Tannish states he had come across
an article in Washington Post about the re-emergence of the Religious Left (is that an oxymoron?) As I have mentioned a few times over the past year, the political pendulum is reversing its path, and nothing I’ve found lately illustrates this as clearly as the reorganization of progressive and moderate believers in the New American Battlefield of Political Dominance.
I wanted to tell him in my comment :
I doubt this phenomenon is new... after all, Jimmy Carter ran on the basis of it being his Christian Duty to do what he could for the country and the world (while Independent-opponent-John B. Anderson's Greek Orthodox wife Keke had a bumper sticker on her car mocking Jimmy's religious status: "I was born right the first time").
"Religious Left" is no oxymoron: Martin Luther King (although, it was the Democrat leadership that sicced the IRS & the FBI on him). Jesse Jackson. Al Sharpton. These others, without public faces (okay, don't go all weird cuz I'm linking to a righty sitey. I'm just mean that way).
Tannish concludes with this query:
I ask, can there be any good to the marriage of political activism and religion. No matter whose yard you stand in, should those on the other side of the fence wield a holy sword in this political joust?
From the very beginning, this new country was founded upon principles largely gleaned from Christian teachings. The most important parts of that – Freedom and Equality were said always to be given to us by our Creator. Personal Responsibility – straight from Martin Luther, John Calvin, & the other hard-core Protestant leaders. Our country was settled largely as an act of religious/political activism.
The Declaration of Independence & the Constitution were not a barrier to living in Good Faith, just a then-novel approach to political structure based on religious teachings.
All politics comes down to questions of right and wrong. Most people base their moral boundaries in faith, one way or another. Some of them even try to live up to those moral standards (albeit very few public officials of any party do so).
2 comments:
Back in the mid-1960s, I attended the Chicago Theological Seminary BECAUSE it was a left-wing place: civil rights base for Martin Luther King, strong anti-war sentiment, and lots of right-thinking socialists. Jesse Jackson was a year ahead of me there.
The religious left was very big and growing then. I'm not convinced it is any more.
btw, I left seminary to do grad work in economics, and over the years have been mostly atheist/agnostic libertarian. But it was still an extremely valuable exercise for me.
Egad! You must have been just a couple of years behind my dad, there! (Well, Dad actually attended the U of C's seminary just before I was born -- and just before he became a physicist.) It looks as if Chicago's religious schools managed to produce at least two rational atheists...
:-)
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