Move over, religious right. The faithful's quest to shape a Christian political agenda is about to get a whole lot broader. Christian publishers are welcoming the pivotal election year of 2008 with a slew of titles intended to equip voters to make nuanced, faith-based decisions at the ballot box. In most cases, they're targeting hungry believers who've come to doubt that Jesus' concerns would be limited to abortion, gay marriage, terrorism and judgeships.

It's an appetite that's arguably been growing for several years. After "values voters" tipped the scales for President George W. Bush in 2004, readers fed on the liberal evangelical views of Sojourners magazine publisher Jim Wallis (InProfile, this issue), whose perfectly timed God's Politics (HarperOne, 2004) became a surprise bestseller. Since then, Democrats have further warmed to God talk. Republicans have sounded a populist chord in their evangelical base. Defining the content of faith-driven politics has, within just a few years, become anybody's game.

As foundations rumble, Christian publishers see the opportunity to help readers ponder how best to exercise deep convictions in the public square. On the table is everything from global warming and health care to questions about party allegiance, political philosophies and the proper tone for public conversations. In publishing, it's time to find out what resonates with readers.

A New Emphasis

Sensing a long-term trend, some Christian publishers are tailoring entire lines to satisfy a readership ravenous for political ideas. One example is Moody Publishing, branching beyond its traditional focus of presenting the gospel as simply as possible. With Good Intentions: Nine Hot-Button Issues Viewed Through the Eyes of Faith (Feb.), economist Charles M. North and journalist Bob Smietana are kicking off a new line of books analyzing issues and culture. They don't advocate a particular agenda, but they open the floodgates by naming gas prices, CEO pay and child care as a few of many pocketbook issues for values voters to weigh with biblical and economic principles in mind.

"There is some fatigue when it comes to religion in politics, but I think the fatigue is toward the charged language—the anger on both sides," says Andy McGuire, acquisitions editor for issues and culture at Moody. "This book is not politically charged. It's not angry. It's saying, 'Hey, let's think about these things. Let's approach these issues in pragmatic ways.' "

Gospel Light is taking an uncharacteristic step into the campaign fray. Its Regal imprint delves into politics for the first time with two visions for a kinder, gentler evangelical agenda. Red Letter Christians: A Citizen's Guide to Faith & Politics (Feb.) brings a case for action on 17 issues from Tony Campolo, a longtime fixture on the evangelical left. And in A New Kind of Conservative (Jan.), evangelical megachurch pastor Joel Hunter warns religious conservatives they stand to lose their clout if they don't adopt a new ethic that prioritizes the environment and poverty relief. Regal is marketing Hunter's book as "a must-read for any evangelical or political conservative who wants to maximize their influence before the 2008 elections."

"There's a feeling out there that we need to move beyond the bitter partisan politics we've been entrenched in," says Alex Field, associate publishing director at Regal. Campolo, for example, "is reluctant to say, 'I'm a Republican' or 'I'm a Democrat.' He always says, 'Name the issue first, and I'll tell you where I stand.' "

Are Christians All Republicans?

As much as Christians might be craving a centrist third way, many don't know where to begin, especially if their viewpoints aren't easily categorized as "liberal" or "conservative." That's the assumption behind three titles that aim to lead where major parties, ever attentive to their true-believer bases, seldom go.

In How to Be Evangelical Without Being Conservative (Zondervan, Mar.), Roger E. Olson explains why it's wrong to assume evangelicals must be Republicans. He traces an ideology of laissez-faire capitalism to secular scholars who accept social Darwinism's premise that the strong eventually overcome the weak. Evangelicals don't accept that assumption, Olson says, and their doctrine of universal sin suggests they should be wary of unregulated enterprises. Yet they routinely support GOP politicians who profess a hands-off approach to business and an unwarranted confidence in corruptible private charities. More political independence, Olson suggests, would help evangelicals stay true to their own beliefs.

To encourage independent thinkers, Methodist megachurch pastor Adam Hamilton probes what such a path might entail in Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White (Abingdon, Apr.). His approach is rooted in spirituality. Political issues get discussed only after two big sections on the challenge of walking with God in a culture that's quick to oversimplify the challenges at hand. Journalist Marcia Ford, author of We the Purple (Tyndale, Mar.), can apparently relate. She laments partisan messages that she routinely hears in evangelical worship services and urges people of faith to self-identify as "independents"—a legitimate option that doesn't mean "undecided."

"Christians on both sides [of the aisle] are rethinking their party's platform and wondering if voting independent would allow them to more accurately vote their values," says Tyndale senior acquisitions editor Carol Traver.

Calls for a broader, faith-driven agenda in Washington, D.C., are coming from multiple points on the Christian spectrum. Jossey-Bass features the ideas of two Gen-X, Catholic political activists—Alexia Kelley and Chris Korzen—in A Nation for All: How the Catholic Vision of the Common Good Can Save America from the Politics of Division (May). An agenda based on Catholic social teachings could unify an otherwise divided country, they argue. United Methodist theologian Delwin Brown aims to reinvigorate a tradition of progressive activism in What Does a Progressive Christian Believe? A Guide for the Searching, the Open and the Curious (Church Publishing/Seabury, Mar.). Readers will also get primers on the agendas of politically progressive Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism and Islam in the Whose Religion? series, due to debut from the New Press in June.

Certain writers offer an informed glimpse into the 2008 landscape of religiously charged politics. Jim Wallis, in The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America (HarperOne, Jan.), takes readers inside the world of religious agenda-making with anecdotes, calls to action and signs of hope that his unchanging dreams are gaining traction. But perhaps the most thorough analysis of evangelical players and their shifting stage comes from Christian ethicist and political activist David Gushee in The Future of Faith in American Politics: The Public Witness of the Evangelical Center (Baylor Univ., Jan.). He cites evidence for evangelicals positioning themselves as centrists (he counts himself as one). They're against abortion and gay marriage; for policies that are "green," for human rights, supportive of diplomacy rather than warfare; and beholden neither to the GOP nor the Democrats. "If he's right," says Carey Newman, director of Baylor University Press, "then whoever gets it wins the [presidential] election."

