How politically unified are American evangelicals? In The Future of Faith in American Politics, David P. Gushee argues that popular stereotypes depicting American evangelicals as “right wing” or “conservative” distort reality. While a large percentage of evangelicals are political conservatives (and, indeed, form a key component of today's Republican Party), there is also a highly vocal evangelical “left” and a growing evangelical “center.” Indeed, Gushee's purposes in writing this book are to describe the evangelical center, document its growing importance, and urge his fellow evangelicals to join him in the center.

Gushee knows his subject well, having worked for a variety of evangelical institutions across the political spectrum and developed close personal ties with key evangelical leaders including Jim Wallace, Richard Cizik, Ron Sider, and Jim Skillen. Yet neither the evangelical “right” nor the evangelical “left” escapes Gushee's criticism. According to Gushee, the evangelical right has focused too narrowly on issues of family and personal morality, neglecting broader issues of social justice. The right also has permitted itself to become too closely identified with the Republican Party. On the other hand, Gushee criticizes the evangelical left for its near-pacifism on issues of war and peace as well as its lack of enthusiasm for the right's abortion and family issues positions.

Gushee argues that there is growing disillusionment among evangelicals for the flawed positions of both ideological extremes and a growing willingness to adopt a more centrist stance. It is here that he faces some exceedingly difficult conceptual and empirical challenges. Chief among these challenges is defining the concept of “center.” In the context of the contemporary American ideological spectrum, center implies some middle position (perhaps a compromise) between left and right. In this sense, a centrist would be best described as a political moderate. But Gushee seems to mean something quite different when he refers to the evangelical center (described in great detail on pages 88–92), which appears to be an amalgamation of the “best” (in Gushee's opinion) of the political right and left. That is, the evangelical center is centrist only in the broadest understanding of the term. Thus, Gushee associates such conservative positions as concern about morality in the mass media, opposition to gay marriage, rejection of sex outside heterosexual marriage, and opposition to abortion and such liberal positions as opposition to racism, friendliness toward an internationalist vision, opposition to global warming, and gradual embrace of a just peacemaking ethic with his evangelical “center.” Finding a convincing theological (or, for that matter, political) basis for pursuing such a diverse agenda is exceedingly difficult. Even a scholar as thoughtful as Gushee struggles to do so.

Herein lies the most significant problem for someone like Gushee who is aiming to convince evangelicals to join the center. One's perspective matters. For example, to a person on the political right, Gushee's passionate discussion of global warming (or human-made climate change) might well be viewed as mere leftist propaganda. Moreover, it doesn't help that Gushee can be quite dismissive of opposing perspectives. Gushee has little patience with global-warming skeptics such as Calvin Beisner “and his ilk.” He attacks their “revanchist, die hard” skepticism, finding their doubts to be “fundamentally theological” (178). Gushee's rather scornful approach seems ill-suited to convince evangelical skeptics to support his view.

A second problem with Gushee's analysis is empirical. Gushee aims to convince readers that there is a growing movement of evangelicals toward the center. His supporting evidence, however, is largely limited to case studies of evangelical elites. Gushee provides considerable and convincing evidence that growing numbers of evangelical leaders are rejecting extreme right positions and embracing broader political and social agendas. This is noteworthy. It does indeed matter that prominent evangelical leaders such as the editor of Christianity Today and the head of the National Association of Evangelicals are increasingly open to more centrist perspectives on a range of issues. But are the millions of evangelicals sitting in church pews also moving toward the center? Answering this question is exceedingly important as well, since it would tell us much about the internal unity, political strength, and future political direction of American evangelicalism. In short, survey data of evangelical laity would be very useful.

These concerns, however, do not detract fundamentally from the value of Gushee's work. Few available works do a better job of delineating the political fault lines in contemporary American evangelicalism. And even readers who have doubts about Gushee's centrist approach will not doubt either his sincerity or his evident love for his religious tradition. One cannot be certain if Gushee has correctly identified the “future of faith in American politics.” But there is little doubt that he takes his readers on a well-intentioned, informative, and thoughtful ride.