Tuesday, September 30, 2008
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Newsweek's September 15th cover read "Palin-tol-ogy," the "advanced study of Sarah Palin and how she sees the world." Since her surprise find as the GOP vice-presidential nominee, the media has been in a tizzy trying to get the definitive story about just who Sarah Palin is. Perhaps the primary reason this newly unearthed conservative evangelical has received so much attention is that she has enlivened what was assumed to be an ossifying Christian Right. For some political progressives--who legitimately note the divisive and uncivil turn that religion has taken over the last few decades--Palin has confirmed an old suspicion: that religion is primarily "a problem" for American democracy.
These "religion as problem" progressives tend to have three prominent worries:
- that religious people ultimately prefer a theocracy of their own religion to democratic pluralism;
- that religion breeds incivility and intolerance; and
- that religious passion is dangerously irrational and makes people of faith unreliable partners.
But if progressives allow these familiar worries to cloud their vision this election season, they will be misreading the changing religious landscape, where there is an emerging progressive religious movement that encompasses numerous faithful allies on progressive issues.
You can read the rest of the article, making the case that these worries of political progressives are misguided, here.
Labels: Christian right, Palin, progressive politics, progressive religious voices, religious right
Sunday, September 21, 2008
I've included Sarah's review of the book below. You can check out the full review and discussion thread at Firedoglake.com. I want to extend my gratitude to the Lake for the great discussion.
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By Sarah Posner
Welcome to the FDL Book Salon on Robert P. Jones' new book, Progressive and Religious: How Christian Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist Leaders Are Moving Beyond the Culture Wars and Transforming American Public Life. It’s a really interesting and engaging read, and offers some valuable insights into how politically progressive religious people find the source of their progressive values in their religious traditions.
Because we are in the throes of the presidential campaign, peoples' minds (including my own) tend to be calibrated toward well-known and highly politicized religious movements like the religious right, which emerged with the expressed purpose of influencing elections, or the less easily defined religious center/left, which seems to seek to influence candidates' and parties' positions on issues but hasn't organized, as the right has, as a reliable voting bloc for either party. Recalibrate your thinking for this discussion, though: it has nothing to do with electoral politics, and everything to do with community organizing.
Robby opens the book with interviews of Jewish leaders, and the central concept they lay out -- that of tikkun olam, or repairing the world -- is a guiding principle even for most secular Jews (and Jews, both religious and secular, tend to be politically progressive). God made the world imperfect, messy, broken, and it’s our job to fix it. That principle informs the imperative to help the poor not just as an act of charity, but to question authority, raise hell, and transform society. It is, as Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, tells Robby, “establishing the conditions for justice.”
It’s not a huge leap from that concept to the underlying principles of Christianity, of course, but that central element of Jesus’ teachings has been so warped by judgmental, condemnatory fundamentalism and the political rise of the religious right that many people don’t associate it with our country’s majority religion. I know I promised not to talk about the election, but Sarah Palin’s RNC speech was emblematic of religious right disdain for the social justice Jesus. As was pointed out by many after her speech, Jesus was a community organizer, but you might forget that if you listen to the religious right too long. In those circles, Jesus’ teachings on poverty have been eclipsed by a handful of bible verses that have been twisted to condemn homosexuality.
Alleviating poverty by radicalizing social, economic, and political institutions is central to the social action of the Christian leaders in Robby’s book, as well as the Jewish ones. I was struck by the discussion in the book of the “extravagant welcome” these Christian thinkers find in Jesus’ teachings, and the imperative of welcoming all to an “open table.” (Similar concept in Judaism is how it is a mitzvah, a blessing, to welcome guests into your home.) But the “extravagant welcome” is not just into one’s literal home, it’s about, again, transforming the world to subvert the conditions and institutions in which inequality -- of wealth, of opportunity, of education -- persists.
While poverty is at the fore of these activists’ teachings, they extend that “extravagant welcome” to people marginalized and shunned by the religious right. In John 3:16, the verse cited by religious right activists to emphasize the imperative of salvation (“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believed in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”) these activists find “whosoever” to include everyone, and especially the LGBTQ people the religious right has condemned to hell.
