Dispatches from the religious left

by Frederick Clarkson

  Who can better understand this than a people whose collective "self," whose identity, is formed in covenant, whose worship is in community, and whose relationship with God is intertwined in relationship with one another?

  To be in relationship is about justice, not charity. Relationship requires recognition of the "other" as a "self" equally created in God's image, unique, and capable of choice. It is to do "with" the other, not "to" the other. Entering into "relationship with" requires speaking and listening; exploring values, interests, and resources; discerning commonalities and differences; committing to a shared project. Understood in this way, relationship is demanding because it requires giving of ourselves, not only of our goods. But this is also why it is so powerful.

  To find sources of renewal, we begin by revitalizing old relationships and creating new ones, through which we can question what we have not before questioned, learn what we have not yet learned, identify common purposes, turn differences into collaboration, and create shared capacity.

  Although we begin within our congregations, this is only a beginning. Doesn't Hillel want us to understand that only by reaching out to others can we fully realize the capacity that lies within ourselves? This is as true for congregations, communities, and nations as it is for individuals. Our instruction to be a "blessing to the nations" does not mean "giving charity to"; it means "entering into relationship with."

  If not now, when? Does this mean that the only things worth doing are what we can do right now? Hillel's question implies that unless reflection and relationship result in action - in worldchanging work-it is self-indulgence. Action requires the commitment of time, money, and energy. Committing resources requires making choices. And making choices shapes who we are. By taking action we not only change the world around us, we also change ourselves. But creative action is challenging-risky, uncertain, and ambiguous. We can never learn to do it if we remain in the Garden, where all is given to us. Because it is challenging, we are easily caught in what Tolstoy called "the snare of preparation"- a little more study, a little more planning, a little more certainty. So Hillel's question teaches us that changing ourselves and our world depends on creative action, the capacity that flows not from our status as "knowers," experts who have all the answers, but from our courage as "learners"-questioners with the faith that we can learn to create a new world only by creating it.

  To find the strength to renew ourselves-as individuals, congregations, or communities-where do we turn? Hillel guides us to the insight that the challenges of leadership, community, and work in the world-particularly the work of justice-do not each stand on their own, but are linked to each other. And our power to do the work of justice grows out of the relationships we build with one another. The motivation to build relationships with one another grows out of the recognition that we can only become complete selves by doing so. It is not complicated just difficult. We must commit our time, imagination, and hearts. We must engage with each other in newly challenging ways. And we must find the courage to risk creative action.The job of leadership is to make this happen; this craft-rooted in the work of Moses-is what organizing is all about.

  Reprinted with permission from Sh'ma: A,Journal of Jewish Responsibility (www.shma.com)January 2007

  THE RELIGIOUS LEFT:

  CHANGING THE SCRIPT

  REV. DANIEL SCHULTZ

  When Fred Clarkson asked me to contribute an essay to this collection, I immediately set about detailing the demographic, organizational, philosophical and theological differences between the Religious Right and the Religious Left. I plotted out a detailed examination of these qualities, using public opinion surveys, voting data, organizational charts and religious history.

  Two and a quarter pages and nine footnotes into the project, I was hopelessly bogged down.

  For the record, I still believe there is value in a thorough sociological examination of the Religious Left and what makes it unique. Mercifully, what needs to be said for the present purposes is simple:

  What the Religious Left is doing is not working!

  We on the Religious Left are bedeviled by a number of problems, if you'll excuse the phrase. What follows are several points of bedevilment-and some thoughts about the way out of this bedevilment.

  First of all, we are far too varied and complex a movement to speak with one voice. We are made up of congregations, denominational offices from local to national levels, other religious representatives, ecumenical and interfaith organizations, social-justice and peace activists, single-issue groups, Washington insiders, Democratic Party outreach initiatives, seminaries, institutes, and bloggers. None of us work the same way, or on precisely the same concerns. And where secular progressives have to deal with political and strategic differences, religious liberals also have to factor in theological and ecclesiastical gaps. In many ways, our diversity is our core strength, but this diversity also requires a common, coherent, strategic vision. Currently, we do not have one.

  While things have started to get better since Faith in Public Life, an outgrowth of the Center for American Progress, arrived on the scene following the 2004 elections, a persistent lack of organization and funding for infrastructure across the movement has caused our messaging to be diffused and ineffective. This leads to the perception that we don't believe in much of anything. It also doesn't help that for a movement based on religious values, we have an odd tendency to lose ourselves in the fog of issues.

  One classic example of this tendency was a press release issued by the National Council of Churches the day before the 2004 election to call on the Bush administration to repatriate Uighur prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay. The reaction of Amy Sullivan in an article for the Washington Monthly the following March was caustic, but on-target: "I have no doubt that advocacy on behalf of Chinese Muslim prisoners is a worthy cause," she wrote. "I also have no doubt that it confirms the irrelevance of the once-powerful religious left."' Much of the malfeasance of the Bush administration was well known before the 2004 election. A relevant religious voice would have asked about the rush to war, Abu Ghraib, or the inexcusable immorality of the Guantanamo prison itself The NCC chose instead to target a single, narrowly-defined issue. By not "breaking the frame" of the debate, the Religious Left has often conceded morally unacceptable situations before the fight has even begun.

