Right cross
Christian progressives fight for their faith
by Cate Terwilliger

When backers of ballot initiatives that would ban same-sex marriage and domestic partnerships drew up battle plans, they knew they could rely on an army of Christian soldiers.

"It's a natural constituency," says Jon Paul, executive director of Coloradans for Marriage. The group supports Amendment 43, which would modify the state constitution to reiterate the statutory definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

Some 450 churches, including Catholic, Baptist, Methodist and non-denominational evangelical congregations, worked to gather enough signatures to put the measure before voters this fall, according to Paul.

"A few [churches] out there oppose what we're doing, churches that are the fringe element of the Christian movement in this state," he says. "But that's like finding a needle in a haystack and saying the haystack is made of needles."

Backers of Initiative 109, which aimed to forbid the state from recognizing a legal status similar to marriage, fell short of making the ballot.

But they, too, looked to Christians to embrace their cause. State coordinators Dick and Sue Rehg reminded signature-gatherers that "we are at war for the very heart and soul of our great nation" and encouraged them to keep the faith by remembering "He who is the General of our army." Rep. Kevin Lundberg, R-Berthoud, asked volunteers to pray for God's "special blessing" while looking forward to "successes God will grant us."

Nationwide, same-sex marriage rhetoric from conservative Republicans presumes the same moral authority. Georgia Rep. Phil Gingrey has declared that God "has spoken very clearly" for a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Marriage between a man and woman is "part of God's plan," agrees Texas Rep. John Carter.

"We best not be messing with His plan," warns Colorado's own Bob Beauprez.

But in this election season, Christians who have claimed Calvary as right-wing real estate face an increasingly powerful opponent that originates outside any "gay agenda" to destroy the traditional nuclear family and with it — in the view of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson — Western civilization.

This "enemy" comes from within. It's another Christian army, one whose vision of Jesus Christ and biblical truth could scarcely be more different than that of the religious right.

'Make-believe' Christians

"There is a movement that was begun in the distress that many people felt after Nov. 3, 2004, when a lot of conscientious people of faith, particularly Christians, woke up to say, "What's going on?'" says the Rev. Peter Laarman, an evangelical Christian and executive director of California-based Progressive Christians Uniting. "The words "Christian' and "conservative' seemed to have become oddly joined in the public discourse."

Like religious progressives nationwide, local pastor Nori Rost experienced President George W. Bush's re-election as an "outrage."

"It was, in some ways, like hearing the verdict in the Rodney King trial after we had seen the videotape of the cops beating him: Of course they were going to be convicted," she says. "And they weren't."

The day after the election, Mayflower Congregational United Church of Christ (UCC) pastor Robin Meyers, of Oklahoma City, delivered a fiery speech that excoriated Bush for claiming the Christian faith while acting contrary to its tenets. As examples, Meyers cited a litany of "immoral" behaviors, including prosecuting an unjustified war, giving tax breaks to the wealthy, dismantling environmental protections and using hatred of homosexuals as a wedge issue to turn out evangelical voters.

Bush and his ilk, Meyers told the peace rally, are "make-believe Christians."

"I have watched as the faith I love has been taken over by fundamentalists who claim to speak for Jesus, but whose actions are anything but Christian," he said. "I'm a great believer in moral values, but we need to have a discussion in this country about what constitutes a moral value. ...

"I'm tired of people thinking that, because I'm a Christian, I must be a supporter of President Bush, or that because I favor civil rights and gay rights, I must not be a person of faith."

Meyers' speech, which was widely disseminated over the Internet, became the basis of Why the Christian Right is Wrong: A Minister's Manifesto for Taking Back Your Faith, Your Flag, Your Future, published in May.

In Colorado Springs, New Life Church pastor Ted Haggard says the clash between believers is nothing new.

"In the body of Christ, there has always been a discussion of how faith impacts culture ... and where it's appropriate to legislate a faith position," says Haggard, president of the 30-million member National Association of Evangelicals.

"Any group can say, "They've co-opted my Jesus, they've co-opted my Bible, and they don't represent me.' That is the fundamental nature of Protestantism: It's so incredibly diverse."

