In 1973, 40 evangelical leaders gathered at a YMCA in Chicago to call for a movement against poverty, racism, sexism and violence. Their declaration was drafted by a young urban ministry activist, Jim Wallis, and signed by such evangelical pillars as theologian Carl Henry, a close ally of Billy Graham.

Time Magazine and the Washington Post described it as the social awakening of evangelical America. But a few years later, the Rev. Jerry Falwell's conservative lobby, the Moral Majority, had taken over as the political voice of evangelicals.

"We certainly didn't have Jerry in mind when we called for evangelicals to become more socially engaged," said Ronald Sider, president of Evangelicals for Social Action, which grew out of that 1973 Chicago Declaration.

Now his wing of evangelicalism is emerging from 30 years in the political wilderness. Mr. Wallis is writing bestsellers, and prominent evangelical pastors are calling for "creation care" on global warming and galvanizing church members to address Third World poverty and disease.

Few agree on what to call this movement, which echoes Catholic social thought in its opposition to abortion, its call to alleviate poverty and its skepticism about military solutions to world problems. Dr. Sider opts for "evangelical center."

"Today there is a strong evangelical center emerging that agrees that a biblically balanced agenda has to include pro-life, pro-family, pro-poor, pro-racial justice, pro-creation care and pro-peacemaking," he said.

To pollsters, "evangelical" means "white evangelical." Black Protestants hold similar beliefs, but vote more monolithically Democratic than white evangelicals. That disguises the diversity of both communities, said John Green, senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Policy.

"White born-again Protestants may have liberal views on the economy, but vote on abortion. Black born-again Protestants may oppose abortion, but vote on the economy," he said.

For 30 years, "people like Jim Wallis and Ron Sider may have influenced people's ideas and positions, but it didn't influence their voting behavior. Now things have changed," he said.

If so, that would delight Jennie Geisler, 55, a Christian counselor from East Pittsburgh. In 1973 her evangelical campus minister at Grove City College introduced her to Mr. Wallis' magazine, The Post-American, now called Sojourners.

She embraced its call for solidarity with the poor. Her evangelical faith led her to meetings in support of the United Farmworkers and opposition to the arms race. She fasted to raise money for world hunger. She and other members of her evangelical church bought houses in East Liberty in an effort to aid the impoverished neighborhood.

She is now married to an Episcopal priest; "a lot of the seeds [Mr. Wallis] planted are why we have a heart for inner-city ministry," she said.

"I think the religious right was helpful to really bring a greater awareness and education around pro-life. I totally support that agenda. But they also had other key issues that I didn't agree with and I didn't find that they had a heart for the poor, so I didn't fall into their ranks."

The center disappears

Mr. Wallis attributes the juggernaut rise of the Moral Majority in 1980 to a deal between powerful conservative Christians, led by Paul Weyrich, and Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign. In return for the candidate's commitment on a few issues, including abortion, they promised to deliver votes and created a machine to do so.

Moderate evangelicals appeared silent because the media wasn't interested in them, said the Rev. John White, president emeritus of Geneva College in Beaver Falls, and a president of the National Association of Evangelicals in the 1980s.

He recalls being invited, then disinvited, to represent evangelical policy views on a major national news program. The Rev. Falwell appeared instead.

The National Association of Evangelicals "was too balanced for [the media] in its views, especially as those related to politics. There were many statements of the NAE throughout the years of deep concern about everything from ecology to poverty to civil rights," he said.

It's widely believed that GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain alienated evangelicals in 2000 when he called the Rev. Falwell and the Rev. Pat Robertson, "agents of intolerance," but Larry Eskridge, associate director of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College in Illinois, doubts it, saying many of them agreed with him.

"Now, if McCain had slapped down Billy Graham, that would have been a different matter. That he would have carried with him to his grave," he said.

There are reasons, beyond the famous Weyrich deal, for why the evangelical center appeared to disappear. It suffered from fragmentation over which issues were most important, said David Swartz, who is writing a doctoral dissertation on the subject at the University of Notre Dame. Like much of evangelicalism, it was slow to grasp the impact of the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.

"Not until the early to mid-1980s did the evangelical left start to coalesce around a consistent ethic of life borrowed in large part from Catholics," Mr. Swartz said.

"If the evangelical left had led the campaign against abortion, I wonder if evangelical politics would look very different today. Abortion transcended every other issue for many evangelicals and funneled them directly into the Republican Party."

Those who didn't want to be Republicans faced hostility from the Democrats, said D. Michael Lindsay, a Rice University sociologist and author of "Faith in the Halls of Power."

"The evangelical left didn't disappear. They appeared to, but in many ways they were forced out of the Democratic Party elite," he said. Evangelicals "are not only not welcome, they are made fun of at party events."

But while they were politically homeless, Dr. Sider's "Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger" sold 400,000 copies, going into five editions and eight languages. Rick Warren, arguably the nation's most influential evangelical pastor, plowed the royalties from his mega-selling book "The Purpose-Driven Life" into efforts to alleviate global poverty and AIDS.

"It's absolutely not fair to say that this progressive evangelical movement is something new. Most of the reason that the United States has been involved in Africa on behalf of the poor and AIDS victims is because of evangelicals," said Duquesne University law professor Bruce Ledewitz, author of "American Religious Democracy: Coming to Terms with the End of Secular Politics."

Corwin Smidt, director of the Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics at Calvin College, believes the evangelicals' political cohesion peaked in 2004, when about 80 percent voted for President Bush.

"That doesn't mean that evangelicals will split their vote 50-50. But I don't think they will approximate 80 percent again in the near future," he said.

They haven't changed positions, but are shifting priorities, Dr. Green said.

Getting evangelicals' support

Of white evangelicals who attend church weekly, just over 8 percent said that only "social issues" would be "very important" to their presidential vote, according to findings last year by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. That was slightly more than those who named the economy alone and twice the number who cited Iraq alone. The largest group, 34 percent, said the trio of Iraq, the economy and social issues would be very important.

Evangelicals 18 to 29 years old are challenging many political orthodoxies. They are even more opposed to abortion than are older evangelicals, but don't like the religious right, he said.

From 2005 to 2007, the percentage of young evangelicals who identified themselves as Republicans dropped from 55 to 40. One third of those who left became Democrats. Most are independents.

There is now open conflict over how broad the evangelical agenda should be.

In 2004 the National Association of Evangelicals issued a paper advocating "the protection and well-being of families and children, of the poor, the sick, the disabled, and the unborn, of the persecuted and oppressed and of the rest of the created order."

In the wake of the statement, the group's vice president for governmental affairs, the Rev. Richard Cizik, mobilized evangelical opposition to global warming. Some leaders of the religious right, including radio psychologist Dr. James Dobson, then called for the Rev. Cizik's ouster. The association refused.

In 2006 the Christian Coalition chose a centrist, the Rev. Joel Hunter, to be its next president. But the Rev. Hunter, who wanted to broaden the coalition's agenda to include poverty, the environment and other issues, resigned before he even took office, saying the board would not back him.

Meanwhile, at Evangelicals for Social Action, Dr. Sider is trying to build ties between centrist evangelicals and Catholics.

"Obviously not all Catholic voters vote the way the Catholic bishops want them to, and not all evangelical voters vote the way the NAE document says they should. But if even a quarter of both communities got together on that common agenda, it would be quite influential," he said.

If the Democrats want to attract evangelicals, they must respect the concerns of those who oppose abortion, Mr. Wallis said. That doesn't necessarily mean outlawing abortion, but supporting real alternatives and no longer denigrating pro-lifers.