Evangelized foreign policy?

But Darfur is hardly the first foreign rallying cause for evangelical Christians. In fact, their awakening to foreign-policy issues began well before the Bush White House, analysts note.

"One place it started was during the efforts to open up the former Soviet Union" in the 1980s, says John O'Sullivan, a foreign-policy analyst and editor at large of National Review. "They looked at the success of the Jewish community in helping the Soviet Jews and said, 'We have done nothing to help our co-religionists in Africa and Korea and other parts.' "

From there came a string of diplomatic initiatives bearing the stamp of evangelical influence - and largely engineered through the halls of Congress, notes Mr. Hertzke. Congress passed the International Religious Freedom Act in 1998, which makes freedom of religion and conscience a "core objective" of US foreign policy. It also established an office and an annual international religious-freedom report that grades countries on rights.

Subsequent initiatives include legislation in 2000 that targets human trafficking and sex trafficking; the Sudan Peace Act of 2002, which among other things established a certification process for periodic review of Sudan's peace efforts; and the North Korea Human Rights Act of 2004. The influence of evangelical Christians is also seen in the Bush administration's focus on AIDS in Africa, as well as in attacks on international family-planning activities, experts say.

But it was the North Korea initiative that first prompted foreign-policy analysts to take notice. Michael Horowitz, a prominent protagonist of the involvement of conservative faith-based organizations in foreign policy, called the North Korea act a "miracle" wrought by evangelicals. But some experts pointed to the large number of Korean-American Christians and their activist pastors as a larger factor in the act's passage.

The faith-based community's influence appeared to deepen when Bush last year named Jay Lefkowitz, a former White House aide and Horowitz associate, to the post of "special envoy for North Korea human rights," as called for in the act. That appointment prompted worried blog entries on the "Christian conservative agenda" for US foreign policy.

Still, some experts express skepticism about the evangelicals' impact, arguing that their key triumphs - such as the Sudan and North Korea legislation - have done little to change the course of what are drawn-out conflicts.

Others say a swing back to domestic issues in recent months may be pulling the Christian right away from foreign-policy concerns. "The culture wars of the last year, the uproar over gay marriage and so forth, have diverted some attention from the international focus," says Hertzke.

The staying power of evangelical influence will also depend on the ability to expand their influence by creating coalitions, according to others. "They won't have continued success unless they make the right alliances," says Mr. O'Sullivan of National Review.

Yet with his new book, "Freeing God's Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights," Hertzke argues that such a broadening is already taking place. It's happening, he says, through links between the Jewish community and Christian organizations, as well as on college campuses and in traditional religious and secular human rights organizations - which have long been interested in such foreign causes.

Hertzke adds that the impact of the "unlikely" movement, still being gauged in terms of Darfur, has already "altered the trajectory of history" in southern Sudan, where the government and rebel groups signed a peace accord in January 2005.

"A 20-year civil war actually ended in large part due to the activism of evangelicals and their alliance with others, including Jewish groups," he says. "It's an unheralded story, but it's also a historical fact."

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