The Religious Left

Georgia Mountains Unitarian Universalist Church

Copyright Joan King March 7, 2004

It's an honor to be here. I've addressed this congregation twice before, but both times it concerned nuclear issues, something I've studied for over twenty years. This time, it appears that you've invited because of my column in the Gainesville TIMES.

The TIMES has a circulation of between 21 and 24 thousand people. Outside the city of Gainesville, most readers are rural or small town. I write for an audience that I see as conservative. They're religious but not analytical about their religion, and they probably get most of their national and international news from television and talk radio.

I don't think UUC members fit this description. In my experience UUC members are progressive, well read, and they are analytical about themselves and their religion . You must like what I write about religion, politics, civil rights, and so forth, or you wouldn't have asked me here; but I don't want to preach to the converted.

I write to stimulate thinking, my own as well as my readers. I want readers to question their beliefs, to question their sources of information, challenge things they were taught growing up and now take for granted; but UUC members already to this.

For my part, I just want to get things right. To be honest I just don't want to embarrass myself. I am not a trained journalist, or a scientist, or a theologian. Actually, I have a degree in Anthropology with a minor in Art. My avocation is dance. What right do I have to talk about politics or religion or other social issues?

Writing for the TIMES has forced me to be very careful. I've had to think through everything I say. Is it true? It is opinion or fact? How do I know? Can I back it up? What are my sources? Have used the right word? Is my meaning clear?

What's more, I am a terrible editor. I can read over my own material dozens of times and still miss typos and other mistakes. By the time I file my column I've read and reread it dozens of times always looking for errors, always afraid I have missed something, some colossal blunder that twists my words into something I did not mean.

It's nerve wracking, but it has been good for me because I've been forced to look at things from the readers' point of view, readers who most likely have a very different belief system than I have. And now that I have my email address below the column, readers who will tell me if I get it wrong.

This is what I've gained from writing a column and what I want to talk about this morning .

I know what I think. I know what I believe and how I feel, but what does it look like from a different perspective? What does it look like from the point of view of a someone who considers himself a religious or political conservative?

We hear a lot about the Religious Right but very little if anything about a Religious Left. UUC members are religious liberals, but are you "The Religious Left", because "Left" implies a political orientation. Webster's dictionary defines "left" as persons or groups seeking egalitarian political goals through reform or revolution." Does this describe your church?

When Bo Turner spoke here last month he said he had a tattoo on his arm that read, "Jesus was a liberal." I don't think that's accurate. Jesus was a revolutionary. He was political. That's why the authorities killed him. Jesus was a revolutionary, and that fact is probably more relevant today than whether or not he was the Son of God. We are all children of God. We all share what ever divinity there is in life. I support a division, a fire wall if you wish, between church and state; and I would like to see politics kept out of the pulpit, but right now it isn't possible. Philosophy, religion, and politics are intertwined because all three attempt to tell us how to live.

Partisan politics is something else. I do try to keep partisan politics out of my writing. No one world view has all the answers. We simply don't know enough. Call it the law of unintended consequences or the hand of God. At our very best we humans have very limited control over the future. And I believe in doubt. Neither religion nor politics is healthy when it is unwilling to question, when it can't or won't say, "I could be wrong."

But like it or not, religion is going to play a roll in the coming election. A large majority of Americans consider themselves religious, Southerners especially so. Not too long ago the Pew Center for Research conducted a poll that exposed a religious difference between the two major political parties. Roughly speaking ... and it is roughly.... Republicans are church goers. Democrats are not. Suddenly the Republican Party is the Party of God. Democrats are not. Or at least this is the way it's being portrayed in some quarters.

I grew up in New Jersey. I attended Sunday school at a nearby Episcopal Church the same way I attended regular school. I was sent. My parents stayed home. In public school we read from the Bible and saluted the flag. To this extent, religion was part of public education. But what we did with it was private.

When I moved South and married into a Southern family, my husband's aunts took over. (His parents were deceased.) I was introduced to a circle of women at a luncheon, a book club or some other social function .... where the moderator suggested we turn to the person next to us and tell them what our husbands did for a living and what church we belonged to.

I was shocked. I didn't consider myself an appendage of my new husband, but what really upset me was the question about church attendance. One's church affiliation, or lack there of, was a private matter. One simply did not ask a question like this where I grew up. It was a little like opening a conversation with a stranger by asking about their sex life. Religion was personal.

Well, in the South ... in the rural South .... things are different. Religion is public, and this is not necessarily wrong. It is just different.

Now, I'm going to change the subject a little. Is there a Universal Moral Law? This is probably a philosophical question, but it relates to both religion and politics. I believe the question of Moral Law is what's behind all the brouhaha over the Ten Commandments. It's why so many believers are upset when someone says they are an atheist. Many people, particularly conservatives, are firmly convinced that without a belief in God and they usually mean their God .... there is no conscience, no personal inhibition, no security for society at large.

