Dispatches from the religious left
Page 3
"Transformational politics requires us to challenge the way people think about issues, opening their minds to better possibilities. It requires us to root out the assumptions about politics or economics or human nature that prevent us from embracing policies that will make our lives better."'
Questioning assumptions, imagining new possibilities, keeping an eye on the human bottom line of public policy: this is the natural work of faithful people engaged in an ongoing ethical encounter with a dynamic God. God is still speaking indeed, still working to re-create our world, and we should be fearless in proclaiming the social and political implications of that reality.
If we can do so, we will take control of the so-called Overton Window, the spectrum of "commonly held ideas, attitudes and presumptions [that] frame what is politically possible."4 By using the moral authority traditionally accorded to religious leaders in America, we can influence which ideas are or are not considered acceptable in political discourse.
This work is taking place already, as various formations of the media seek to balance the domineering voice of the Religious Right with voices from the "new" Religious Left. However, we need to push the media beyond "usual suspects" like Tony Campolo, Michael Lerner, or Jim Wallis. But that's relatively easily done, especially in a time when media opportunities for the Religious Left seem to be growing. If we can come together around counterscripts, it will allow us to work across both partisan and confessional lines, an area of major concern for our new movement. This will enable us to critique both Democrats and Republicans, and perhaps even to establish new coalitions based on shared values. And because it relies on shared observation rather than revelation or a single theological framework, it will allow us to hold together both secular and religious progressives.
Brueggemann's Biblical theses are faithful-and progressive. They do not sell out or tone down for political convenience the kind of values articulated by George Lakoff's Rockridge Institute: strength, safety and protection, fulfillment, fairness, freedom, opportunity, prosperity, community, cooperation, trust, honesty, and openness. But they do ask in a distinctly religious voice to what end we uphold those values and whether they are ultimate or partial goals?
Establishing accountability through counterscripts is fairly simple. No politician will ever be able to usher in the Kingdom of God, of course, even if they were able to move the nation as a whole away from destructive scripts to healthier ways of being. But as a relative matter, evaluating the extent of their cooperation with the technological, therapeutic, consumerist, conformist or militarist scripts is almost as simple as opening the Congressional Record.'
In order to do this, we will have to lose our scruple about calling things for what they are. Prophets who are unwilling to judge present realities against a vision of God's possibilities are by definition unnecessary. Standing in judgment, however, goes against the grain of many religious progressives. Developing a righteous anger may therefore be the most difficult change to make- but also the most necessary.
COUNTERSCRIPTS: JUDGMENT, AMBIGUITY AND NEW GROUND
We are not safe, and we are not happy. This frank evaluation is the starting point for any meaningful conversation about the current state of our nation. If we on the Religious Left want to find relevance beyond easy slogans and "me-too-ism," then we will have to find a way to help our fellow citizens understand how to reorder their commitments in light of the scripts' failure to perform as advertised. Otherwise, the Religious Left will be remaindered as a not-particularly-effective electoral adjunct to the centrist wing of the Democratic Party.
How might we start this conversation in a way that advances the progressive cause yet honors "a view of God and his purposes"? That, of course, is the question of questions. And we will hear many answers to it in the years to come. Brueggemann for his part is explicit that his statements are theology, not utilitarian politics:
"Liberals tend to get so engaged in the issues of the day, urgent and important as those issues are, that we forget that behind such issues is a meta-narrative that is not about our particular social passion but about the world beyond our control. The claim of that alternative script is that there is at work among us a Truth that makes us safe, that makes us free, that makes us joyous in a way that the comfort and ease of the consumer economy cannot even imagine."
For a number of reasons, it will not be easy for religious progressives to work toward the counterscripting of our present society. Scripture guides us to build an alternative society in the countercultural world of the church, not to attempt the redemption of the public square. Moreover, the God Brueggemann has in sight is not an easy boss, nor is the textual container for his good news always user-friendly. Though the tensions between secular and religious liberals are often overstated, they do exist, and they will continue for the simple reason that their experiences and overarching goals, though they overlap, are not identical.
