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This latter document, written in the wake of profound disillusionment with the Nixon presidency, denounced militarism, racism, sexism, economic injustice, and "Nixon's lust for and abuse of power." For several heady years, progressive evangelicals met annually at a series of Thanksgiving Workshops and enjoyed the attention of the evangelical and secular media. Sullivan makes much of this annual event, framing an entire chapter around the 1973 Workshop at which the Declaration was written.
It is at this point that Sullivan makes one of her very few missteps. Suspending her narrative of the evangelical Left to tell of Democratic hostility toward religious conservatives, she ignores an equally salient narrative—that of internal evangelical fragmentation, specifically the role of identity politics layered on top of an already diverse evangelical social agenda. There were clear signs, even in the first Thanksgiving Workshop, of deep cleavages within the nascent evangelical Left along gender, racial, and theological lines.
The first evidence of dissension at the 1973 Workshop came from African American participants who perceived hints of "evangelical triumphalism" in opening remarks by Ron Sider, the organizer of the Workshop and future author of Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. How could Sider justify celebratory rhetoric, they asked, on behalf of a tradition that failed to embrace the civil rights movement? Very quickly, remembers Sider, "the lid blew off." Black participants sharply attacked the committee for including only one black on the committee. Then over a separate lunch of turnip greens and ham hocks prepared "for atmosphere," they drew up an alternative statement more radical than the original. Palpable tension permeated the workshop through the first evening. When delegates entered the dark streets after the day's final session in search of a snack, they traveled in two groups, one all white, the other all black, both venting their "frustration in angry separation." The next day spirits lifted as participants approved section after section of the reworked document. By the evening, some blacks and whites went out to enjoy soul food together. Still, a divisive tone had been set.
Women also asserted their identity. In a workshop dominated by high-powered evangelical executives and scholars, one delegate felt as if "she had walked into an Eastern men's club." The men, complained Nancy Hardesty of Trinity College in Deerfield, Ill., "tended to be insensitive to women as people." Dr. Ruth Bentley was listed a participant, but as chairperson for an afternoon session she became "Mrs. William Bentley." Even worse, CWLF's Sharon Gallagher objected, women were "commanded to speak and then expected to shut up when the men felt the issue had been covered. It seemed easier for the establishment men to be gracious toward the blacks they probably rarely had to deal with, than with status changes that might affect women, their own personal house niggers." When Hardesty, co-author of the influential All We're Meant to Be, and Gallagher discovered that there was no mention of sexism in the first draft of the Declaration, they formed an emergency caucus with the only five women in attendance. While delegates in the plenary sessions mostly affirmed the caucus's demands to condemn sexism and affirm the Equal Rights Amendment, a substantial minority balked at women's ordination.
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