As public figures representing millions of evangelical Christians, Richard Cizik and Gary Edmonds generally see eye-to-eye on moral issues - except perhaps when it comes to mass killings in 2004. Staggering reports from the Darfur region of Sudan - where as many as 1 million Africans could die this year - have increased pressure on people of conscience to respond. Mr. Cizik is so troubled, he says, he is considering trespassing on the Sudanese Embassy steps this month to call for military intervention. Meanwhile Mr. Edmonds, secretary general of the World Evangelical Alliance, says he too is concerned about rape, murder and starvation in Darfur, but politics limit what he can say - to the point that he dare not use the label "genocide." Mixed responses even among like-minded groups provide a glimpse of a nation wrestling with a faraway crisis more easily deplored than fixed.
Jul 22, 2004
































