Nadia Bolz-Weber represents a...Christianity...that merges the passion and life-changing fervor of evangelicalism with the commitment to inclusiveness and social justice of mainline Protestantism. She’s a tatted-up, foul-mouthed champion to people sick of being belittled as not Christian enough for the right or too Jesus-y for the left.

the traditional family-values issues have been blunted—not in their importance to individuals but as weapons in the political theater. What’s motivating religious conservatives now, says Tony Campolo [a sociologist, pastor, and confidant of President Bill Clinton], is a vision of America as God’s own special country, and free-market capitalism as crucial to the nation’s flourishing. Everyone who doesn’t see things this way, according to this perspective, is a socialist or a communist—“Pinkos who are subverting America under the auspices of the president of the United States,” he says. “The marriage between evangelicalism and patriotic nationalism is so strong that anybody who is raising questions about loyalty to the old, laissez-faire capitalist system is ex post facto unpatriotic, un-American, and by association non-Christian.” Support for Obama, in other words, equals an abandonment of American principles equals godlessness. And the spokesman for this movement, adds Campolo, is the Fox News commentator Glenn Beck. “There’s no question in our minds about that.”

a dozen moderate Christian leaders...meeting in Washington, D.C. [re] their colleagues on the religious right...delivering a potent new message about God and country, of fear and domination...resonating among Christians and conservatives nationwide.