  The Religious Left is also split between spiritual development and political action. Progressive religion has long been uncomfortable with conflating the two, unlike our conservative counterparts. This tension, coupled with long-term membership declines, has led some Protestant denominations to withdraw from the public square. Religious front groups for right-wing political and financial interests such as the Institute on Religion and Democracy have happily encouraged this trend with well-funded campaigns to paint the churches' leadership as radical leftists, and by stoking internal denominational disputes. Despite the meddling, some denominations have embraced a liberal political or public policy identity. But the reality is that for many reasons-cultural, numerical, and theological- the Protestant mainline and the "social Catholics" are no longer as visible as they once were.

  Let's not let ourselves off the hook, either. For many faithful progressives, ambivalence is the emotion of first resort when considering politics. Because we tend to define faith over and against the dirty, judgmental business of winning elections, we are, unsurprisingly, reluctant to jump into the partisan shark tank. Therefore, some of us pursue "spiritual activism," or understand "progressive" to modify theology more than politics. Others have become embittered commentators on the state of a game they refuse to play. And many maintain an uneasy line between religious and political commitments without ever being able to give their hearts undivided to either side. This conflict is particularly acute for Christians raised on sermons about loving one's enemy or being "in the world, but not of it."

  In many ways, all of this creates a healthy, even fruitful tension. And, as we shall see, one of the unique strength
s our movement can leverage is our moral authority. That authority is only increased by the ability to stay out of petty political bickering. But it is equally true that the Religious Left's claim to influence on public affairs has been withered by its general failure to address the aggression of movement conservatism. (Some right-wing evangelicals don't even consider progressive believers to be Christians.) No doubt this is largely influenced by the perception that we won't stand to testify for our beliefs. What's more, many progressive activists without deep ties to religious communities are confused by the Religious Left's apparent powerlessness and silence before the reactionary elements of Christianity, and harshly critical of its refusal to articulate a simple, clear and effective moral critique of conservative ideas and policies. However Christ-like we may be in our ethical approaches, as a political movement we are in danger of being declared neither hot nor warm-and being spit out accordingly.

  A PRESCRIPTION FOR THE RELIGIOUS LEFT: POLITICAL THEOLOGY

  So much for the diagnosis. Now, what is to be done? First off, we know what doesn't work, as ignoring the political dimension of faith in favor of spirituality without context has lost mainline churches a generation of believers. For belief to be relevant, it must demonstrate that it makes a difference in this world and the next.

  Whining that progressives have values, too, accomplishes nothing. Instead, it keeps alive conservative frames about "amoral liberals" without offering a meaningful alternative. In addition, trying to make the Democratic Party more "friendly to faith" in order to draw "persuadable" social conservatives is, frankly, a waste of resources. This is likely to be a controversial assertion, as many progressives want to establish as broad a coalition as possible, and see nothing wrong with being "faith friendly." Unfortunately, this strategy does not provide a positive vision, but only offers a defensive reaction to conservative criticism. Even if, as seems possible, we are entering an era of Democratic dominance of national politics and government, there is no need to water down the identity of a nascent Religious Left by soft-pedaling core social beliefs in order to reach swing voters.

  Similarly, the idea that the Religious Left can somehow show the nation a kinder, gentler way to do politics without partisanship is also useless. On a practical level, voters have demonstrated again and again that they want Democrats to provide a meaningful alternative to the reactionary ideology of the Republican Party. The progressive agenda is a popular one, while conservatism represents an ever-smaller slice of the electorate. Again, there is no political need to compromise with a radical movement that is declining in popularity.

  Ethically, this seemingly principled desire to accomplish something "beyond politics" while remaining engaged with the political system rests on dubious assertions. It assumes that there is some divine shortcut to solving political problems that somehow does not involve politics. In truth, there is no such transcendent way. Until the Kingdom come, those who want to create and sustain social change are stuck with morally ambiguous involvement in the world of partisan politics. Those who want to keep their hands clean should find another hobby or withdraw from the political realm altogether. Pacifists like Stanley Hauerwas will be happy to point the way.

  The eagerness to heal politics also involves the perverse notion that one party should be allowed to drag the nation through an almost infinite variety of dirty tricks, at the end of which the other party should let bygones be bygones. However satisfactory that might be to those raised on an ethos of turning the other cheek, it does little to establish justice. Many wrongs have been committed during the conservative ascendancy of the past forty years. They will need to be set right. This is not a time to cry "peace, peace" when in fact there is no peace. This is a time to articulate apolitical theology. By this I mean a normative politics rooted in "a view of God and his purposes, and their relation to human action in history, even though our normative thought doesn't derive directly from any theological premises, revealed or rationally arrived at," to borrow a quick-and-dirty definition from the philosopher and social critic Charles Taylor.

