The
New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good (NEP) was founded in 2010 by David Gushee (professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University) and Richard Cizik (a senior fellow at the United Nations Foundation and a leader of the “Young Evangelicals” movement in America). The Partnership encourages Christians to vocally petition America's religious, economic, cultural, and political institutions
to promote
“the well-being of God’s world.” By NEP's reckoning, such
“well-being” can best be achieved by way of progressive
public-policy initiatives.
A proponent of single-payer,
government-run healthcare systems, NEP has been actively “involved
in efforts to expand
healthcare access in the United States and around the world.”
The Partnership also advocates the implementation of “a more fair
and humane economic order” predicated on wealth redistribution,
to stamp out “poverty and economic injustice” both “here [in
the U.S.] and around the world.”
Citing
a divine mandate for mankind to “exercise
stewardship over the earth and its
creatures,” NEP is “deeply
involved” in efforts to address the “major environmental
challenges facing our world.” “Since 1995,” says
the Partnership,
“there has been general agreement among those in the scientific
community … that climate change is happening and is being caused
mainly by human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels.”
Warning
that “millions of people could die in this century” because of
heat waves, droughts, torrential rains, and floods caused by climate
change, NEP laments that “the
consequences of global warming will ... hit the poor the hardest, in
part because those areas likely to be significantly affected first
are in the poorest regions of the world.” To avert
disaster, NEP calls for
the U.S. to immediately pass national legislation “requiring
sufficient economy-wide reductions in carbon dioxide emissions ...
such as a cap-and-trade program.”
NEP
takes a firm stance “against
human degradation and for the human rights of all people,
especially the rights of the most vulnerable and despised.”
Consistent with that position, the
organization “enthusiastically
endorse[s]”
the Evangelical
Declaration Against Torture, which calls for a “government-wide
embrace of the Geneva Conventions” to protect all detainees from
“cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.”
Further, NEP has urged President Barack Obama and Attorney General
Eric Holder to conduct a “thorough
investigation”
of allegations,
brought forth by Physicians for Human Rights, that U.S. military and
intelligence personnel during the Bush administration conducted
“experiments utilizing 'enhanced interrogation techniques' on
detainees captured after 9/11.”
A
particularly significant core principle of NEP is its stand “against
war and for peacemaking,” especially in the Middle East,
coupled with its call for worldwide nuclear disarmament. Toward these ends, NEP states that it is "proud to work with the Ploughshares Fund." NEP
founding partner David Gushee derides
“the
Christian Right, which dominated evangelical politics from the late
1970s until 2006,” for having “never treated nuclear weapons and
their horrible destructive power as a major moral issue in their
portfolio.” “No,” he elaborates, “they were (and are)
concerned about the 'life' issues of abortion, stem cells, and
euthanasia, and the 'family' issues of pornography and gay
marriage.”
An
expression of NEP's pursuit of Mideast peace is its “Muslim-Christian
Dialogue”
initiative, which proceeds from the Partnership's confession that “in
the past (e.g. in the Crusades) and in the present (e.g. in excesses
of the 'war on terror') many Christians have been guilty of sinning
against our Muslim neighbors.” For this, NEP begs “forgiveness”
from both “the All-Merciful One” and “the Muslim community
around the world.” Moreover, the organization celebrates the “core
common
ground
between Christianity and Islam,” namely the “love of God and love
of neighbor” that is allegedly central to the teachings of the
respective founders of each faith, Jesus and the Prophet
Mohammad.
NEP
seeks to promote the foregoing values by
way of
public-policy
advocacy efforts and “practical initiatives”; the publication and
dissemination of research reports; the use of the Internet and other
venues to issue “timely commentary to the media and the public on
important issues related to the common good and the moral witness of
evangelicals”; and the “building and mobilizing [of] a new
evangelical constituency” with progressive inclinations.
As of July 2011, NEP identified 13 "partner organizations" with which it was affiliated. One of these was the National Religious Campaign Against Torture.
For additional information on NEP, click here.