PRIMARILY ORGANIZED BY the Evangelical left, a summit called “Religious Faith, Torture and Our National Soul” convened in Atlanta on September 11 to inveigh against the Bush administration’s allegedly pro-torture policies.
Evangelicals for Human Rights President David Gushee was the summit’s chief organizer. A Christian ethicist at Mercer University, Gushee helped persuade the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) last year to endorse his evangelical manifesto against torture. The manifesto, along with intensified interest in Global Warming, has marked the NAE’s shift to the left. Gushee and other leaders within NAE also represent the increasingly predominant Evangelical Left within evangelical academia, where the traditional Religious Right is shunned as an embarrassment.
