Brookings Institute Report: U.S. Religious Progressivism is "Way of the Future"
Published on Saturday, May 3, 2014 by Inter Press Service
U.S. Religious Progressivism “Way of the Future”
A faith-based movement potentially able to provide momentum to a new movement for social justice
by Michelle Tullo
The future of religion in U.S. politics lies not with conservatives but rather with religious progressives, social scientists here are suggesting, with a faith-based movement potentially able to provide momentum to a new movement for social justice.
According to a new report from the Brookings Institute, a think tank here, the current religious social justice movement can be compared to the period of civil rights activism in the mid-20th century.
“There really is an opening now for a religious movement for social justice that is similar in many ways to the civil rights movement. We see it around issues of minimum wage, budget cuts, and immigration,” E.J. Dionne, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and one of the authors of the report, told IPS.“On social justice issues, religion has long been a progressive force, and Pope Francis is challenging people’s assumptions that religion is an automatically conservative force … After years of paying lots of attention to religious conservatives, religion by no means lives on the right.”
The United States has a strong history of religious groups in social justice movements, including in pushing for the abolition of slavery and the institutionalization of civil rights, as well as the social welfare programs put in place a half-century ago. Yet today, religion and progressivism are often seen as being at odds.
According to the report, for instance, just 47 percent of white Evangelicals in the United States think government needs to do more to reduce the gap between rich and poor. On the contrary, 85 percent of Democrats hold this belief.
This schism underscores two trends that have defined the U.S. religious landscape over the past two decades: a decline in those who regularly attend religious services, and a rise in the conservative “religious right”.
According to the report, these trends are interrelated, as “many young Americans were not turned off by faith itself but by the rightward trend they perceive among leaders. To young adults … ‘religion’ means ‘Republican,’ ‘intolerant,’ and ‘homophobic.’”
Yet despite these trends of growing secularization, Dionne said, “a religious voice will remain essential to movements on behalf of the poor and the marginalized and also on behalf of the middle-class Americans who are under increasing pressure at a time of inequality.”
More of Article at:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2014/05/u-s-religious-progressivism-way-future/
= new reply since forum marked as read
But to say that Dionne has "blood on his hands" because he didn't write about Uganda when it isn't his beat...seems very harsh.
Even when I posted how RT discusses GLBT issues back awhile ago and gave you links you refused to listen or even acknowledge the links I gave you.
I really don't know how to answer you when you mind is made up to trash everything and everyone as not agreeing with what "you see" as some kind of lack of awareness of GLBT issues so that EVERYONE is an enemy and you don't see how much is moving forward--maybe not on your timetable...but to not see the good going on and only the bad makes it hard for me to understand where you are coming from if you refuse to discuss the good and prefer to look at only what you seem to see as "No Progress."