Perhaps most vexing of all, the judgment of the God Walter Brueggemann knows often drags us before our own ambivalence and forces us to face it:
"One of the crucial tasks of ministry is to name the deep ambiguity that besets us, and to create a venue for waiting for God's newness among us. This work is not to put people in crisis. The work is to name the crisis that people are already in, the crisis that evokes resistance and hostility when it is brought to the surface and named.
• God may yet lead us anew where liberals and conservatives can disrupt the shrillness long enough to admit that variously we are frightened by alternative patterns of sexuality. We do not want to kill all gays as the book of Leviticus teaches, but we are in fact uneasy about changes that seem so large.
• God may yet lead us anew when conservatives and liberals can interrupt our passion for consumer goods and lower taxes long enough to admit that we believe neighbors should be cared for, even with taxes. We have a passion for social programs but are nonetheless aware of being taxed excessively, and it causes us alarm.
• God may yet lead us so that liberals and conservatives can stop the loudness to know that the divestment that costs us nothing is too easy, whether directed at Israel or the Palestinians; the core divestment to which we are first called comes closer to our own entitlements. The Spirit has always been, for the church and beyond the church, `a way out of no way."'
This will no doubt make many progressives squirm. There are good reasons for that. Brueggemann addresses here the work of the church, not the state or society, and the work of the church is to stay together above all else. In that it is no less political than any other venue of human activity, but it is a politics directed at a certain aim-unity-that does not always map well onto larger spheres.
Then there is the less than full-throated support for a progressive agenda, particularly on questions of sexual identity, a difficulty Brueggemann himself points out. But the essential insight seems correct: there are any number of issues where honesty compels us to admit to conflicted feelings. More importantly, there are any number of issues where honesty compels us to challenge our self perception as morally pure agents. It is precisely at such junctures where we might look for fertile new ground, spiritually and politically.
Take one of Brueggemann's examples quoted above. We might say that 9/11 has left our society ambivalent about what it means to be safe in an age of terror. Such a statement does not require us to surrender the belief that the Bush administration has seriously undermined democratic liberty and the rule of law in its zeal to erect an American security state. It has. Nor must we give up the argument that a reckless administration compromised national security in a rush to conduct an ill-considered, risky, and unnecessary war. It did. But we should also confess that many of us enabled this administration's lunacy by "supporting the troops" if not actually voting for Bush and Cheney. Certainly, we have all paid for the administration's malfeasance with our tax dollars, and benefited from the militarism it exploits.
Once we have admitted our moral compromises before and after S
eptember 2001, we can begin to recognize an opportunity for transformation. The attacks on New York, Pennsylvania and Washington D.C. should have sparked a reconsideration of an already dangerously unbalanced American security policy. That rethinking is now long overdue. Until we are able to surface and address our ambiguous desires to be kept safe and free, that rethinking will remain undone, and we will continue to be subject to "the charade of a national security state" in one form or another because we will not have changed the crucial assumption that the force of arms alone can keep us safe. That keeps us wedded to the morality of violence and the politics of militarism.
Working with such deeply embedded scripts may blunt the transactional effectiveness of the Religious Left in the short run. We can seldom offer a promised land, as it were, only an ongoing journey with a cranky, temperamental God and a destination that is perpetually just around the corner. There is a reason Brueggemann speaks of where "God may yet lead us." An honest faith demands that we admit that we have no idea where exactly God is directing us. After all, we've never been "there" before.
Again, this will be distressing for those who look to progressive faith to provide an electoral counterweight to the right-wing idolatry of power. They no doubt will want to know what religious believers can contribute toward securing the immediate electoral or governmental fortunes of a resurgent progressive movement. And there is no reason they shouldn't. Politics as it is currently designed is a short-range, bottom-line oriented business. If you can't deliver money or votes, then you have no power. The Religious Right is able to bring both to the table; therefore they still have considerable power.
