Dispatches from the religious left

by Frederick Clarkson

  The Right has known, and acted on, this principle of linking issues under a broad vision for at least sixty years. They've made connections between their own, potentially competitive, issues while creating wedges to drive between the issues of the Left. And, too often, we on the Left have taken the bait, allowing ourselves not only to compete with one another's issues but also, even within single issues, to disdain one another's tactics. Political activists, crafting the legislation we long for, dismiss radicals in the street as unsophisticated and ineffectual. Hands on social activists, caring for the dispossessed and disregarded from within institutions or suffering communities, deride lobbyists, assuming that anyone who works within the system of political power must have been corrupted by that power. Mystics and visionaries dismiss all the rest as being too much of this world, too focused on the problems and not enough on the promise.

  We fail to recognize that, as important as staunching the immediate wounds is, so, too, is changing the systems that do the wounding. As essential as political and legal work is, it requires the leverage, notice, attention that are often purchased in the rough and tumble of street demonstrations. As crucial as it is to put our bodies where our hearts are, we must have well-trained hearts with a vision worthy of our passion. In both the issues we care about and the strategies we employ, far too often, among the Left, the legs allow themselves to be convinced they have no need of the arms, the arms no need for the mouth, the mouth no need for the eyes. And so we falter, with neither vision nor victory. We allow ourselves to be divided and conquered-again and again.

  Standpoint theorists and scholars of Genesis alike will know that a comprehensive vision, a vision worthy of our passion and our labor, requires a multitude of eyes. In Genesis, God's first, great gift to humankind is difference. First God creates ha-adamah (the creature of earth) containing within itself all that it means to be created in the image of God, to be human. The only thing such a creature lacked was the ability to be in relationship with; since it comprised everything of what it meant to be human, it could not encounter any "other." Seeing this irredeemable loneliness, God took that creature of earth and divided it-creating difference. Male and female, Jew and Greek, gay and straight, Democrat and Republican, every color and age and culture ... in creating difference we were given the opportunity to encounter others, not to be alone in all of creation. At the same time, the reflection of the image of God within each of us was made incomplete. Those "others" contain parts of the image not in us. We need each other's vision, each other's likeness of God, to enable us to see all that is possible and desirable in this world-all that God intends human-kind to be. Or, if religious metaphor isn't your cup of tea (which is fine-we need our differences) each of us can only view reality from the perspective of our own experience-the place on which we stand. We need those who stand elsewhere to show us things we could not otherwise see, would not otherwise notice.

  For practical purposes it is essential that we invite in, seek out, solicit, seduce, and search for a variety of voices from every margin, listening always for that we have not yet heard, striving always to make connections, to weave a common vision more complex and complete than any of our individual agendas could allow. Strategically, this offers our best hope of success. Morally, it offers the only success worthy of our passion.

  RELIGIOUS RIGHT,

  RELIGIOUS LEFT

  CHIP BERLET

  "... the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the beloved community. "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

  When I speak in public about my criticisms of the Religious Right, I often identify myself as someone who is trying to help build a Religious Left. A common response to this statement is, "Oh great, that's all we need. Now we'll have twice as many problems." I hope that is not the case, as I don't think additional problems are the likely outcome of attempts to remobilize a Religious Left in the United States.

  On the contrary, I have faith that the resurgence of an authentic, politically dynamic Religious Left will be part of a new broad progressive coalition that will help fulfill the long delayed promise of American democracy for all people, especially those who have historically been oppressed, marginalized, and abandoned by our society.

  Throughout our history as a nation, Religious Left activists have been fierce advocates for justice and equality and opponents of unfair concentrations of privilege and power. In addition, they have joined with secularists and civil libertarian religious conservatives to defend our Constitutional tradition of separation of church and state.

  Few people realize that my activism and analysis is rooted in progressive Christian theology. As a teenager in the 1960s, I joined the Civil Rights Movement after reading the "Letter from Birmingham Jail" by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.-which was used as a study guide in my Presbyterian youth group. I went on to help run a church-based coffee house in suburban New Jersey, and an ecumenical youth camp in New Hampshire. Later on, at the University of Denver, one of my mentors was the school's dean, a Presbyterian minister by the name of John Rice. (Rice is perhaps better known as the father of Condoleezza). Dean Rice taught me about institutional racism and white privilege, and as a result, in 1971 we invited him to speak at a campus rally on the anniversary of the Kent and Jackson State student killings. During his speech, Rice challenged us: "When tomorrow comes will you be the perpetuators of war or of peace? Are you the generation to bring to America a lasting peace? Or did your brothers and sisters at Kent and Jackson State die in vain?" When tomorrow came, I was arrested along with many others for committing non-violent civil disobedience at the Denver Federal Center.