It goes even deeper than that. Moral Law is thought to be part of God's Creation. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant believed "the moral law within that is, the voice of conscience .... is proof of God's existence. Anthropologists tell us all cultures have a kind of conscience. In other words, they have ideas about how they ought to behave .... and these ideas exist whether they have one god or many, whether they worship their ancestors or earth spirits or nothing at all. Buddhism, I'm told, claims no deity at all. People make a connection between a belief in God and individual conscience. The more fundamental the belief in God, the more the question of Moral Law comes becomes an issue. Thus religion intrudes on politics. And this is why the Religious Left needs to do a better job of explaining itself to the general public.

One of the best, most feeling, most conscientious individuals I know is a UUC member. He is active in his church and committed to a number of peace and justice organizations. I've known and worked with this man for years, and I don't believe I have ever heard him use the word God. On one occasion I was visiting a UUC church and had a member tell me she was an atheist.

This is O.K. with me. I've been struggling with the existence of a personal God for years, but this characteristic of some liberal church members, this inability to use the word God when talking about values, is as unsettling to conservatives as the luncheon moderator's suggestion that I introduce myself to a total stranger by asking about her church affiliation.

Not to publicly acknowledge a belief in God says to conservatives, this individual does not subscribe to Moral Law. He is not one of us. He can't be trusted to act in an acceptable manner. He is dangerous. At least, that's my interpretation of the Religious Right's need for public displays like the Ten Commandments, for prayer in school, and for vocal affirmations of belief by their leaders. This behavior makes a some People very uncomfortable, because as they see it conservatives are trying to force their religious beliefs on others. Moreover, they are willing to use the law to do it.

This is why I believe religious liberals need to make themselves better understood. Right now, the Religious Left does not have equal visibility with the Right. Religious liberals are a rather amorphous group. They are for peace. They are environmentalists. They support human rights, but they have not done an adequate job of putting this in theological terms, and by that I mean terms the general public can recognize and understand. Like it or not, religious liberals have got to start talking about God.

We humans are one race. We share a single planet. Whether one believes in divine creation or evolution, we all come from a single source. One race, one earth, one God. Religious liberals also need to better understand their counterpart. The Religious Right has been so egregious in some of their demands that many of us who think differently have completely lost perspective. We've have a negative knee-jerk reaction to people we don't know, good people who believe they are doing the right thing for their families and their nation.

I said something along these lines to a close friend. She became irate. "No, you don't need to understand these people. They are uneducated bigots. You need to stand up to them and on and on. I'm sorry. This is not the solution. It only widens an already dangerous split in the country.

When I started working on this talk I put "Religious Left" into Google. One of the articles that came up was by a professional journalist who introduces himself as a practicing Christian and a political conservative. The author is Rod Dreher, and the title of his piece supports my claim that religious liberals need to reassess their public image. It's called THE GODLESS PARTY.

I've never understood people who believe Christians are being persecuted by the media or anyone else in this country. I do understand them when they insist that America is a Christian nation because that's the way it has always appeared to a parochial people. Now that we've become a more multicultural nation, these people feel disenfranchised. They are frightened, and they're angry.

Reading Rod Dreher's column helped me understand some of these feelings. Dreher sums up his article with this: A survey of T.V. news directors and newspaper editors showed that at least a third of these people, these media professionals, say Evangelical and fundamentalist Christians have too much political power and are a threat to democracy. Almost none of them make the same statement about nonbelievers and secularists. I, too, am worried about the power of the Religious Right. I am frightened by fundamentalism where ever I find it, but I can see why a survey of this sort upsets Christians who believe Moral Law is a manifestation of God and believe that people who do not profess a belief in a higher power can not possibly have a moral compass.

There is more to be gleaned from Mr. Dreher's article. In one place he says, "Because they (fellow journalists) don't know any religious people..." In another, "...because journalists (don't) know religiously observant people..." Oh really! Perhaps his colleagues simply don't want to argue with him, or maybe they think religion is a private matter. There is another reason why the media is seen as secular. It's their job. They are supposed to deal in facts, not opinion, and belief a matter of opinion; but that takes me away from my point.

Dreher says the media repeatedly links the Religious Right with the Republican party, but says there are no similar stories tying the Secular Left to the Democrats. The Democrats, he says, are a Godless Party, and the fact that the media doesn't expose this is clear proof of their bias.

This is pretty heavy stuff, and the article makes some big leaps in logic, but it gives you an idea of why I believe religious liberals need to do a better job of explaining themselves. Being pro-choice or supporting the union of gays and lesbians is not necessarily secular. Being an environmentalist is not just saving cuddly little creatures. It is not secular; it is defending God's Creation. Social justice has always been of concern to religious liberals, but religious liberals don't always explain their concern in scriptural terms. The civil rights movement was a religious movement. It was based in scripture. This was its strength. It wasn't embarrassed to talk about God.

I am not proselytizing. I am talking about communication. If I were living in a Muslim or Hindu country, or any other religious culture, I would say more or less the same thing. Look for the spirit, then learn the local language.

The nation needs to hear from the Religious Left. It needs to be a strong clear message grounded in deep faith and animated by the same positive life force that brought this world into existence. We may be uncomfortable talking about our religion and reluctant to use the word God, but if that's the language used by those around us, than that's the language we need to use.

God has been co-opted by the Right. Religious liberals need to reclaim the moral high ground. I want to see the Religious Left become as much of a political force as the Religious Right. The nation will be stronger when it does

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