American evangelicalism is vast and diverse. Anderson certainly doesn’t speak for all evangelicals and would never claim to, but he is a decent stand-in for what you might call evangelicalism’s silent majority: those who may not see political activism as central to their religious identity, or those who might tend to vote Republican but describe themselves more as church people than party people. Some evangelical leaders who have chosen to stay out of politics in the past have felt called to speak up about what they see as Trump’s moral shortcomings: The editor in chief of Christianity Today, Mark Galli, recently published a viral editorial calling for Trump’s removal from office, which resulted in a few angry tweets from the president himself.

I recently sat down with Anderson in New York City. (He and his wife, Charleen, live in Minnesota, and make an annual Christmastime pilgrimage to the city to celebrate their long-ago engagement there.) Anderson is retiring from his post at the NAE at the end of the year. We talked before the Christianity Today editorial came out, and when I followed up to see whether he had anything to add, his comment was true to form: studiously neutral and above the fray. “Evangelicals may all share the same faith,” he said, “but we don’t all share the same politics.”

Our conversation below has been edited for length and clarity.

Emma Green: I think people like you have ceded the ground to people like Robert Jeffress. Evangelicalism, in the mind of the public, is very much tilted toward people who are quite politically conservative. Especially in the past few years, more moderate or nonpolitical perspectives like your own have receded into the background. Does that trouble you at all?

Leith Anderson: It does—in the sense that, to me, evangelicalism is about faith. It’s not about politics. It’s a historic religious movement. And that’s not a popular message, in the midst of polarized politics.

I distinguish between politics and government. I was on President Obama’s advisory council. That was a government function, not a political one. If I were asked to pray at a government event, like a White House Easter breakfast, I would say yes to that. But when I was asked to pray at political conventions, I declined.

Green: Let me push you on that. The NAE is not necessarily a political organization, but politics has certainly been part of its history. George W. Bush spoke to the NAE during his 2004 reelection campaign and said the organization was “doing God’s work.” Ronald Reagan gave his famous 1983 “Evil Empire” speech to the NAE.

Anderson: I was six feet away from him.

Green: Did it not seem clear then that evangelicalism was becoming more of a political movement, or at least that it was being perceived that way?

Anderson: To my knowledge, I’ve never preached a sermon that most people would consider to be political. Actually, I'm not sure if I’ve ever heard a sermon talk much about politics.