Evangelical Voters: A Call for Change
As conservative evangelicals assess the outcome of the 2008 election, a leading spokesperson is offering some advice for the movement’s future.
Mark DeMoss, who heads an Atlanta-based PR firm for religious organizations, writes in a guest post on Beliefnet, “I have an idea for a new project for evangelicals: we could lead the charge to get rid of negative political advertising, irritating “push” calling, and generally mean-spirited, petty campaign behavior…”
In addition to demanding civility from candidates, DeMoss urges evangelicals to stop demonizing their opponents while claiming perfection in their own candidates — which, he claims, causes them to “lose credibility and legitimacy.”
DeMoss calls on evangelicals to be more generous with campaign contributions and to support qualified candidates who share their values, as opposed to simply voting for politicians who belong to their particular religious denomination. In his Beliefnet post, he writes:
Along the campaign trail I met so many people, including pastors and religious leaders, who could tell me only that their choice for president was a “good Christian” or “one of us.” This, in my view, is a dangerously inadequate approach to choosing our highest leaders. We don’t choose people for any other positions using this test; why would we apply it to one of the most important positions on the planet?
DeMoss, who identifies himself as an “evangelical Southern Baptist,” worked for Mitt Romney (a Mormon) in the GOP primary campaign, and voted for John McCain in the general election.
Tags: 2008 election, evangelicals
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Jonathan Serrie is an Atlanta-based correspondent for FNC. He was
stationed in Macedonia during Operation Allied Force and in Uzbekistan
during Operation Enduring Freedom. 
I agree with basic premise of this blog. I do think we ‘evangelicals’ seem very elite ourselves. We can implement some change as long as we never compromise our basic core beliefs! We must stay pro life and never accept less than we know to be truth as we believe it to be.
We need never be afraid of exercising our free speech in calling out an opponent on any policies that run counter to God’s Word — that are sinful. DeMoss’s nice-guy approach to politics is just not going to happen. We already have too many hypocrites in the Church for large segments of the populations to take Christians seriously, evangelical or otherwise. Sorry, Mark. I’d take Jerry Falwell back in a heartbeat, by the way. A man’s man who called it like it was and was not afraid to preach on sin. I’m not too sure about his son, Jonathan. Jesus was about dividing. He wanted unity in his church, but not at the expense of sound doctrine. We need to fix the Church first. Kick out the illuminati elitists and let politics take care of itself.
The church is apostate. It has no words of wisdom to offer anymore. We can’t look to them. We kill millions of babies, promote every evil in the world, spit in God’s face and then ask God to lead us and bless us and to save us from all the ills that have befallen us. We have allowed every man made evil false religion into our country and called them good and promoted them. We look to ignorant men and government to save us. None of them can solve the problems that corruption and power hungry men have brought upon us. They just can’t do it even if they would. The most dangerous place you can be now days is sitting in a church pew listening to wolves in sheeps clothing preach lies, deceiving many citizens of this land. We are reaping what we have sown as a nation. We accepted the big lie of liberalism years ago without consulting the one true and living God and his Word. This article shouts this out loud and clear even though it didn’t mean to.. Salvation is of the Lord and not of man. It is by Grace through faith in the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, who died in our place that we might have forgiveness of sins and live. It looks like our prayer for today should be, besides have mercy on me a sinner, ….”Oh God I didn’t know my people were so wicked. In judgement remember mercy.” The truth is the one thing that the News Media refuses to print. It is too yucky.