The Left Finds its Voice

The Star Tribune notices there are religious people who are also liberal:

They call themselves "spiritual progressives," and they're getting louder and prouder.

Reacting to the successes of the Christian right and reviving the faith-fueled activism that drove 1960s crusades on civil rights and the Vietnam War, more liberals are embracing the language of faith.

For decades, left-leaning activists "were so afraid of imposing their beliefs on others that we hadn't claimed a stance," said Carolyn Pressler, a professor at United Theological Seminary in New Brighton. "Suddenly it was the Christian right versus the secular left. We had abdicated."

No more. Nationwide, new books and websites are raising the flag of the religious left. In Minnesota, the trend has been evident in such arenas as the legislative debate over a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Evangelicals and Catholics who back a ban faced church activists who argued that godliness was on their side. The chorus of liberal religious voices also has been heard on poverty, immigration and taxes.

My own take on this is that the liberal religous voice never went away; it was just temporarily drowned out by the more strident voice of religious conservatives who finally found their political voice and got involved. But having won political battles the conservatives then had to govern, and governing is messy and involves compromise and actually having to make decisions and live with their consequences. And suddenly having easy access to power and money and media, not surprisingly some of them have succombed to greed and corruption.

Meanwhile the left just kept doing what it was always doing, advocating for justice for all, peace, and care of the environment. And I will concede that in recent years we have become better organized and more media savy. But overall, we are growing in strength in large part because the middle is drifting back our way. We may not be as flashy as the evangelicals, and we may not be so damn certain that we have the Truth, but we are not near as likely to destroy the earth, start a war, or take away civil liberties, all in the name of God.