Religious left gears up to face right counterpart
By Thomas Ferraro Tue Jul 25, 8:16 AM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The religious right, which helped re-elect President Bush in 2004 by rallying opposition to abortion and gay marriage, is now facing a pushback from the religious left.
With a faith-based agenda of their own, liberal and progressive clergy from various denominations are lobbying lawmakers, holding rallies and publicizing their positions. They want to end the
Iraq war, ease global warming, combat poverty, raise the minimum wage, revamp immigration laws, and prevent "immoral" cuts in federal social programs.
Some, like the
Rev. Robin Meyers of the United Church of Christ in Oklahoma, marry gay couples and seek to reduce abortions while rejecting calls by the right to outlaw them.
"I join the ranks of those who are angry because I have watched as the faith I love has been taken over by fundamentalists who claim to speak for Jesus but whose actions are anything but Christian," declared Meyers, who has written a new book, "Why the Christian Right is Wrong.
According to scholars, the religious left has become its most active since the 1960s when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other clergy -- black and white -- were key figures in the civil-rights and anti-Vietnam war movements.
INFLUENCING ELECTIONS?
While the religious right is still more powerful, the left is setting its sights on this year's congressional elections and the 2008 White House contest.
Rising Democratic star Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois said it is imperative for his party that fellow Democrats seek to counter the influence of the religious right.
"If we don't reach out to evangelical Christians and other religious Americans and tell them what we stand for, the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons will continue to hold sway," he said at a June conference.
Hoping to expand its influence, the religious left has become visible in ways more often associated with the right.
Some progressive clergy, reaching out to the sick, joined a diverse coalition that took on the right in a battle this month to expand federally backed embryonic stem cell research.
Congress passed a bill to allow more research, but Bush vetoed it, saying the measure would violate the sanctity of human life by encouraging destruction of embryos left from fertility treatments.
"The religious right intends for you and I to live in a country where church and state are united -- where only their interpretations of biblical law dictates the law of our land," said the Rev. Welton Gaddy, a Baptist minister in Washington who heads The Interfaith Alliance which seeks to maintain the constitutional separation of church and state.
RIGHT REMAINS POWERFUL
But it's unclear how big an impact the religious left will have.
Laura Olson, a Clemson University expert on religion and politics, said the religious left is energized, but "a lot of times it shoots itself in the foot. It often pushes an overly broad agenda that results in conflicting priorities."
And analysts warn that greater activism can worsen the political divide.
"Religion has never been as politicized in recent times as it is right now," said Allen Hertzke, who teaches religion and politics at the University of Oklahoma.
"Politics is about combat -- 'us versus them.' Religion shouldn't be about that," Hertzke said.
Despite increased energy on the left, the religious right -- featuring big-name preachers, popular talk shows and legions of followers -- remains a far bigger influence than the loosely knit left.
In fact, the religious right has become in the past few decades a cornerstone of the Republican Party, working to put its conservative values at the heart of the party's priorities.
In the 2000 elections, the religious right helped Bush and fellow Republicans by rallying opposition to abortion. In the 2004 contests, the movement added to its agenda a drive against the equally divisive issue of gay marriage.
Exit polls in the 2004 White House election showed Bush had a big edge among regular churchgoers while Democrat John Kerry had strong backing among those who said they never attend.
The right's success prompted progressive faith-based voices to denounce the Rev. Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority, and other conservative evangelical leaders.
"The call of the gospel is to help the poor," Meyers said. "The strong ought to help the weak, instead of the strong helping the strong get stronger, which the Bush administration is all about."
Those on the right say they are not worried by the left's activism. Richard Land, president of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission in Nashville, said, "The religious left is a shadow of what it was in the '60s."
"I'm quite confident that in the struggle for hearts and minds, we've got a lot more boots on the ground than they do."
Amid the war of words, some clergy are making a point to steer clear of labels. Rev. Jim Wallis, who heads a faith-based group in Washington called Sojourners, has been widely viewed as part of the religious left. Yet he rejects the name and preaches the need to bring the nation to "a moral center."
"I'm an evangelical Christian who thinks that justice is a biblical imperative," said Wallis." The monologue of the religious right is finally over and a new dialogue has just begun."
Religious left gears up to face right counterpart
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