Still, there's an undeniable edginess to the current conflict. Meyers' book joins a burgeoning list of volumes that sharply advocate a socially progressive spirituality. Other recent titles include The Hijacking of Jesus by Dan Wakefield, Thy Kingdom Come by Randall Balmer and Getting on Message: Challenging the Religious Right from the Heart of the Gospel, edited by Laarman.

Jim Wallis, a veteran of the evangelical left who in 1971 founded the social-justice ministry Sojourners, penned one of the best-known works. God's Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, embodies the movement's refusal to align with partisan ideology.

Wallis criticizes the right for defining "moral values" in terms of homosexuality and abortion, to the detriment of concerns over poverty, the environment, criminal justice and war. And he criticizes the left for an elitism that alienates many people of faith.

"I think people who are religious or, say, even spiritual, have not felt like there's much of a home on the left," Wallis told Mother Jones magazine. "Even those who aren't religious need to respect people of faith. The connection the world's waiting for is to connect the hunger for spirituality with passion for social change."

A group of Democratic leaders, including Tennessee Sen. Roy Herron, just this week tried to make a connection by launching FaithfulDemocrats.com. The mission of the "online Christian community" is to help readers "put their faith to work for the common good, holding our nation and the Democratic Party to their highest ideals."

Then there's the recently formed Network of Spiritual Progressives, whose statement of purpose challenges "the misuse of religion, God and spirit by the religious right." A committed faith, the group says, should manifest itself not in moral rigidity, but in activism aimed at bringing about peace and social justice, alleviating poverty and protecting the environment.

At the same time, the statement opposes "the many anti-religious and anti-spiritual assumptions and behaviors that have increasingly become part of the liberal culture."

"We will educate people in social-change movements to carefully distinguish between their legitimate critiques of the religious right and their illegitimate generalizing of those criticisms to all religions or spiritual beliefs or practices," the group pledges.

NSP's executive chair is the Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of the recently published The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right. The book includes a "spiritual covenant with America" that, among other things, supports the full inclusion of same-sex couples and their children in its vision of the American family.

The witness of Scripture

Such views are anathema to Christian conservatives.

Focus on the Family spokesman Tom Minnery, who often speaks for Dobson, declined to be interviewed for this story. But his boss — whose media ministry defines evangelical Christianity for millions of followers — is well-known for an arch-conservative morality that condemns homosexuality and has implied that same-sex relationships belong in the same category as polygamy, incest and bestiality.

Dobson has little patience with Christians who don't share his views. In 2004, he told the Daily Oklahoman that Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Catholic, "hates God's people" because he stands opposed to conservative Christian values.

Colorado Initiative 109 coordinators Dick and Sue Rehg were likewise impatient with dissenting believers during the summer petition drive. They reminded signature-gatherers that "the enemy" has many weapons — among them "timid pastors who are unwilling to stand firm on Biblical Truth and some Christians who have forgotten the command to be "salt and light' and believe their only biblical responsibility is to bring others into the kingdom and look toward heaven praying for Christ's return."

While they could hardly be described as timid, retired local First Congregational Church pastor Jim White and his successor, Ben Broadbent, have been similarly condemned. Conservative anti-gay Christian Rep. Dave Schultheis, R-Colorado Springs, once dismissed both men as "pseudo clergy" and their church as "a splinter group of Christians." Broadbent has a divinity degree from Harvard; White's is from Yale.

White became an icon among local religious progressives when he started performing same-sex unions at First Congregational in the mid-'90s — 10 years before the United Church of Christ formally endorsed such weddings. The decision fractured White's congregation, but ultimately, more were drawn to the church than left.

Today, the retired minister has a succinct explanation of the schism between conservative and liberal Christians.

"One group reads the Bible, and one group doesn't," he says. White points to some 2,000 biblical references to relieving poverty, compared to a handful about homosexual acts and nothing about sexual orientation as understood today.

He likens the current conflict over homosexuality to divergent views of slavery 150 years ago.

"People who were against slavery were folks who took a broad view of the Scriptures — namely that the witness of Scripture is for freedom, for the release of the captives, for the rights and dignities of people, and love extended to all," White says. "Other people, especially those in the South, read the Bible more literally, and there, the plain sense of the Bible was that slavery is acceptable to God ...

