Dear Colleagues,

Although the Religious Right has represented the popular face of American evangelicals' political engagement since the late 1970s, a minority of politically progressive evangelical leaders have promoted an alternative public agenda over the past four decades. Representatives such as Sojourners' Jim Wallis, Evangelicals for Social Action's Ron Sider, and Tony Campolo have insisted that Christians have a religious responsibility to prioritize reforms of injustices and inequalities in their political participation. In recent years, progressive evangelical leaders have increasingly captured the attention of evangelical audiences, journalists, politicians, and scholars. In the process, they have reinvigorated debates within American evangelical circles about the nature and priorities of Christians' social and political activism. Yet socially and politically progressive evangelicalism is neither a recent nor uniquely American phenomenon. Thus this special issue of Religions explores both historical and contemporary expressions of progressive evangelicalism, not only within the United States but also in international contexts. Scholars are invited to contribute articles from a broad range of methodological approaches that analyze progressive evangelicals and their efforts to confront social injustices and inequalities.

Dr. Brantley W. Gasaway
Guest Editor

• progressive evangelicalism
• evangelical left
• social justice
• social reform
• evangelicals and politics
• Jim Wallis
• Sojourners