Will people of faith transform the left?

by | Jan 25, 2021 | Politics | 1 comment

Politics and religion have always in this country. Before the twentieth century, most Americans’ understanding of the establishment clause differed from later conceptions. Biblical instruction was commonplace in public schools, and in North Carolina the state constitution banned Catholics, Jews, atheists, and other non-Protestants from holding public office. This is not to say we were a “Christian nation”; America already had remarkable religious diversity. But even despite a strong movement toward the separation of church and state under the Warren court, religious witness continued to influence politics, largely on the right.

Through the Trump era, religion propelled right-wing Republicanism. Conservative Christianity helped to lure former Southern Democrats into the Republican coalition. George W. Bush utilized religious conservatism and an anti-same sex marriage initiative to carry Ohio in 2004, sealing his reelection. When the country began to secularize in the 2010’s, the religious-conservative base almost single-handedly kept Donald Trump a viable political force. For most of the post-1960’s period in America, religious politics redounded to the benefit of conservatives.

Thus, it is striking that President Joe Biden has made faith such a central part of his early iconography. The night before his inauguration, he attended mass with Republican congressional leaders; he quoted a Catholic hymn in his victory speech, and he had Garth Brooks sing “Amazing Grace” at the inaugural ceremony. This represents in part an expression of who Biden is, but it could also portend a shift in the valence of religious politics. We could be seeing the religious left, long-elusive, come into its own.

Biden’s expressions of religiosity come in the face of strong secularzing trends under the progressive tent. Forces like emptying churches and a “New Atheism” promulgated by figures like Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher had begun to make the left less religious. Bernie Sanders was likely the least conventionally religious major presidential candidate since the Founding era. And polls have found that a majority of white Democrats are unchurched. But here Joe Biden seeks to make religion, no doubt ecumenical, a part of progressive culture.

The religious left is visible in activist circles as well. Perhaps the leading civil rights activist in the country is North Carolina’s Reverend William Barber, an African American pastor. At the height of the Moral Monday movement that Barber led, he told (ironically enough) Bill Maher that he believes in “a God who cares for the stranger.” Immigration activists have allied themselves with Anglican and Catholic clergies that favor more humane treatment of migrants. And though many “woke” progressives are stridently secular, there is undoubtedly a strain of religious (or pseudo-religious) zeal in their revolutionary movement.

A new religious progressivism carries promise and risks. In states like North Carolina, a Democratic Party that was more comfortable with religion might begin to regain the trust of rural voters who have come to see it as an Other. But on the other side of that coin is the threat of exclusion. If the Democratic Party seeks to foster a religious left, it must be resolutely ecumenical and respectful of the many secular Americans both inside and outside their coalition. It would be ironic, and invidious, too, for a movement based on love and hope to replicate the errors of 50 years of religious-right activists.

1 Comment

  1. j bengel

    Jesus was a bleeding heart liberal socialist gave away free stuff.

    While the left believes that religion should not serve as the basis of the common law, there are any number of faith-based progressive organizations. Faithful America has had the distinction of being vilified by the religious right (to the point of being denounced as irreligious.) Bend the Arc and Jewish Voices for Peace represent the Jewish contingent, MPower does the same for Muslims. Friends Committee on National Legislation and American Friends Service Committee represent the Quakers. All of these regularly email me on one issue or another. By comparison, American Atheists have only recently discovered my email address.

    Like the flag, the right has made exclusive claim to the church, and in a large part left has ceded that ground without contest. When chants of “USA! USA!” erupted at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, pundits were puzzled, as if Democrats were somehow disallowed of displays of flag waving. The same is true of faith and spirituality. The expectation is that the left has neither quality, and the left has done little to challenge the perspective. The right makes this case (ironically) by pointing to instances of the left calling out the glaring hypocrisy on the part of self-described evangelicals like Paula White, Franklin Graham, and Joel Osteen. They proceed from there to the left’s inclusivity towards non-Christian practitioners, and even atheists. And finally you find an interpretation of the establishment clause on the right so contorted as to be unrecognizable.

    And it is this last point where two sides irreconcilably part company.

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