I've been reading some ancient history from the 1990's about Call for Renewal, an attempt to counter the Christian Right and occasionally also the Left with an organized spiritual-political movement that transcended political party lines. It was an outgrowth of the Sojourners community in Washington, D.C., which eventually merged back into it.
The Sojourners history page on their website says that Call for Renewal was focused on the issue of poverty, but Jim Wallis' book "Who Speaks for God?" focused more on opposing Pat Robertson and the Christian Coalition. I'm not very familiar with Pat Robertson, but his quotes in the book have held up quite well.
I also found a speech by Obama, titled "Our Past, Our Future & Vision for America", which was the keynote speech at Call for Renewal's Building a New Covenant for America conference, on June 28, 2006.
Obama related how he became a Christian-with-doubts, and said that Christians must find common moral ground with others in order to achieve political objectives.
I found a copy of the covenant itself on a site that is probably loaded with computer viruses. It leans liberal.
http://obamaspeeches.com/081-Call-to-Renewal-Keynote-Address-Obama-Speech.htm
This song is haunting, although not directly applicable to my personal experience.
There's an interesting semi-parallel in Revelation 7:17 and 8:1:
"...and God shall wipe all tears from their eyes. And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour."
Some years back there were some public comments from famous authors about the Susan in the Narnia books not being present for the Final Battle and what followed. It was framed as bigotry against women and people of average morals.
Neil Gaiman's came in the form of a short story, "The Problem of Susan," which from an excerpt I found is apparently quite vile.
Gaiman has fallen out of public favor as allegations against him have begun to surface.
Two other authors were J. K. Rowling, who ought to know better, and Phillip Pullman, who also writes vile stories, I've been told.
Pastor Douglas Wilson has a lucid, sensitive, and rather long rebuttal to the Problem of Susan; link below.
My own, lesser contribution here, is that C. S. Lewis was a fan of George MacDonald, and MacDonald wrote some vivid portrayals of spiritual devolution. In The Princess and Curdie, Curdie was given the ability to discern which beast a person's moral character was descending into by holding their hand. In ...