Baylor is sending review copies to political bloggers, a technique that "was cheap and it worked" in the past for Baylor, according to marketing manager Jennifer Hannah. Gushee is also having "quiet conversations" in Washington, D.C., with congressional staffers. The goal, Newman says, is "for one of the [presidential] nominees to say something like, 'as David Gushee has said in his new book....' "

Down but Not Out

Despite all the pleas for centrism, the religious right is far from finished. It's releasing its own voter guide: How Would Jesus Vote? A Christian Perspective on the Issues (WaterBrook, Jan.). In it, the late pastor D. James Kennedy makes biblical arguments for preserving the death penalty, dismissing global warming as a consequence of human behavior and being leery of government-run health care. With opening chapters dedicated to method and subsequent ones focused on specific issues, How Would Jesus Vote? relies on the same basic structure as many of the year's other Christian voter guides. But the agenda is wildly different.

Several of Kennedy's themes also run through The Soul of a Nation (Thomas Nelson, May) by James Robinson. With a chapter-a-day series of 30 reflections, prayers and recommended scriptural passages, Robinson reaffirms a familiar agenda for "this Christian nation." He warns the faithful not to follow in the way of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican whose plans will reportedly lead to "lower taxes and less spending, combined with homosexual marriage, abortion on demand, strident environmentalism, and excessive gun control." This book, bathed in patriotic illustrations, shows that some in the religious right see Christian publishing as a promising tool for sustaining their message beyond 2008.

Others see this moment as ripe for some big picture rethinking. According to centrist and activist Ronald Sider (InProfile, this issue), evangelicals have never honed a political philosophy akin to that which guides Catholics or even mainline Protestants. To build an intellectual framework upon biblical principles and to quell the folly of applying biblical verses out of context, Sider has written The Scandal of Evangelical Politics: Why Are Christians Missing the Chance to Really Change the World? (Baker Academic, Feb.). Sider spends 78 pages exploring the process of crafting Bible-based, responsible public policy. Another 163 pages frame a political agenda, but even that is offered as a case study in method.

"The Scandal of Evangelical Politics provides a road map to help Christians of all political persuasions to develop a relevant and just political philosophy," says Baker Academic senior acquisitions editor Robert Hosack.

Sider has company in getting back to basics. In Beyond Left and Right: Helping Christians Make Sense of American Politics (Baker Academic, Feb.), political scientist Amy Black delivers a refresher course on civics and American governmental institutions as guiding context for applying one's faith in political arenas. Another political scientist, Steve Monsma, takes readers on a thought journey similar to Sider's in Healing for a Broken World: Christian Perspectives on Public Policy (Good News/Crossway, Feb.). He devotes nearly half the text to the significance of principles such as sin, redemption, justice and solidarity. His work, along with Sider's and Black's, numbers among the voter guides most likely to show up on reading lists at Christian colleges.

And for readers ready to ask what being political really means, Shane Claiborne (InProfile, this issue) and Chris Haw offer some humorous and serious thoughts in Jesus for President (Zondervan, Mar.). "Jesus would make for a bad president," they write. Among the problems: he wouldn't like being commander-in-chief of the world's largest military. Yet he was political in challenging the social order. Today's Christians can follow suit through acts "of resistance to the corporate global economy" by, for instance, making more of the goods they need to live.

Christian publishers are ready to inform and guide wide swaths of the American electorate, as the variety of their approaches attests. To see which ones succeed, wait 'til November.

What Does History Tell Us?
As 2008 serves up a fresh brew of politics mixed with religion, publishers are gearing up to feed curious observers, who are apt to wonder: has it always been this way?

The question has drawn top historians and observers of American religion into the marketplace with timely books. Each mines a few select episodes in American history for a lens to help make sense of today's political environment.

God in the White House: How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush (HarperOne, Jan.) by Barnard College historian Randall Balmer is a breezy survey of nine administrations that makes this point: a candidate's faith has been a perennially poor predictor of what kind of president he or she will be.

"I see books like Balmer's as an important offshoot of the recent religion and politics trend in publishing," says HarperOne publisher Mark Tauber. "Call it a second wave of writers who are not leading movements or issuing critiques of the current state of affairs, but doing the historical work to see just where and when politics and religion have worked together for better or worse."

Purdue University historian Frank Lambert takes a longer view in Religion in American Politics: A Short History (Princeton, Mar.). He recalls the roots of major themes and fault lines—such as faith vs. science and competing theologies within Protestantism—that gave rise to enduring political currents. Final chapters show how the rise of the religious right and the possible re-emergence of a religious left might reflect movements ebbing and flowing in America for well over a century.

Theological seeds sown around 100 years ago are today producing a harvest of political action, according to Markku Ruotsila, a Finnish historian of American religion. In The Origins of Christian Anti-Internationalism: Conservative Evangelicals and the League of Nations (Georgetown Univ., Feb.), Ruotsila examines how dissenters in a post-WWI push for international cooperation were applying religious purity codes to international relations. He says this approach to politics continues to fuel "national public debates about American 'empire,' unilateralism and exceptionalism in the age of a war on terrorism."

For those who yearn for a purer time in the history of religion in politics, Beliefnet.com CEO Steve Waldman has bad news: it's always been messy. In Founding Faith: Providence, Politics and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America (Random, Mar.), he finds the founders struggled mightily to protect religion from state tyranny. Yet the church-state tensions never fully relaxed, even in their times.