The Outlines of a Religious Left

Dispatches from the Religious Left, edited by Frederick Clarkson, features essays from a wide range of religious leaders and thinkers. One of these essays is co-authored by my husband, Shai Sachs, and me. We give a practical introduction to using new media and explain how the Religious Left may find new media particularly useful.

Shai and I received our copies of the book a few days ago and I’ve enjoyed reading the essays by other contributors. Although contributors addressed a range of subjects and with different kinds of expertise, I noticed some recurring ideas about what the Religious Left is or should be:

1.The Religious Left is organized around religious ideas, leaders and institutions, as is the Religious Right. But unlike the Religious Right, the Religious Left does not and should not promote or any one religion. We can be deeply religious and deeply political, while also celebrating religious freedom and defending separation of church and state.

In his editor’s introduction, “A Religious Left for the 21st Century,” Clarkson highlights the Religious Left’s attitude towards separation of church and state as a key difference. Dispatches also features the essay “A Progressive Vision of Church-State Relations,” by Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

2. The Religious Left must recognize issues as interconnected. Several contributors urged against jettisoning issues such as reproductive freedom or BGLT rights from the Religious Left’s agenda.

Rev. Dr. Katherine Ragsdale in “Not by Outrage Alone” states, “we cannot talk adequately about reproductive justice without also talking about health care, child care, job security and safety from violence.”

Rev. Debra Haffner and Timothy Palmer make a similar point in “Toward a Theology of Sexual Justice” writing,

Pushing aside women’s reproductive rights and equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) persons would harm the very constituents that faith communities agree they are most called to serve — people in poverty and children.

3. The Religious Left must offer alternative theologies and frameworks for understanding events and issues. Multiple contributors expressed the importance of religious ideas and beliefs in helping shift the terms of political understanding, including Rev. Dan Schultz in “The Religious Left: Changing the Script,” Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou in “Who’s God? Faith, Democracy, and the Making of an Authentic Religious Left,” and to some extent Leo Maley in “Marriage Equality in Massachusetts: A Progressive Victory.”

It’s an exciting contribution to the development of a more mature and powerful Religious Left. The first point (we value separation of church and state) feels very fully developed to me. I think the message that progressives can merge religion and politics without advocating theocracy has already been well-articulated and modeled in practice. However, it’s a foundational message and one that may need repeating and further elaboration in some places. The second two points, the interconnectedness of issues and the necessity of theological engagement, seem to me less widely accepted and less fully lived-out. Those feel more to me like the cutting edge of development in the Religious Left.

There are two more issues facing the Religious Left, which were not discussed much in Dispatches, but which I think are highly relevant: the role of congregations and the challenges of building a religiously plural movement.

What role do congregations have in the Religious Left? Are they organizing units in the Religious Left or is their mission fundamentally different from that of non-congregational institutions of the Religious Left? (Or both?)

What are the challenges of building a religiously pluralistic movement? Are members of the Religious Left bound together only by our stands on social issues, or is there room for theological exchange and common ground?

P.S. If you’re in New York this Tuesday, you can hear from select Dispatches contributors in person, at the book launch celebration on October 14.