7. The Birth of the New Evangelicalism

For decades leaders like Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo and Ron Sider have pressed their movement to extend its concern beyond classic issues of individual sin to questions like economic inequality, material aid overseas and the environment. But this year others took up their prophetic calls in response to Democratic blandishments, Bush-fatigue and an increasingly vocal youth generation that finds its church unduly pushy on issues like homosexuality. The new trend is hardly cohesive, and evangelical opposition to abortion has, if anything, increased. But powerful pastors like Florida's Joel Hunter and California's Rick Warren are pressing the culture beyond the narrow concerns of the religious Right.

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