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The New York Times columnist won a 2006 Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Darfur genocide. He dubbed conservative Christians "the new internationalists" in a 2004 column, one his many that has explored evangelicals and American foreign policy.

What's surprised you about covering evangelicals?

There is a really important change going on within the evangelical community. In general, evangelicals had been a disproportionally isolationist constituency in the country, skeptical of foreign aid and foreign engagement. That is really changing. Increasingly, you're getting a really important evangelical constituency for fighting AIDS, for fighting genocide in Darfur, for fighting sex trafficking.

What misconceptions do evangelicals have about secularists or big media like The New York Times?

The misconceptions and distrust tend to be mirror images. In general, people on all sides of these issues are people of goodwill who are struggling with how best to address tremendous problems of human suffering. The question of abstinence versus condoms has become one of these battlegrounds. And that battle has certainly created a certain amount of resentment and gnashing of teeth on both sides. It is useful for both sides to pause and remember that people on the other side of that debate are genuine people of goodwill who are trying to ease suffering.

What moves you to cover humanitarian crises?

I've been surprised since I got the column that newspapers columns have less persuasive power than most people believe. When I write about an issue that is already out there, that persuades very few people. On the contrary, when I write about an issue people aren't thinking about, I can help put it on the agenda. If I take something like sex trafficking, Darfur, or AIDS orphans, then I can make people feel pretty bad over breakfast. Feeling bad is often their first step toward generating some kind of response to deal with the problem.

What are the possibilities, but also the limits, of faith-based activism on Darfur?

Especially during the Bush administration, evangelicals have a special responsibility to take action and lead the way, because they have influence in the White House that The New York Times columnists do not. There are hundreds of thousands of people who are alive today in Darfur because an outcry has galvanized the White House to provide a lot of humanitarian aid. But there are hundreds of thousands of others who are dead because we all didn't do more. If churches around the country had stood up at the end of 2003 or early 2004, if newspapers and television stations had stood up, then we would have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. They died on our watch.

What has your reporting taught you about Christianity in China?

Christianity has certainly been growing since the early 1980s. But in the past there's been a certain stigma attached to it among some intellectual quarters, because often the Christians have been peasants. It struck me that in the last few years there have been more intellectuals in the cities converting to Christianity.

To some degree Christianity has also become linked to democratic protest in a way that reminds me a lot of South Korea in the 1980s. I think the government is really nervous about how to deal with this. Christianity creates networks of people around the country, which is something that traditionally the Communist Party has not faced. It creates a source of moral authority and legitimacy that is outside the government. In Poland the Communist Party had this terrible problem with the Catholic Church. The Chinese never had anything remotely like that. The Christian church may be the beginnings of such a framework. And the fact that President Bush is a Christian, is concerned about Christians in China, that gives Christians in China a measure of protection that Falun Gong, for example, does not. China would not get away with beating to death lots and lots of underground Christian church leaders.

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September 2006, Vol. 50, No. 9