Obama Approaches Young Evangelicals

I'm excited to hear that Obama's reaching out to evangelical voters. It's even more interesting to learn he has plans to launch a "Joshua Generation" project for young Catholics and evangelicals. The basic idea is that there are some conservative Christians who are never going to vote for him because they disagree with him on abortion and gay marriage.

But there are others who see other issues as important values questions: poverty, the AIDS epidemic, and the environment, for example, and who might be willing to put those concerns ahead of the traditional "family values" litmus tests. I read a quote from one such person in the Christian Century a few weeks ago. He said (I am paraphrasing), "We like to joke that the people having the fewest abortions are married gay couples."

So, they've come up with a name, "The Joshua Generation Project," which is just about pitch-perfect as far as names go: it could be the sequel to The Prayer of Jabez, or one of the Left Behind series books. The basic idea is that Moses brought the Israelites to the promised land, but Joshua had to lead them into it to settle it.

One personal qualm about that choice of a name - Joshua was responsible for a LOT of killing to clear the land of Canaanites. I guess we'll have to assume the Joshua Generation's battles are not going to be quite so bloody.

Religion Stats, Part II

So, back to the Pew Forum on Religion in Public Life Religious Landscape survey.

My first reaction to this was to want to know about my own location. And, guess what? the UCC makes up 0.5% of the entire population of the United States. And then beyond that, how many of those folks really have similar views to mine? Who knows?

But it started me thinking about being in a minority group and a majority group simultaneously. As a Christian, I'm part of the 78% majority religion. But as a liberal mainline Christian, I'm probably in a group that's closer to 8-10% of the population (I'm guessing - I just divided the mainline churches (18%) in half to get that number).

So there are some advantages to this - Christmas is a national holiday, after all. But also some disadvantages. If you read much by Christopher Hitchens, you'll see that he's decided he knows what all Christians are about (actually, all religious people), and if I disagree with the picture he paints, well, I'm not really a Christian. Here's a writing sample. This interview on Interfaith Voices is even better.

But you know what? Why shouldn't Hitchens confuse fundamentalists with everyone else? They're kind of the loudest and most dramatic part of any given religion. I mean - who really wants to read about word-smithing at somebody's national church meeting? It's much easier to see and understand the people who do things in black-and-white. Plus, as the survey seems to show, there are more evangelicals than other kinds of Christians in the US. Not that all evangelicals are fundamentalists. But it's a good-sized number. And they have a relatively large number of television shows.

I mean, sure, he's a writer and should probably do his research and try to understand his subject with some nuance. But as an entertainer and seller of books, it's more important that he play off shallow stereotypes. So, I think he's just managed to nail the shallow stereotypes. I seem to have drifted into sarcasm. Time to stop. My basic point: being in the minority (a boutique Christian?) means people tend to misinterpret and misunderstand what you're about.