"So I can say, "Yes, there are these texts which look like they condemn same-sex behavior.' But the greater, larger, stronger witness in Scripture is always on behalf of the oppressed, the outcast, the marginalized. If you want to be faithful to the basic intent of the Scriptures, you've got to be identified with the outsider, and not the power."

Yet it's more comfortable, he notes, to be allied against an outsider than to look within.

"The religious right has always been moralistic," White says. "Usually, they've focused on genital sins, but there have been times when other issues dominated — like alcohol, Sunday store closings, divorce. ...

"But people on the religious right like to shop in Wal-Mart on Sunday, and they like their beer when they watch football, and they get divorced at higher rates than atheists do. So you can't condemn that; it won't sell.

"You can sell something that people are not. You can say, "The problem is outside; it's other than me.' Terrorists, communists, homosexuals, liberals — whatever it may be. But it's someone who's not me."

God and family

Some liberal Christians interpret the current rift among believers as the result of radically different responses to the anxieties of modern life.

"The religious right responds to modernity as a threat, and the best response is to look back to a time that seemed to be, at least in collective memory, idyllic and safe," Broadbent says.

That time was just after WWII, when America was an international hero, when the domestic economy prospered, when modern neighborhoods flourished and the traditional nuclear family became enshrined as "the acme of what reality and human relationships can and should be."

"That's why now, on the part of conservative Christians, you find these values that are pre-1960, pre-women's liberation," Broadbent says.

"A lot of this has to do with gender and sexuality: "If we can get back to that set ordering of gender roles, then we'll save marriage, and thereby save civilization.'"

The nostalgic appeal of a simpler time is seductive to countless anxious Americans; additionally, many find relief from the modern malaise of social isolation in the embrace of an evangelical megachurch. (A Harper's Magazine article last year described Haggard's New Life, with an estimated 14,000 members, as "America's most powerful megachurch.")

"People are facing tremendous stress in their personal lives over work and the stagnation of income," Laarman says. "Regular households are kind of under siege. Conservative Christianity is not only their answer for everything, but the megachurch environment is very comforting. It provides a whole welcoming social system."

There's no equivalent on the left.

"The response on the religious left to modernity is, "OK, this is the inevitable evolution of culture, history and humanity, and we're going to go with it, and put out in front of us this sense of something better,'" Broadbent says.

It's a vision grounded in idealism rather than nostalgia, and as such is neither as knowable nor as comforting as what the right promotes.

"The right is able to articulate this very clear view of a romantic past that can be reached merely by jettisoning everything that is incompatible with that past," Broadbent says, "while we're sharing an ideal that has not been realized."

Faith, politics and diversity

Yet some religious conservatives are breaking ranks when it comes to political activism.

The New York Times recently reported on an evangelical Minnesota pastor who — weary of being asked to throw his faith behind conservative causes and American jingoism — preached against politicization of the pulpit.

"When the church wins the culture wars, it inevitably loses," the Rev. Gregory Boyd told his congregation two years ago. "When it conquers the world, it becomes the world. When you put your trust in the sword, you lose the cross."

Boyd's sermons — which came in the middle of a $7 million fundraising campaign — prompted 1,000 of his church's 5,000 members to leave. The fund drive fell $3 million short, forcing the layoff of seven church staff; 20 Sunday school volunteers also left.

But Boyd told the Times he didn't regret speaking out. "It was a defining moment for us," he said. "We let go of something we were never called to be."

Conversely, NAE president Haggard embraces the nexus of faith and politics. "I believe in freedom of speech, and the free deliberation of ideas," he says. "And one of the great places that can go on in a wholesome environment is local churches."

Yet Haggard worries about the power of evangelical media ministers to project a seemingly monolithic political view.

"Don't buy into the idea that just because Jim Dobson or Jerry Falwell uses the media, they represent evangelicalism," he says. "They don't.

"The issue of representing the gospel ... is distorted by virtue of media ministers using the force of their personality and a bombastic presentation of current events in order to increase the size of their mailing lists, or who claim the sky is falling in order to raise money. That distorts the public view of where evangelicalism stands."

Haggard, for instance, has called on fellow evangelicals to protect the environment, and to work against poverty and racism — priorities that scarcely make a blip on James Dobson's radar screen.

