The Rev. Stephen Davey is an evangelical Christian. He views the Bible as the inerrant word of God. He believes Jesus alone can provide salvation. And he reads the Genesis story as a literal historical account of creation.

But Davey, senior pastor and founder of Colonial Baptist Church in Cary, does not believe the church should engage in political action. To the contrary, it should submit to government authority, he said.

That position -- held by the Triangle's largest Protestant church, and a conservative one at that -- is at odds with many national evangelical leaders, who have called on their congregations to press for political and social changes.

"The mission, energy and investment of the church is not to clean up the evils of society," Davey said. "The mission of the church is to evangelize society."

Davey's conviction comes at a time when evangelical influence in the corridors of power has never been stronger, especially among conservative Republicans. Evangelical churches helped reelect President Bush in 2004. They worked to pass heterosexual marriage amendments in more than a dozen states and urged the president to select two Supreme Court justices who oppose abortion. Evangelicals have the ear of Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove. They command growing numbers in the chambers of Congress.

"Reclaiming America for Christ," a slogan popular among many evangelical churches across the country, is also the name of a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based center. And last month, the N.C. Republican Party asked churchgoers to share their membership directories to help the GOP with voter mobilization efforts.

"The most common view now is that Christians should be involved in the political process," said John Green, senior fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, based in Washington, D.C.

Davey, who draws about 3,700 people to his Tryon Road church each Sunday, is in the minority. Many other churches, such as the Upper Room Church of God in Christ or Mount Olivet Baptist, are eager to step up and fight these political battles.

But his dissent demonstrates that the evangelical movement is diverse.

"They're not all Pat Robertsons," said Christian Smith, a professor of sociology at UNC-Chapel Hill who has written widely on evangelical churches. "There's complexity. There's diversity. There's ambivalence within evangelical ranks."

Faith and authority

When he stands in the pulpit on a Sunday morning, Davey is little interested in small talk. He dives right into the passage at hand.

Reared in Virginia by Christian missionary parents, Davey wanted to teach history before he was called to the pastorate.

Much like a college history teacher, he outlines the major points in his sermons, and asks his listeners to repeat phrases and circle key words.

For the past five years, his church has been studying the book of Romans, one verse at a time. In Chapter 13, the apostle Paul called on Christians to submit to the governing authorities. During Paul's time, that was the corrupt Roman emperor Nero. And yet, Davey said, nowhere did Paul encourage early Christians to overthrow Nero or mount a culture war.

The same goes for today's culture, Davey said.

"I believe the greatest danger facing the evangelical church is not the destruction of its values but the distraction of its focus," Davey said.

Many of the church's members support Davey's position.

"The American church has become a voting bloc, a lobbying force," said Wayne Knowles, an elder. "That's never been our commission."

Churches were created to make disciples, Davey said, not to mobilize voters to vote for Christian-friendly officials or to change an immoral culture.

That doesn't mean that church members shouldn't vote or run for political office, Davey said.

Political involvement is a matter of degree at Colonial Baptist. For example, before the 2004 presidential election, the church distributed voter guides showing where candidates stood on issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion. One of the Sunday school classes invited U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, a Republican from Farmville, to speak. And it's safe to say most of the church's core members voted Republican -- Davey among them -- though they were never advised to do so.

But the church has sworn off involvement in groups such as Called2Action, the grass-roots Christian church coalition in Wake County. When the group launched an effort to "keep Christ in Christmas," Colonial Baptist found the effort misguided and pointless.

"The investment of the church's time and energy is not to see that Christmas greetings are shared, but that Christ's gospel is shared," Davey said.

Colonial Baptist hasn't joined in Called2Action's other campaigns, such as last year's marriage amendment rally or the more recent effort to press NBC to cancel its series "The Book of Daniel."

Morality and legislation

In its resistance to political involvement, Colonial Baptist is in many ways a throwback.

For much of the 20th century, evangelical enthusiasm for the political process flagged. Evangelicals saw little hope in rehabilitating the world and devoted their energies toward saving people's souls.

That all changed in 1979. That watershed year, the Rev. Jerry Falwell created the Moral Majority, the Southern Baptist Convention elected its first conservative president, and Ronald Reagan was elected president after charming 2,500 pastors at a Dallas conference when he said, "You can't endorse me, but I want you to know, I endorse you."

In the two decades that followed, evangelical churches grew increasingly active, pressing believers and churches to get involved in politics and issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.

These days, the Rev. Mark Creech, executive director of the Christian Action League, a public policy group based in Raleigh, said evangelicals are derelict if they don't become politically involved. He disagrees with the phrase, "You can't legislate morality."

"You can't legislate anything but morality," said Creech, a registered lobbyist with the N.C. General Assembly. "It's the means by which we as a society say, 'This is right and this is wrong.' The real question is whose morality we legislate. Politics doesn't operate in a moral vacuum."

Still, to many church members, Colonial Baptist strikes the right balance.

"The appropriate concern of the church is the individual," said Steve Volstad, a member who joined Colonial to better understand the essentials of the faith. "You don't change people by trying to manipulate society."