I saw in the New York Times today that a new group is being created to help the left counter the religious right’s influence when it comes to political campaigns, policy debates, and voters who take faith seriously.
“In an effort to counter the influence of conservative Christian organizations, a coalition of moderate and liberal religious leaders is starting a political advocacy organization to mobilize voters in opposition to Bush administration policies,” the Times reported.
The Clergy Leadership Network, which will officially form later this week, will operate “from an expressly religious, expressly partisan point of view.” The Times article also noted that the “organization seeks to counter groups like the Christian Coalition of America and newly influential groups like the Family Research Council and the Traditional Values Coalition.”
(I’m not sure I’d characterize the Family Research Council and the Traditional Values Coalition as “newly influential,” but that’s another story for another day)
The Rev. Albert M. Pennybacker, of Lexington, Ky., chief executive officer for the organization and the chairman of its national committee, told the Times, “The Christian Right has been very articulate, but they have been exclusive and very judgmental of anyone who doesn’t agree with them. People may want to label us the Christian Left. But what we really are about is mainstream issues and truth, and if that makes us left then that shines even more light on the need for a shift in our society.”
Initially, I believed the Clergy Leadership Network would be unnecessary. Though the groups that are already challenging Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, et al, may not be household names, the landscape is already fairly crowded. Americans United for Separation of Church and State has been around since the 1940s, the Interfaith Alliance popped up in the 80s, People for the American Way has worked on some of these issues for a while, and PFAW even spun off the Progressive Religious Partnership a couple of years ago, an entity that sounds a lot like this new Clergy Leadership Network.
In fact, if you were to check the literature for any of these groups, all would say that they exist primarily to “counter groups like the Christian Coalition of America, the Family Research Council, and the Traditional Values Coalition.”
I know that just last week I was going on and on about the important drive to create parallel institutions for the left that the right has enjoyed for years, but at first blush, it appeared that the Clergy Leadership Network was an unnecessary addition to a crowded area of public policy. Why have another group duplicating identical efforts?
And then I realized that the new group may have found a niche.
While groups like Americans United have done exceptional work exposing the radical agenda of the religious right, none of the organizations that have taken on the religious right have made an effort to focus on electoral politics. Indeed, all of these groups are non-profit, 501(c)3 organizations that cannot, by law, intervene in partisan elections.
While there’s nothing particularly wrong with that, the Clergy Leadership Network is taking a different path. As the group’s leaders told the Times, this will be the “first national liberal religious group… whose primary focus is electoral politics and partisan political organizing.”
Indeed, the Clergy Leadership Network will be part of the burgeoning 527 movement — a category of political groups that can raise unlimited amounts of money from an unrestricted pool of donors. The group won’t endorse or contribute directly to candidates, but it won’t have to. By organizing on behalf of progressive candidates, raising money, and taking out ads to blast the GOP’s positions on issues, the group can have a significant impact.
Clergy Leadership Network, welcome to the party.