Is the Christian Left back?..............Why yes, I think it is.

[Dob Bole]

Reinhold Niebuhr. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The former was a theologian who saw the failures of the Depression and became a leader of Christian socialists in America. The latter was the greatest figure of the Civil Rights movement.

During the 20th century, from about 1930-1980, there was a strong religous left in our country, without which the New Deal, a great society, or much of the Civil Rights movement wouldn't have succeeded. Yet, the movement seemed to die when we elected one of its own...Jimmy Carter. It was then that we saw opposition and the "Rise of the Religious Right" that overtook it.

Fast-forward to 2004. We are in a war that almost every major Christian church was against. For the first time in years, we have a candidate opposed to the death penalty running for public office.

I found this article discussing the phenomenon. What do you think?

"What we're seeing in this campaign is a reinvigoration of the progressive religious voice," said John Podesta, president of the Washington-based Center for American Progress and a former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton.

http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/okeefe090204.html

[H2O Man]

1. I think it is one of the most over-looked

things happening in America today. My wife and daughters are members of a Christian church. The people who attend are probably 85% republicans. But I doubt that 10% of them will vote for Bush. They recognize that his behaviors go in the face of the teachings of Jesus.

In the early 1980s, when I was a bit more radical, I published an article in a national magazine called "Christian Manifesto." It compared the teachings of Jesus with the viciousness of Reagan. The article would still hold true today, regarding the half-wit in the White House.

[Dob Bole]

4. I think you're right...do you think...

that the Kucinich candidacy was an extension of this? Kucinich seemed to be the religious-left candidate this year, or at least have their support.

[H2O Man]

9. That's an interesting thought ....

... I'll say this: I have a lot of friends who supported Dennis K. Actually, more than those who supported any other candidate early in the primaries. About a third were people who were atheists who have a strong moral code (which allows me to tease them by saying we believe in the same God). And two-thirds were progressive Christians, and traditional Native Americans. So I think that by giving voice to that gentle moral code that exists both inside and outside the churches and sweat lodges and homes of these people, Dennis united an ad hoc Christian left coalition.

[onecitizen]

2. Bill Moyer's has discussed this..........

a few times. You can get a lot of info from his website. You could start here:

http://www.pbs.org/now/society/faithpolitics.html

Thanx for your post BTW.

[Free2BMe]

45. Bill Moyers program "NOW" on PBS

is the best/only show worth watching..bought alot of the books recommended...there is hope for Christianity and it's existance with other faith based people...(oops- I like West Wing, too...where is it?)

[carpediem]

3. the people of the nine commandments

I love this line from Clinton:

"Sometimes I think our friends on the other side have become the people of the Nine Commandments," Clinton said. "It is wrong to bear false witness."

[DemBones DemBones]

6. I'm going to remember Clinton's line and use it! nt

[Eye and Monkey]

24. precious

[bleedingheart]

5. I walked my precinct today with a Born Again Christian who

is adamantly for Kerry...

there are leftist christians and they walk the walk...

[DeepModem Mom]

7. Oh, God (so to speak), I hope so!

[T_i_B]

8. Churches launch climate campaign

I don't think that the religious left has ever been away personally. It's just that the religious right, as well as being more adept at spreading the word are easier for the sensationalist media to pick up on. Here's a good example of the church taking up a progressive cause. Another good example would be the opposition of many churches to the war on Iraq.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3728692.stm

A coalition of churches has begun a campaign to curb climate change, by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. "Operation Noah" aims to highlight warnings that atmospheric warming from burning carbon fuels is causing violent weather patterns and rising sea levels.

Delegates attending a conference in Coventry on Saturday to launch the campaign were asked to sign a covenant promising to cut their greenhouse gas emissions. They were also encouraged to put pressure on the UK government and world leaders to do the same.

The conference was followed by a parade through Coventry and a speech by Dr David Hallman, co-ordinator of the World Council of Churches' climate change programme, at the city's cathedral.

