Evangelical Leader Irritated by Stereotypes in Post-Election

"[Lisa] Miller [of Newsweek] seems to think that the election returns have reminded us all of something that had been forgotten by many in the media - that we white Evangelicals are not the only significant religious presence in American life. I follow the media quite carefully, and had not noticed that we evangelical types were being treated as if we were the only game in town," said Richard J. Mouw, president of Fuller.

In Miller's "A Post-Evangelical America," published days after the presidential election, she outlines how Obama shed light on the diverse religious groups that helped him on the path toward his victory on Nov. 4.

"As an evangelical I hadn't realized that I had been 'post-ed' as a result of the Obama victory," Mouw said in a commentary in Washington Post and Newsweek's "On Faith" forum.

White evangelicals put George W. Bush in the White House and have been the go-to religious group for the media, dominating headlines over other faith groups. But this election season, Miller points to the millions of other religious voters who flexed their muscles this election season, supporting Obama and making their own headlines.

Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners and a progressive evangelical, commented to The San Francisco Chronicle: "Black and Latino Christians led the surge this time. They were engaged by the Obama campaign, and they were in alliance with a whole new generation of the faithful, of young believers - evangelical, Catholic, mainline Protestant, Muslim, Jewish - who joined together with different people of faith and color. Around 30 percent of young evangelical voters came out for Obama. That's very significant."

Mouw said he was further irritated by a column in The New York Times that praised the Americans who made Obama the country's first black president but painted a grim picture of those who supported gay marriage bans in several states. "We have to continue to combat those horrible folks in California and elsewhere who, having been duped by the Bush administration's 'demagogic exploitation of homophobia,' supported the ban on same-sex marriages," Mouw paraphrased from the column.

This is not a time to "ridicule" those who hold conservative values or to silence them in the public debates, Mouw stressed, but it is a time to realize that evangelicals are not monolithic and occupy different places on the political spectrum.

And some, including those who did not vote for Obama, he said, are also celebrating the election of America's first black president.

"If there is a lesson to be learned about evangelicalism these days, it is not that we have been banned from the public square because of the Obama election, but that we are not as easily stereotyped as the Lisa Miller and others want to think," Mouw stated.

"We have come to an evangelical faith as people from a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and economic levels," he continued. "We represent every 'tribe and tongue.'"