Religious Left and the Democratic Party
There is an interesting chain of posts, all very worth reading, on the role of Religious Left. It started by this article in Salon by Amy Sullivan:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/03/10/religious_left/print.html
arguing that Democrats should court the Religious Left.
PZ Myers of Pharyngula responded with wreath here:
http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/sullivan_gah/
listing a litany of historical events during which the Religious Left stood meekly by and watched, only to claim responsibility for the positive outcomes post facto.
Mike The Mad Biologist takes issue with both here:
http://mikethemadbiologist.blogspot.com/2005/03/sullivan-pharyngula-and-religion.html
and makes an important point about the difference between Christian Left and Jewish Left. He also adds:
I'll take the Christian left seriously when they deliver the goods.
Chris of Mixing Memory chips in here:
http://mixingmemory.blogspot.com/2005/03/religious-left.html
He says, among else:
We shouldn't compromise our values simply to make the members of religious
groups who agree with us on other issues happy.
To which I agree. I have argued before (http://sciencepolitics.blogspot.com/2005/02/evolution-worship-for-changing-world.html) that Christian Left is lost and headless and needs to get involved in politics on the side of the Left, including the Democratic Party. It is not Democrats who need to appeal to liberal Christians - it is the other way round: liberal Christians have to do the work of joining in the fight, offering their services, and asking for help in doing so. The Democrats should embrace them and give them a guiding hand, but only if the churches show some real enthusiasm about joining in. The Democratic Party should set the agenda, the platform, and the strategy, while the churches, if they want to help, should follow the lead. No aspect of the progressive agenda should be sacrificed to appeal to the churches. It is the churches that need to decided if they want to fight, to get off their butts and ask "How may I help you?"
