For anyone who’s still in doubt, this week’s headlines certainly offer proof that there are evangelicals who care about more than banning abortion and same-sex marriage.

The week began with the resignation of Rev. Joel Hunter, president–elect of the Christian Coalition, who cited agenda disputes as the reason for his departure. Apparently the coalition wasn’t ready for a leader like Hunter who wanted to expand its agenda to include caring for the poor and protecting the environment. Over the past few years, Hunter has become know as an evangelical pastor who is seeking to broaden the range of issues that evangelicals work on beyond the traditional “pro-life, pro-family” agenda. He says that “unless we are caring as much for the vulnerable outside the womb as inside the womb, we're not carrying out the full message of Jesus.”

A leader among the ranks of evangelical environmentalists, Rev. Richard Cizik, vice president for government affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, was named as one the greatest proponents of ‘creation care’ in a Beliefnet profile on Thursday. According to Cizik, “you have got to care about this because when you die, God is not going to ask you about how he created the earth. He’s going to ask you, ‘What did you do with what I created?’”

And just look at the AIDS conference taking place today in California, hosted by mega-selling author and evangelical pastor Rick Warren. Warren’s wife Kay says that it is time to “break the silence” that has paralyzed Evangelicals on the issue of AIDS because of its ties to issues of sexuality, and Warren says that he has “no doubt if Jesus were walking the Earth today, he would be hanging out with people with AIDS." With a goal of bringing people together, the conference includes such diverse speakers as Sen. Barak Obama, Sen. Sam Brownback, Archbishop Emmanuel Kolini of the Rwandan Episcopal Church and Bono, and has attracted more than 2000 participants from across the country. Despite opposition by some evangelical groups to the invitation of the pro-choice Obama, Warren has stood by his decision, saying that, although he does not agree with Obama’s views on abortion, “the HIV/AIDS pandemic cannot be fought by Evangelicals alone."

These stories give hope for more future collaboration on the many serious issues that our world is facing today. I think Warren said it best: “Republicans, Democrats, gay, straight, Christians, Jews, Muslims — can we not work on some of these issues together?”