The New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good (NEP) is a faith-based nonprofit group that offers a renewed Christian public witness for the sake of the Gospel and the common good.
The New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good (NEP) "exists to advance human well-being as an expression of our love for Jesus Christ, which is itself a grateful response to his love for us and for a good but suffering world."
NEP was founded by Richard Cizik, the former Vice President of Governmental Affairs at the National Association of Evangelicals; David P. Gushee, professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University; and Steven D. Martin, a pastor and documentary filmmaker.
The nonprofit describes itself in three ways:
We are an evangelical partnership, in that:
We confess our evangelical faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and seek to live every aspect of our lives under his lordship.
We embrace the tenets of orthodox Christian theology even while representing different particular denominational traditions.
We identify with traditions of evangelical public engagement that in the United States setting have been highlighted by 19th century movements for the abolition of slavery and for women’s rights, early 20th century movements for worker’s rights and a more just economy, and late 20th century movements for civil rights for African-Americans, peacemaking, the protection of the unborn, and the care of God’s distressed creation.
We identify with the broad, holistic moral vision exemplified in evangelical Protestant documents such as “For the Health of the Nation” (National Association of Evangelicals, 2004), The “Evangelical Manifesto” (2008), Ron Sider/Diane Knippers, eds., Toward an Evangelical Public Policy (Baker, 2005), Jim Wallis’ God’s Politics (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), and David Gushee’s Future of Faith in American Politics (Baylor, 2008), among other key works.
We are building upon a recent heritage of holistic evangelical social engagement in word and deed by some of our nation’s finest evangelical leaders.
We are above all committed to the evangel, the good news of God’s love for the world in Jesus Christ.
We are a new evangelical partnership, in that:
We aim to be an alternative to the past generation’s old partisan and ideological culture-wars evangelicalism that damaged the evangelistic witness of the church in American culture and contributed to gridlock rather than constructive problem-solving.
We represent a new organizational embodiment of a kind of Christian public engagement that has been described by a number of journalists and observers as a “new evangelicalism” for the 21st century.
We are a new evangelical partnership for the common good, in that:
We are the kind of evangelicals who care about human well-being as a whole, and not just the good of the United States of America, or of Christians, or of evangelicals here or anywhere else.
We believe proper Christian advocacy is for the common good, not for partisan, ecclesiastical, or national interests.
We believe that fighting for the common good involves fighting against social injustice and the abuse of power by those who benefit from the power arrangements of an unjust world.
Richard Cizik
David P. Gushee
Steven D. Martin
Lisa Sharon Harper, NY Faith & Justice
Rev. Dr. Cheryl Bridges Johns, Church of God Theological Seminary
Katie Paris, Faith in Public Life
Rev. Gabriel Salguero, The Lamb’s Church
Dr. Glen Harold Stassen, Fuller Theological Seminary
