Most Evangelicals claim to be politically non-partisan, and say they only identify with the Republican Party because the Republicans are committed to 'family values.'
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I, for one, am quite willing to join the 'forgive, forget and move on' crowd, but it does make me wonder if Evangelicals are going to sound believable when they say that they tend to vote Republican because of their religious commitments to the family.
In the past, the Republican Party has depended on unified support at election time from Evangelical Christians. But times are changing!
It's hard to pin down what it means to be an evangelical today. It's been diluted quite a bit. It is a powerful voting bloc, no question, but they're liberal as well as conservative - and they're made of Latinos, blacks, whites.
A significant fraction of evangelical voters appear more likely to ignore the candidates' specific economic and foreign policy platforms in favor of concerns about gay marriage or abortion.
In America, evangelical churches have often been bastions of conservatism, providing support for the status quo.
It's a new day for the Democrats when it comes to matters of faith, and the younger Evangelicals are aware of this and many of them are moving into the Democratic camp.
Evangelicals need to take a good look at what their issues are. Are they really being faithful to Jesus? Are they being faithful to the Bible?
I think there are other issues that the Democrats could use to rally evangelicals. There are a lot of us, for instance, who believe that the Bible calls us to be environmentally responsible.
It was funny that rank-and-file evangelicals were ahead of all the leadership. They saw for decades conservative Republicans had made promises to them on issues that were important to Christians and conservatives when they were running for office. But when they won, they didn't keep those promises.
Evangelicals can't be closely identified with any particular party or person. We have to stand in the middle, to preach to all the people, right and left.