Little seems left for liberal religious activists
Civil rights and Vietnam gave way to abortion and homosexuality.
Mark I. Pinsky is an Orlando Sentinel staff writer.
Heading into a presidential election year, the Republican Party faithful are already rolling up their sleeves and passing the collection plate. In church social halls, they are raising money for voter registration; issue advertising; and "Christian scorecards," which rate candidates on their positions on key cultural issues such as abortion and homosexuality.
By contrast, there is little activity at the other end of the spectrum. Left-wing religious efforts at political mobilization, where they exist at all, seem puny, aged and marginalized.
After decades of riding popular social movements such as civil rights, the left splintered and now seems unable to regroup. Conversely, the GOP has attracted many religious voters by focusing on cultural and lifestyle issues such as gay marriage.
On economic issues, another mainstay of the left, the outlook is no brighter. Despite the loss of three million jobs since 2001 and falling retirement and investment portfolios, people in the pews are more likely to object to teaching of Darwin in the classroom than to economic disparities.
Poll numbers are ominous for Democratic candidates, who seem to have written off voters with strong religious convictions. A survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that nearly two-thirds of Americans who attend religious services at least once a week vote Republican. For those who say they seldom attend a house of worship, that figure is reversed: Two-thirds vote Democratic.
Though preachers don't pick presidents in America, for at least 150 years they have helped set the political agenda. Thundering from pulpits, mobilizing congregants, religious activists in the 19th and early 20th centuries helped end slavery, supported women's suffrage, brought about Prohibition, and supported the rights of workers to form trade unions.
More modern inheritors of this social gospel were also vigorous agents of change and resistance, propelling the civil-rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. As recently as the 1960s and 1970s, left-wing religion was a force to be reckoned with.
"We had the feeling that we were getting somewhere," recalls the Rev. William Sloane Coffin, former chaplain at Yale University and a patron saint of mainline Protestant activism. "We criticized American practice in the name of American ideals."
Today, liberal religion is seen as a spent force, said Mark Tooley, a researcher for the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a conservative Washington think tank.
The religious left comprised denominational leaders and tended to be elite as opposed to grass roots, he said. Today's religious right is younger and more vigorous, drawing its support from growing evangelical, charismatic and nondenominational churches.
"The religious left was mobilized and excited by the civil-rights movement and by the anti-Vietnam War movement, and has had difficulty finding equally passionate causes to replace those," Tooley said. "The religious right has abortion, homosexuality and church-state issues that have energized them over the past 25 years. There's no sign that any of these issues are going to go away anytime soon."
Evangelicals who previously voted Democratic because of economic issues are trending Republican because of cultural issues, Tooley said.
"But at the same time, most of those people are still, by and large, not activists by nature," he said. "They are largely middle-class, suburban people who are not drawn to the same kind of economic wedge issues that would excite the religious left or liberal evangelicals."
There are a variety of explanations for the fading of the religious left in America.
Some believe its members never recovered from the divisive period of the 1970s, when the movement split into "identity politics." After working together to break down old barriers, the unified movement headed in diffuse directions: affirmative action, feminism, gay rights and multiculturalism.
Others think the left was simply outmaneuvered and outorganized by the right. Savvy religious conservatives decided it was a mistake to see political involvement as something "unclean" for so many years, conceding the field to liberals by default. And the perceived excesses of the 1960s galvanized conservative Christians into action.
Access to religious television enabled leaders such as the Revs. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell to build the Christian Coalition and Moral Majority political movements. The religious left had no comparable figures.
In November, a group of liberal and moderate religious leaders from mainline denominations announced the formation of the Clergy Leadership Network, aiming to become what some called a Christian Coalition of the left. Founders include Coffin and the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, former general secretary of the National Council of Churches. They are a who's who of veterans of the civil-rights and anti-Vietnam War movements.
"I don't think it's going to go very far," said Tooley. "Its leaders are largely retired, mainline Protestant leaders. It would have better prospects if it had enlisted pastors of large black churches, or a few liberal evangelical pastors, or more Catholic clergy and bishops. It just doesn't seem to have plugged into the more dynamic and growing parts of American religion."
Still, there are faint signs of life - and youth - in the religious left, according to Jim Wallis, of the Washington-based Sojourners community. Founded in 1971, the group is a Christian ministry whose mission is "to proclaim and practice the biblical call to integrate spiritual renewal and social justice."
Wallis considers himself a theological conservative, pro-life evangelical - and a radical social activist. Unlike many evangelicals, he believes that religious concern for the poor and the powerless should be motivated by justice, not charity.
Wallis says he has many requests from young evangelicals to join his community, which focuses on economic and social justice. When he and others like him, including Tony Campolo of Eastern College, carry their message to heartland churches, the response is positive, he said.
"I agree that liberal religion is in decline, but I don't agree that social justice is in decline in the church," said Wallis. The problem with most mainline denominations, he said, is more theological than ideological.
"If you don't have a real Bible-based, Jesus-centered faith, then all you have is upper-middle-class, affluent Americans, who are not going to be your primary constituency for social justice," he said.
In battles around the country for a "living wage," mainline clergy make a political mistake when they frame the debate in secular terms, talking about "fairness." A more effective strategy, Wallis said, is to rally evangelicals with verses from the Bible, especially prophets such as Isaiah, who spoke out forcefully for fair payment for those who labor.
Coffin, whose collection of speeches and sermons, Credo, has just been published, said he was impressed with Wallis' brand of evangelical Christianity.
"That's exactly where it should be," he said. "The more orthodox the theology, the more radical the politics. There are two great biblical imperatives: to pursue justice and to seek peace."
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