Media aren't understanding the Christian Left

Here's an important fact-check point for media commentators: Being an evangelical does not make someone a conservative.

Writing for Nightline, Jake Tapper and Dan Morris discuss efforts by some evangelicals to extend the church's focus from traditional conservative  causes like opposing gay rights and abortion access, to include issues like global warming and poverty.

Not surprisingly, those making these efforts are being pushed out of the organizations they're trying to take in new directions. Tapper and Morris portray this is as a split in the conservative evangelical community.

News flash! The conservatives aren't split at all. This divide is not between Right and Right, but between the Right and the Left in Christianity. The story is the growing number of evangelicals and post-evangelicals who identify themselves with something other than the GOP.

The story is the growing awareness in the church of our responsibility to the whole message of Christ, not just to areas of morality that he never addressed himself.

Jesus never said a word in the gospels about abortion or homosexuality. But he said plenty about caring for the weak and the outcast, the poor and the downtrodden. He talked about a revolution of values that utterly transformed society so the poor were fed and the wealty were sent away hungry.

Do those sound like conservative talking points to you? Conservative voices have a place in the church, but stop pretending that they speak for all of us. They don't, and the truth is that they never did.