The Christian Century

The tomb of Archbishop Oscar Romero is all but hidden in the basement of the national cathedral in San Salvador. Though the memorial was recently beautified to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1980 assassination, no signs point to its location. Of course, San Salvador is not known for being tourist friendly; it has few signs pointing to anything.

When evangelical pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren announced that he would make a preaching mission to North Korea next year, it raised eyebrows in the conservative religious community.

North Korea, after all, is a keystone in President Bush’s “axis of evil” and is called by the State Department and human rights groups a gross violator of religious freedom.

It’s been said that a fundamentalist is an evangelical who got mad. Fundamentalists in 1920, angry that their fellow conservative believers did not fight back, fought against moderates and liberals in their own denominations as well as in other churches and in the nation. Their politically minded descendants do the same these days, using their kind of biblical literalism as a weapon.

When Tim King organized a sleep-out in Chicago last year, 300 students from across the Midwest came to raise awareness of homelessness by gathering signatures for a petition, holding up signs and even “sleeping out” on the Magnificent Mile.

Warning of millions of potential deaths worldwide from climate change, a new network of evangelical leaders has launched a campaign for government and grassroots action to reduce global warming. The network’s formation symbolizes a growing divide among evangelicals on how—or even whether—to address climate change.

Breaking rank with leading evangelical groups that have chosen to stay out of current immigration debates, a new coalition has formed to represent more than 20 million Hispanic evangelicals and to denounce Congress’s handling of immigration issues.

List-making is a peculiarly modern obsession. The top 20 basketball teams. The top ten best sellers. Ten ways to trim your thighs. Time magazine recently listed its choices for the 25 most influential evangelicals.

Time magazine has named “The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America,” leaving out Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson but naming author Tim LaHaye of the Left Behind series, GOP Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Michael Gerson, a White House speech writer.

Yielding to increasing pressure to show the Arab and Islamic worlds (and much of Europe) that he is sensitive to the plight of the Palestinian people, President George W. Bush recently declared his commitment to implement a “road map” to an Israeli-Palestinian peace. Meanwhile, a powerful domestic countermovement capable of undermining the U.S. initiative is well under way.