  The Religious Left needs to put forward a simple, clear and effective moral critique not just of conservatism, but of all American life. This critique must lay out clear ethical distinctions, and suggest the political (but not necessarily partisan) choices that have be made as a result.

  But a workable progressive political theology should be consistent with broadly progressive values, yet incisive enough that it is able to establish clear responsibility for living up to those values. It must offer insight into social, cultural, economic and political problems. It is not enough to say, for example, that "fighting poverty is a moral value." Voters must understand not only what the value is, but why it is important and who they should hold accountable if it is not upheld. In short, a workable progressive ideology must create a standard for judging the contemporary political scene.

  THE POLITICAL THEOLOGY OF WALTER BRUEGGEMANN

  In a 2005 Christian Century article, the Old Testament scholar and theologian Walter Brueggemann laid out nineteen theses about the Bible's counter-cultural witness to our society. Brueggemann discerned the presence of "scripts" in our lives: dynamic, normative stories that actualize our values in patterns of behavior, often below the threshold of consciousness. The Biblical narrative of relationship with what Brueggemann terms the "elusive, irascible God" calls these scripts into question. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael is a jealous God, and will brook no divided loyalties.

  The primary script in control of our lives, according to Brueggemann, "the script of therapeutic, technological, consumer ist militarism that permeates every dimension of our common life." By this, he means certain acculturated assumptions about the way life should work. Brueggemann writes:

  • "I use the term therapeutic to refer to the assumption that there is a product or a treatment or a process to counteract every ache and pain and discomfort and trouble, so that life may be lived without inconvenience.

  • I use the term technological, following Jacques Ellul, to refer to the assumption that everything can be fixed and made right through human ingenuity; there is no issue so complex or so remote that it cannot be solved.

  • I say consumerist, because we live in a culture that believes that the whole world and all its resources are available to us without regard to the neighbor, that assumes more is better and that `if you want it, you need it.'Thus there is now an advertisement that says: "It is not something you don't need; it is just that you haven't thought of it."

  • The militarism that pervades our society exists to protect and maintain the system and to deliver and guarantee all that is needed for therapeutic technological consumerism. This militarism occupies much of the church, much of the national budget and much of the research program of universities."'

  This script, says Brueggemann, promises to make us "safe and happy," yet has been a miserable failure. For our health and the health of the world, we must let it go and grasp a new one. Though his aim is to strengthen the theology of the church, not assist in partisan ideology, Brueggemann describes this in straightforwardly political terms:

  It is clear to all but the right-wing radio talk people and the sponsoring neoconservatives that the reach of the American military in global ambition has served only to destabilize and to produce new and deep threats to our society. The charade of a national security state has left us completely vulnerable to the whim of the very enemies that our security posture has itself evoked. A by-product of such attempts at security, moreover, has served in astonishing ways to evoke acrimony in the body politic that makes our democratic decision making processes nearly unworkable. We are not safe, and we are not happy. The script is guaranteed to produce new depths of insecurity and new waves of unhappiness. And in response to new depths of insecurity and new waves of unhappiness, a greater resolve arises to close the deal according to the script, which produces ever new waves and new depths.

  This is a more insightful analysis of t
he current state of the union than anything I've ever read in corporate journalism. Brueggemann has sussed-out the framework that underlies much of our contemporary politics, and the utter faithlessness of its premises.

  Which is not to say that this is a perfect vision. I would add one piece: we live in a conformist culture that relieves the anxiety of difference by attempting to synthesize, domesticate or co-opt all that cannot be easily digested. This is most readily seen in the tensions that swirl around cultural, racial and sexual diversity, but it is also reflected in the unhealthy desire of many pundits and politicians to establish "bipartisanship" without confronting real difference. However, bland unity and cheap healing are not progressive religious values. The God of the Old and New Testaments is often radically, even inexplicably "Other" from humanity. God's sovereign work of reconciliation should never be mistaken for "reaching across the aisle to get things done. "With this addition, we have the ingredients of a workable political theology.

  Brueggemann's critique couldn't be simpler or more clear. Though it is not shy about evaluating moral or political stances, its targets go well beyond a single ideology to attack shared, flawed assumptions. Attempting to live life without contingency or responsibility to others is wrong and unsustainable. That, it seems to me, is the central critique progressive faith can offer, and we ought to jump on it with both feet.

  PUTTING COUNTERSCRIPTS INTO PLAY

  New York Democratic state senator Eric Schneiderman recently described the difference between what he calls transactional and transformational politics. The first is the simple and pragmatic art of securing the best possible deal given today's circumstances, while the second is "the work we do today to ensure that the deal we can get on gun control or immigration reform in a year-or five years, or 20 years-will be better than the deal we can get today." Schneiderman's description of this process makes it seem tailormade for the Religious Left: