Where do rich and famous Christians find their spiritual community? Not at church, according to D. Michael Lindsay, a columnist at USA Today. After five years of interviewing 100 prominent evangelicals including Hollywood celebrities, athletes, business executives, and two presidents, he reports that sixty percent were not regular attendees in a local congregation. They tended instead to meet with other high-level Christians for fellowship in private Bible studies.

Gary LaFerla, whose credentials include being a senior pastor, CEO, published author, and executive coach, has worked with Christian leaders in business and the arts for over 25 years and had a somewhat different experience. Most of the Christian business executives he knows do go to church and interact with believers from different income levels, but many Christian artists are not solid in their church attendance, especially those who perform as Christian artists for religious audiences. They leave for a number of reasons, he said, some because of personal sin, others for involvement in Christian outreach to seekers, be it personal evangelism in private bible studies or domestic and international missions.. “You have to give them a lot of credit,” LaFerla said of the latter.

But one of the biggest reasons he listed for Christian stars’ departure was disillusionment. “They perform in mega-churches, and unfortunately see contradictions behind the pulpit. Others have too many options: too much wealth with too little accountability.”

LaFerla said he and his family are “praying and considering the start [of] a new work among businesspeople outside of the local church,” geared primarily for interested non-Christians and new believers. They’ve attracted some interest, he said; “We’ll see where it goes.”

If you’re not a subscriber of WORLD Magazine — or if you are one and are just impatient and can’t wait for the latest issue to arrive in your mailbox — head on over to WORLDMag.com to check out the February 23 issue, hot off the server. Here are some highlights:

• “No heaven on earth” — Jamie Dean reports on how John McCain can’t tune out conservative angst over his candidacy.
• “Barack the vote” — Mark Bergin writes about how Barack Obama’s quick draw in the Wild West has Hillary Clinton on the run.
• “The bloc to watch” — Clint Rainey checks in from Texas, where the Hispanic vote will have clout in the state’s March 4 primary.
• “End of an illusion” — Joel Belz discusses how evangelicals are not the political force many thought they were.
• “Bewitching hour” — Marvin Olasky on how the Obama campaign is emotionally appealing but not very specific.

Plus, there’s an excerpt from Anne Rice’s second novel on the life of Jesus, Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, along with an explanation from Rice for why she depicted as she did Jesus’ encounter with Satan.

A growing number of young evangelicals may pull Democratic levers in the voting booth this Tuesday. Young, white evangelicals — traditionally Republican-party stalwarts — are increasingly moving away from their conservative allegiances, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of 2001-2007 data.

Wheaton graduate and emergent church minister Mike Clawson is one such evangelical. Once a self-described “Rush Limbaugh-loving Republican/Libertarian, Clawson began to question his political loyalties because of the “lack of compassion” he saw in the conservative leadership’s rhetoric.

“I couldn’t square the ‘pull-yourself-by-your-own-bootstraps’ ideology of the Right with Jesus’s words that whatever we did for the least of these we did for him,” Clawson told WoW. “There are so many important, biblical, concerns that they are simply ignoring - peacemaking, the poor, the environment, fair trade and economic justice, racial reconciliation and gender equality.”

On January 23, a panel of progressive evangelical leaders convened at George Washington University to discuss how Christians are broadening their priorities to include issues like poverty, global warming, and social justice. According to ABP News, Richard Cizik, vice president for government affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals, said evangelicals are no longer going to “blindly follow prominent leaders in the Religious Right” who tell them what they “have to believe.”

The conservative evangelical establishment is fighting evangelical departure. Cizik came under fire in March 2007 from a contingent of conservative Christian leaders, including James Dobson, who accused him of “dividing and demoralizing” the Christian base by promoting a “Creation Care” agenda. The group said Cizik’s focus on the environment detracted from the greater moral issues of abortion, same-sex marriage, and abstinence.

According to progressives like Clawson, however, evangelicals don’t have to be single-issue or single-party voters. “We should let our commitment to the kingdom of God be our first and only loyalty,” said Clawson. “And then look for candidates (from whichever party) that will help promote kingdom values.”

The Orlando Sentinel styled today’s Florida primary election a wide-open race that could be decided by white evangelicals, a voter-bloc comprising 25 to 35 percent of likely GOP voters. But evangelicals there aren’t necessarily aligning with Huckabee, the Baptist minister on the ballot. In fact, they seem evenly split among three of the major GOP candidates:

“Each candidate speaks to a different interest of the evangelical perspective, and each is getting a share of the pocketbook and family-values vote,” said Pastor Joel Hunter, author of A New Kind of Conservative…A Mason-Dixon Florida Poll conducted this week showed 27 percent of self-described “born again” voters backed Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister who combined a “FairTax” campaign pitch aimed at blue-collar voters with conservative “biblical” values to win a victory in the Iowa caucuses.

