The religious left makes a move

March 28, 2006

The religious right, as a political movement, has always had a counter-balance from the progressive religious community, but the “[tag]religious left[/tag]” has never had the power, influence, notoriety, or public profile of its conservative rivals. As Digby noted yesterday, it seems that this rivalry of sorts is in flux.

For example, the [tag]United Church of Christ[/tag], a progressive and socially tolerant denomination, has created a partnership with Media Matters to “fight the pronounced tilt toward the [tag]Religious Right[/tag] in mainstream media news.” Both entities believe, accurately, that when news outlets seek out the faith community for a perspective on a political story, more often than not, they turn to a conservative.

You wouldn’t know it from watching the major news networks, but progressive religious leaders are more articulate and thoughtful on the key issues of the day than anyone in the religious right. Before a TV producer calls James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, or Pat Robertson to comment on a story, they might also put a call into Tony Campolo, Jim Wallis, or Barry Lynn.

For that matter, the United Church of Christ is also returning to the airwaves with a commercial preaching tolerance and acceptance.

The campaign is being sponsored by the United Church of Christ, a Protestant denomination that garnered attention in late 2004 with a commercial that offered a startling perspective on religious diversity and inclusiveness. The spot, which returned last spring, showed two burly bouncers using a red velvet rope to block the entrance to a church, keeping out worshipers whose appearances departed from mainstream norms but letting in those with stereotypical all-American looks.

“Jesus didn’t turn people away,” the commercial declared. “Neither do we.” The spot, created by Gotham in New York, an agency owned by the Interpublic Group of Companies, was rejected by two broadcast networks, CBS and NBC, because, they said, it was the kind of advocacy advertising they did not accept.

The church will return on April 3 with a second commercial, also from Gotham, titled “Ejector Pew.” The spot depicts a smug, traditional-looking family looking askance as they are joined inside a church by worshipers who are significantly different from them.

Suddenly, the worshipers who are disabled or elderly, or who appear to be gay, Hispanic or of Middle Eastern origin, are forcibly ejected from their seats. “God doesn’t reject people,” the commercial says. “Neither do we.”

The reason I think efforts like these are so worthwhile is that it helps move the discussion. Right now, “religious” is too often a synonym for “conservative.” That won’t change over night, but it’s encouraging to see the “religious left” make a good-faith effort (pun intended) to change the landscape.

the “religious left” has never had the power, influence, notoriety, or public profile of its conservative rivals.

Whoa, there. Never?

The Civil Rights movement. Without the support of the whites in “mainline” protestant denominations, SCLC and SNCC would have failed.

In fact, the rise of the “Conservative Christian” movement is due in part to the resentment by racist “Christians” to their denominations’ support of Civil Rights. The animosity was bubbling in 1973 when Roe V. Wade was decided and made for “uncivil war” in Southern churches.

The Presbyterian Church in America was formed in December 1973, and more “conservative” (read racist) congregations started moving from the PCUS (“Southern” church).

The Southern Baptist Convention’s tilt to the right began about the same time.

JAC

  • Excellent point, JC. I meant since the rise of the religious right as a movement in the early 1980s, but your point is well taken.

  • LOL — I had the same reaction. I guess you have to be of a certain age to remember when politically active churches were associated with us lefties.

    Excuse me while I return to trying to figure out my Plan D options…

  • It will be interesting to see if any networks run the new UCC ads, which seem more aggressive than the previously-rejected set. (I assume that is part of the plan: get free publicity on the news stories about the ads being rejected, while also using it to build the case about media bias against progressive faiths.)

    Of course the vehicle is already out there and has been for years — the Interfaith Alliance. It would be great if more churches became engaged with and put more resources into TIA rather than compete with them. TIA has long been a voice of calm and reason; they could stand to get a little more vigorous, but I really think they are positioned to be the counter-balance to the American Taliban.

  • The interfaith social justice action group of which I’m a member prefers the term “progressive” rather than “left”, though most of us who are members are liberals. There are other people of faith who wouldn’t consider themselves liberals, but would see themselves as progressive and would agree with our values statement.

    (Briefly, our values are: global economic justice; protecting the environment; peace/opposing war; honesty and transparency in all sectors of society; human rights for all; preserving civil liberties; respecting individual privilege to worship or not; meeting the basic needs of all (shelter, health care, education, and employment).)

  • Addendum to my post above: it’s obvious by our values that we progressives must enter the public discourse to try to influence our elected officials. Jim Wallis has set such a great example for us.

    While we as a group would not endorse any political candidates, we can and do as individuals. And most of our members are involved with other groups – peace, Amnesty International, local housing advisory committee, Democratic party, etc.

  • When I got home from work yesterday, my wife recounted a segment she had just seen on Nancy Grace’s show about the Tennessee Minister who was recently killed by his wife. Turns out the deceased was a Church of Christ Minister, so Nancy had on an “expert” to bring us up to date on what the Church of Christ was all about. He told the audience that they were rather a new church, only about 100 years old, that they were dogmatic and intolerant of other faiths, and that they were out of step with the religious movement in today’s USA. In short, it was a very negative picture. The capper is that the expert on the Church of Christ was a Baptist!

    I wouldn’t expect anything different from Nancy, but you’ve gotta admit, it’s kind of funny.

  • I want to underscore the comments above about religious politics being progressive, prior to Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush. During the late ’50s I was a paid political operative for the Northern California/Nevada Council of Churches. My salary, and campaign office rent, were paid by the American Friends Service Committee (the Quakers). Hard to believe, but in San Francisco the only party interested in Civil Rights or the United Nations, for example, was the Republican (pre-Goldwater). All the Democrats cared about was how to keep the blacks out of the Mission District (then an Irish Catholic slum). That all ended, there, when Phil Burton and the rest of his family took over every local Democratic club and, ultimately, the party. But there was really a time when “the Party of Lincoln” acted like it.

  • Jim, The Church of Christ should not be confused with the United Church of Christ. They are very different animals. The description the Baptist “expert” gave of the Church of Christ, if you have reported it accurately, wasn’t far wrong.

  • Also, there are different strains of Baptists, Lutherans, and other denominations out there as well, and it is important to keep them straight. There’s a big difference between Southern Baptists and American Baptists, as there is between the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Lutheran Church’s Missouri and Wisconsin Synods.

  • That the religious right rose in reaction to religious progressivism in the sixties makes a lot of sense, intuitively. I would just add the religious anti-war movement to civil rights as a motivator there. You can imagine the heartburn people like William Sloane Coffin gave the holy rollers.

    And, yes, the Church of Christ is entirely unrelated to the *United* Church of Christ. One is a fundie church, the other is a liberal denomination with roots in New England, I think. The only thing they share is the word “Christ.”

  • I also immediately thought about Martin Luther King.

    But also had a Canadian perspective, Tommy Douglas, the founder of Canada’s NDP Party and father of Medicare in Canada was a prarie preacher. He was part of the Social Gospel movement. The founding speech he gave is remembered as the “New Jerusalem” speech because of his famous words calling on people to found a “New Jerusalem” here on Earth.

    In addition, in the context of this discussion it might be appropriate to mention the current work of Rabbi Michael Lerner and the ongoing work of a number of Christian Left organizations, The Catholic Worker Organization, the American Friends Service Committee, Pastors for Peace, and Christian Peacekeepers come to mind.

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