Dobson and Haggard also part ways over same-sex marriage. Focus on the Family strongly opposes any legal recognition of gay couples.

While Haggard supports federal and state constitutional amendments that limit marriage to a man and a woman, he's more measured in his view of domestic partnerships.

"If the state wants to provide people who are in a different type of relationship the same benefits as marriage, that's up to the community," he says. "As a Christian, I would be hesitant to do anything that would deny people medical insurance or the ability to visit their partner in a hospital."

Haggard agrees with Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 Supreme Court decision that struck down anti-sodomy laws and, unlike Dobson, is generally cautious about codifying religious teaching in law.

"We believe within the church that sexuality should be only between a married man and a woman," Haggard says. "But there are many things that I teach in the church that I would never want integrated into civil law."

The 'rational' religious

To moderates, such diversity presents the hope that the distance between believers can be bridged. Locally, Vanguard Church pastor Kelly Williams is attempting to do just that.

"We're not trying to create an environment of tolerance," Williams says. "God didn't call us to tolerate each other; God called us to love each other. We're trying to say that we can find some common ground, that we can demonstrate respect and be in relation to one another. It's possible to hold opposing views and live out the values Christ taught us."

In April 2005, the church hosted a panel discussion on homosexuality that included participants from the local gay community, Focus on the Family and First Congregational Church. The evening was a huge success — 1,200 people attended and hundreds more had to be turned away — but Williams acknowledges that deep rifts remain.

"What's sad to me is the extreme bitterness — and maybe some of it is legitimate," he says. "But to me, the moral issues are secondary to building relationships with other people. Unfortunately, there's very little of that, and more the dos and don'ts."

Christian progressives are similarly focused on relationship-building, as they craft coalitions with those who share their social priorities, if not their theology.

"We're not going to do this litmus-testing thing," Laarman says. "There has to be room for people who understand Jesus in different ways."

He concedes that many secular progressives remain "phobic" about religion; they don't trust that faith mixed with politics can be a good thing.

"They need to be reminded there are religious people who are entirely rational," he says. "So the coalition [between religious and secular progressives] hasn't yet come together. I'm not saying it won't, but we're still in the baby steps. When you think about the infrastructure the religious right has built up — it's vast, wealthy, deep. There's nothing like that [on the left]."

Nori Rost has undertaken a similar mission locally. Rost left her largely gay Metropolitan Community Church congregation last year to start Just Spirit, an initiative to help progressives "reclaim the spiritual language of justice."

"We have refused to engage the religious right in spiritual values, and we've done that from a very good heart," Rost says. "Because we're progressives, we don't want to offend anybody, and we don't think we have the one right answer. ...We can't tell people, "If this legislation gets passed, then our country is going to hell in a handbasket, literally.' We can't say that, because we don't believe it."

But progressives can reframe the dialogue using the language and priorities of Jesus, Rost says. "Never once did He say, "Follow these laws or you're going to hell.' He always used the spiritual language of love and inclusion. ... He wanted people to feed the hungry, house the homeless, take care of the oppressed."

Even Christians who believe homosexuality is sinful have to recognize those imperatives, Rost says.

"If for some reason, the blood of Jesus were not enough to accomplish salvation, I don't think compulsive heterosexuality would be the addition. Maybe the blood of Jesus and feeding the hungry, or the blood of Jesus and housing the homeless. But it wouldn't be the blood of Jesus and heterosexuality that gets you into heaven."

For Christians, that's the heart of it, Broadbent says " the teachings of Jesus.

"The New Testament is our test of truth, and not only that, but Jesus, and not only that, but going even farther down to Jesus' sermon on the mount, which is a distillation of his teachings," he says.

"And it's all about a world turned upside-down ... He's saying that, while society will always elevate the rich and those who take care of themselves, God's spirit most closely dwells with those who are weakest, who are left out, who are summarily denied the rights that society gives.

"That's the essence of the gospel: that God is not an angry, strict father God, but a loving God."

