Ever since the dramatic Republican sweep of evangelical voters
in 2004, many new, well-funded initiatives have arisen targeting
evangelicals for liberal political initiatives. Potentially at
stake is the political allegiance of America’s largest religious
demographic.
One of the latest efforts is the National Latino Evangelical Coalition,
founded in 2010, which announced a new national voter registration
drive on January 10 at a Miami press conference. A number of
prominent liberal Anglo evangelicals have endorsed it. And the
coalition claims support from major evangelical denominations like
the Church of the Nazarene and the Assemblies of God not ordinarily
associated with liberal political causes.
Although Republicans typically get 30-40 percent of
Hispanics as a whole, evangelical Hispanics more often vote
Republican, especially in presidential elections. The coalition
reports that about 7 million U.S. Latinos are evangelical.
Unmentioned by the coalition is that Latino evangelicals tend to be
strongly conservative on social issues like abortion and same-sex
marriage, much more so than Catholic Hispanics.
It’s unsurprising that the coalition, when citing its key
issues, omitted abortion and marriage. Instead it cites “poverty,
comprehensive immigration reform and education equality.” Although
mostly evading specifics, the coalition favors liberalized
immigration policies and seems to favor conventional liberal big
government programs on poverty and education. “We’re going to vote
our conscience and we’re going to vote around these three issues,”
promised one coalition official at the Miami event. In the
coming weeks the coalition will also debut voter registration
events in various key swing states.
Evidently the coalition will be rhetorically bold. “We’re
in favor of immigration reform and we want it now,” emphatically
declared Rev. Gabriel Salguero, the coalition’s president,
according to Fox News Latino about the Miami event.
Salguero claims to represent 3,000 Hispanic evangelical
congregations. According to the coalition’s website: “We believe in
respect for the rule of law, but we also believe that we are to
oppose laws and systems that harm and oppress people, particularly
the most vulnerable.” For starters, the coalition wants the DREAM
Act, which would legalize the children of illegal immigrants. And
it wants to overturn immigration law enforcement measures in
Arizona and Alabama. Ultimately, it wants a full path for
legalization of illegals as advocated in several failed federal
legislative attempts at Comprehensive Immigration
Reform.
But immigration is not the coalition’s only issue, of
course. In November, Rev. Salguero joined with labor unions at a
Living Wage New York City Campaign rally at famously liberal
Riverside Church. It was largely an angry jamboree against New York
Mayor Bloomberg, who opposes the Living Wage demand aimed at city
contractors. “They say evangelicals are often on the wrong side of
things,” Salguero noted in the majestic gothic sanctuary built with
largesse from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. as a temple for Social
Gospel Protestantism. “But I want the unions and the church to
know. There’s some new evangelicals rising,” he announced to
applause and whoops from the placard wielding audience of 2,000
activists. “And we’re going to be on the right side of
history.”
Salguero recalled to the approving crowd that although a
Pentecostal minister, he had been educated at theologically
revisionist Union Seminary, another 20th century beneficiary of
Rockefeller dollars to promote liberal theology. “I’m not confused,
I’m just integrated,” he described to more applause, the audience
maybe unaware that Union has fallen from its previous prestigious
heights of influence.
“Anybody that’s read the Bible has seen this before,”
Salguero sermonized, remembering Pharaoh’s “exploiting labor” in
ancient Egypt. Appealing to Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists
as he pivoted off the Exodus story, he proclaimed, “We’re not going
to stand for less straw and more bricks!” And the pastor asked from
the pulpit: “Are there any midwives in the house?” He further
queried of the frenzied crowd: “What do midwives say? They say,
‘Push!’” With evidently the Hebrew midwives who protected baby
Moses in mind, Salguero again shouted to his rapt and cheering
listeners: “Push! Push!,” imploring them to become “midwives for
justice.”
At the more recent Miami event, a Pentecostal young adult
minister explained the coalition’s voter drive is aimed especially
at young evangelicals. “I believe our young people are getting
ready to dive into biblical justice,” she
opined. “They’re ready to go outside the four walls of the
church and do whatever it takes to grow in Christ and do what
Christ calls us to do.”
Prominent Anglo endorsers of the coalition, as advertised
on its website, include Ron Sider of Evangelicals for Social
Action, Florida megachurch pastor (and spiritual advisor to
President Obama) Joel Hunter of the National Association of
Evangelicals, Evangelical Left ethicist David Gushee of the New
Evangelical Partnership, welfare state lobbyist David Beckmann of
Bread for the World and Reformed Church in America chief officer
Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, who’s long been prominent within the
National Council of Churches.
How successful will the National Latino Evangelical
Coalition be in shifting Latino evangelicals leftward? Most Latin
evangelical congregations are non-political and very theologically
conservative. Whether a pastor trained at an ultra-liberal seminary
and aligned with the old Religious Left will be a successful
organizer is dubious.
The officials of mostly Anglo, conservative evangelical
denominations backing the coalition probably believe their
exertions will enhance spiritual outreach among Latinos. But
substituting the traditional Gospel with leftist politics was a
poison pill among declining Mainline Protestants, whose elites also
disastrously sought to be on the “right side of history.” Rank and
file evangelicals, Anglo and Latino, are unlikely to resonate with
fervid appeals to political entitlement. But as with earlier
generations of once ascendant Mainline Protestant elites, image
conscious evangelical elites may unwisely seek to align their
churches with “history.”
