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In my years in and out of public office, I've concluded that there are many in the political world who would just prefer that the Christian/evangelical community quietly go away, or at the very least, just sit on its hands while the world goes to hell in a handbasket.

Any person of faith who gets involved in today's cultural wars is going to get dirty. Politics is a rough and tumble business and the scrapes and scars that come with it are as natural as an auto mechanic getting grease under his fingernails. One can not take on the cultural issues of the day from a biblical perspective and not expect to be called some bad names or worse.

There are some who have assumed the mantle of evangelicals in the partisan political process. Assumed or not -- and hold on to your hats my political allies -- I am persuaded that Christians should not be seen as a sure thing for any political party. Or to say it a different way, Christians should not be seen as lockstep or group thinkers when it comes to any political party.

If that happens, the next assumption is that God favors one candidate or party over the other, and that's just not true. God is not a Republican or Democrat. As the Christian singer/songwriter Steven Curtis Chapman said a couple of years ago, "God is God and I am not." Indeed, God has his own agenda.

A couple of weeks ago, 77 evangelical Christians issued a manifesto to clarify what they called "the confusion and corruptions surrounding the word 'Evangelical.'" They pointed out in this document that Christians from the left and right have politicized faith.

(Christian author/blogger Dave Burchett has some interesting and, I think, appropriate thoughts on this document. Check out his unique perspective at http://www.daveburchett.com/archive/2008/05/14/7827.aspx

But back to what I think. Allow me to give you some flavor to what I think the signers of the Evangelical Manifesto are talking about: The leadership establishment of both parties uses faith to tap into a demographic of which their understanding is only skin deep.

If you could get beyond the self-anointed leadership in the evangelical community, you would find that many people in church pews support policies that address matters of health care, poverty and the environment. Indeed, they long for policies that are sound, effective and efficient, not policies simply for cosmetic purposes.

What does it say for the faith community when the new president of one of its political arms -- The Christian Coalition -- resigned last fall because the coalition didn't want to broaden its agenda beyond abortion and family matters to include dealing with poverty and justice? The man was on the job for but a few weeks, and resigned in dismay.

I don't care what one's faith is -- it is universal to Jew, Gentile, Protestant and Catholic faiths that we be concerned about the least of us.

Many conservatives/evangelicals who operate in the political arena are tone deaf on poverty issues, or at least they give that impression.

When you have a political establishment which has hijacked the words "evangelical" or "conservative" for the sake of pushing the button of a certain demographic so they will turn out and vote, it sends mixed signals and confuses those the church is trying to reach.

Politics by nature is a brutal and ugly sport. Nevertheless, evangelicals who participate should never give the impression consciously or unconsciously that you have to divorce humanity to be good at it.

As I have implied previously in this space, many political conservatives often allow politics to determine their faith. I believe it's the faith of the faithful in the pews that drives their politics.

This brings me to the Democrat establishment. They just can't figure out why most of those folks in the pews on Sunday don't trust them. They hire consultants to help them speak "evangeleze." What they fail to understand is, if it's not in your heart, it won't come out in your words. Further -- if the folks in the pews don't trust you on the social issues, they won't trust you on the economic issues.

Those same folks in the pews are also concerned about security. I mentioned earlier how politically tone deaf the GOP establishment is on poverty. The Democrat establishment is perennially inharmonious on security issues.

The things I've mentioned here should surely be on the agenda for both parties to consider. However, for the sake of the cause, evangelicals and people of faith should never be beholden to any political establishment, Democrat or Republican.

The 77 evangelical leaders who signed the manifesto are right to reclaim their identity from the partisan political establishment.

J.C. Watts is chairman of J.C. Watts Companies, a business consulting group. He is former chairman of the Republican Conference of the U.S. House, where he served as an Oklahoma representative from 1995 to 2002. His e--mail address is JCWatts01@jcwatts.com