[w4rma]

12. The rightwing spend their money on advertisements and on TV programs

(and TV stations). They spend much less on helping folks.

So while the left has been out helping folks the right has been out expanding.

Also the right is more than willing to start a fight over stuff. But, the left has been backing down and acting so calm that we get no attention.

[Pax Argent]

35. Blessed are the Peacemakers

Lefties are hung up on this as an ideological linchpin. RW'ers seem to have skipped that chapter which gives them more latitude for aggressiveness, which leads to further retreat by the left.....

It's a vicious cycle, but this year it ends.

[demforall]

10. Christian Left, I agree

Good article ... yes, I agree, the tides seems to be turning. Thanks for the link.

[Kire]

11. Sojourners

Sojourners, www.sojo.net, is a Christian ministry whose mission is to proclaim and practice the biblical call to integrate spiritual renewal and social justice.

In response to this call, we offer a vision for faith in public life by:

publishing Sojourners magazine, SojoMail and other resources that address issues of faith, politics, and culture from a biblical perspective;
preaching, teaching, organizing, and public witness;
nurturing community by bringing together people from the various traditions and streams of the church;
hosting an annual program of voluntary service for education, ministry, and discipleship.
In our lives and in our work, we seek to be guided by the biblical principles of justice, mercy, and humility.

To find out more about Sojourners, read about our history or contact us at:

Sojourners
2401 15th Street NW
Washington DC 20009
Phone: [phone] or 1-800-714-7474
Fax: [phone]
E-mail: [e-mail]
Web Questions: [e-mail]

http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm

[CBHagman]

13. The Christian left didn't depart.

There was vehement, vehement opposition to Ronald Reagan's defense, social and international policies during the 1980s. It's true that it didn't manage to stop getting Reagan elected and reelected, but I also don't recall that the press gave much attention to liberal Christians. On the other hand, I almost kicked my TV screen in on more than one occasion, thanks to the seemingly endless appearances of Jerry Falwell (such an odious human being).

Interestingly, the very first time I noticed The Washington Monthly on the newsstand was the time they ran a cover story called something like "Do We Need a Religious Left?" That was in 1995.

We've been out there. It's just getting a foothold that's a problem.

And it isn't just in the area of ideas where this is a problem. Popular culture (look at TV, publishing) doesn't necessarily reward hard work or moral values. I'll bet more young people in this country could identify Paris Hilton than could identify Jimmy Carter, Rowan Williams or Desmond Tutu.

[T_i_B]

16. I've been thinking about this

Why does the right get more attention then the left in religious matters? Well partly because hate sells and it is easy to pick up on the hateful aspects of some on the right, "God hates fags" and all that.

But it's also down to the fact that the religious left is not as adept at evangelism. We perhaps don't spend enough time spreading the word of the lord. It's not easy I must admit. I myself do not find it easy to put my religion into words but perhaps that is a crucial point.

And it isn't just in the area of ideas where this is a problem. Popular culture (look at TV, publishing) doesn't necessarily reward hard work or moral values. I'll bet more young people in this country could identify Paris Hilton than could identify Jimmy Carter, Rowan Williams or Desmond Tutu.

I have to say I agree with you 100% on this point. And it's worth noting that many progressive arguments are based on sound moral values. This is the further question. How do we address morality? We do need morality but increasingly it seems to be passed over by many as inconvenient.

[Dob Bole]

19. I think you're right

nt

[The Zanti Regent]

14. I don't see them in Los Angeles.

All I see is right wing Superchurches and temples with W signs and stickers on them.

[gratuitous]

15. Look behind the superchurches

We've been here all along, working at feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting the sick and imprisoned. We're in the dilapidated, overworked and underfunded little buildings where folks give their money not to the personal aggrandizement of a charismatic preacher, but pool their resources to increase their impact.

Look for the churches that have United Church of Christ, Society of Friends or Church of the Brethren in their names. They're not usually spelled out in neon, so it's easy to miss them.

