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Through this long election campaign, the theme of "evangelicals and politics" has surfaced again and again. Endorsements from high-profile clergymen have been sought—and then discarded. Candidate appearances have been scheduled in churches, charities, colleges, and other places important to evangelicals. Party platforms have been modified with evangelicals in mind. And staff have been hired specifically to find out the best possible answer to one fundamental question: What do evangelicals want?

A spate of recent books by evangelicals provides a set of windows through which we can see what evangelicals want. And what they want is not what everyone is used to thinking evangelicals want.

The first feature of these books is their moderation in tone, as even the late D. James Kennedy writes, "God created only one country in the history of the world: ancient Israel. He did not create America. The United States is not the new Israel." Southern Baptist leader Richard Land freely acknowledges the plurality of religions in contemporary America and insists that church and state must be rigorously kept separate. In short, there are no advocates for theocracy in any of these books. As Kennedy memorably puts it, "Jesus is not on the ballot."

At the same time, there are no broadsides against America, either, no easy "Amerika" jibes, no wholesale denunciations of the United States' leaders, its military, its corporations, and its popular culture, as we have been led to expect. Instead, Ron Sider leads the way in calling evangelicals to a responsible engagement in politics that will increase justice, morality, compassion, security, prosperity, and freedom for all.

This responsible engagement, furthermore, is seen by almost all of these authors in terms of a chastened realism, the expectation that politics will not provide anyone's preferred version of the kingdom of God on earth. This realism remarkably contrasts with the bombast of certain evangelical preachers and authors of the Left and the Right who press for an all-or-nothing, total conquest of American culture on behalf of their vision of righteousness. Instead, the common exhortation in these books is for patient and piecemeal shalom making that will never usher in the New Jerusalem, but will nonetheless further God's purposes.

And what are those purposes? Many evangelicals still place an exclusive emphasis on "saving souls." These books instead are informed not only by the Great Commission of Matthew 28:19 to "make disciples," but also by the cultural mandate of Genesis 1:28 to cultivate the world as "sub-creators" (Tolkien) with God. Whatever their political differences, they nonetheless agree that Christians should engage in political life not only to pursue their religious purposes without interference, but also to secure some other goods for the general welfare.

Greg Boyd's The Myth of a Christian Nation stands out from the rest precisely in this respect. Boyd provides an evangelical version of the political theology of the late Mennonite ethicist John Howard Yoder and Duke University's Stanley Hauerwas. Boyd calls the church to offer itself to the world as an alternative community of peacemaking and holiness, thus remaining apart from institutions of coercion and violence (such as the judicial and military systems). Boyd scorns any concern for political effectiveness in favor of the concern for particular faithfulness to the example of Jesus.

Once this case is made, however, it is not clear just what Christians are to do regarding the system of electoral politics. And if we think Christians should not abandon the state to non-Christians, then we must turn away from Boyd to the bulk of these recent books.

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November 2008, Vol. 52, No. 11