Some of His Best Friends.

In the current issue of Columbia Journalism Review, religion reporter Mark I. Pinsky poses this quiz to readers: Name a "single evangelical Christian who is not a national religious leader, a country music star, a politician, or an athlete."

If you failed as miserably as I did, you get Pinsky's point: Too many of us living outside the red states know evangelicals only by their media and pop culture caricatures, and not as neighbors and friends. As a result, we tend to view evangelicals as monolithic when, in fact, "they hold surprisingly diverse views on many issues."

Pinsky writes from experience: a self-described "left-wing Jew" raised in New Jersey (he grew up near Camden and did a fellowship at Princeton), Pinsky covers religion for the Orlando Sentinel. It's Pinsky's job to report on houses of worship, but it's outside the job-at his kids' school, at Scouts, in the bleachers at ball games-that he encounters evangelicals "simply as people, rather than as subjects or sources of quotes for my stories."

I spoke with Pinsky over the weekend, partly because I was humbled by how little I knew about the evangelical world, and mostly because he wrote what is undoubtedly the second greatest book on religion ever, "The Gospel According to the Simpsons: The Spiritual Life of the World's Most Animated Family "(he's also written a follow-up, "The Gospel According to Disney: Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust," also published by Westminster John Knox Press).

First, definitions: An evangelical Christian is one who actively tries to convert others to his or her faith. Pinsky relies on figures suggesting there are roughly 50 million adult evangelicals, and their political center of gravity has tended to swing to the suburbs of the Sunbelt.

It's that proselytizing impulse-what evangelicals call the Great Commission-that Jews probably fear the most and understand the least, said Pinsky. Evangelicals must share their faith with everyone, and are not targeting Jews. "It's true that for them if a Jew were to convert it is like the brass ring-that's the reality because of our historical relationship with them and Jesus," he said.

When neighbors and strangers approach Pinsky, he has a ready answer: "Thank you, but I already have a `faith home.' It's nicer to say that than `don't bother me.'" When the person is particularly aggressive, Pinsky might say, "When the messiah comes, one of us is going to be very surprised and I am willing to wait. That generally stops them short."

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