Democratic vote this year, but I did enjoy the ray of hope presented in the piece.
The death of the Rev. Jerry Falwell marks a changing of the guard for religious conservatives that has been under way for several years.
In the 1980s, Falwell mobilized millions of evangelicals. But today, younger Christians are becoming restive with the old style and focus. In fact, some pollsters say that more than 40 percent of white evangelical voters could be up for grabs in the 2008 election.
Two months before he died, Falwell gave a televised sermon about global warming. It was vintage Falwell: grand, pugnacious and, he admitted, politically incorrect. Falwell said that the danger to society is not global warming, but the green movement itself. He worried particularly about evangelicals involved in the green movement: They were being distracted from moral concerns, such as abortion, gay marriage, violence and divorce.
"It is Satan's attempt to redirect the church's primary focus," Falwell said in March to his 22,000-person-strong congregation at the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va.
...
To get an idea of how far some evangelicals have traveled since Falwell's heyday, I visited Joel Hunter at his mega-church in Orlando, Fla. Hunter's vision of the "correct" evangelical view of the environment seems to come from a different continent - or a different God.
"Let me tell you one of the reasons I'm so keen on taking care of the environment," he told his 7,700-member church recently. "It's not just that it's beautiful, which it is. But it's the first order we had when we got put into the garden: Cultivate it and keep it."
Hunter is a new kind of evangelical: conservative about abortion and gay marriage, but also engaged in other issues, such as the environment. And he's leading his conservative flock in the same direction.
...
"The problem has become that we have paid so much attention to the human being in the womb that we have forgotten about the human being out of the womb," Hunter said. "It's become such a focus for some leaders that they don't want to address the other pro-life issues, such as climate change, such as poverty, such as AIDS."
Last year, the Christian Coalition asked Hunter to become its president. He agreed, as long as he could spotlight attention on non-sexual issues, such as the environment and poverty. At the last moment, both sides got cold feet and the union was called off.
It was an early test of what may be a coming generational shift. For years, Falwell, Robertson and Dobson dominated the Christian message. But now, some younger evangelicals are complaining that the old message focuses more on what Christians are against than on what they are for.
In related news, davidgallaher1 has pointed out that Tinky Winky did, in fact, speak to Salon.com about his relationship with Jerry Falwell.
The death of the Rev. Jerry Falwell marks a changing of the guard for religious conservatives that has been under way for several years.
In the 1980s, Falwell mobilized millions of evangelicals. But today, younger Christians are becoming restive with the old style and focus. In fact, some pollsters say that more than 40 percent of white evangelical voters could be up for grabs in the 2008 election.
Two months before he died, Falwell gave a televised sermon about global warming. It was vintage Falwell: grand, pugnacious and, he admitted, politically incorrect. Falwell said that the danger to society is not global warming, but the green movement itself. He worried particularly about evangelicals involved in the green movement: They were being distracted from moral concerns, such as abortion, gay marriage, violence and divorce.
"It is Satan's attempt to redirect the church's primary focus," Falwell said in March to his 22,000-person-strong congregation at the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Va.
...
To get an idea of how far some evangelicals have traveled since Falwell's heyday, I visited Joel Hunter at his mega-church in Orlando, Fla. Hunter's vision of the "correct" evangelical view of the environment seems to come from a different continent - or a different God.
"Let me tell you one of the reasons I'm so keen on taking care of the environment," he told his 7,700-member church recently. "It's not just that it's beautiful, which it is. But it's the first order we had when we got put into the garden: Cultivate it and keep it."
Hunter is a new kind of evangelical: conservative about abortion and gay marriage, but also engaged in other issues, such as the environment. And he's leading his conservative flock in the same direction.
...
"The problem has become that we have paid so much attention to the human being in the womb that we have forgotten about the human being out of the womb," Hunter said. "It's become such a focus for some leaders that they don't want to address the other pro-life issues, such as climate change, such as poverty, such as AIDS."
Last year, the Christian Coalition asked Hunter to become its president. He agreed, as long as he could spotlight attention on non-sexual issues, such as the environment and poverty. At the last moment, both sides got cold feet and the union was called off.
It was an early test of what may be a coming generational shift. For years, Falwell, Robertson and Dobson dominated the Christian message. But now, some younger evangelicals are complaining that the old message focuses more on what Christians are against than on what they are for.
In related news, davidgallaher1 has pointed out that Tinky Winky did, in fact, speak to Salon.com about his relationship with Jerry Falwell.