[T_i_B]

17. Kick

:kick:

[intheflow]

39. they're there, working hard

in addition to previous post suggestions, check out the Unitarian Universalists, certain Catholic churches, some Methodists, Buddhist temples, some Presbyterian, certain Lutherans, and even American Baptists tend to lean left.

Favorite MLK Jr. quote:
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."

Time to reclaim spiritual power for the left!

[T_i_B]

43. A lot of it is down to the vicar

The actual man of the cloth running the individual church and delivering the sermon and his own take on Christianity has a lot to do with the stance of a church. Some lean one way politically, some the other but the individual vicar probbably matters more than denomination.

For example, both the best and worst sermons I have ever heard in my life were from Anglican vicars. What does that tell me about the Anglican church? If truth be told it tells me very little other than that the Anglican Church is a broad Church. Most Churches with a wide base have have leaders with both liberal and conservative views, it's just a matter of finding the right person to guide you through those all important spiritual questions.

I personally attend a Church with a liberal-minded vicar who was actually out demonstrating for debt relief at the labour party conference recently but for me the actual religious part of my religion matters more than politics. The log in my own eye is a more pressing issue than the speck in the eye of others.

[Beware the Beast Man]

18. My sister-in-law and her husband are att odds with their church

They are fundamentalist Christians, yet are strongly pro-Kerry, oddly enough. This has put them in a bad way with their church. I really think that liberal Christians need to get together and speak out to show folks on both sides of the coin that we're here and our voice matters. We need to convince people that not all Christians are partaking of the RW Kool-Aid.

[keep_left]

20. Yes, and it's going to be a rough ride...

I'm a practicing Roman Catholic, and the Church is in a terrible state right now. The far-right ideologues are just totally out of control (Chaput, the Archbishop of Denver, is one of the worst). IMO they're acting like punch-drunk fighters as a result of the child-abuse scandals, which awakened some of the progressives in the Church. So they're abusing their authority and feel like they don't have anything to lose. It's not a good time to be in the Church. I've never seen anything like this.

[eridani]

21. I think that some fundies have actually made Christ into kind of a demon

Among the Kwakiutl it did not matter whether a relative had died in bed of disease, or by the hand of an enemy; in either case death was an affront to be wiped out by the death of another person. A chief's sister and her daughter had gone up to Victoria and because their boat had capsized they never came back. Immediately the tribe set up the war pole to announce their intention of wiping out the injury, and gathered a war party. They set out and found seven men and two children asleep and killed them. Then they felt good when they arrived at Sebaa in the evening.

From Anthropology and the Abnormal, by Ruth Benedict

This creepy passage has been rolling around in the back of my brain ever since someone posted it in an on-line forum. My first reaction was “What planet is Ruth Benedict from, anyway?” This reminds me of a whole lot lot people from many different cultures all over the world. My second reaction is that the Kwakiutl really are pretty rare and highly abnormal in their clear, pristine limpid, straightforward in your face honesty about their motivations. As our species is probably the biggest collection of bullshitters within 30,000 light years of galactic central point, the basic human norm is to plaster these base urges over with layer upon layer of garbage about Freedom, Justice, the Will of God, Allah, Amaterasu, whoever.

Whether masked or barefaced, the spirit of the Kwakiutl chief lives in everybody’s head as part of our basic makeup, this notion that we are owed someone else’s pain whenever we are in pain. Mostly we hold him in check. Mostly, when he threatens to cut loose, Jimmy Buffet (who is also in everybody’s head) righteously slaps him down with a rousing chorus of “Hell I think, well it could be my fault.” Mostly, the worst that happens is hollering at family members when we lose our car keys, or insist for a few minutes or hours that since our day got off to a really crappy start, that our families, friends and coworkers need to have lousy starts to their days too.

