Tony Campolo, well known for stirring up debate in American Evangelical circles, last week wrote an article “Is Evangelicalism Headed for a Split?” in which he writes, among other things:

[…]

Finally, there is a political divide insofar as a significant majority of Evangelicals operate under the assumption that if you are not committed to the Republican Party, you can hardly call yourself an Evangelical, and perhaps you even ought not to call yourself a Christian. I have heard, as all of us have, certain voices who have suggested that to be a Christian is, post facto, to be a Republican, given what the Republican Party stands for and what the Democratic Party stands for. Needless to say, there are a number of Evangelicals who disagree with that kind of judgment.

[…]

Campolo’s article is him trying to wire together a multi-sided argument about a coming split in “Evangelicalism”, an idea about which one commenter over at Patheos concisely and dryly dismisses:

J.L. Schafer says:
Jan 17, 2013 @ 10:03 at 10:03 AM
I doubt that the evangelical movement is unified enough to have a dramatic split.

Anyway, what strikes me as noticeable about the Campolo piece is that other American “evangelicals” are indeed being put off by the increasingly, stridently, political lurch to the right of many congregations and religious leaders.

I think the NRA blow-back on their tin-eared approach to the Sandy Hook massacre is adding fuel to this division. A great many right-wing religious writers have lamented that they couldn’t keep some “Christians” and “Evangelicals” from voting for Obama (because in these writers minds Obama == Evil.)

The best thing we can do, I propose, is to continue mocking and prodding the far right as they become increasingly narrow in their outlook. By demonstrating how truly atavistic or extreme many of these wingnuts are others Americans, who frankly are either too busy or too lazy to pay attention, will begin to notice that there are people out there claiming to speak for them who are in nature reprehensible.