Posted on 07/27/2006 9:04:58 AM PDT by fgoodwin
How To Fight The Religious Right
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/26/opinion/main1837172.shtml
http://tinyurl.com/jhs6f
July 26, 2006
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(The American Prospect) This article was written by Adele M. Stan.
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It was a modest and, I thought, obvious proposal that I put forward two weeks ago on this page: That liberals give up the notion of creating a cohesive religious left movement that could act as an effective counterforce to the animus of the religious right. Instead, I argued, liberals would do well to claim our own moral agency by virtue of our own humanity and the essential values of liberalism, which encompass the most admirable tenets of the world's great religions.
My jumping-off point for this thesis was the latest strife in the Episcopal Church USA, which is riven with controversy over its 2003 installation of a gay bishop in the Diocese of New Hampshire, and last month's election of Kathleen Jefferts Schori, a woman who supports the gay bishop, as the American church's chief prelate. With all of the mainline Protestant churches engaged in similar internal battles, I argued, it was counterproductive to expect the leadership of these grand old faiths to hold, for the rest of us, the line against the religious right.
A lot of folks had a lot to say about this argument. A colleague who does extraordinary work tracking the nefarious activities of the religious right cheerfully accused me of stabbing him in the back. Episcopalians, both liberal and conservative, seemed to be the most offended. At The Green Knight, a well-written blog which appears to be the work of a liberal Episcopalian, the anonymous knight himself was the most succinct in articulating a common critique:
The reaction of people like these folks and these and many others has been to get organized, tell the story of what's happening, and start to push back. We're having an effect, too; even the media's beginning to find out about it now. And just at that moment — Stan tells us not to bother. Nice.Well, actually, that's not what I said. I said that the movement in which the knight apparently takes part will never be an effective counterforce to that of the religious right in the world of secular politics. As for the media finally beginning to take notice, that's what I thought 10 years ago when I began covering the religious left. Sure, the obligatory AP stories and the occasional New York Times item will appear, but the regular, "likely voter" the pollsters love will remain unlikely to know of such a movement's existence. Why? Because, unlike the right, the religious left has no media empire of its own; the right does not rely on the kindness of the wire services. Over the course of the last 10 years, I have seen no serious attempt on the religious left to build a comprehensive, integrated media empire of its own.
Meanwhile, another Episcopalian respondent helpfully noted an error I made in the haste of meeting my deadline regarding the funding mechanism of the Episcopal Church. Confusing provinces with parishes, I stated that nearly half of the church's 22 provinces had broken with it, deprived it of funding. Provinces actually denote regions around the globe that make up the Anglican Communion, of which the Episcopal Church USA is a part. What those 22 provinces have actually done is refuse, within the Anglican Community, to have any contact with the American church. The point I had hoped to make was that a number of individual congregations — no one can state definitively how many — have either broken away from the Episcopal Church USA or stopped paying their required contribution to the central body. The phenomenon is goaded by such right-wing outfits as the American Anglican Council.
Which brings us to an important point made by The Green Knight, a missing piece of the story I told in my article: Organized right-wing pressure groups have deliberately and stealthily acted to bring about the current internal schisms within mainline churches. Indeed, the progenitor of the strife within the Episcopal Church — as well as the other mainline Protestant churches — is the Institute for Religion and Democracy (IRD), a right-wing outfit that enjoys significant funding from Richard Mellon Scaife, and on whose board sits a number of right-wing notables, including Mary Ellen Bork, wife of the spurned judge. I first wrote about IRD in May of 1996, documenting the organization's smear campaign against Rev. Philip Wogaman who, at the time, served as pastor of the church attended by then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. I also wrote of the strife it sought to foment within the Protestant churches. (See this excellent piece by Frederick Clarkson for more details.)
I am not saying that liberals should abandon the battle with the likes of the IRD. If anything, far more of us need to be involved in a fight we have been too happy to cede to a dedicated few who could use a bit more cash for carrying out their work. But it is precisely because, as the Knight says, the IRD and its allies have achieved their goal of distracting the mainline churches with internecine battles that we should change tactics and move away from the idea of a movement that parallels the religious right. The might of the right demands an asymmetric strategy on our part, one that deprives the right of an internal base from which to wage a viral campaign.
Further, to target only churchgoing voters with a moral message is to miss a huge opportunity. It is often said that the United States is one of the most religious nations on earth. This truism no doubt stems from the fact that a famously huge majority of Americans believe in God. Conventional wisdom all too often conflates these believers with churchgoers when, in fact, according to the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) some 40 percent of people who identified themselves as belonging to a particular denomination or religion did not attend religious services in houses of worship — nor did anyone in their households. (Because of the way the question was worded, we do not know how many non-churchgoers live in households where others attend religious services.)
That's a lot of people — people who likely derive their ethics from a particular faith tradition but who may not respond any better to the words of a religious liberal than they do to a religious righty. But they most likely will respond to ideas of right and wrong, and to language that sets these ideas in grand prose. (See: King James Bible.) If secular liberal politicians would simply engage the better angels of a broad, and often unchurched, electorate, they just might win.
By Adele M. Stan
On the other hand, they might solidify their core.
Yes, Adele, the left's relentless endorsement of abortion and sodomy really give it a lot of moral authority. After all, all of the world's great religions agree on those values ... don't they?
Hmm... The author is unaware that most Americans are of the "church" variety. Maybe not zealous, or weekly - but still churched.
I've known people my age who don't go to church, and don't really profess a strong belief, but they want to get married in a church, and when they have kids, they end up attending regularly, or sending their kids to sunday school regularly.