But sometimes it gets worse. Sometimes, anything bad happening to people means they are entitled to a pile of burned, bleeding broken bodies in return, and it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference whether any of the victims had anything to do with the original bad event. Sometimes there is road rage that leaves dead bodies at the side of the freeway, or busloads of schoolchildren blown up, or planes flown into buildings. And since 9-11, this particular Kwakiutl chief has had full and complete control of US foreign policy, and Jimmy Buffett is nothing but a girlie-man who could never be a commander in chief.

Here is a list of countries: United States of America, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan. One of these will surely strike people as an anomaly, but what all have in common are things like mutual refusal to ratify treaties on the rights of women and the rights of children, capital punishment, AIDS prevention by abstinence only. All have in common heavy political influence or outright control by religious fundamentalists. The anomalous country is anomalous in that fundamentalist control of government is at total odds with the cultural norms of its majority, which is rendered relatively powerless by peculiarities of its constitution originally intended to preserve slavery, granting the Kwakiutl chief 20 votes for every Jimmy Buffett vote.

The chief must always get his dead body, innocence be damned.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1374/is_3_63/ai_101261133

Hearing a death row. inmate's appeal, Justice Laura Stith of the Missouri Supreme Court displayed exasperated incredulity when questioning Assistant State Attorney General Frank Jung. According to a February 24, 2003, New York Times article Stith said, "Are you suggesting that even if we find Mr. Armine actually innocent, he should be executed?" Jung replied, "That's correct, your honor." A second justice, Michael Wolff, recast the question to make sure he had heard Jung's reply correctly. He asked, if DNA evidence proved a convict's innocence, should the state nonetheless execute her or him if there was no procedural error at his trial? Again, Jung said yes.

The chief has been in charge of Wahabism and its various offshoots for 150 or so years, but more recently he has also assumed total control of a huge subset of the nominally Christian. The Jesus of the Gospels told the disciple who had sliced off the ear of the high priest’s servant to put up his sword and healed the ear, and his most physical hissy fit had nothing but moneychangers’ tables as victims. The chief has transmogrified the Jesus of the Gospels into a figure of horror, worshipped by the purchasers of 60 million copies of the Left Behind books.

In the latest installment, "Glorious Appearing," Jesus merely speaks and the bodies of the enemy are ripped open. Christians have to drive carefully to avoid "hitting splayed and filleted bodies of men and women and horses."

"Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and a yawning chasm opened in the earth, stretching far and wide enough to swallow all of them. They tumbled in, howling and screeching, but their wailing was soon quashed and all was silent when the earth closed itself again."

Jesus melts enemy soldiers like wax, creating a 5-foot wide/deep river of blood, walks through it, and the "remnant" worships him with traditional Christian hymns. Then he rides his horse toward Jerusalem, quoting various Bible verses, and every time he says something people are decimated like roadkill under a semi.

Can the rest of the world ever get the chief under control, before endless rounds of “I got you last” played out by religious crackpots of various stripes destroy everyone on earth who remains capable of empathy and self-criticism? Stay tuned—we’ll find out one way or another in less geological time than you might think.

[A Simple Game]

25. Wow

Thought provoking and not just a bit scary.

[DemBones DemBones]

26. Interesting thoughts re: the Kwakiutl chief vs. Jimmy Buffett,

you should polish it up for the front page.

On edit: Not that I noticed anything wrong with it, just that I know if I were submitting one of my long posts, I'd probably want to finetune it. YMMV. ;-)

[eridani]

27. Suggestions for polishing welcome and sought after n/t

[Ladyhawk]

22. I hope liberal Christians organize and give the religious right...

...the ass-kicking it deserves. I am so sick of all the negative things being done in the name of religion. :mad:

As an atheist, all I can do is cheerlead. :) One caveat: never let dogma become more important than truth...that way leads to the dark side.

[mitchum]

23. Carter's tactical era was introducing the "born again" nonsense into...

the political dialogue. Once that happened, it served the right far better than it served us.


I also would like to see a return of the Christian Left

[Dob Bole]

32. It's not nonsense....

he was being honest about his faith. It was the Puritans who adopted his language, not the other way around.

