Megachurch pastor Joel Hunter, who tried to lead the nation’s evangelicals toward more moderate, center-right positions on issues such as climate change and immigration, is stepping down as leader of Northland, a Church Distributed, in Longwood, Fla.
For the past two decades, Hunter urged his fellow evangelicals, in the pulpit as well as in the pews, to make common cause with Catholics, mainline Protestants, Jews, Muslims and other faith communities on single issues on which they could agree, such as human trafficking, homelessness, hunger and prison reform. In a pragmatic — and astute — effort to engage fellow evangelicals, he embraced a biblical approach to the environment and climate change, calling it “creation care.”
Hunter had less success in steering white evangelicals away from being taken for granted as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party. He served as a spiritual adviser...