Sojo Discusses Young Evangelicals and Voting

On October 16th, the progressive evangelical group Sojourners hosted a discussion panel on young evangelicals and the 2012 election. The conversation was based on recent study by Sojo that analyzed the political priorities and attitudes of evangelical Christians under age 35. The panel included Jenny Yang of World Relief, Jessica Prol of Family Research Council, Rev. Adam Taylor of World Vision, Ben Lowe of Young Evangelicals for Climate Action, Jayme Cloninger of Feed the Children, Christopher LaTondresse of USAID, and Eric Teetsel of the Manhattan Declaration.

Sojourners head Jim Wallis noted, “The thing about your generation is that you believe your faith is personal and it’s also public. I like to say faith is personal but not private.” Most of the panel interpreted the data in a more progressive light. Jenny Lang asserted, “Young evangelicals care about a wider set of issues than evangelicals are generally known to be involved in…Young evangelicals care about issues of justice…immigration, creation care, what our government does that affects the most vulnerable.” Environmentalist Ben Lowe worried, “A lot of us are disaffected politically and with how the church deals with political issues.” Yang, on the other hand, believed, “[Young evangelicals] actually advocate for better laws and policies that they care about the most.”

Rev. Taylor acted as the voice of moderation. “At the heart of the Gospel is the good news, especially the good news for the poor.” he mused, “Poverty continues to be a taboo issue for many of our elections…the discussion tends to come from the lens of the middle class, and I think we need to close that gap between where the church and young people are and where our politicians are.” Taylor declared, “Despite the polarizing effects of culture wars, we’re finding that young people are still engaged. They’re finding new wines skins for their enthusiasm and passions.”

“There is still a lot of tension  about how many young people feel in trying to identify with one political party or the other…The kingdom of God is not on this ballot, and it won’t be on future elections,” he furthered. Taylor believed, “The biggest fault line in our culture and in our churches is on economics…but as Christians, I hope we can initiate a deeper discussion about those questions…We speak to issues that oftentimes aren’t on the agenda.” All in all, he recommended, “Any election is about imperfect choices, and we have to be about prudential judgments, based on a whole set of issues that we care about.”

On the other hand, Christopher LaTondresse stood out as outspokenly liberal. He instructed that, eight years ago, the common perception was that evangelicals “only care about two issues [abortion and marriage]” and are “predominately Republican.” LaTondresse insisted this led to a poor public image crisis for Christians, with the media painting them as “hypocritical, judgmental, anti-homosexual.” Thankfully, these misconceptions are on the way out since “the tapestry of what is the evangelical world is shifting.”

“Yes, we mourn that there have been 50 million deaths due to abortion, but we also see there are hundreds and thousands of people living in poverty now, and those lives also matter and that’s an important issue,” he argued. Jayme Cloninger attributed this global poverty focus not only to global communication, but also observed that “[w]e’re a product of the short-term mission trip boom.” LaTondresse continued to elicit progressive themes: he praised the highly controversial Nuns on the Bus, who essentially argue, “We are pro-life when we fight for a living wage, social safety nets, social security, Medicare.”

“Republicans have a significant credibility gap with young evangelicals,” LaTondresse believed. “There is no question there’s a marriage crisis in this country. There is no question there’s a family crisis in this country. There is no question there is a fatherhood crisis in this country,” he confessed, “But one of the things that pains me is to see how evangelicals have lost credibility to speak to our culture on these issues because we’ve zeroed in on one aspect of the marriage conversation that isn’t even relevant to building healthy marriages between one man and one woman.” He concluded his searing indictment: “I mean, when Friday Night Lights has more credibility to speak to the family more than the evangelical community or rather organizations like Family Research Council or Focus on the Family, that’s a big problem.”

The conservatives were not left without a voice. Jessica Prol noticed that a high percentage of this demographic is “still pro-life…that’s refreshing for me. I think it’s tragic that we are continuing to abort so many of our unborn children.” In response to LaTondresse, she replied, “The problem I see personally is a narrative gap…where it’s believed Republicans don’t care about the poor…I see specific welfare programs worsening the problem of poverty.” Prol contended, “But the way we solve some of these poverty concerns and we speak to and relate to immigrants, we have to do so in a way that’s sensitive to—to use a conservative word—our institutions, our mediating structures. What is the role of the family? What is the role of the church? What is the role of civil society?”

“I for one am encouraged, because this [study] shows people volunteering and not just asking money from the government, so I don’t see this as a lost cause at all,” she concluded, “I work within a conservative framework because I think that’s the way to do things that is the most robust and the most relational in how we care for people.”

The Manhattan Project’s Eric Teetsel raised more salient points: “We are finding a generation who are able to distance themselves from some of the rhetoric and some of the other characteristics of the religious right and some of the dangerous associations that came when the church and politics were wedded in an unholy way, yet they’re not willing to abandon those underlying convictions…” He disagreed with the sentiments of his progressive compatriots, confessing, “I was worried, because their impressions were not my impressions as I looked at this study.” (He elaborated his concerns on his Patheos blog).

“I think it’s a different narrative…than the one that says that young people are starting to prioritize other issues. I don’t see that. I don’t think that’s true,” Teetsel countered, “I think if you ask them, they’ll say, ‘Yeah, I care about immigration and I care about the environment.’ And this [study] seems to suggest that, if you asked them, they would still prioritize life more.”

“The culture of death cheapens life in all its stages,” Teetsel worried. He touted “moral prioritization” when Christians go to the polls to vote. “We need to have a moral Christian ethic that reflects the priorities of Scripture,” he claimed, “It seems to me that (this is going to sound bombastic) sometimes we tend to focus on issues as if we’re vacuuming the house as the house burns down. Immigration isn’t going to matter if immigrants aren’t alive. This is very plain.” He also clarified, “We care about people’s livelihood, but we first have to make sure that they can even get here, to be born. I think the Scripture is clear about the inherent worth of human life.” In summation, he reported that “a life prioritization is what’s reflected in this summary. I could say the same thing about marriage and religious liberty, but I’ll leave it off there.”

No doubt Wallis and his compatriots hope that younger generations will join in their progressive pursuit of increased government interference, welfare programs, and loosened immigration policies. Though conservative Christians share the same concerns about poverty and citizenship, they seek to accomplish the ends by different means. It looks as if the political discussions in the evangelical community will remain quite lively in the years to come.