A viable evangelical Left existed in 1973 but lost to conservatives

Evidence

In 1973, progressive evangelical leaders issued the Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern. Like members of the emerging Religious Right, they saw politics as an expression of their faith, but on nearly every issue they parted ways with their conservative brethren. They denounced racism and called for Christians to defend the rights of the poor and oppressed. Confessing that Christians had “encouraged men to prideful domination and women to irresponsible passivity,” they called instead for “mutual submission and active discipleship.” And they challenged “the misplaced trust of the nation in economic and military might—a proud trust that promotes a national pathology of war and violence which victimizes our neighbors at home and abroad.” The evangelical Left, however, failed to convince most fellow evangelicals that their faith required a critique of patriarchy and American power, rather than the assertion of both, and they would remain a relatively marginal group within the larger movement. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 120

Categorization

• QUESTION: Du Mez says the Left ‘failed to convince’ — but did it lose on argument, on money, on organizational power? That’s a key analytic question for the reader.
• XREF: The reader’s stated project of contested vs dominant strand: this paragraph directly evidences the strand argument — there was a genuine alternative. — connects to: Evangelicals abandoned social reform for individual conversion as proto-liberals embraced it; Progressive evangelicalism peaked in the mid-1970s with Carter’s election — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 72; A leading Southern Baptist fundamentalist publicly supported Roe v. Wade in 1973 — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 91 (+3 more)
• DEFINE: Establishes that the counter-tradition existed, which is crucial to the reader’s central method question.