But I hope that what I have been able to demonstrate in this analysis is that transactional politics is not our calling. What the Religious Left has been doing does not work because we are meant to ask the questions, not line up behind the answers. Where the Religious Right has been the cash machine and ground troops for the conservative movement, the Religious Left can and should be the engine for transformational progressive politics. And where religious conservatives have been the stout defenders of everything that is clear and solid and unchanging, religious progressives are the "astronauts of inner space," relentlessly pushing through uncertainty toward newer, higher ground. We ought to take it as a good sign when that drive "evokes resistance and hostility" and charges of judgmentalism. It means we're making progress.
The genius of the Religious Left has never been in organizational heft or the ability to mobilize campaign contributions or stick to talking points pumped out of the blast-faxes of suburban Virginia. Progressive faith has been generative instead in its eternal, persistent, damnably disruptive questioning of the seemingly selfevident way things must be. We are meant to be gadflies in the service of Lord, asking through political theologies difficult questions about what truly makes us safe, what truly makes us happy, and what truly brings us together across the divisions imposed by our society.
That last question is worth reflecting on another time. For now it is enough to recall the old joke that says the purpose of good preaching ought to be to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I think that applies in spades to the Religious Left. There is and always has been a temptation to define religious progressives by the issues or the parties they have backed. It is a temptation that should be resisted. We are, and always have been, a ragged, disputatious lot following a ragged, disputatious narrative toward an irascible, hidden God. What has worked for us hasn't been a comfortable groove, but affliction and an inborn, restless stubbornness that forever keeps us asking questions instead of supplying the answers. That is hardly less complex than the "demographic, organizational, philosophical and theological differences" I set out to detail, and there are times when it seems hardly less satanic. But it is the faith we know, and most days, with God's help, it suffices. I'd suggest that any group that purports to call itself the Religious Left start there and work its way forward, slowly, tentatively, and with one eye always set firmly on where God may yet lead us.
NOTES
1. Amy Sullivan,"The Good Fight," Washington Monthly, March 2005, http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0503.sullivan. html
2. All Brueggemann quotes are from "Counterscript: living with the elusive God," published in Christian Century November 29, 2005 and adapted from an earlier speech.
3. "Transforming the Liberal Checklist," Nation, March 10, 2008. Hat tip, as always, to Digby.
4. Nathan J. Russell, "An Introduction To the Overton Window of Political Possibilities," Mackinac Center For Public Policy, http://www. mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=7504
5.To forestall the inevitable snickers, let me stipulate that there will always be ways for crafty poll to hide their records in the complexity of governance in a nation of 300 million people. Which means that there will always be a need for sharp-eyed critics tuned to the artful dodge.
NOT BY OUTRAGE ALONE
REV. DR. KATHERINE HANCOCK RAGSDALE
I want to live in a world that values cooperation over competition; compassion over punishment; respect over control; and the dazzling diversity of creation over conformity. I dream of a world where every human being is cherished, in her and for her own particularity, and is, therefore, assured of food, education, health care, and meaningful work; where hospitality and mutual concern are the norm-in our homes, at our borders, and across this ever-shrinking globe. I long for a world where we fight with one another passionately about how best to achieve justice and freedom and peace, but such fights are grounded in mutual respect and a firm commitment to honesty and "seeking the truth come whence it may cost what it will." (Phillips Brooks, 1835-1893) And I want to know, I need to know, your vision. What do you see that this White, Southern (US), lesbian, feminist, activist Episcopal priest cannot see from where I stand or because other things have captured my attention? I want to spend my life fighting for something bigger than the reach of my own sight or the scope of my own imagination. I need others, many, many others, to contribute to such a vision.
