I'm not religious. I don't see religious belief as inherently evil or fundamentally good. Martin Luther King Jr. based much of his objection to institutionalized racism on his religious convictions. Osama bin Laden ostensibly did the same with 9-11. But religion is here to stay in politics, always has been, always will be. So I'm encouraged to see a rebirth of the religious left in the works. And of course there is the looming religious right warming up their pushback, birth and after birth I guess you could call it. For those of you who are value your faith, but are uncomfortable with the conservative misuse of it, Daily Kos has a sister blog called Street Prophets you might want to check out:
Street Prophets--What we are about in 2006 is not about the correct interpretation of scripture, or taking back Christian values, or gospel politics. It isn't about making the Democratic party safe for people of faith, or capturing the church-going vote, or "practicing fully our authentic being," as the NYT quotes one minister as saying. It isn't about what you believe or what tradition you are or are not about. It's about one thing: getting these corrupt bastards and their stupid, malignant ideology out of power, for good.
For decades now the religious right has used a narrow set of issues to recruit voters and rake in contributions to benefit the neo-conservative agenda. The deal more or less can be summed up as, "You religious right folks vote for us, support anything we tell you to, fight for it, defend it, go along, attack critics ... and we'll pretend to give a shit about restricting reproductive rights or from time to time we'll even throw you a bone." And that's pretty much the way it has played out.
Every modern item on the neo-conservative agenda revolves around robbing from the poor and giving to the rich. Every item on the agenda of the religious right is carefully selected and promoted by neocons only if it facilitates or does not interfere with this goal. It's not easy to sell an ideology that benefits the elite at the expense of the working class. And so an entire industry of right-wing religious opportunism has grown-up around cooperative pastors, a few of which have been elevated to superstar status and given a huge stake in that status quo. It's a full-time job to herd mostly mainstream Christians away from real issues that affect them and keep them focused on the propaganda. The strategy has worked pretty well, and now the working class religious right routinely votes in direct opposition to their own interests, for the very people who seek to disenfranchise the grassroots even further. That is, it worked until George Bush and the Rubber Stamp Republicans flopped so publicly and painfully. And as they say, success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan.
The leaders of the religious right are in big trouble, and they know it. They have absolutely hitched their wagon to George W. Bush. He is the religious right incarnate. And no matter what the Dobsons and Reeds do or say, their future rests completely on Bush's fate. But while the leaders are committed, their sympathizers are not. And now there's a trickle of religious voters leaving those organizations. It's not a rush, but remember the margins of victory for Bush in 2000 and 2004: All we need are a few percentage points to stray from the GOP, and the Republicans couldn't win the office of dog catcher.
The religious right will actually argue that 'the left' shouldn't use religion. Get ready for it. They'll look out of the TV screen and say with straight face that the left is 'politicizing religion.' And they'll say that skeptics like myself don't have the right to have an opinion, or accept people off faith into the big progressive tent. All I can say is tough shit: We skeptics pay taxes too, what the government does with our contribution is therefore my business regardless of the rationale used to justify it.
If I have two religious folks making an argument before me, and one tries to persuade me that bombing, torture, theocracy, corporate welfare, and secret prisons are OK based on their interpretation of their sacred book[s], and the other advises feeding the poor, giving a leg up to our fellow man, healing the sick, and treating all with equality, I'm going to make my decision on who to support based on the strength of their arguments, the track record of their leaders, and the consequences of failure or error. And let me tell you, with George Bush and the neocons in power, that decision is a lock on all three counts.
True, I'm not a religious guy, but I can read the Bible. And it's pretty damn clear that anyone who argues for the wealthy and powerful at the expense of the sick and the weak isn't just morally repugnant, they're at odds with the words of Jesus Christ himself.