— newsroom@csindy.com
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Crosswalk America Arrives in Washington, DC

John Shelby Spong September 13, 2006

It began on April 16, 2006, following a sunrise service in Phoenix, Arizona. It ended on September 3, 2006, at a celebration in the Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, DC. Between those two dates, more than five million steps were taken, at least three pairs of shoes per person were worn out, over 2,500 miles were registered and 12 states were crossed. These fascinating facts constituted just a few of the dimensions of the journey undertaken and completed by a group of people, who called themselves "Crosswalk America." The purpose of their walk was to lift up another face of Christianity that is quite different from the Christianity seen in the media today. They walked to publicize something they called the 'Phoenix Affirmations' that involve these principles:

• Christians must have an openness to other faiths
• Christians must care for the earth and its ecosystem
• Christians must value artistic expression in all its forms
• Christians must welcome and include all persons
• Christians must oppose the co-mingling of Church and State
• Christians must seek peace and end systemic poverty
• Christian must promote the values of rest and recreation, prayer and reflection
• Christians must embrace both faith and science

It was the hope of this group, who certainly put their bodies where their mouths were, to raise in the national awareness the presence of the progressive Christian movement throughout America. They were tired of having the Christian faith, to which each walker was deeply committed, constantly identified with the negativity of the anti-abortion movement and the anger of the anti-homosexual stance employed by so many who use the name Christian. They wanted to demonstrate that those who are committed to Christ would not set the citizens of this land against each other over differing religious beliefs and practices. Their desire was to turn the present course of Christianity in America away from its divisive pro-war, anti-female, anti-gay public face, where those who disagree are relegated to an emotional status somewhere between being excommunicated and burned at the stake, to a religion identified with the words 'love' and 'inclusion.' In every community entered across this nation, these walkers went to the local churches, identified themselves and shared their message. They worshiped in all kinds of settings, deliberately including the most fundamentalist. One was called 'The Jesus Baptist Church' in Springerville, Texas, that stated publicly their belief in the inerrancy of the Bible and the sinfulness of homosexuality, but they also worshiped in a Metropolitan Community Church in New Mexico, that was organized just for homosexual people who had been forced out of their churches by religious and biblical prejudice. One town that was not eager to entertain the walkers had only very conservative churches, yet they found a welcome in that town from a group of people who, tired of the religious atmosphere in their own community, had formed a "House Church" that met every Sunday. In the Texas town of Bovina, less than 30 miles from the town of Hereford, the names of which indicate the dominance of the cattle industry in Texas, they discovered that their stance on inclusiveness was not nearly so offensive to the locals as the fact that three of the walkers were vegetarians!

They received the apology from the mayor of Clovis, New Mexico, a town that advertises itself as the "most welcoming community in America," because the head of the ministerial alliance refused even to meet with the walkers much less to provide them with any hospitality. The mayor challenged the clergy there and insisted that the welcome of Clovis did extend to progressive Christians.

They were picketed at two services in St. Louis, Missouri, where they had been invited to share their story with two congregations. One was the Episcopal Cathedral in the heart of the city; the other was the Metropolitan Community Church in the suburbs. Interestingly enough, while the picketers carried a number of religious placards, the majority of their signs were anti-abortion/pro-life. Since the MCC congregation is made up entirely of homosexual persons, it represented the first time in the history of that denomination that they had been the target of anti-abortion picketers. Abortion is not frequently part of the life experience of gay people!

They were interviewed by the local press and appeared on local radio all along their route. One memorable interview occurred in Farwell, Texas, on a station known as "Jesus Radio." They went expecting to be attacked for not being fundamentalists but they found themselves embraced by the owner. "So what if we don't agree on every issue," he said, "You're out walking for Jesus and loving people!" This man could separate the wheat from the chaff. He admitted he would probably get a lot of criticism from his listeners for having this group on the show but, he said, "I will tell them that they are to run their churches and I will run this radio station!"

