One day as I walked from my office on East Capitol Street in Washington, DC, to catch the Metro at Union Station, I passed by the Supreme Court building before crossing Constitution Avenue.   When I was in the street I happened to glance left, and in the distance I saw a mass of people (I later heard it was 75,000, but Park Police estimates usually varied from those of events organizers) heading in my direction.  “Ah,” I thought, “It’s the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.”

Every year in January there was a rally on the mall, then a march to the Supreme Court by those who desired a rollback from rights affirmed in that landmark case.  Without fail, there appeared in the following day’s Washington Post a photo of out-of-control Bible-waving Christians, nose-to-nose, screaming invective, and looking for all the world as murderous as the road-ragers settling their scores on the Beltway.  In the days after the march, trash cans around the Hill overflowed with discarded placards featuring full-color photos of aborted fetuses.

For thirty years or more the ruling has stood.

Christian conservatives finally are waking up to the fact that some among their number have gone too far in the execution of their political activities.  Many liberal Christians share the same disease.  Writers and signers of “An Evangelical Manifesto” decry the diminishment of the Gospel by those caught up in the win/lose scenario of big-time politics.  They even admitted, “All too often we have attacked the evils and injustices of others while we have condoned our own sins.”

The old guard among conservative Christians still clings to the notion that abortion and marriage, as they define it, are the crucial issues that must be addressed by people of faith.  Younger evangelicals are looking for a wider witness, including concern for the environment, economic justice, and issues of war and peace.

There is no suggestion in the Manifesto that people of faith should not be politically active, but the slash and burn approach practiced by some has worn thin with thinking folks, and has not endeared practitioners to the general public.  I might add, it also has seriously debilitated the general perception of what it means to be a Christian.  We’re actually not all racist, misogynistic hate-filled homophobes.  Nor are we all Republicans.

Absent from the list of Manifesto signers are Richard Land, public policy guru of the Southern Baptist Church (“I wasn’t asked to sign.”), and James Dobson of Focus on the Family.  Some suspect that if the heavyweights among the vocal Religious Right aren’t included the document won’t carry water with the regular folks.

I’m not so sure.  The scriptures show pretty clearly that God raises up new leaders, even from unlikely sources, when more faithful direction is needed.

And, by the way, Pentecost is upon us.