Throughout this volume you will find essays describing how to build workable political coalitions, as well as others making the case for why various issues are integral to the agenda of a more politically dynamic Religious Left. It is not my intent to pile on with more examples of either. Rather, I hope to make the case that we cannot, and ought not, win if we don't build broad coalitions with visions and agendas that refuse to exclude anyone out of either expedience or blindness.
With each passing year I become more convinced that movements cannot be sustained on outrage alone. Which is a pity, for we have much to be outraged by: economic policies that protect and engorge already obscenely wealthy individuals and business interests at the expense of the poor (and the formerly middle-class who are joining them); incursions on civil liberties that target the most vulnerable in order to persuade the rest of us that our safety is being attended to; governmental attempts to regulate who we love and when, how, and if we bear children while privatizing those things government is best equipped to attend to-education, health care, the social safety net, even defense and the waging of war. Each of us could fill pages with additions to the list of the outrageous and the unconscionable.
Perhaps one of the most fundamental outrages of all is the erosion of honest public discourse. When, instead of disagreeing honestly, the Right (or any of us) practice to deceive and to cut off debate with spurious claims, whether through biased, agendadriven (B.A.D.) science, disingenuous assertions about what the Bible purportedly says, or lies about weapons of mass destruction, we are left unable to know what to believe, how to speak in order to be heard, how to struggle together to discern truth. By all means, let us put our values and convictions on the table, with the facts, and then let's disagree about the moral and policy implications of that data. Let us disagree passionately-an indicator of how seriously we take it all. But let's disagree honestly. Otherwise, we salt the ground of civic discourse that has, through the ages, led to as tonish
ing new discoveries as well as moral enlightenment.
We have much to be outraged by. Yet the smug satisfaction that accompanies un-tempered outrage is good neither for the health of our souls nor for the movements we strive to build and serve. Outrage, no matter how powerful, how justified, how often re-stoked, cannot survive the long haul. It burns hot, but it burns fast. To see our work through we need the steady fire of our vision to center and sustain us. This vision may, and will, take many forms as we each bring our own interests and passions to the table but, in all its forms, it must incorporate the broad reach of issues and agenda. It must link our passions.
Fortunately, linking our agendas is not difficult-it is, in fact, almost inevitable. Reproductive Justice, for example, depends not just on safe, affordable access to abortion, but also on all those things that give women and families real options-that make possible the choice to bear and raise children as well as the choice to avoid, and, when necessary, to terminate pregnancies. Therefore, we cannot talk adequately about reproductive justice without also talking about health care, child care, job security and, safety from violence. LGBTQrights are linked to the whole spectrum of gender equity, as well as to social security, health care, immigration ... and immigration is inseparable from racial justice, education, civil liberties. The links are endless if we train our eyes to see the complementarities rather than the conflicts.
The problems arise when, in the heat of pitched battles over issues closest to our heart, bedeviled by a zero-sum mentality, we too often back-burner our the concerns of our allies, or worse yet, barter them away, in an attempt to capture ground in our own fights. This not only fractures our movements, dims our vision, and gives lie to our professed values, it also too often wins us only trivial and illusory victories. For our issues truly are too tightly linked to sacrifice even one without crippling all the others. Even we ourselves, often under the same skin, carry multiple identities linked to multiple issues. The opportunities to privilege one issue, one identity, at the expense of others are constant and seductive. But they lead to death and dismemberment-requiring us to try to separate and sacrifice parts of ourselves, sacrificing the whole for the illusion of protecting one or another part. (Or as the prophet Jeremiah once found in a valley-dry bones.) Ask anyone who witnessed the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries. Look at how easily they led to fractures in the movement as leaders and activists, reluctantly sometimes but still adamantly, chose their sides-anti-racist or anti-sexist. Ask Black women for whom this false dichotomy cut particularly close to the bone. Most of us carry multiple passions; many of us also carry multiple identities. As long as we continue to fight against this or that most recent atrocity of the Right rather than for a comprehensive Progressive vision, we will be doomed to face such "Sophie's choices"-choices that promise death for most and no real life for any.