Welcome back to Engaging Faith, a weekly series of Street Prophets. Here, we seek to have a conversation between the broader progressive community and us religious progressives. This conversation is intended to help us all work together on our shared goals in helping this nation, and this world, become a better place.
This forum is open to respectful questions and concerns on anything within the broader mission of the series. Need details on how to work with the religious left? Want strategies for how to work against the religious right without alienating the religious folks who aren't your enemies? That's what we're here for.
Today I'm going to go into more detail on a topic I alluded to last week. In Religious Activity in NY Same Sex Marriage Law, I mentioned how many clergy members came out in solid and vocal support over the bill, but they didn't do so spontaneously, activists had to approach them and help them understand how important their public involvement on this issue would be.
Engaging Faith is a forum to help the broader progressive community connect politically with religious progressives for our mutual benefit, and to help the progressive community as a whole better address political issues that involve interaction with religion and religious groups. We are offering this forum as a place for respectful engagement, we never fully understand each other, we may not completely agree with each other, but we share many of the same goals. To that end, it's important to be able to ask each other questions (and listen to the answers), share our viewpoints with each other (and observe the points of view around us), and that's where I hope this series comes in.
For this to work, however, I want participants to remember that we're not here to debate, not here to change people's minds, we're here to express our minds, understand others, and learn how to work together to everyone's benefit. When I share my views, I consider it important and helpful to be mindful of the fact that they're my views, not anybody else's, regardless of how much I identify with a group. To remember that my experiences are limited, and I shouldn't make overly broad characterizations. To recall that people have been truly hurt by the actions of people who identify as religious or political, and when someone lashes out from that pain, lashing back only makes things worse.
This forum lies within the Street Prophets community, you are welcome, but please remember that our community rules for respect apply here, and are in place to permit dialog among people with a wide diversity of views, not to suppress anybody's opinion. Don't act like a jerk or a hater.
For more about what I'd like to see here, and what I wouldn't, I go in more detail in the first post of the series.
A Quick Dip in History
So, why is the Religious Left so politically disconnected? Part of the reason is simply lack of practice, people like those I discussed while talking about the NY Same Sex Marriage debate, who would happily sign onto support a worthy cause, if someone helps them connect to the cause, but they're not going out looking for policies to support or oppose. Still, for many on the Religious Left, I feel the disconnect goes far deeper.
There is a widespread belief among many in the Religious Left that politics, especially modern American politics, is too corrupt and short-sighted to be a worthy endeavor.
Historically, I see the political connectedness of the Religious Left in US politics as waxing and waning. There have been periods of time when they were very connected, the Abolitionists of the 1850's were largely organized through northeastern churches, the Social Gospel movement of the late 19th century was a profound force that helped create the Progressive political movement. The Labor Temple movement in the early 20th century saw the marriage of religion and the growing Labor movement. The Civil Rights movement in the 60's found its drive and soul, and most of its leaders, in churches (and mosques, not to forget Malcom X).
But all of these movements, all this religious energy being brought to bear for social justice, seems to be outside the annual grind of electoral politics. They arise from a sense of injustice, religious folks looking at the world around them and going "hey, this isn't good", and then finding a critical mass of people to work together to push things closer to the good. In all these examples, the religious movement solidly connected with (and inspired) secular movements including many folks who aren't especially religious.
Why Not Electoral Politics?
Electoral politics, the subtle dance where we regularly get together in the ballot box and choose those people we wish to represent us in the halls of political power, is an important pillar of all modern Democratic Republics. I wholeheartedly support this system, vote in almost every election (including library budget votes, which I'm reminded takes place tomorrow in my city). I just consider it a poor model for religious political action.
In electoral politics, we vote for a "person" to represent our interests in government, a councilperson, a judge, a comptroller, a senator, a president. I say "person" because, while we pretend we're electing one individual, we're simultaneously electing a group of advisors, staff members and political interconnections all nestled quietly behind that name on the ballot. This representative then takes their place in government, and do what makes sense to them at the time. What makes sense to them is invariably a balancing act between a number of different interests, or more accurately, their perception of those interests: those of their constituents, those of their career, and those of their connections.
Sausage making. It results in all sorts of messy compromises, half-measures and disappointing decisions. It's important, and arguably the least bad way to run a government, but it's not terribly inspiring.
One thing I've noticed as a New Yorker (Machine politics for 222 years and counting) is the Religious Right, in their close connection to Republican electoral politics, has taken on the worst features of Machine politics. You have pastors organizing buses to honor political deals, getting their congregation to the polls in order to vote for a candidate who will hurt them (not to mention fail to get the intended legislation passed). This is causing the movement to fray along the edges, they're losing people and the leaders of the Religious Right are publicly speculating whether or not they're in the right place.
The religious left, the faithful call for justice, works best when it's a step removed from the considerations of the electoral cycle. Where it doesn't have to make the same compromises and deals. Where it can be a voice framing the suffering around us, and offering an uncompromising path out of that suffering (with the quiet knowledge that the sausage makers will be making compromises, for better or worse).
Helping to inspire and shape the discussion; Moving Overton Windows, not ballots.
Where's the Injustice?
So before I open the floor, let's look at just two of the issues that are being actively pushed by the religious. These issues (and others) could use some support, and you don't have to be religious to support them.
- Environment and resources: I lump these two issues together, because they are the two visible faces of the same coin. Collectively, we are destroying our own ability to survive as a civilization on this planet. Even the most environmentally conscious Americans are using far more than their share of the planet's resources, thanks in part to the unbalanced efforts of our government on our behalf. Our massive use of fossil fuels essentially amounts to us enthusiastically cultivating a forest fire (we're specifically burning ancient rain forests, transformed over time into oil or coal, but the same forest) over the area of many continents, to the point where we've already radically transformed the climate of the planet, and continue to do so. This is unethical, immoral, unskillful, sinful. I don't think it's understating things at all to say we need to repent and change our ways, before Gaia if not God lets us give ourselves the boot. Two religious groups worth mentioning that are working on this issue are the National Religious Partnership for the Environment and GreenFaith
- Peace: I killed people today, and maimed even more; it is only by an act of supreme delusion that I look at my hands, or yours, and see them as clean of blood. This is because my elected representatives have ordered a large group of "volunteers" overseas to kill people on our behalf (using our taxes to pay for some of it, and our collective credit rating to defer payment of the rest). Perhaps there are sometimes good reasons to travel to foreign lands and kill people, but surely not so often, nor so many. A conservative estimate pegs us at over 900,000 Iraqi and Afghanis killed since 2001, and far more wounded. That is the entire population of the city in which I live, nine times over, and then some.Two religious groups worth mentioning on this issue are the Center on Conscience and War and the Buddhist Peace Fellowship
Plenty more issues where those come from. These are issues that aren't going to decide who gets into office next, nor who gets to be the Senate Majority Leader, but, if we enter them thoroughly enough, they might just help change how we live here together. Alternately, if we don't, our inaction might just carry away all we hold dear.
Clearly such topics aren't the sole domain of the religious, but I feel the religious element adds a framework of values, adds passion and inspiration to the cause. Regardless, some people will be approaching a cause from their faith, others from other directions, and it's worthwhile to all work together.
So how about you? How do your values mesh with your politics? How do you give them voice, share them with others, organize them into actions? The floor is also open to any other questions or concerns within the broader topics of the forum.