Well-known conservative evangelicals such as the Rev Joel Hunter, a megachurch pastor in Florida, and the Rev Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), have embraced the global warming issue and are forging a new relationship with the Obama administration and Democrats.
Both leaders believe in consensus-building and working with those they differ with.
Hunter, while adamantly against abortion, helped draft the Democratic Party's new abortion platform that states its support for a women's right to choose but at the same time, also declares its support for the reduction of abortions in America. Hunter delivered the closing prayer at this year's Democratic National Convention.
It was also Hunter who prayed with Obama by phone last week before the president-elect went on stage in Chicago's Grant Park.
"What really works in this country is not inciting the base, but making partnerships with people with different views to advance your agenda," Hunter said, according to The Associated Press. "Those who don't will marginalise themselves politically. I don't think advancement of a cause primarily by attack is the way of the future."
The politically-engaged megachurch pastor is also against same-sex unions, but supports giving homosexuals some form of legal recognition of their relationship.
Fellow evangelical leader Richard Cizik is likewise optimistic about working with the Obama administration.
Cizik, who has angered the Christian right with his advocacy on climate change, believes the incoming president understands that social problems are morally rooted.
He says centrist evangelicals are in a better position than the religious right to work with the new administration.
"The strategy is very different from the past. The religious right practiced this zero sum game where somebody else has to lose for us to win," commented the Rev Richard Cizik, vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals, during an election analysis teleconference on Wednesday.
"And our [centrist evangelical] strategy is a common good that says we are all in this together," he said. "That means we learned as evangelicals how to collaborate with whom we disagree."
While this emerging breed of centrist evangelicals is finding itself in a comfortable position with the new administration, the Christian right movement still needs to decide how it will approach a more liberal post-Bush White House.
"Do they want to be an oppositional force, lambasting the administration at every turn, which can help their organisations raise money?" said Mark Rozell, a political science professor at George Mason University, to AP. "Or do they find ways to intersect with new leadership and either try to minimise damage to their agenda or move forward issues where they can find consensus? It's an important turning point for the movement."
