🙁 Maybe because we have an expectation on that actually happening?

Not trying to get us off the hook here, you understand, but I do think the dynamics play out differently from state to state.

Yeah right. Some of the biggest complaints I’ve heard about evangelicals not partnering with others have come from Adelaide.

Well I wasn’t only writing for a Melbourne audience. The word is generally understood around the world to mean what I was referring to.

I think the word fundamentalist would have been a more accurate and effective phrase. After all the Baptist Union would describe themselves as Evangelical too

Mike, I suspect your comments here are based on experience mainly in the eastern states, as we Adelaideans call them? We are friendlier our west, and value working together. We are often grieved by the tribal nature of our brothers and sisters on the eastern seaboard, as well as cut out of the discussion by their muscular discourse.

To the right-wing I’m a backslider, and to the left-wing, I’m a fundamentalist…go figure!

We are “stuffed” together. I too am in the same boat, but, I suspect, more a lefty than evangelistic. 🙂

My experience is that I’ve been labelled a fundamentalist by the ‘left’ and a back-slider by the ‘right’ – equally damned…

Interesting. I hate to be the naysayer, but your experience might not be that common. If you’ve ever tried to marshal a local ministers’ association into collaborating on a joint project you’ll know it’s usually the evangelicals who resist partnering with the Uniting or Catholic Church reps. Likewise, AFES has hardly been the most inclusive group in recent years. I’ve known a number of people working on campuses with non-AFES groups who have felt completely frozen out by them. In theory, there’s great openness, but in practice if we can’t partner with the local Catholics or Navigators group what chance is there of partnering with the Left?!