The Leftists don't understand how faith and belief in something higher than ourselves is comforting. They don't understand how that faith and belief brings order to our chaotic world and gives it a purpose. They also don't understand that most people are not going to abandon Christianity for a brand new, synthetic religion that the liberals try to make up.
Boy, has he got our number. We infiltrated all those nice, peaceful churches with 2000 year traditions of same-sex marriage and with a few parliamentary maneuvers forced them to accept traditional marriage. For our next trick, we plan to have a council at Nicea and impose religious standards on the entire church.
liberals would do well to claim our own moral agency by virtue of our own humanity and the essential values of liberalism, which encompass the most admirable tenets of the world's great religions.
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Where were the barf, gag alerts?
About as moral as Hitler and 'free' love--which they neglected to inform folks . . . NEVER turns out to be free . . .
humanity? as in all animals are equal and no human is more important than a rock, a pigeon or a sea slug or even than the microbe on the sea slug's butt?
virtue? Ahhhhh, yes, after the manner of Dillbo/Billdo Klintoon and Monica? Or were you referring to the lesbo orgies at Camp David with Shrillery and her Dilldo packing lay-ins?
Or were you referring to Billdo's declining to give the OK to cruise missle Osamma because Billdo didn't want to be bothered in his golf game though folks were risking their lives waiting to hear from him? Very virtuous that.
Or were you talking about the infanticide of 30 million infants in our country? Very virtuous that.
admirable tenants?
Oh, like traitorous destruction of one's own nest and Republic? Attacking those putting their lives on the line to protect one's own family and person and Nation?
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Someone needs to get this idiot traitorous author a dictionary and force feed it . . . both ends might be OK by me. What a super idiot.
Get a load of this, Alouette.
Trying to form a religious left. Maybe they can recruit "Rabbi" Yoffie, eh?
From the article: "I argued, it was counterproductive to expect the leadership of these grand old faiths to hold, for the rest of us, the line against the religious right."
Deception one: Present yourself as "holding the line" and the other side as the aggressor.
FACT: Conservatives are the ones trying to "hold the line" against liberal "progressiveness" into moral relativism. We hold the side of history, the wisdom passed down through the ages. They are the agressors.
While the secular and "religious" left is contracepting, aborting, queering, and overall failure to reproduce itself into extinction, I just received news of the birth of my 16th grandchild.
Sorry about that -- was I supposed to put a "barf alert" on my headline?
I've seen those before and I wasn't exactly sure what it meant.
But I think I know now, and will be sure to do so the next time I post something from the Left.
Wow! It's like Adele just stumbled upon the American religious scene 15 minutes ago.
Mainline churches aren't splintering over "right wing" zealots, they are losing the congregations that value traditional Christian doctrine and practice. Unluckily, those also the people who donate, volunteer, and rake the leaves up in the fall.
Liberal Christians will never have a successful media presence because their message is too secular and the secular media is too competitive.
What a clueless idiot.
"Liberalism is the root of heresy, the tree of evil in whose branches all the harpies of infidelity find ample shelter; it is today the evil of all evils."
from Liberalism Is A Sin
But, we've been give the Gift of Speaking God's Language--so, guess we'll get by LOL!
>> If secular liberal politicians would simply engage the better angels of a broad, and often unchurched, electorate, they just might win. <<
Translation: We can't defeat those who actually know anything, so we'll appeal to the native prejudices and impulses of the ignorant.
Why, you neglected to mention that the religious right, that bastion of strife progenitors, has turned the abortion tradition topsy-turvy as well. I mean how dare we think proscriptions versus child sacrifice are long-standing religious traditions! (We all know this was something cooked up by the Moral Majority simply to accumulate political power).
Anybody w/a modicum level of historical knowledge knows how longstanding child sacrifice worship rituals have been...and that these--while not exactly world religion status, were at least "Judeo-Christian" (well, maybe not exactly Judeo-Christian, but Judeo-Pagan, anyway). Why, such worship of idols (Molech, Chemosh, Dagon and Bel) resulting in child sacrifice was practiced by the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Philistines, and the Babylonians, (and, of course, embraced at times by certain syncrenistic Jews).
So, how dare the religious right come along and foment such stealth divisiveness in the name of protecting the next generation! What's important, after all, is for liberals to target all religiously-inclined voters...not just churchgoers. In this way, liberals embrace all wide-ranging religious values (and what better multi-cultural values could we embrace if not one that encompasses Ammonites, Moabites, Philistines, Babylonians, some neighboring Jews, and the rest of the generational-sacrificing clans and tribesmen old and new?)
Adele is right about one thing: the religious left (yes, it does sound like an oxymoron) cannot confront the religious right in a fair-fight. The American public will see them for what they are, and as has been happening, leave liberal churches in droves.
The left admits it can't win a fair fight, so their next strategy is to redefine their objectives and redefine what it means to "win".
They think its a win to fold-up and declare victory by claiming "real" Christianity isn't standing for the Good News of Jesus Christ and the Bible, but instead, "real" Christianity is killing babies and celebrating gay weddings.
Problem solved!
Well, that's just it, w/one "small" exception. The images I recall of the Iraqi Republican Guard is that they indeed were "organized" in one elongated road presence...perhaps headin' out of town 2 by 2.
You forget that in an era of tolerance, where all religious values (except certain Biblical ones) are equal & are all welcome to the same platform level, that the Kuwaiti & Iraqi roads simply would have trouble accommodating such "values vehicles" headin' into a showdown. I mean it's like 40-50 vehicles all astride each other vying for lead position--all on a 2-lane desert dirt road.
So, in that sense, I have trouble conjuring up the image of an "organized" fight.
re: #5
That is WELL stated and dead on...
nail meets the hammer.
jw
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