Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

I’m sure that all of you in my adoring public are waiting for my comments on the President’s speech tonight. Well, I’d be happy to comment, if he had anything new to say. Given this, I found something far more interesting and important to talk about.

I read in the American Prospect this morning about a new group that has formed called the Christian Alliance for Progress. They are a Florida based organization that seeks to be a voice for left-leaning Christians. This is great news for those of us who take all of that squishy “love thy neighbor” stuff and the Beatitudes seriously. They have issued something called the “Jacksonville Declaration,” I urge all of you to check it out and if you agree, sign on. (NB - The Populist movement of the 1890s started with something called the “Ocala Declaration,” maybe Florida ain’t so bad.)

They are not shy about their main aim: confronting the religious right on ground that they think belongs to them. This is a far cry from groups like the National Council of Churches, that while well intentioned, are so non-confrontational as to be politically flacid. This organization leaves me with the hope that someone is willing to be righteously angry and put up a fight against these nitwits.

The Alliance has six main issues:

• Caring For “The Least Of These” - Pursuing Economic Justice
• Caring for the Earth - Responsible Environmental Stewardship for Today
• Rejecting Bigotry, Embracing Dignity - Equality for Gays and Lesbians
• Honoring the Sanctity Of Childbearing Decisions; Effective Prevention vs. Criminalizing Abortion
• Forsaking Brute Power - Seeking Peace, Not War
• Extending Healing to All - Health Care for All Americans

I’m glad they have included environmentalism as one of their issues. I always wondered why there hasn’t been more talk about environmental stewardship, although James Dobson made some noises about it a couple of months ago. That suprised me.

But what was Noah doing but trying to help endangered species, right?

The nice thing about this is that this group isn’t shy about using religious rhetoric. One of the things that we on the left forget is how important religion has been in many social justice movements in this country. The obvious one is the civil rights movement, but the suffrage movement and the progressive movement drew from the “social gospel” preached by progressive preachers at the turn of the century, the sanctuary movement here in Southern Arizona was housed at churches, and the UFW always marched under the banner of the Blessed Virgin. It would have been ridiculous for anyone to tell folks in these movements to tell them to tone down the religion.

One of my continuing frustrations about the Democratic party is our fear of religion. Funny thing, our voters are faithful, and most of our candidates are religious too. But, it seems we have a lot of activists and political professionals who have some sort of fear of religion. In 1992, one activist I knew told me she was deeply offended by Bill Clinton quoting the Bible in a speech, and that she wasn’t going to vote for him. I thought this was totally ridiculous.

The right loves to say that we hate religious people. But, when we start having convulsions because someone mentions God, we are proving their point. Some amazing things have happened in this country when religious progressives want something done. Maybe that will happen again.