But 28 percent favored former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who once made much of his anti-abortion, anti-gay-marriage credentials but is now touting himself as a businessman who can fix a “broken” Washington establishment. And 23 percent chose Arizona Sen. John McCain, a maverick conservative and supporter of the Iraq war who in 2000 blasted some evangelical leaders as “agents of intolerance.”

At this point, only Giuliani is already looking like an also-ran, polling just 9 percent. Let’s pretend we’re the Sunshine State. If you were voting today in Florida, which GOP candidate would you vote for and why? Tomorrow, we’ll see if our winner matches the one down south.

About 40 Jews who left Iran in secret arrived in Israel yesterday - one of the largest such defections - and got a Christmas present of $10,000 per person from U.S. evangelicals, the Washington Times reports.

A Jewish Agency spokesman credited the increase to a stipend program financed by donations to the Christian Zionist group International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ).

“The money is a major consideration” to come to Israel, said Michael Jankelowitz, a spokesman for the agency. “These people come with the clothes on their back and their suitcase. Iranian money has no value.”

Accoring to one quasi-governmental group, the number of Iranian-Jewish emigrants to Israel more than tripled to 200 in 2007.

Touchstone magazine has a forum asking, What is Evangelicalism today?  That’s a timely question, and the answer may surprise all of us, especially when we so often hear non-Evangelicals tell us what it is and who we are. 

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Last week, we blogged on the Times essay by David  Kirkpatrick titled “The Evangelical Crackup,” about the splintering of the Christian right.  One Evangelical says this isn’t the case, though. Evangelicals aren’t cracking up, because we never were a bloc in the first place.

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It’s the presidential election cycle, so evangelicals are in the news again. Which candidate will they support? What price will they exact? Are they even relevant? The New York Times ran a story recently on fissures within the movement (“The Evangelical Crackup”). But anyone who thinks that American evangelicals are going to dwindle in numbers or retreat into their old fundamentalist cultural withdrawal is deluding himself.

Nonetheless, evangelicals are not primarily a political movement, but a spiritual community. So they are for the most part conscientious and prone to seasons of critical self-assessment. Thus, a growing number of evangelicals has become uneasy with the spiritual toll that politicking has taken on them personally and on the evangelistic calling for the church. (Consider Blinded By Might: Why the Religious Right Can’t Save America, published in 2000 by Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson).

Immediately after the broad Republican congressional defeat in 2006, David Kuo of the JWalking blog published this reflection on the evangelical soul searching that continues today (”Putting Faith Before Politics,” New York Times, November 16, 2006):

There has been a radical change in the attitudes of evangelicals—it’s just not one that will automatically be in the Democrats’ favor. You see, evangelicals aren’t re-examining their political priorities nearly as much as they are re-examining their spiritual priorities. That could be bad news for both political parties.

John W. Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute, the conservative Christian organization that gained notoriety during the 1990s when it represented Paula Jones in her sexual harassment suit against Bill Clinton, wrote this after the elections: “Modern Christianity, having lost sight of Christ’s teachings, has been co-opted by legalism, materialism and politics. Simply put, it has lost its spirituality.” He went on, “Whereas Christianity was once synonymous with charity, compassion and love for one’s neighbor, today it is more often equated with partisan politics, anti-homosexual rhetoric and affluent mega-churches.”

Mr. Whitehead is hardly alone. Just before the elections, Gordon MacDonald, an evangelical leader, wrote that he was concerned that some evangelical personalities had been seduced and used by the White House. He worried that the movement might “fragment because it is more identified by a political agenda that seems to be failing and less identified by a commitment to Jesus and his kingdom.”

After the 2006 election, Beliefnet.com conducted an online survey of 2,000 people. Two findings struck me:

• nearly 60 percent of non-evangelicals have a more negative view of Jesus because of Christian political involvement
• nearly 40 percent of evangelicals support the idea of a two-year Christian “fast” from intense political activism

A fast from “intense political activism” may be a healthy exercise for some, but abstaining from political engagement in general would be misguided. Christians are called to be good citizens. In a free republic, good citizens are politically engaged. It would also be a sinful neglect of one’s neighbor’s good. How to go about that political engagement Christianly appears to be the question for us at this end of the Bush presidency.

Let me suggest a theological answer. That is, I suggest that Christian political life in this land of liberty take its bearings from the character of God. I have three particular attributes in mind: his wisdom, his sovereignty and his goodness. In order for God to be trustworthy, he must have all these three attributes. If any one of them were missing, we would have no grounds for trusting him. (I’ll leave you to think it through.) Following this pattern, if Christians are obedient to the wisdom of God, we will be a godly influence. If Christians are confident in the sovereignty of God, we will be a humble influence. If Christians are confident in the goodness of God, we will be an effective influence.

