Evangelicals – How Faith Informs Their Politics

Post a Comment » Written on October 17th, 2008     
Filed under: News
SEATTLE, WA (October 17, 2008) – Evangelical Covenant Church pastor Eugene Cho is featured on the cover of the current issue of Sojourners magazine and is quoted in an article on “new evangelicals” and how their faith informs their politics.  
The article entitled “The Meaning of Life” states that evangelicals are expanding the issues they consider when electing a candidate. Reporters Jim Rice and Jeannie Choi write, “Eugene Cho in many ways exemplifies these new evangelicals.” Click here to access the article (a website registration is required).

“Personally, I don’t want to be defined by one or two issues,” Cho says. “Obviously two of the bigger issues that are highlighted by certain groups of the Christian segment are gay marriage and abortion. And while I acknowledge that they are important to me, I simply don’t elevate them over other issues. I must juxtapose them with the war in Iraq, local and global poverty, and human rights.”

A member of Cho’s church also is quoted: “For some evangelicals, even those who consider themselves strongly pro-life, the issue of abortion doesn’t have a lot of influence on how they vote in presidential elections. For example, Bo Lim, a member of Quest Church in Seattle, said that abortion, along with several other moral concerns, ‘don’t rise to the top of my list of issues in regard to the election because of the limited role the president or our government can do in regard to these issues.’ ”

Jesus Creed, a blog written by North Park University professor Scot McKnight, also is mentioned because of comments on the blog website from one reader in response to one of McKnight’s entries. The Sojourners article states: “A self-described anti-abortion evangelical commenting on Jesus Creed, a leading blog of the emergent church, wrote that policies that fight poverty, work for health-care justice, and generally improve economic conditions for poor and working-class people will likely result in the number of abortions decreasing much more than under an administration that simply declares itself opposed to Roe vs. Wade – and thus supporting the former initiatives should arguably be considered more ‘pro-life’ than the latter.”

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