They Pity Darfur

An organization called Evangelicals for Darfur ran a full-page ad in the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today and dozens of other daily papers (including The Gazette) imploring President George W. Bush to take more action in Darfur, Sudan. The region has been the site of bloody fighting since 2003. Most of the signatorees are well-known in evangelical circles, and include our own Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals.

This is interesting for a whole host of reasons.

1) From what I gather, most of this in-fighting -- characterized as a "genocide" by the ad -- is predominantly between Muslims. No "protect the persecuted Christians" backstory here.

2) The Signatorees represent the astoundingly broad scope of the evangelical movement -- from the right you see Joel Hunter, president of the Christian Coalition of America; on the left, there are folks like Jim Wallis and Brian McLaren.

2a) It's also interesting to see who's missing -- namely the standard-bearers of the traditional Religious Right. There's no James Dobson. No Chuck Colson. No Pat Robertson. If I was a religious pundit, I might say it's a sign of a split between evangelicalism's old guard and young Turks. But I'm not, so I'll move on.

3) Two of the signatorees, Haggard and Wallis, will speak at today's CC Symposium, which fortuitously focuses on the intersection between religion and politics. Here, literally in black-and-white, is an example of such an intersection.