Phil Johnson works for John MacArthur and blogs at Pyromaniacs. His recent post on How Evangelicals Traded Their Spiritual Authority for a Mess of Political Pottage concludes…

…it is my conviction that because they have invested so much in the political process, evangelicals have weakened their own movement with a tendency to compromise; they have sacrificed evangelical distinctives, and they have gone far off message from the central truths of the gospel. Political activism has been a disaster for the American evangelical movement on every front. Not only have we completely failed at the political process; we have failed even more egregiously to remain distinct from the world.

and has generated a response from my friend Joe Carter over at the Evangelical Outpost titled, A Herd of Unicorns: The Myth of Evangelical Political Engagement in which he responds in part…

Contrary to what many secularists claim–and many Christians believe–we evangelicals are not all that politically involved. Sure, like most Americans we talk a lot about politics, especially in an election season. But the claim that we are involved in actual political activities–lobbying, organizing, campaigning, etc.–would be difficult to support with actual evidence.

. . . . . .

Rather than assuming that evangelicals are a large, powerful, committed political bloc that, for some inexplicable reason, is completely ineffective, the more realistic conclusion is that politically engaged evangelicals are like a herd of unicorns: powerful and abundant in the imagination while not actually existing in the real world.

Read Phil then Joe and then hope that both honor my request to join me on a future edition of The Paul Edwards Program to bring the debate into the real world of talk radio.

UPDATE: Joe Carter and Frank Turk (from Pyromaniacs Blog) will join Paul this afternoon at 4:30 pm.