Reads like good news for the nation, if you ask me. I've often wondered about this, since I know a lot of evangelical Lutherans (hey, I live in Lutheranville here in Minnesota), and they aren't the same brand of evangelical as the southerners are at all. So reading about these Wisconsin folks rings much more true to my experiences with evangelical Christians, who are not the equivalent of fundamentalist Christians, despite the widespread stereotyping of them as the same sorts of people. They really aren't.

While many evangelical Lutherans and evangelical Catholics around here are anti-abortion, and Minnesota had a very strong and powerful Christian led anti-abortion movement in the 1980s and 1990s, that has waned considerably. I am sensing that, in the Upper Midwest anyway, that the fundamentalist Republicanism of the Bush sort has passed it's peak, or will with this election.

The change, I think, isn't because anyone has fought these folks, or gotten them to "change over from the dark side" sorts of crap. I think they themselves have come to realize they have much more in common with other Americans than the political evangelista wing of the Republican party wants them to recognize. Finally, I see more and more of them becoming disillusioned with the pettiness, political games, etc in their religious communities, and drifting away from what they once felt they needed desperately and so intensely embraced: the isolation of their religious communities that set them too far apart from other people in their communities.

Very intersting article.