The first pres­i­den­tial debate in ear­ly August should wor­ry Repub­li­cans, but not because of any mem­o­rable gaffes. It was the deaf­en­ing silence — beg­ging to be filled by Bernie Sanders — that sig­nals trou­ble on the GOP’s horizon.

If evangelicals do give Bernie a fair hearing, they might discover that they have far more in common with the democratic socialist than they had ever imagined. More than that: They might actually give him their vote.

Plen­ty of hot air and blus­ter cir­cu­lat­ed in the debate, to be sure, but one of the key cul­ture war issues that has stoked so much anger and pas­sion since the 1980s — gay rights — was notably absent. The most notable com­ment on the sub­ject came from Ohio gov­er­nor John Kasich, who said that ​“I’m going to love [my chil­dren] not mat­ter what they do” in response to a ques­tion about same-sex mar­riage. ​“God gives me uncon­di­tion­al love” Kasich added. ​“I’m going to give it to my fam­i­ly and my friends and the peo­ple around me.”

We are a long way from Patrick Buchanan’s speech at the 1992 Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion, in which he declared that ​“there is a reli­gious war going on in this coun­try … for the soul of Amer­i­ca” — and thus unof­fi­cial­ly launched the cul­ture wars that have dom­i­nat­ed our pol­i­tics for a generation.

The issue that sparked the most pas­sion among the 10 can­di­dates was the Oba­ma administration’s nuclear deal with Iran, and the tone and qual­i­ty of that ​“debate” were summed up by Mike Huckabee’s cri-de-coeur that ​“when some­body points a gun at your head and loads it, you need to take it seri­ous­ly. And by God, I take it seri­ous­ly.” Mean­time, he and the oth­er can­di­dates showed lit­tle seri­ous­ness about eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty. Nor did they mean­ing­ful­ly address the sub­ject of cli­mate change.

The can­di­dates’ silence on the lat­ter sub­jects plays well among many Repub­li­can vot­ers, but it threat­ens to erode their appeal among a key seg­ment of the GOP base: young evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians who are uncom­fort­able with party’s denial­ism on cli­mate change and its inat­ten­tion to inequality.

White evan­gel­i­cals — the bedrock of the GOP base — con­sti­tute about one-fourth of the U.S. pop­u­la­tion, and they pre­fer Repub­li­cans to Democ­rats by a mar­gin of 46 points (68 to 22 per­cent), accord­ing to recent data from The Pew Research Cen­ter. And the num­ber is actu­al­ly ris­ing. The per­cent­age of white evan­gel­i­cals who iden­ti­fy as Repub­li­cans has increased by 10 points in the past eight years.

But this strong affil­i­a­tion of white evan­gel­i­cals with the GOP runs up against a sec­ond key trend of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics: young peo­ple are solid­ly Demo­c­ra­t­ic. In the Pew sur­vey, mil­len­ni­als (peo­ple 18 to 33) iden­ti­fied with Democ­rats by a mar­gin of 51 to 35 percent.

Though young and old­er evan­gel­i­cals are sim­i­lar in their rates of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the GOP, young evan­gel­i­cals’ atti­tudes are close to their Demo­c­ra­t­ic-lean­ing age cohort on two spe­cif­ic issues: eco­nom­ic inequal­i­ty and envi­ron­men­tal­ism. Accord­ing to the 2012 Gen­er­al Social Survey, for exam­ple, rough­ly 60 per­cent of young evan­gel­i­cals believed that gov­ern­ment was doing too lit­tle for the envi­ron­ment or to fight pover­ty. This is in sharp con­trast to the strong anti-gov­ern­ment ani­mus among white evan­gel­i­cals more broad­ly. In a 2014 Pew sur­vey, they pre­ferred ​“small government/​fewer ser­vices” to ​“big government/​more ser­vices” by a spread of 47 points (70 to 23 percent).

All of this should wor­ry the GOP — a par­ty that has made ​“moral issues” the foun­da­tion of its plat­form for a generation.

It’s not a coin­ci­dence that the surg­ing star of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial race, Bernie Sanders, is aligned with the world’s most promi­nent reli­gious leader, Pope Fran­cis, in cast­ing inequal­i­ty and cli­mate change as the great­est moral chal­lenges — one might say the great­est sins — of our time. The old­er, white evan­gel­i­cals in the GOP’s base may dis­miss that mes­sage as non­sense, but their chil­dren are open to it — which makes the recent announce­ment that Bernie Sanders will speak at Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty this fall very inter­est­ing news indeed.

Lib­er­ty, found­ed by Jer­ry Fal­well in 1971, remains the sym­bol­ic heart of the Reli­gious Right. The polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion that Fal­well sub­se­quent­ly cre­at­ed, the Moral Major­i­ty, was crit­i­cal to the movement’s ear­ly years. Giv­en that con­text, Sanders will face a large­ly hos­tile audi­ence at the school.

But not entire­ly hostile.

The young, evan­gel­i­cal vot­ers at Lib­er­ty have been taught that a politician’s stance on the moral issues is the acid test of whether a Chris­t­ian should vote for him or her. But what if the most impor­tant moral issues are no longer fem­i­nism, gay rights and repro­duc­tive rights? What if inequal­i­ty and cli­mate change are becom­ing inte­gral to young evan­gel­i­cals’ moral universe?

Con­vert­ing just a small frac­tion of the Repub­li­can evan­gel­i­cal base would make a big dif­fer­ence, giv­en the GOP’s deep prob­lems with essen­tial­ly every non-white, non-South­ern vot­ing bloc. And a small-scale con­ver­sion is a plau­si­ble goal. While abor­tion remains a potent cul­ture war issue, a recent sur­vey by Pew showed that two-thirds of evan­gel­i­cals under 35 are open to vot­ing for a can­di­date who dis­agrees with them on that issue.

A Lib­er­ty grad­u­ate and writer for the con­ser­v­a­tive web­site The Blaze recent­ly not­ed that evan­gel­i­cals should glad­ly wel­come the oppor­tu­ni­ty to engage with Sanders, cit­ing the exam­ple of Jesus, who ​“hung out with the tax col­lec­tors, the pros­ti­tutes, and the exiles.” The thing about hang­ing out with the exiles and out­casts, though, is that you nev­er know what you will learn — or where the jour­ney might lead. If evan­gel­i­cals do give Bernie a fair hear­ing, they might dis­cov­er that they have far more in com­mon with the demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist than they had ever imag­ined. More than that: They might actu­al­ly give him their vote.