I was reading an entry by a liberal Protestant (I assume) minister (RevRandy) about a
"liberal religious revolution" today, in which he was attempting to rouse liberal members of all religions to take action of some sort. As I told him, I wish him well, but I have my doubts about how much success he and others will have without some major changes on the religious left.
As a Neopagan activist I have watched over four decades of liberal mainstream religionists speaking noble words and expressing (four or more) noble truths, but still not having one-tenth the cultural, political, or economic impact their fundamentalist brethren have.
As I look at the eternal stewpot of hate that is the Middle East, or even just at domestic American events, I find myself wondering where the liberal Jews, Christians, and Muslims are. I know they exist, but their voices all seem terribly muffled (with the major exception of the civil rights movement of the 60s).
Where are the liberal religious PACs and get-out-the-vote efforts electing candidates to federal office, loudly denouncing fundamentalist lies, refusing to allow the Talibaptists and their ilk to represent the only voice of religious or spiritual concern in our nation?
I read about some such folks every now and then, but they are so few, so terribly few.
The only explanation that has come to me over all the years is fear--sensible fear, but fear nonetheless. It's the fundamentalists and their cohorts, the people with absolute truth claims who live in a black and white world, who have all the guns. Their monopoly on weaponry and other implements of violence, combined with their willingness to use them against those who oppose their theocratic agendas (they shoot doctors, remember, and university professors), is enough to silence loud and persistent opposition from their liberal coreligionists, whether here in the USA or overseas in the Muslim world.
Martin Luthor King and Malcom X knew they were risking their lives to stand up for their religious beliefs, and they paid the price. How many Martins and Malcoms are there now on the religious left to stand up to the snipers, the firebombers, the character assassins (and the literal ones), and the militias on the religious right?
When will the liberal monotheists have the courage to loudly, publically, and repeatedly state that people who believe their scriptures literally, and who believe those scriptures give them the right to kill other people, are insane rather than "misguided"? Because that seems to me to be the meme they should be spreading. When will they (liberal religionists) understand that tolerating bigots is not only intellectually and spiritually bankrupt, but also suicidal?
Their religious opposition consists of people who are crazy, intolerent, and violent. Mere rationality, toleration, and peacefulness won't stop them. They want an eventual worldwide theocracy, with themselves in charge, starting with the USA and the Middle East, leading to a "glorious" battle of Armageddon in which the "winning" Crusaders or Jihadists will rule over the radioactive ruins. Being sweetly reasonable and talking just to ourselves won't stop them.
I don't really know what will. I deeply suspect that monotheism, with the almost inevitible dualism that usually accompanies it, is part of the problem, not part of a solution. The culture wars are between dualists and pluralists, with liberal monotheists stuck uncomfortably in the fuzzy area between.
This may be an an area where liberal Neopagans, Hindus, Voodooists, and Native religionists of many lands may have a role to play in the coming years. We know that the universe can count higher than two, so we're not necessarily stuck in the mainstream Western culture's dualist worldview.
Ironically, many leftists who might stumble over this post will probably think that I'm as crazy as the fundamentalists of the religious right, because they've decided by their own religious dualism that all religions are insane. That is correct Marxist dogma, but the only variety of Marxist-Lennonism I'm interested in involves Groucho and John.