evangelicals saving the day

In contemplating what I want to spend the majority of my life doing, I've sort of settled on trying to improve the lives of people whose lives are really hard. The only way that's going to happen in a sustainable way in this century is if the U.S. government starts giving away more money. And the only way that is going to happen is if politicans' constituents allow them or force them to open up the governments coffers a little wider. Like many people who have read the Bible and have taken to heart the teachings of Jesus, I have long been dissappointed by the fact that evangelicals have chosen to focus on issues of sexuality and reproduction for a poltical agenda rather than concern for the poor and the oppressed. But, in contemplating specific career paths, in the back of my mind I wondered if I couldn't find a way to try to steer the evangelical agenda toward a more economic focus, one that still had a clear Biblical and spiritual grounding. If that could be done, global development would have a real chance of becoming a high priority for the U.S. government.

If David Brooks (conservative columnist for the NYT) is right, this might actually be happening. At the risk of hyperbole, this could be one of the most important political shifts in history.