WWJD for Congress?

Wheaton College professor Lindy Scott is exploring a run for retiring Illinois Rep. Henry Hyde's seat in Congress. Prof. Scott is the Director of the Center for Applied Christian Ethics, and he apparently is taking his own teaching to heart.

"I would want to serve as if Jesus were serving," Scott says. A pastor in the Evangelical Free Church, Scott was a missionary and an author before joining Wheaton's faculty.

But before all of you blue-staters get your britches in a bunch, you need to know that Scott is a Democrat. He calls himself a compassionate Christian who is conservative on some issues and progressive on others. He opposes the death penalty and privatization of Social Security, and supports gun control, increased education funding, and steps towards universal health care. Foreign policy experience? Scott is the author of a book called Terrorism and the War on Iraq, he lived in Mexico for 16 years.

As the Duke has said for a long time, the evangelical community is not the monolithic conservative institution that Republican political strategists would have you believe. Wheaton College is a strong academic institution that is the alma mater of both Billy Graham and Denny Hastert. Some even call it the "Harvard of Christendom," a reference to its prominent standing among Christian colleges, so do not underestimate the impact this announcement could have across the evangelical community.

The Washington media have accepted the Republican spin that people of faith are all conservative Republicans. In part this may be that there are too few Democratic elected officials who are comfortable speaking from an evangelical perspective. Lindy Scott in Congress might begin to change that.