  I suspect that most people who are skeptical about religious or spiritual beliefs have not spent a great deal of time thinking about how the Religious Right and Religious Left differ in their goals and methods. Why is this so important? Because, on one hand, understanding how the Religious Right gained so much power in this country will assist us in constructing effective challenges to that power. And, on the other hand, knowing more about progressive religious and spiritual activists will assist secularists in the process of building respectful and durable coalitions with us in order to advance the causes of equality, peace, economic justice, and a healthy environment.

  WHAT IS THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT?

  In the 1970s New Right strategists took the lead within the right by identifying white conservative Christians as potential recruits for the movement." -Jean Hardisty

  The Religious Right is the common name for a series of interlocking social and political movements that were knitted together in the 1970s and gained prominence in the 1980s. For the most part, the Religious Right is composed of Christians, with a handful of traditionalists and conservatives from other religions joining in on projects where there are overlapping concerns.

  Christianity in the United States is broadly divided into Catholicism and Protestantism. While the largest branch of Catholicism is the Roman Catholic Church, there are also a variety of other branches, including the Orthodox churches. Protestantism split away from Roman Catholicism in the 1500s, and is today divided into numerous denominations and independent churches. Within Protestantism, there have historically been periods of widespread revivalist mobilizations which sometimes intersect with political activism. We are in the middle of one of those moments today.

  Secularism may be on the increase in the United States, but a significant majority of Americans still believe in God, and about 50 percent say they are adherents of an organized religious belief system. Depending on how the question is asked, some 25 to 45 percent of the U.S. population report that they see themselves as either "Born-Again" Christians, or, in the broadest sense of the word, Christian "evangelicals." While most mainline Protestant denominations are shrinking in size, there is substantial growth in the most demanding and orthodox Protestant churches.

  We know that there really is something called the Christian Right because exit polls have found that roughly 15 percent
of the voters in Presidential elections say they are allied in some way with the movement. A big mess results, however, when pollsters decide to ask about concerns over "moral values" or "family values," and think they are measuring the Christian Right. Most Americans are concerned about "moral values" or "family values," whether or not they describe themselves as religious-even those of us on the political left... even the pagans and atheists.

  WHO ARE THESE FOLKS?

  There are three ways to view Christian evangelicals, according to the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals (ISAE): as people of faith that follow a set of specific doctrines; as an organic network of traditions; or as a self-identified religious coalition that emerged during World War II.

  When viewed as an organic network of traditions, ISAE explains that evangelicalism "denotes a style as much as a set of beliefs. As a result, groups as disparate as black Baptists and Dutch Reformed Churches, Mennonites and Pentecostals, Catholic charismatics and Southern Baptists all come under the evangelical umbrella-demonstrating just how diverse the movement really is."

  Core evangelical doctrines, according to historian David Beb- bington, are the belief in the need to change lives through conversion; expressing the message of the gospels through activism; a strong regard for the Bible as a guide for life; and stressing the importance of Christ's sacrifice on the cross.

  The terms Fundamentalist, Born-Again, Pentecostal, and Charismatic denote specific and sometimes overlapping stylistic subsets of Christianity, and primarily are found within Protestant evangelicalism. To be Born-Again implies a personal religious conversion experience that involves a powerful sense of being imbued with the spirit of God. Pentecostals and Charismatics believe that they routinely manifest gifts from the Holy Spirit such as speaking in tongues or being swept up into physical ecstasy by the Lord of the Dance.

  Fundamentalists read the Bible literally, reject liberal church doctrine, and tend to shun secular society. "A fundamentalist is an evangelical who is angry about something" quips historian George Marsden. In the late 1800s, a split began within Protestantism over what was denounced as the accommodation by leaders of the Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, (and other major denominations) of the scientific method-particularly Darwin's theory of evolution. In addition, these folks were suspicious of educational reform movements developed by John Dewey, and troubled by the ideas of new immigrants and new lifestyles-which back then meant the eight hour work day and women wearing pants. I like to think of it as the 3-D effect-Darwin, Dewey, and Diversity.

  By the 1920s, a group of ministers and theologians had issued a list of "fundamental" religious beliefs to which they thought every Christian should adhere. These fundamental beliefs not only excluded the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, but the "mainline" Protestant denominations as well. The Scopes "Monkey Trial" of 1925 highlighted this split in popular culture, as the State of Tennessee fired John Scopes for teaching evolution rather than the Biblical story of creation. While creationism won in court, fundamentalism were so ridiculed in the media that many in the movement retreated from public political participation for several decades.

