the gap

....people of faith do not understand God operating in the world in the same way. The vast majority of fundamentalist and evangelical Christians see themselves embroiled in an apocalyptic battle against evil. They are on God's side, and they are fighting Satan's emissaries in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Hollywood.

Progressive Christians do not shy from a spiritual battle against those forces that do great damage to human dignity and the environment. But they do not see history as inevitable, nor is God hell-bent on bringing about the end of the world. While specific acts can be called evil - for instance, the massacres in the Sudan - they do not aim to color a map of the world into two hues, the children of light and the children of darkness.

All to say, Christians in the U.S. today do not simply disagree on a hierarchy of values. They read the Bible quite differently and express their faith in Jesus in radically distinct ways. I award Thomas Friedman, columnist of The New York Times, with the pithy phrase of the week past: We are "two nations under God."

From: God-talk and moral values by David Batstone.