Now when Job’s three friends heard of all these troubles that had come upon him, each of them set out from his home—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They met together to go and console and comfort him…. They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.

—Job 2.11, 13

On Sunday night some friends from church organized a wake keeping for my dad. People came to our house, brought food, socialized (or, fellowshipped since this was a church thing), and listened as Carey and I shared about my dad. Then they prayed for us and we sang “Amazing Grace,” a song Dad loved. My friend explained to me that a wake keeping is more of a Catholic tradition usually done overnight with the body of the deceased present. Ours was much shorter and without Dad’s physical presence, but still wonderfully meaningful. Carey and I still cannot communicate how loved we felt. I haven’t experienced in Southern California the immediacy of our loss so clearly as on Sunday night. These are friends who didn’t know my father, but still honored and loved him by serving us. It is a gift to have friends who will sit with you in your grief. Thank you.

David D. Kirkpatrick recently wrote an article in The New York Times Magazine declaring that the once-solid and powerful evangelical voting bloc in the US is showing signs of splitting with the GOP for numerous reasons and splintering amongst itself for still other reasons. Kirkpatrick’s story, “The Evangelical Crackup,” is a fascinating read, and at 10 pages, can address the subject in a depth usually not found in most print stories.

I had several reactions to the story. Because I am an evangelical who never voted for George W. Bush and has opposed much of his positions and know many other evangelicals who share my disagreement with his policies, I find it refreshing that the media has finally heard Jim Wallis’ declaration that he’s made for the past few years that, “The monologue of the Religious Right is over.” Though I’m not one to make the mainstream media into the bogeyman, I do recognize that it has largely portrayed evangelicals as a monolithic group in terms of its party loyalties and social priorities. Many leaders of the Religious Right, such as James Dobson or Jerry Falwell, have made grandiose claims in which they assume to speak for evangelicals and the media let them. Kirkpatrick claims that the Southern Baptist Convention has been, “the core of the evangelical movement.” Southern Baptists are many and powerful, but I do not think they make up the core of evangelicalism theologically or socially, but perhaps I’m naive in looking through my Fuller and California evangelical lenses. Kirkpatrick discusses the influence of pastors such as Bill Hybels and Rick Warren as if these are new kids on the block despite the fact that these men have pastored two of the largest and most influential churches (at least in ecclesial terms) in the US for many years.

Kirkpatrick shows much dissatisfaction with the president and GOP amongst evangelicals. Some like Dobson find dissatisfaction in Bush and his possible successors for not having followed their wishes enough in social reform—Dobson has publicly vowed to vote for a third-party candidate if the GOP nominates a pro-choice candidate like Rudy Guliani. Other evangelicals, like many other citizens in the US, suffer from war fatigue. Still other evangelicals have decided that the issues of abortion and protecting marriage are far too narrow a platform. They are beginning to embrace environmental, economic, and foreign policy matters as moral issues as well and they are dissatisfied with the GOP’s answers to these issues. It seems some evangelical leaders are worrying that as younger evangelicals begin addressing other social matters, that we are in for another mainline-evangelical split in which some embrace the Social Gospel and others embrace a gospel focused on salvation. I’m not so worried about a new split. Many of the evangelicals I know and read speak of a full gospel, one in which salvation is more than a decision that gets one into Heaven when they die—it is about discipleship and loving God and neighbor and participating with God is doing in the world here and now.