The Crosswalk America idea was born in the mind of Eric Elnes, a United Church of Christ/Congregationalist minister in Scottsdale, Arizona and an emerging national leader. A learned man with a PhD in Biblical Studies from Princeton, he had long chafed at the rising tide of fundamentalism in America. While on a retreat in Oregon, he wondered how people might respond if he planned a walk across America in the name of a progressive, scholarly and inclusive Christianity. When he returned to Arizona, he shared his idea with a few friends and found it excited all who heard about it. One person in particular who resonated with this dream was Rebecca Glenn, who had once been the moderator of Dr. Elnes' church. She was a very successful, high-ranking vice president in the information industry. Her husband was the head of an insurance company. She said that all her life she had been looking for some way to act out what she believed about Christianity and this possibility captured her imagination. She resigned her job to be part of it. Dr. Elnes and Rebecca Glenn became co-presidents of what they named Crosswalk America and the dream began to move toward reality. Rebecca Glenn's daughter Katrina also joined the walk and Rebecca's mother and father, Ray and Donna Gentry, drove the van that accompanied the walkers, carrying luggage and supplies and being available to transport any walker to safety should sickness or accident strike. Others on the march had equally exciting backgrounds. One man named Mark walked from Oregon to Phoenix just to hook up with the walkers before completing the Phoenix to Washington DC journey. Another named Merrill heard about it in nearby Phoenix and immediately joined the effort. "I've never been good at talking," he said, "but I am good at walking, so I'll let my feet talk for me."

Last April, I wrote a column about this walk before it began. That column can be found here. I followed their progress across America on the Internet with great interest and was delighted to accept their invitation to be the keynote speaker at their final celebration in Washington, DC.

Quite characteristically, the Foundry United Methodist Church, one of the District of Columbia's outstanding congregations, that has claimed among its members both Bill and Hilary Clinton, as well as Robert and Elizabeth Dole, and whose former pastor, Philip Wogaman was a well known and highly respected national religious leader, invited this group to hold the celebratory service in their sanctuary. To get a feel for the spirit of the event, my wife Christine and I joined the walkers on the last two days of their pilgrimage from Maryland into Washington. The walk on Saturday, September 2, was a bit less than 10 miles, but tropical storm Ernesto had passed through that area the previous night so we walked in a steady, misty drizzle and stepped over branches and leaves that had been ripped off trees by the wind. We worshiped the next Sunday morning at the Silver Spring Congregational Church and then, with perhaps 200 people, many from the Washington area, we walked from Meridian Park the final mile to 16th and P where we held a news conference on the steps of Foundry Church. The celebratory service began at 4:00 p.m. and ended at 6:30 p.m. It was as if something precious was being held tightly and no one wanted to let it go.

I listened as we walked those final two days to the life-changing stories of the walkers. A cameraman named Chris, who joined them to produce a documentary, told me of his distaste for Christians as he had experienced them in the past, but what it had meant for him to be embraced by this group as a non-believer. Another walker, named Meighan, who had left her job with the Seattle Symphony to join the walk said she had found her voice on this walk and now could talk about what Jesus meant to her without sounding like those religious people whose "Jesus talk" repelled her. She also found a new vocation into which she is now quickly moving.

Eric Elnes is completing a book on this experience that will be out from Jossey-Bass Publishing Company in about six months. Another religious voice, this one of tolerance and compassion, is now in the American religious conversation. Will the image of Christianity in America be changed by this wild imaginative act? Only time will tell. However, if nothing else happens except that a group of people found in Christianity in the year 2006 the power to motivate them to walk across America, to bear witness to what Christianity can be, it will be enough for me. For that means that this venerable faith tradition, to which I am so deeply committed, still has within its ranks those who can reform it and renew it to live in another century. I rejoice in that.

Note: Those who want more information on Crosswalk America may find it at www.crosswalkamerica.org. You may also correspond with its leadership by writing Eric Elnes or Rebecca Glenn at: Crosswalk America, 4425 N. Granite Reef Road, Scottsdale, Arizona, 85251. A congratulatory card or letter from you would mean a great deal to them.

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Disowning Conservative Politics, Evangelical Pastor Rattles Flock

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN, nyt, 7/30/06

MAPLEWOOD, Minn. — Like most pastors who lead thriving evangelical megachurches, the Rev. Gregory A. Boyd was asked frequently to give his blessing — and the church’s — to conservative political candidates and causes.

The requests came from church members and visitors alike: Would he please announce a rally against gay marriage during services? Would he introduce a politician from the pulpit? Could members set up a table in the lobby promoting their anti-abortion work? Would the church distribute "voters’ guides" that all but endorsed Republican candidates? And with the country at war, please couldn’t the church hang an American flag in the sanctuary?

