Are Evangelical Christians Really That Conservative?

According to David French in this piece at The Corner on National Review Online, maybe not so much.
Yes, on the so-called push-button issues of abortion and same-sex marriage, the Evangelical Christian are the strongest against abortion and same-sex marriage.
But on economics, the environment and illegal immigration, I hate to agree with Mr. French.
Look at the Southern Baptist Convention.
The world's largest and most traditionalist Baptist denomination will support a "clean" version of the so-called DREAM Act. It would be the nightmare act, but that is not the point. The point is that traditionalist Baptists are now on record supporting the children of illegal aliens gaining a "path to citizenship" if they meet certain criteria. The DREAM Act is but a back-door amnesty that is to wear down opponents to so-called comprehensive immigration "reform".
Again, the largest Protestant Christian denomination in the United States is essentially condoning the illegal actions of parents. Would they be so cavalier if this was some other issue?
The fact is that this issue is overtaking all denominations. And I hate to be so cynical, but I believe that all see new church members at the expense of national law and identity.
On the issue of the environment, I believe that we conservatives often times just express the opposition to the Globaloney Warming agenda and do not point out the fact that we conservatives do care about the environment and emphasize conservation over environmental extremism.
Say what you want about former President Theodore Roosevelt. In a lot of ways, he was a big-government kind of guy. But one thing he was spot on about is the creation of the National Parks system.
The problem has become the abuse of the National Park system. It has been used to create more National Park land to please a minority of people that make wild claims not based on science but emotional positions. The other problem is what appears to be a blurring of the difference between the two.
Conservation is a realistic approach to concerns about the way we are with the gift of land and sea that the Good Lord has given us. But, we conservatives need to speak to this as the best approach to being good stewards rather than essentially going back to the Stone Age as the radical environmentalists would like.
On the economy, I think that again there are many Evangelical politicians that do not really understand how the free market works and does not work.
One example is the Rev. Mike Huckabee.
As the Republican governor of Arkansas, he presided over some of the largest tax hikes ever imposed on the state. The excuse for this was that court decisions led to these tax hikes. He really did not want to do them. However, the Rev. Mike did think that another former governor, Massachusetts Republican Mitt Romney, should have ignored the Massachusetts supreme court decision on same-sex marriage.
But the fact is that the Rev. Mike did not mind increasing the size of government for what he liked. Rather than truly having a limited government that lived within it's means, he was a tax and spender.
Thus, it is a herculean task to educate, especially young people in general, that the free market and a free economy is the best way to lift all boats.
But where Mr. French is spot on is young Evangelical Christians in higher education.
As noted, some of those that these young Evangelicals are exposed to are theologians like Ron Sider, Shane Claiborne, and the new self-proclaimed leader of the Evangelical Christian left, Jim Wallis.
That is not a problem in and of itself. But the problem is when these young Evangelicals are not exposed to those who are more traditionalist. That talk about personal salvation. About good ol' fashioned sin. About what our responsibility is to one another. That is why there is a problem and Mr. French is right to point it out.
But I am an optimist.
As soon as these people get a taste of the real world, particularly in economics, they will come to understand that the pie-in-the-sky the Evangelical Christian left preaches is not all that it is cracked up to be.
Thus, we need to be more engaged with the Evangelical Christian modernists on the campus, not less. There are a lot of hearts and minds that need to be changed and some are on our own team.