Republican Party Bleeding Support from Evangelicals.

The dam has cracked. More and more, even within the right-wing Southern Baptist Convention, people are more and more reluctant to identify themselves as members of the Religious Right. Even though they are still fervent about preaching their gospel of fundamentalism to the masses, they are more and more reluctant to identify themselves as members of the Republican Party. In fact, there are plenty of young evangelicals who have declared that they are voting for Barack Obama this fall.

The Journey, a megachurch of mostly younger evangelicals, is representative of a new generation that refuses to put politics at the center of its faith and rejects identification with the religious right.

They say they are tired of the culture wars. They say they do not want the test of their faith to be the fight against gay rights. They say they want to broaden the traditional evangelical anti-abortion agenda to include care for the poor, the environment, immigrants and people with H.I.V., according to experts on younger evangelicals and the young people themselves.

"Evangelicalism is becoming somewhat less coherent as a movement or as an identity," said Christian Smith, a sociology professor at the University of Notre Dame. "Younger people don’t even want the label anymore. They don’t believe the main goal of the church is to be political."

More and more, Evangelicals are getting troubled by the power and tactics of the Religious Right. For instance, in 2000, here in a local House race, right when the Republicans were at the height of their resurgence, the Democrats picked up a seat in part because the Missouri Republican Party put flyers in church parking lots claiming that the Democrat was going to hell because he was pro-choice. That caused a backlash even in this born-again part of the country, and the Democrat picked up a seat in a year that was a strong Republican year here in Missouri. These trends were initially isolated to local races like this one, but they have now blazed out into the open.

Now, 47% of born-again Christians who are under the age of 40 think that the political efforts of the Religious Right pose a problem for this country. These people are more likely to want to build a Habitat for Humanity home on a mission trip to Florida rather than picket outside abortion clinics. Other evangelical groups are meeting in taverns where they hope to reach out to people. This sort of live and let live mentality means that you are more likely to see people who frequent both the bar and the church -- even the local preacher on occasion.

This younger generation of evangelicals is much more likely to reject the Religious Right, support Obama, and consider politics a peripheral issue. They see the Religious Right as being too insular -- shutting themselves in instead of reaching out and preaching the gospel of Christ to the community. And that is true -- a lot of megachurches have their own self-contained communities, churches, schools, and social groups, all wrapped into one.

Others are rethinking the meaning of "pro-life." While they may still be anti-gay and anti-abortion, many younger evangelicals are just as likely to vote for Obama because he is stronger on the environment because they see environmentalism as a pro-life issue as well. They might also see it as a matter of good stewardship, seeing God as having created this world and giving us the responsibility to take care of it. After all, if you love God, then you love his creation and want to take care of it.