By Ed Stoddard

DALLAS, Oct 16 (Reuters) - The new president of America's National Association of Evangelicals said on Tuesday he would avoid the overt politics sometimes practiced by his fallen predecessor Ted Haggard, but this did not mean yielding ground on divisive issues such as opposition to abortion.

"Clearly we are nonpartisan ... and I have no desire to be politically engaged," Leith Anderson, who was formally appointed president of the 30-million member NAE last week for a three-year term, told Reuters by telephone.

The Minnesota-based pastor said there were "lots of different ways of advancing a moral agenda" which included advocacy and not the confrontational partisan activity adopted by some U.S. evangelicals.

Anderson became the interim president of the NAE in November last year after Haggard stepped down amid an embarrassing gay sex scandal.

Haggard was a vocal, though not strident, opponent of gay marriage who had links to the Republican Party and its socially conservative wing. This includes an influential block of mostly white evangelical Protestants dubbed the "religious right."

The NAE has been a powerful lobbying force in Washington for the successful passage of initiatives such as strengthening U.S. support for religious freedom abroad and President George W. Bush's plan to fight AIDs with $15 billion over 5 years, mostly in Africa.

"Concern for the poor has always been an evangelical priority," said Anderson.

He added that he felt that evangelicals in the United States were often portrayed inaccurately as conservative political activists first and devout Christians second, if at all.

"Evangelicals have been misunderstood in terms of what is our first priority ... Our first priority is that we believe in Jesus Christ and we take the Bible seriously," he said.

"We are not primarily about politics ... when evangelicals are together, in my experience politics are rarely spoken of. It's faith and not politics," he said.

Last week a group comprised of U.S. evangelicals and self-described "progressives", meaning secular liberals, issued a paper calling for common ground on divisive cultural issues such as abortion. It said common ground included affirming the dignity of gay people.

Anderson said as an evangelical he would put his principles -- he is opposed to abortion and gay marriage -- first, even if he does not take the overt partisan political approach on such issues as other conservative U.S. Christians.

"We are not primarily motivated by looking for common ground ... we are motivated by moral concerns," he said.

The churches and denominations under the NAE's umbrella comprise about half of America's 60 million-strong evangelical community. It has broadened its agenda in recent years to include the environment and Anderson said that next year it would take up immigration reform.

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