After refusing each time, Mr. Boyd finally became fed up, he said. Before the last presidential election, he preached six sermons called "The Cross and the Sword" in which he said the church should steer clear of politics, give up moralizing on sexual issues, stop claiming the United States as a "Christian nation" and stop glorifying American military campaigns.

"When the church wins the culture wars, it inevitably loses," Mr. Boyd preached. "When it conquers the world, it becomes the world. When you put your trust in the sword, you lose the cross."

Mr. Boyd says he is no liberal. He is opposed to abortion and thinks homosexuality is not God’s ideal. The response from his congregation at Woodland Hills Church here in suburban St. Paul — packed mostly with politically and theologically conservative, middle-class evangelicals — was passionate. Some members walked out of a sermon and never returned. By the time the dust had settled, Woodland Hills, which Mr. Boyd founded in 1992, had lost about 1,000 of its 5,000 members.

But there were also congregants who thanked Mr. Boyd, telling him they were moved to tears to hear him voice concerns they had been too afraid to share.

"Most of my friends are believers," said Shannon Staiger, a psychotherapist and church member, "and they think if you’re a believer, you’ll vote for Bush. And it’s scary to go against that."

Sermons like Mr. Boyd’s are hardly typical in today’s evangelical churches. But the upheaval at Woodland Hills is an example of the internal debates now going on in some evangelical colleges, magazines and churches. A common concern is that the Christian message is being compromised by the tendency to tie evangelical Christianity to the Republican Party and American nationalism, especially through the war in Iraq.

At least six books on this theme have been published recently, some by Christian publishing houses. Randall Balmer, a religion professor at Barnard College and an evangelical, has written "Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America — an Evangelical’s Lament."

And Mr. Boyd has a new book out, "The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church," which is based on his sermons.

"There is a lot of discontent brewing," said Brian D. McLaren, the founding pastor at Cedar Ridge Community Church in Gaithersburg, Md., and a leader in the evangelical movement known as the "emerging church," which is at the forefront of challenging the more politicized evangelical establishment.

"More and more people are saying this has gone too far — the dominance of the evangelical identity by the religious right," Mr. McLaren said. "You cannot say the word ‘Jesus’ in 2006 without having an awful lot of baggage going along with it. You can’t say the word ‘Christian,’ and you certainly can’t say the word ‘evangelical’ without it now raising connotations and a certain cringe factor in people.

"Because people think, ‘Oh no, what is going to come next is homosexual bashing, or pro-war rhetoric, or complaining about ‘activist judges.’ "

Mr. Boyd said he had cleared his sermons with the church’s board, but his words left some in his congregation stunned. Some said that he was disrespecting President Bush and the military, that he was soft on abortion or telling them not to vote.

"When we joined years ago, Greg was a conservative speaker," said William Berggren, a lawyer who joined the church with his wife six years ago. "But we totally disagreed with him on this. You can’t be a Christian and ignore actions that you feel are wrong. A case in point is the abortion issue. If the church were awake when abortion was passed in the 70’s, it wouldn’t have happened. But the church was asleep."

Mr. Boyd, 49, who preaches in blue jeans and rumpled plaid shirts, leads a church that occupies a squat block-long building that was once a home improvement chain store.

The church grew from 40 members in 12 years, based in no small part on Mr. Boyd’s draw as an electrifying preacher who stuck closely to Scripture. He has degrees from Yale Divinity School and Princeton Theological Seminary, and he taught theology at Bethel College in St. Paul, where he created a controversy a few years ago by questioning whether God fully knew the future. Some pastors in his own denomination, the Baptist General Conference, mounted an effort to evict Mr. Boyd from the denomination and his teaching post, but he won that battle.

He is known among evangelicals for a bestselling book, "Letters From a Skeptic," based on correspondence with his father, a leftist union organizer and a lifelong agnostic — an exchange that eventually persuaded his father to embrace Christianity.

Mr. Boyd said he never intended his sermons to be taken as merely a critique of the Republican Party or the religious right. He refuses to share his party affiliation, or whether he has one, for that reason. He said there were Christians on both the left and the right who had turned politics and patriotism into "idolatry."

He said he first became alarmed while visiting another megachurch’s worship service on a Fourth of July years ago. The service finished with the chorus singing "God Bless America" and a video of fighter jets flying over a hill silhouetted with crosses.

