"When I return from [trips abroad] and read profiles in Time and Newsweek about U.S. evangelicals, I feel sad. Many Americans view evangelicals as a monolithic voting bloc obsessed with a few moral issues. They miss the vibrancy and enthusiasm, the good-newsness that the word evangelical represents in much of the world. Evangelicals in Africa bring food to prisoners, care for aids orphans, and operate mission schools that train many of that continent's leaders. There, and in Asia and Latin America, evangelicals also manage micro-enterprise loan programs that allow families to buy a sewing machine or a flock of chickens. About a third of the world's 2 billion Christians fall into a category to which the word evangelical applies, a large majority of whom live outside North America and Europe.

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Many U.S. evangelicals, of course, share in that vibrancy. We staff many of the 500 Christian agencies that have sprung up since World War II to combat social problems. Megachurches based on the 17,000-member Willow Creek Community Church near Chicago and Saddleback Community Church in Southern California are replicating in major cities. A new, hard-to-classify emergent church has evolved to minister to the postmodern generation. In fact, one recent survey revealed that 93 of the top 100 rapidly growing churches in the United States identify themselves as evangelical.

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Evangelicals, according to the New York stereotype, will propagandize and proselytize. You can't trust them. They're judgmental. They have an agenda.

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Until the 1960s, evangelicals were as likely to be aligned with the Democratic Party as the Republican. Evangelicals led the fight for women's suffrage and the abolition of slavery?and also the opposition to it. (Revivalist George Whitefield in the 18th century justified slavery, and Southern Baptists formed over the right of missionaries to own slaves.) [etc]

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In short, evangelicals have taken political stances that sometimes appear quixotic, sometimes heroic, and often contradictory.

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Increasingly, U.S. evangelicals have allied themselves with conservative politics. Many rallied around Ronald Reagan, the nation's first divorced President, who rarely attended church and gave little to charity, while viewing with suspicion Jimmy Carter?a devoutly religious President who taught a Baptist Sunday school class throughout his term in office.

To complicate matters, many evangelicals in places like the United Kingdom and New Zealand align themselves with liberal political parties, believing their Christian commitment enjoins them to seek government help for the poor and to oppose war. And in China, many whom we would identify as evangelical see no contradiction in their support for the world's largest Communist government.

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After spending several decades working within evangelicalism, I would summarize its essential tenets in three statements:

This is our Father's world. Evangelicals believe that God created the world and lavished it with care. Any residue of goodness on the planet reflects God's "common grace": the sun shines and rain falls both on those who believe and on those who don't. All pleasure, including beauty, sexuality, art, and work, are God's gifts to us, and we look to God's revelation for the pattern in best ordering our desires so that in them we may find fulfillment and not bondage.

As an expression of love for the world, God entered its history (the Incarnation) and gave the Son's life as a sacrifice for its redemption (the Atonement). Its emphasis on Jesus and the Cross separates Christianity from all other religions, and evangelicals hold fast to that distinctive.

In the mystery of the Trinity, God was "in Christ reconciling the world unto himself" (the apostle Paul's words). Evangelicals recognize that the world has been invaded by evil and believe that Christ began a process of reclamation. In that thrust the church plays a crucial role that will culminate in a final victory.

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Through the power of the Spirit, followers of Jesus advance God's kingdom in the world. Karl Barth also said, "To clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world." Yes, and in recent years evangelicals have increasingly recognized the corresponding need sometimes to unclasp those hands and lead the uprising against that disorder."