March (Web-only) 2007

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Suzanne Brownlow shivers on the Oregon highway overpass as a cutting wind whips her sign: "Honk to End the War." Her weekly demonstration is the latest turn in a fractious journey that has taken the evangelical Christian mother from protesting abortion clinics to protesting the war in Iraq.

"I feel like at least we are doing something," Suzanne Brownlow says, waving with her husband, Dave, and two youngest children just outside Portland.

No polling data conclusively demonstrate that opinion has shifted among conservative evangelicals. But some prominent national evangelical leaders say that debate about — and, in some cases, outright opposition to — the war is breaking out among Christian conservatives.

For those evangelicals, they say, frustration with Republicans' failure to overturn abortion rights has fueled their skepticism. Others decry the war's human toll and financial cost, and they're concerned about any use of torture.

"This war has challenged their confidence in the party," says Tony Campolo, an evangelical Baptist minister who lectures across the country on social issues.

"Add to that that they feel the Republicans have betrayed them on the abortion issue," says the author and frequent talk-show guest, "and you are beginning to see signs of a rebellion."

The National Association of Evangelicals, which says it represents 45,000 evangelical churches, recently endorsed an anti-torture statement saying the United States has crossed "boundaries of what is legally and morally permissible" in its treatment of detainees and war prisoners in the fight against terror.

The Brownlows voted for Bush in 2000 because of his more conservative views. But a month before the 2003 invasion, the Damascus, Ore., couple began campaigning ...