{"id":1178,"date":"2009-01-16T16:34:13","date_gmt":"2009-01-16T16:34:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2009\/01\/evangelicals-progressives-anno.php"},"modified":"2009-01-16T16:34:13","modified_gmt":"2009-01-16T16:34:13","slug":"evangelicals-progressives-anno","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/01\/evangelicals-progressives-anno","title":{"rendered":"Evangelicals, Progressives Announces Common Agenda"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON (RNS) An evangelical-progressive coalition has developed an agenda aimed at moving beyond past divisions on hot-button social issues to seek policy changes on abortion, torture and other issues.<br \/>\nAfter two years of discussion, they have concluded that their &#8220;Come Let Us Reason Together&#8221; agenda will include reducing abortion, protecting employment rights of gays and lesbians, renouncing torture and immigration reform.<br \/>\n&#8220;We offer the president-elect and leaders of Congress on both sides of the aisle a road map on how to put an end to the culture wars, to move the country beyond the ugliness and stagnation of distrust and divide,&#8221; said Rachel Laser, culture program director of the Third Way, a Washington progressive think tank, which spearheaded the coalition.<br \/>\nEvangelical leaders who do not condone gay marriage said they could nonetheless support greater workplace protections for gays and lesbians, provided there is an exemption for faith-based employers.<br \/>\n&#8220;Though I focus on the ideal for marriage as between one man and one woman, &#8230; I also believe that each American citizen has the right to earn a living without discrimination,&#8221; said Florida megachurch pastor Joel Hunter.<br \/>\nThe abortion reduction component of the agenda includes preventing unintended pregnancies, supporting pregnant women and expanding support for adoption. The opposition to torture includes a call for the U.S. to forbid any interrogation methods it does not want used against Americans. The immigration reform component calls for secure borders, an &#8220;earned path to citizenship&#8221; and a guest worker program that fills jobs but doesn&#8217;t create a disadvantage for American workers.<br \/>\nThe effort has been welcomed by organizations such as NARAL Pro-Choice America and People for the American Way, and religious leaders such as Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism and Fuller Theological Seminary President Richard Mouw.<br \/>\n<em>By Adelle M. Banks<br \/>\nCopyright 2009 Religion News Service.  All rights reserved.  No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON (RNS) An evangelical-progressive coalition has developed an agenda aimed at moving beyond past divisions on hot-button social issues to seek policy changes on abortion, torture and other issues. After two years of discussion, they have concluded that their &#8220;Come Let Us Reason Together&#8221; agenda will include reducing abortion, protecting employment rights of gays and&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Evangelicals, Progressives Announces Common Agenda<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/01\/evangelicals-progressives-anno\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Evangelicals, Progressives Announces Common Agenda\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"WASHINGTON (RNS) An evangelical-progressive coalition has developed an agenda aimed at moving beyond past divisions on hot-button social issues to seek policy changes on abortion, torture and other issues. After two years of discussion, they have concluded that their &#8220;Come Let Us Reason Together&#8221; agenda will include reducing abortion, protecting employment rights of gays and&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/01\/evangelicals-progressives-anno\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-01-16T16:34:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"nsymmonds\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Evangelicals, Progressives Announces Common Agenda","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/01\/evangelicals-progressives-anno","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Evangelicals, Progressives Announces Common Agenda","og_description":"WASHINGTON (RNS) An evangelical-progressive coalition has developed an agenda aimed at moving beyond past divisions on hot-button social issues to seek policy changes on abortion, torture and other issues. After two years of discussion, they have concluded that their &#8220;Come Let Us Reason Together&#8221; agenda will include reducing abortion, protecting employment rights of gays and&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/01\/evangelicals-progressives-anno","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2009-01-16T16:34:13+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/01\/evangelicals-progressives-anno","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/01\/evangelicals-progressives-anno","name":"Evangelicals, Progressives Announces Common Agenda","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-01-16T16:34:13+00:00","dateModified":"2009-01-16T16:34:13+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/01\/evangelicals-progressives-anno#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/01\/evangelicals-progressives-anno"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/01\/evangelicals-progressives-anno#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Evangelicals, Progressives Announces Common Agenda"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}