Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism

9. The Chicago Declaration and a United Progressive Front

CHAPTER 9 The Chicago Declaration and a United Progressive Front We acknowledge that God requires justice. But we have not proclaimed or demonstrated his justice to an unjust American society. Although the Lord calls us to defend the social and economic rights of the poor and the oppressed, we have mostly remained silent. —The Chicago Declaration In the 1960s politically progressive evangelicals were “scattered, lonely, and frustrated,” according to Reformed philosopher-theologian Richard Mouw. They came from diverse traditions, nurtured different impulses, and pursued disparate projects. In the early 1970s, however, they began to find each other. In 1970 African American evangelical Bill Pannell traveled to Costa Rica to tell Latin Americans about the black experience in the United States. In 1972 Mouw helped organize the annual Calvin College Conference on Christianity and Politics, which brought prominent neo-evangelicals to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where they learned about the political implications of Dutch Reformed theology. Anabaptist Ron Sider and Samuel Escobar of the Latin American Theological Fraternity brought their visions of global justice and simple living to InterVarsity circles. John Alexander, who continued to preach racial justice, added contributing editors to The Other Side’s masthead. Wheaton College students joined Jim Wallis at rallies against the Vietnam War. Senator Mark Hatfield gained headlines as a contrarian. Sharon Gallagher and the Christian World Liberation Front enjoyed growing prominence as practitioners of a third way of intentional spiritual community. Carl Henry, Chicago Declaration and Progressive Front 171 already well known, continued to repudiate quietism in the pages of Christianity Today. Provoked anew by animus against Richard Nixon, the continuing war in Vietnam, and persistent racial strife, progressive evangelicals of different types began to make common cause. Ron Sider, who had spent the last decade living in poverty-stricken sections of New Haven and Philadelphia, emerged as the driving force for this evangelical left coalition. Holding policy positions in the mainstream of Democratic politics and speaking the language of mainstream evangelicalism, he stood opposed to Nixon’s reelection. In 1972, Sider organized Evangelicals for McGovern. In 1973, he brought the growing movement together in Chicago. On Thanksgiving weekend at the downtown YMCA hotel, Henry, Alexander, Wallis, Gallagher, Mouw, Escobar, Sider, and thirty others rallied for social justice. There they drafted the Chicago Declaration, a striking document that condemned social, not just personal , sin. The national press, including the Washington Post, began to take note of the evangelical left’s growing numbers, proliferating literature, and political activism. Sojourners associate editor Jim Stentzel, voicing the feistiness of an evangelical left on the move, declared, “If the connection between the Bible and the nation’s alienation is made, things will start popping. Fifty million ‘born-again’ Christians could be one hell of a political force.” Spoken ahead of the Moral Majority, Stentzel’s words betrayed not a trace of irony. Up for grabs, evangelical politics looked as if it might take a progressive shape. I In August 1972 Messiah College professor Ron Sider opened a letter that asked for donations toward Mark Hatfield’s reelection campaign for the U.S. Senate. After sending in some money, Sider asked himself, “Why can’t we do the same thing for the Democratic presidential candidate, George McGovern?” In September, Evangelicals for McGovern (EFM) was born among a small circle of evangelical social activists gathered in Sider’s Philadelphia home. As the effort turned national in the following months, many in both the press and the evangelical communities took note. Not only was this the first explicitly evangelical organization in postwar American politics officially to support a presidential candidate, EFM was endorsing a liberal Democrat. 172 Chapter 9 Progressive evangelicals found McGovern’s political ideology far more congenial to their own reformist impulses than Nixon’s. “We like the way McGovern is getting his feet dirty. He’s concerned about hunger, war, poverty and ecology,” explained Wheaton professor Robert Webber to a Newsweek reporter. Jim Wallis, who served as a regional manager for McGovern’s campaign, called the candidate “a first ray of hope in the midst of widespread despair.” Official EFM documents praised McGovern’s evangelical background, his religious rhetoric, and his stances on school busing, poverty , and the war. “A rising tide of younger evangelicals,” asserted an early news release, “feels that the time has come to dispel the old stereotype that evangelical theology entails unconcern toward the poor, blacks and other minorities, and the needs of...