The Rev. Richard Cizik, the
National Association of Evangelicals lobbyist who was forced to resign after expressing support for same-sex unions, is forming a new organization that will embrace a far broader agenda than the issues long claimed by the conservative Christian movement.
In his first published interview about his new venture, Cizik said yesterday that the new group will focus on the "new evangelicals," or "new-agenda evangelicals" as he variously called them -- those that, polls show, are eager to see the evangelical movement expand beyond opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage and embryonic stem cell research.
"What I'm in essence doing is creating the future," said Cizik. "I'm attempting to provide a way for the new evangelicals to be more effective."
....Yesterday, in an interview after a speech on caring for the environment to the InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington, Cizik wouldn't discuss his departure from the NAE. He said his new organization is not intended to compete with his former employer.
Before his ouster from the NAE, Cizik had increasingly earned enemies in the conservative evangelical movement for pushing to broaden the evangelical agenda, particularly into the area of "creation care," which argues that there is a biblical mandate to take care of the earth. Cizik repeatedly teamed up with faith leaders outside of conservative Christianity to warn that climate change was a crisis that urgently needed attention.
