I’m late in noting Amy Sullivan’s fascinating and important Washington Monthly report, “When Would Jesus Bolt?”, the story of the growing dissatisfaction with the GOP in some evangelical circles. I spoke with Amy about her research while she was working on the story. At the time, I was skeptical of her argument that their may be a serious schism in the evangelical movement, especially because her case-in-point was Randy Brinson, founder of Redeem the Vote — a group I’ve written about in the past as a thinly-veiled GOP vote machine.

But Amy went down to Alabama to to talk with Brinson and returns with a convincing story of a man shocked by the uncharitable behavior of his Republican co-religionists into an unexpected alliance with the Democratic Party. Or, at least, a particularly pious version of it. Leftists won’t rejoice at the news that Democrats are winning evangelical support by advocating Bible study in public schools.

I’m impressed by Amy’s reporting — this is news that the rest of the press has missed. But I don’t share her cautious enthusiasm for the initiative. True, the curriculum in question is essentially secular. In a world with perfect school funding, it’d be a great idea — as my friend Peter Manseau has written, “In America, the Bible is in our bones before we even crack its binding.” Like it or not, it’s all around us, and a good education would include a basic introduction to its history and complexities. So let’s put that on the list of education priorities — right below equalizing funding for poor schools, increasing basic literacy, closing the science and math gap for girls, making schools that are safe for all kinds of kids, reversing a condition of segregation worse than it was before Brown v. Board, etc., etc. Democratic efforts to win “faith” votes through Bible studies in the schools smacks of cheap grace, not a real political shift in evangelical America.

And yet, Amy may be onto a real earthquake with her reporting from this year’s National Prayer Breakfast, at which National Association of Evangelicals vice-president (and longtime powerbroker) Rich Cizik got spitting mad over his co-religionists’ refusal to consider a real policy of “creation care,” evangelicalese for pro-capitalist environmentalism. Only, Cizik isn’t sounding so pro-capitalism anymore: “when I suggested to him that this was an example of the way that business seemed to win out most of the time when religious and business interests came into conflict in GOP politics,” writes Amy, “he stopped me. ‘Not most of the time,’ he corrected. ‘Every time. Every single time.'”

That doesn’t sound like cheap grace. That’s some hard-won wisdom, and Cizik sounds a man who’s taken a bite of the apple. I still don’t see any large-scale evangelical defection from conservative, big biz politics on the horizon, but I’m glad there are few thoughtful Christian Right veterans who’ve finally gained some real knowledge of good and evil.

Read “When Would Jesus Bolt?”, by Amy Sullivan.

–Jeff Sharlet