It is not enough to be culturally conservative. We have to be biblically faithful. But biblical fidelity entails not only godly ends, but also godly means, godly temperament, and sensible efforts to accomplish those ends in a world that is not amenable to, and even resists, godliness.

However wise we have been at selecting our policy positions, we have behaved terribly in the way we have advocated those positions. As a result of our public involvement over the past thirty years, people have come to see evangelical Christians as self-righteous, unloving seekers after an earthly kingdom. “Humble” is neither the first nor the last word that comes to mind for most impartial observers. Unlike the non-Christians who share our political positions on matters of justice and morality but who are strangers to Christ, we should be oddly winsome. Though faithful to the truth, we should demonstrate a personal concern for our opponent’s well being. Public debate should be a form of love for neighbor, and evidently so.

As to effectiveness, Jesus calls us to be as wise (Gk, phronimos - prudent, provident) as serpents, but as innocent as doves (Matthew 10:16). God wants more than good intentions. He wants us to do good. He wants not only veracity, but also charity, and the best charity actually gets things done.

Looking to the next election, the one still ahead of us, Kuo offered these last words:

We will have to wait until 2008 to see just how deep this evangelical spiritual re-examination goes, and how seductive politics will continue to be to committed Christians. Meanwhile, evangelicals aren’t flocking to the Democratic Party. If anything, they are becoming more truly conservative in their recognition of the negative spiritual consequences of political obsession and of the limitations of government power.

Evangelicals should see that we live in tension between two poles. It is wrong for Christians to act franticly in the political arena the way our political opponents do who are without God and without hope in this world, and to grieve the way they do when we lose. It would also be wrong for us to retreat from our responsibility to exercise godly influence in that legitimate and noble sphere of life. Though there are limits to what can be accomplished through politics, there is also an obligation to accomplish what we can, and to do so in the confidence that God does not depend upon our efforts, but does all things well according to his at times surprising and even puzzling will.

…is the title of a great big piece in the Times magazine about the changing politics of the pulpit and the church.  The story begins with Terry Fox, a conservative Southern Baptist minister forced out of his church for getting too political: “The board of deacons had told him that his activism was getting in the way of the Gospel. ‘It just wasn’t pertinent,’ Associate Pastor Gayle Tenbrook [said].’”

Fox, who is 47, said he saw some impatient shuffling in the pews, but he was stunned that the church’s lay leaders had turned on him. “They said they were tired of hearing about abortion 52 weeks a year, hearing about all this political stuff!” he told me on a recent Sunday afternoon. “And these were deacons of the church!”

The gospel has to do with everything, but the pulpit is not a political stump, and pastors - both liberal and conservative - confuse the two at their peril.  Read the rest of this magnum opus here.

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has a plea for those interested in the straw poll results of the evangelical Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C. this weekend: Crunch the numbers.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney took first place in the Family Research Council’s (FRC) poll of more than 5,000 voters, but just barely: Romney won by 30 votes. But Huckabee’s supporters insist that almost winning isn’t the real news: They say Huckabee actually won by a landslide.

In the moments after FRC president Tony Perkins announced the results of the straw poll to some 2,000 evangelicals and conservatives gathered at a three-day conference that featured speeches from all nine Republican presidential candidates, Perkins explained a crucial caveat to those results: Many people voted online. The FRC allowed people from around the country to begin voting in the straw poll online in August, while others voted at kiosks on site at the conference this weekend.

“Garamond” size=”3″>That wasn’t a secret, but it did put Romney’s win in perspective: While Romney won 27 percent of the total votes in the straw poll, he won only 10 percent of votes cast at the conference. Instead, it was Huckabee who dominated the summit: He won 51 percent of the votes cast on site this weekend, swamping every other candidate. Romney trailed in second place by 389 votes.

Jeremiah Lorrig finds that dynamic confusing. The 24-year-old Huckabee supporter said he thinks the FRC “mishandled” the straw poll by allowing people who didn’t attend the conference or listen to the candidates’ speeches to vote. “I think the opinions of the people who are actually here are more representative of evangelicals,” he said.

When reporters grilled Perkins about that dynamic at a press conference, Perkins defended the poll, saying that the FRC clearly published the straw poll procedures months ago, and that every campaign had an equal opportunity to mobilize online voters.

Despite the complexity, Huckabee drew major buzz at the conference with a Saturday morning speech that drew the most enthusiastic response of the weekend. As prominent Christian leaders continued to grapple with which candidate to support, Huckabee supporter Eric Lupardus wondered why they haven’t backed Huckabee: “What they’re looking for is right there in front of them.”