Given my experience, I do not trust the intentions behind anything the American evangelical leadership says. Specifically, there's one agenda item that has recently emerged from the evangelical movement that I'm especially curious about. The current obsession with sex trafficking, especially the trafficking of children, is largely about political posturing. It may also contain a degree of psychological projection, given the recurrence of troubling stories like the one about Benjamin Garlick, a traveling evangelist who was recently indicted in Tennessee (along with his wife) on charges of raping and abusing a child. In any event, it's no way based on actually saving people from the sex trade.
First of all, let's admit this is a brilliant political move. Sex trafficking is without question a real and dreadful thing, happening to far too many people in too many places around the world. The numbers coming out of the evangelical propaganda machine are almost certainly exaggerated, and are also overly focused on the U.S.-Mexico border. But at least we can say evangelicals are paying attention to a legitimate human rights issue, even if there is something decidedly off about their political obsession.
