Great stats about the “Progressive Evangelicals”, the religious group that see a dire need to get Bush out of the White House.
The big mouth guys aren’t too popular:
A recent survey by Religion & Ethics Newsweekly found that evangelical Christians on the whole gave Falwell a marginally unfavorable rating. It also found that many evangelicals (in particular, those who are African-American or Hispanic) care more about jobs and the economy than issues like gay marriage and abortion. Secular liberals may shudder when informed that roughly 40 percent of Americans are born-again Christians; few are aware that, of this total, roughly one-third are “freestyle evangelicals” whose political views are eclectic, and that another 15-20 percent are members of minority groups that tend to vote Democratic.
A balanced Biblical scorecard, to counter the narrow-issued Christian Coalition “voting guides” which use that “American Bible” plus a few talking points from the GOP. The Bible, on the other hand, IS indeed concerned about issues of equality, justice, economics, environment, reconcilation, and making peace….all as opposed to the heretical hawkishness of the Religious Right (“What Woud Jesus Do? They don;t give a rip. They think it an irrelevant question when applied to most of life. Hypocrites!)
Durbin examined the voting records of his colleagues on an array of moral issues of concern to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops–not only abortion but the death penalty, the minimum wage, the concentration of media ownership. On the whole, he discovered, Democrats in the Senate ranked better than Republicans. The highest ranking of all went to the candidate some conservatives have been tarring as antireligious: John Kerry.
Other highlights of the article:
Modeling itself after MoveOn.org, Faithful America has signed up more than 115,000 members for an e-mail list that it plans to use to circulate petitions and turn out people for future events. This summer, it is organizing a “Stonewalk” in which family members of 9/11 victims and religious leaders will drag a 1,400-pound granite monument honoring “Unknown Civilians Killed in War” from Boston to New York, the respective sites of the Democratic and Republican conventions.