[mitchum]

33. I don't doubt that Carter is honest and sincere about...

his faith. However, it was indeed a tactical era. Before Carter, declarations of public faith were offlimits in the modern political era.

Perhaps "nonsense" was too harsh a word
Thou shalt not walk under ladders
Thou shalt not allow a black cat to cross thy path
Thou shalt not step on a crack. The penalty is the death of thy mother
Thou shalt not open an umbrella in thy house
On second thought...

[burrowowl]

28. Dorothy Day

The Catholic Worker, Commonweal, etc. still exist.
Liberation Theology ....

[sr_pacifica]

30. Thank you

I mentioned Dorothy Day as well in my post.

[sr_pacifica]

29. The Christian left holds opposing values to corporate America

and consumerism. It hasn't gotten a foothold because it's not about accruing as much profit as you can at anyone's expense and buying things as a means of distraction. That being the case, it will never get a strong foothold in this country, or any country for that matter. I think it will always be on the fringe and we can only hope for some of its values to be assimilated into parts of the culture.

BTW I want to mention Dorothy Day of the Catholic Workers as one of the old time leftists. And don't forget the Berrigan brothers.

[burrowowl]

34. I could also mention the MaryKnollers

and a MaryKnoll priest whose plane was used to transport medicine, food, doctors, etc. to poor villagers, shot down by the grace of arms from IRAN-CONTRA monies.

[sr_pacifica]

42. Oh, yeah, the Maryknollers

As a teenager I read every one of their little magazines. I thought it great that these religious sounded like socialists!

[quaker bill]

31. We never really left

However, it has been quite a while since we were recognized as a political force. We have generally been more outspoken on issues of peace and social justice and less outspoken about individual candidates.

In 2000, I was the only one in my meeting who was active in the Gore campaign. In 2000, I was "lead" to work for Gore because I was "lead" to understand that the US would be at war within a year of GW Bush being in office.

This year we have folks in the local Democratic party committees and working at Kerry headquarters

[Cleita]

36. I really wonder why you have to be left or right?

Why can't you just separate that philosophical/spiritual part of your psyche from day to day reality. I personally read a lot of stuff that isn't science or about the reality of life. I read fantasy, theology, philosophy, mythology, but I manage not to let it interfere with what or whom I vote for or how I live. Can't people be religous, think about god or gods, have scruples, disciplines and morals, without being political or injecting them in to the practical considerations of everyday life?

[Cha]

37. Here's a cool website for Lefty Christians..

http://www.liberalslikeChrist.org

[Selatius]

41. Thank you for that link

liberalslikeChrist is incredibly enlightening. I'm going to show it to some folks who are interested. Perhaps I could spread "the good news."

[Cha]

44. You're welcome..and

Welcome to DU!

The administrator of that site, Ray Dubuque, is one amazing person..I've heard him call in on The Guy James on Saturday afternoons 3pm to 6pm..and he tells it like it is with dumya!

Has archives!

http://www.theguyjamesshow.com

[podnoi]

38. "Believers against Bush" Sticker/Poster

OK. I made a nice bumper sticker / poster and would like to get it out to other Christians. I have a word doc that I can make freely available if someone has someplace I can put it for download. The Doc is about 1.3 mb but maybe someone can reduce the file size.
Also have it in gif format at about 30kb . Anyone interested?

If so contact me and I will send it to you to look at and decide if you are interested in putting it on your site. No making money off it *unless* all profits go to Kerry, Move on, etc.

[murdoch]

40. The original fundamentalists were left wing

If you look at the original fundamentalists like William Jennings Bryan and so forth, they were all left wing. They were populists when populist meant something good.

I think those days are over though - the US is probably heading towards a society where some people are way-out fundamentalists and everyone else is a completely secular atheist.

[Q]

46. Religion and politics don't mix...

...whether on the right OR left.

[H2O Man]

47. Right. People like Martin Luther King

or a Gandhi should just mind their own business. Great point! Impossible to argue with that logic.