In Armageddon for the Religious Right? - They've climbed to the top of Mount Power. But from here on out, it may be all downhill for America's ayatollahs., Creative Loafing and and Mother Jones writer John Sugg chronicles Evangelical motion towards a reassertion of the Social Gospel tradition and recognition that many leaders of the Christian right have seriously distorted scientfic issues for political gain.

Global warming and other issues that relate to our stewardship of the planet seem finally to have struck a chord among evangelical Christians.

The ministers, academics and lay activists who, along with Hunter, signed the global warming statement encompassed a wide range of beliefs, including 39 evangelical colleges, the Salvation Army and a cross-section of major denominations and churches. As innocuous and as Christian as such a statement sounds, it was a pointed rebuke of the leadership of the religious right and the Republican Party. Up until the declaration, political preachers had dismissed environmental concerns. In many cases, after all, their power relies heavily on claiming the Second Coming is coming soon: Why worry about Mother Earth when you, Tim LaHaye, Ralph Reed and a few others are about to be raptured up to heaven? Such blitheness fits well with the corporate wing of the GOP, which places profits above prophesies of peak oil and environmental disaster from global warming.

A religious schism among evangelicals began. Those who refused to sign the global warming statement included America's foremost ayatollahs: Jerry Falwell; the Rev. D. James Kennedy of the mammoth Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in South Florida; James Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family; the Rev. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention; Richard Roberts, president of Oral Roberts University; Donald Wildmon, chairman of the American Family Association; and the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition.

"There's no surprise at who didn't sign," said Jim Jewel of Atlanta, spokesman for the evangelical environmentalists. "What we did was signal that the evangelical movement has a new cause, beyond just abortion and gay marriage, to human rights. Evangelicals had been depicted as one voice. This let people know we have more than one voice."

In today's religious terms, that's almost heretical. But it's a heresy that hit home with people such as Tim Wise.

The environment isn't the only wedge issue that is chipping at the GOP religious base. Although Republicans and the religious right have stridently opposed stem-cell research -- asserting that using the cells equates with murder -- three of four Americans support lifting bans on the procedure that could find a cure to Alzheimer's and other illnesses. More significantly, 62 percent of fundamentalists and almost 80 percent of moderate and liberal Christians favor stem-cell research, according to a poll by the Civil Society Institute.

Another interesting aspect of Sugg's piece concerns the suggestion thart certain issues are not in flux :  gay marriage and abortion.