A Desperately Needed Balance

Earlier this week the New York Times published an OpEd by Joseph Loconte on the shift in the Democratic party toward emphasizing faith-based principles. "If Democrats give religious progressives a stronger voice, they'll only replicate the misdeeds of the religious right."

Nice try.

Loconte adopts an air of neutrality for the liberal Times editorial page that he didn't bother with when he wrote for the Wall Street Journal back in July, where he had nary a word to say about religious conservatives and heaped scorn upon progressives, claiming that we had conveniently compiled a list of Bible verses that just happened to justify the existing Democratic Party platform. At the time I described the article as a "study in rank hypocrisy."

Now he's developed a new strategy: appeal to the liberal secular audience's distaste for the religious right and try to make them think religious progressives are just as dangerous.

Once again he smears Sojourner's Jim Wallis, accusing him of drawing "a direct line from the Bible to a political agenda" (in July he called it "the impulse to leap directly from the Bible to contemporary politics.") Loconte finds it remarkable how Wallis' citations from Isaiah "conveniently affirm every spending scheme of the Democratic party."

Wallis is the leader of an organization whose slogan is "God is not a Republican or a Democrat." In his best-selling book from last fall, God's Politics, Wallis has plenty of criticism for the Democratic party and its priorities. But even this is missing the main point.

Religious progressives are not pushing a theocracy.

Tolerance, compassion and respect are hallmarks of liberal Christianity; in fact, the "agenda" we push is based on these fundamental principles, and a large part of that means we believe people should have the protected right to live their lives as their personal morals and consciences dictate. As former Bush Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers put it, "Legislating religion or morality we gave up on a long time ago." (It was the day after that quote came to light that the GOP killed her nomination.)

It's not progressive Christians who are attempting to mandate a literal reading of Genesis as part of the scientific curriculum; it's not progressive Christians installing religious monuments on government property; it's not progressive Christians who are worried about "happy holidays."

So what is "Religious Left" doing?

We simply grew tired of the public perception that "religious values" meant two things: anti-choice and anti-gay. The Bible addresses homosexuality in only a couple of places, but throughout both testaments we find countless instructions on caring for the poor and the oppressed. We grew tired of smarmy politicians on their third wife who get elected by pandering to fears about homosexuality and vowing to "defend marriage" or who claim to uphold the sanctity of life and then give away corporate tax breaks paid for with cuts in programs that aid the poor. And then of course there's that war America started.

Religious progressives needed to speak up, as the fear-mongering anti-intellectual wing of American Christianity, more concerned with the potential corruptive influences of SpongeBob Squarepants and Charles Darwin, began to speak for "us" in the public eye. Suddenly, "religious" became synonymous with "conservative," and as we have seen, conservative politics has been hijacked by fascists.

Loconte cynically assumes that Democrats have suddenly "discovered" that pandering to faith communities worked for Republicans and think they can do the same. I can see how it might appear that way, but in reality we are reaching out to Americans who frankly don't know how much they agree with us. We're finding new and better ways to communicate and connect, and it's because it's been so immediately successful that conservatives like Loconte are getting frantic.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, President Bush bowed to business interests and suspended a law that required companies to pay their workers the prevailing wage. What we saw in New Orleans was that the wealthy got out and the poor got stuck, and now here was the President letting companies get rich off government contracts by allowing them to pay their workers less than was fair. The religious left spearheaded the movement to get Bush to reverse that decision. He did.

Loconte faults Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi for denouncing this year's Republican budget proposal for its "injustice and immorality." Of course, Loconte doesn't mention that the budget was basically cuts in services to the poor and new tax cuts for the rich. He warns that the progressive agenda is "awash in scriptural references to justice, poverty and peace, stacked alongside claims about global warming, debt relief and the United Nations Security Council."

And that's bad because...?

The Christian Left isn't interested in invoking "a Biblical theocracy." We're merely bringing a desperately needed balance to political discourse in America.