  While the fundamentalists went underground, other conservative Christians remained politically active. In particular, the views of what historian Leo Ribuffo calls the "Old Christian Right," a collection of strident demagogues often surfing a subtext of white supremacy and anti-Semitism, resonated across much of society in the 1930s.

  THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT AND POLITICAL POWER

  With the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt, a broad range of con servative Christians worried that government and labor union "collectivism" threatened the social contract, the radical individualism of unrefined Calvinism, and the proper relationship between the Godly individual and the church and the state. As a result, "Big Government" and "Big Labor" were attacked as anti-Christian, as well as greasing the skids down the slippery slope toward Godless socialism and eventually Communist tyranny. As rightist economist Friedrich A. Hayek put it in the title of his 1944 book, America was on The Road to Serfdom. Underlying all of this was a version of Calvinist dogma and economic free market thinking that sociologist Max Weber called "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism."

  After the Second World War, industrial capitalism grew alongside Calvinism and a symbiotic relationship developed. According to sociologist Sara Diamond, early Calvinists "justified their accumulation of wealth, even at the expense of others, on the grounds that they were somehow destined to prosper. It is no surprise that such notions still find resonance within the Christian Right."

  The post WWII development of Cold War ideology-especially anti-communism-helped to bring some fundamentalists back into the public sphere. During this period, William F. Buckley, Jr. and his cohorts forged a political coalition that united conservative Christians, social traditionalists, anticommunists, anti-union activists, corporate fat cats, and right-wing economic libertarians. While these sectors all had different ideologies and strategic goals, they were able to work together around common tactical interests. The Christian Right of this period was allied with and funded by major corporate interests, and thus had a more sophisticated approach than the Old Christian Right.

  During the 1950s and 1960s, what became known as the evangelical movement attracted people from both fundamentalist churches and mainline denominations, cutting across many theological and political boundaries. Evangelist Billy Graham sought to energize evangelicals and fundamentalists in the 1950s through a spiritual revival, as well as trying to build a renewal movement within the mainline denominations. In part, this was done to create a bulwark against the threat of external communist military power and what was seen as widespread internal subversion by communists, socialists, and their "parlor pink" liberal allies. Some of the activists, including Phyllis Schlafly, sought to take over the Republican Party. However, the defeat of conservative Republican Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964 sent these rightwing activists back to the drawing board.

  In 1976, Democrat Jimmy Carter (a professing Baptist evangelical) was elected President with the enthusiastic support of many previously non-voting or Republican voting evangelicals. It was a rude shock, therefore, when President Carter's IRS sent out letters to hundreds of segregated white Christian private schools, threatening to terminate their non-profit tax status. Historian Randall Balmer, an evangelical critic of the Christian Right, has documented how this threat sparked a mass mobilization of evangelical activists who became involved in public policy and political struggles.

  It was these newly engaged white conservative evangelical Christian voters who propelled Republican Ronald Reagan into office in 1980. While Reagan never delivered on his promises to end abortion and restore prayer in schools, he did begin to involve Christian Right leaders in policy formation, and appointed their acolytes to federal agencies.

  After Christian Right televangelist Pat Robertson ran a failed 1988 campaign for the Republican presidential nod, he converted his campaign operation into the Christian Coalition, which began to issue biased voter guides and became a leading Christian Right national network during the administration of George H.W. Bush.

  In the 1990s, the Christian Coalition joined a network of conservative groups in launching political attacks on President Bill Clinton, whose second term as president was sidetracked by lurid tales of sexual peccadilloes and conspiracy theories about financial skullduggery and the assassination of political allies turned political liabilities.

  The Christian Right truly found its voice in 2000. One study found that 40 percent of the total vote for George W. Bush in the 2000 election came from Christian evangelicals, making it the largest single voting bloc in the Republican Party. Seventy-nine percent of evangelicals who voted for Bush in 2000 had been contacted at least once by a politicized religious group or individual, as compared to 36 percent of Gore voters. Despite this, many evangelicals have long been "swing voters" oscillating between the Republican and D
emocratic Parties; and many more simply feel neither Party represents their interests. In 2004 a small yet significant number of White evangelicals switched to vote Democratic, primarily due to concerns over Republican political corruption and the war in Iraq.

  Today, the Family Research Council, which replaced the Christian Coalition as the leading national network for the Christian Right, hosts Values Voters Washington Briefings in the nation's capital to mobilize evangelical leaders to build grassroots support for conservative candidates. Neither the Democrats nor progressive social movement organizations have anything close to the Christian Right's complex national structure for organizing voters.

  DIFFERENT STROKES

  `Letjustice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream... "-The Prophet Amos