Religious conservative liberalism

David Brooks's column in the New York Times was quite interesting.
Essentially he sees that a war on poverty might be a uniting factor between religious conservatives and liberals. He writes

we can have a culture war in this country, or we can have a war on poverty, but we can't have both. That is to say, liberals and conservatives can go on bashing each other for being godless hedonists and primitive theocrats, or they can set those differences off to one side and work together to help the needy.

He continues:
Millions of evangelicals are embarrassed by the people held up by the news media as their spokesmen. Millions of evangelicals feel less represented by the culture war-centered parachurch organizations, and better represented by congregational pastors, who have a broader range of interests and more passion for mobilizing volunteers to perform service. Millions of evangelicals want leaders who live the faith by serving the poor.

Serious differences over life issues are not going to go away. But more liberals and evangelicals are realizing that you don't have to convert people; sometimes you can just work with them.

I've always wondered why, of all of the serious but non-controversial problems that religion could help solve, religious leaders often choose some of the most controversial and divisive: homosexuality, abortion, contraception, and evolution, among others.
Poverty is a natural issue and something that could unite all religions, and the socially concious non-religious. It could bring the compasion into compassionate conservative, and do the world a lot of good.