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Zack Exley noticed something different at a recent session of the New Organizing Institute: evangelical Christians.

The Washington, D.C.-based Institute trains young activists for jobs with progressive political campaigns and organizations. This summer, for the first time, the program attracted several people who saw liberal politics through the prism of their religious faith. "They had been active in the Campus Crusade for Christ or similar organizations while in college," says Exley, who co-founded the NOI in 2005 after serving as director of online communications and organizing for the Kerry-Edwards campaign. "Now they were Democratic staffers or trying to sign on with a campaign."

Exley had stumbled across a big story, one that could have profound implications for both religion and politics. Millions of evangelicals are looking beyond issues that have fueled the so-called Religious Right for decades, such as abortion and homosexuality, and focusing on matters more often associated with liberal interests. Well-known pastors, including Rick "The Purpose-Driven Life" Warren and Bill Hybels of the influential Willow Creek megachurch in suburban Chicago, are stressing social justice and the environment. In March, the author and minister Jim Wallis challenged conservative kingpin James Dobson to debate evangelical priorities.

The Beatitudes are in style. "Younger evangelicals are more tuned in to the communal aspects of their faith," says Ken Massey, pastor of Greensboro's venerable First Baptist Church. "They are saying that being my brother's keeper is not ancillary to my faith, it's at the heart of it."

That's not to say that the broader focus on social issues automatically turns evangelicals into Democrats or that liberals have some sort of lock on compassion. It was the Bush administration, after all, that touted faith-based initiatives to deal with poverty and other problems; however flawed the execution of those programs turned out to be (see UNCG professor Bob Wineburg's book on the subject, "Faith-Based Inefficiency," for the sad details), the idea had merit. And not all evangelicals see these issues as political questions or want to hear about them in the first place. "I preached a sermon series on our responsibility as stewards of creation, and I got kudos from younger adults, along with some pushback from older members," says Massey.

But Exley sees the shift as an opportunity, a chance to reconnect to a deep American tradition of religious and political activism that includes abolition and the civil rights movement. He started a blog called Revolution in Jesusland (http://revolutioninjesusland.com) -- the name comes from a joking reference to the red-state map from the 2004 election -- dedicated to reconciling secular and religious progressives. "There are cultural differences between these overlapping communities, and people aren't comfortable talking about them and working them out," he says. "We have a long history of trying to work out frictions between racial and ethnic groups, but we don't have the words to bring together secular and religious progressives."

My own experience, including time spent volunteering at the Greensboro Urban Ministry, where people of different backgrounds and beliefs work harmoniously for a common cause, makes this gap look eminently bridgeable. But Greensboro is in its own way more open-minded, or at least more experienced in such multiculturalism, than bastions of liberal politics like New York and San Francisco, says Exley. When we spoke last week, he recalled the easy rapport he felt at a dinner after the 2006 ConvergeSouth conference, where local homeless advocate Michele Forrest, who writes about both faith and works at her blog, Chosen Fast (http://chosenfast.com), spoke about Jesus as if she had just gotten off the phone with him.

I asked Exley how secular progressives can expect their religious counterparts to become political allies, rather than just partners in good deeds, while issues like abortion continue to divide them. He pointed to research that showed 20 percent of members at the big evangelical megachurches are pro-choice, and said that years of failed attempts to outlaw abortion have convinced many people that the old Clinton formula -- legal, safe and rare -- may be the most practical way to address the question. Mitigating poverty and improving education, that is, may be the best anti-abortion strategy. "People are engaged in self-criticism towards their own culture and its one-dimensional focus on unborn life," he says.

One recent post at Revolution in Jesusland discussed criticism by political types of the term "secular progressive," the fear being that the Bill O'Reillys of the world have made "secular" a dirty word. I am hesitant to give up on a perfectly good word, and one which so well describes the Constitution of the United States at that, but it seems to me that the focus should be on erasing both modifiers -- "secular" and "evangelical" -- instead. If, as Exley writes, both of these groups believe in the "same values: people over profit, the environment over mindless growth, meaning over consumerism, means of making a living and health care for all, care for the needy, peace and more," then why not talk about those values, instead of the things that separate the people who hold them?

Whether doing so benefits one political party or the other seems kind of beside the point.

Edward Cone (www.edcone.com, efcone@mindspring.com) writes a column for the News & Record most Sundays.