"I thought to myself, ‘What just happened? Fighter jets mixed up with the cross?’ " he said in an interview.

Patriotic displays are still a mainstay in some evangelical churches. Across town from Mr. Boyd’s church, the sanctuary of North Heights Lutheran Church was draped in bunting on the Sunday before the Fourth of July this year for a "freedom celebration." Military veterans and flag twirlers paraded into the sanctuary, an enormous American flag rose slowly behind the stage, and a Marine major who had served in Afghanistan preached that the military was spending "your hard-earned money" on good causes.

In his six sermons, Mr. Boyd laid out a broad argument that the role of Christians was not to seek "power over" others — by controlling governments, passing legislation or fighting wars. Christians should instead seek to have "power under" others — "winning people’s hearts" by sacrificing for those in need, as Jesus did, Mr. Boyd said.

"America wasn’t founded as a theocracy," he said. "America was founded by people trying to escape theocracies. Never in history have we had a Christian theocracy where it wasn’t bloody and barbaric. That’s why our Constitution wisely put in a separation of church and state.

"I am sorry to tell you," he continued, "that America is not the light of the world and the hope of the world. The light of the world and the hope of the world is Jesus Christ."

Mr. Boyd lambasted the "hypocrisy and pettiness" of Christians who focus on "sexual issues" like homosexuality, abortion or Janet Jackson’s breast-revealing performance at the Super Bowl halftime show. He said Christians these days were constantly outraged about sex and perceived violations of their rights to display their faith in public.

"Those are the two buttons to push if you want to get Christians to act," he said. "And those are the two buttons Jesus never pushed."

Some Woodland Hills members said they applauded the sermons because they had resolved their conflicted feelings. David Churchill, a truck driver for U.P.S. and a Teamster for 26 years, said he had been "raised in a religious-right home" but was torn between the Republican expectations of faith and family and the Democratic expectations of his union.

When Mr. Boyd preached his sermons, "it was liberating to me," Mr. Churchill said.

Mr. Boyd gave his sermons while his church was in the midst of a $7 million fund-raising campaign. But only $4 million came in, and 7 of the more than 50 staff members were laid off, he said.

Mary Van Sickle, the family pastor at Woodland Hills, said she lost 20 volunteers who had been the backbone of the church’s Sunday school.

"They said, ‘You’re not doing what the church is supposed to be doing, which is supporting the Republican way,’ " she said. "It was some of my best volunteers."

The Rev. Paul Eddy, a theology professor at Bethel College and the teaching pastor at Woodland Hills, said: "Greg is an anomaly in the megachurch world. He didn’t give a whit about church leadership, never read a book about church growth. His biggest fear is that people will think that all church is is a weekend carnival, with people liking the worship, the music, his speaking, and that’s it."

In the end, those who left tended to be white, middle-class suburbanites, church staff members said. In their place, the church has added more members who live in the surrounding community — African-Americans, Hispanics and Hmong immigrants from Laos.

This suits Mr. Boyd. His vision for his church is an ethnically and economically diverse congregation that exemplifies Jesus’ teachings by its members’ actions. He, his wife and three other families from the church moved from the suburbs three years ago to a predominantly black neighborhood in St. Paul.

Mr. Boyd now says of the upheaval: "I don’t regret any aspect of it at all. It was a defining moment for us. We let go of something we were never called to be. We just didn’t know the price we were going to pay for doing it."

His congregation of about 4,000 is still digesting his message. Mr. Boyd arranged a forum on a recent Wednesday night to allow members to sound off on his new book. The reception was warm, but many of the 56 questions submitted in writing were pointed: Isn’t abortion an evil that Christians should prevent? Are you saying Christians should not join the military? How can Christians possibly have "power under" Osama bin Laden? Didn’t the church play an enormously positive role in the civil rights movement?

One woman asked: "So why NOT us? If we contain the wisdom and grace and love and creativity of Jesus, why shouldn’t we be the ones involved in politics and setting laws?"

Mr. Boyd responded: "I don’t think there’s a particular angle we have on society that others lack. All good, decent people want good and order and justice. Just don’t slap the label ‘Christian

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