Beyond the recent debate over the third party threats of the religious right, there exist some subtle and long-term changes affecting evangelical Christianity. Here are two examples on poverty/urban sprawl as well as homosexuality.

Justice in the Burbs

And Zack, of Revolution in Jesusland, recently attended an evangelical leadership conference. It appears more and more religious leaders might be waking up to the fact that constructive engagement with homosexuals is a moral value -- and a church growth value too.

. . .one thing really stood out, and subtly became the main focus of the evening forum. Apparently, all the anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives and other anti-gay campaigning have really been ravaging the perception of Christianity among the general public, and even among young Christians. He [Dave, of the Barna research group] showed one graph that showed favorability ratings over the past several decades for gays shooting up from low single digits to 33% today. (That might have been just among young people, I can’t remember.)

Meanwhile, right along with that, the favorability rating for “evangelicals” among the same group plummeted from high numbers to 3%! David didn’t argue for a direct correlation between those two numbers. But he talked about how today most young people know openly gay people, and they are having a hard time reconciling what their church says and their valued relationships.

Pastor Dan has more, as usual. . .