The holistic theme of transforming the world, of course, runs through all three Abrahamic traditions, and Robby’s interviews with Muslim leaders reflect this view as well. Muslims in America must combat terrible stereotypes about not only their religion but themselves, and as a tiny minority -- less than one percent -- of the American public, that is surely daunting. Yet for the leaders profiled in the book, the principles of justice, goodness, and beauty are central to their teaching, as well as the imperative of ijtihad, or the independent thinking required to link centuries-old traditions to democracy and human rights. In denouncing the extremism of some Muslims, progressive Muslims say, in language that would resonate with Christians and Jews, “that what you do to my fellow human beings, you do to me.”
Robby also briefly explores American Buddhism, which, unlike the other religious traditions, is not based on monotheism and sacred texts. I have to admit to a paltry understanding of this religion, but Robby’s exploration of “Engaged Buddhism,” or the “interbeing” of all things, was a nice primer.
Many people think of religion as a set of principles, rules, or ceremonies, or possibly a way of connecting to a community with a shared place or tradition. But Jones' book casts it as something else, as well: a philosophy for social change that challenges authority, and that is often elegant and revelatory, even for secular allies.
Labels: book salon, progressive and religious, reviews
Friday, September 12, 2008
I had the privilege of presenting the findings of a poll conducted by my firm, Public Religion Research, at A National Summit on Torture: Religious Faith, Torture, and our National Soul. The poll was commissioned by Faith in Public Life and Mercer University and demonstrates the conflicted attitudes on torture among white evangelical Christians in the South.The press conference included remarks by Katie Barge of Faith in Public Life, David Gushee of Evangelicals for Human Rights, and Tyler Wigg Stevens of Two Futures. You can download the polling memo here, and see a video of the press conference releasing it here.
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Close to six-in-ten white evangelicals in the South say that torture can be often (20%) or sometimes (37%) justified in order to gain important information. This compares to roughly half (48%) of the general public who believe that torture can be justified, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll (02/2008).
Despite high levels of religiosity, white evangelicals in the South are significantly more likely to rely on life experiences and common sense (44%) than Christian teachings or beliefs (28%) when thinking about the acceptability of torture. And only about one-in-twenty white evangelicals rely on the advice of government leaders when it comes to torture. These different sources of moral thinking lead to strikingly different attitudes.Among those influenced by Christian teachings, a majority (52%) oppose torture—14 points higher than white evangelicals in the South overall. In contrast, among those who rely most on life experiences and common sense, less than one-in-three (31%) oppose torture.
A majority (52%) agree with the Golden Rule argument against torture—that the U.S. government should not use methods against our enemies that we would not want used on American soldiers. This movement represents a 14-point increase from the 38% of white evangelicals who initially said that torture is rarely or never justified. Appeals to three other moral and theological frames did not significantly influence views on torture.An appeal to the Golden Rule increases opposition to torture among every subgroup of white evangelicals. For example, only about one third (34%) of white evangelicals who attend worship services more than once a week say torture is never or rarely justified, but a majority (50%) of this group was persuaded by the Golden Rule argument against torture. This represents a 16-point shift in opinion among the most frequent attending white evangelicals in the South.
Other Findings
A majority (53%) of white evangelicals in the South believe that the government uses torture as part of the campaign against terrorism, despite repeated claims made by government officials that the U.S. does not engage in torture. Only about one third (32%) say that the U.S. does not use torture as a matter of policy.
Among white evangelicals in the South who are registered voters, 65% support Republican John McCain, 14% support Democrat Barack Obama, and 21% remain undecided. These findings are consistent with the recent Time Magazine poll (08/04/2008) that showed 66% supporting McCain, 17% supporting Obama, and 17% undecided among white evangelicals nationwide.
Two thirds of John McCain’s supporters say torture can often or sometimes be justified, compared to only 46% of Obama supporters and undecided voters.
About the Survey
This survey was commissioned by Mercer University and Faith in Public Life and conducted by Public Religion Research. Results for this survey were based on telephone interviews conducted under the direction of Opinion Access Corporation among a sample of 600 white evangelical Christian adults, age 18 years or older in the southeastern United States. This region includes the following states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and West Virginia. The survey was fielded from August 14-22, 2008.
The margin of error for the total sample is +/- 4.5% at the 95% confidence interval. In addition to sampling error surveys may also be subject to error or bias due to question wording, context and order effects. The data was weighted using demographic weighting parameters derived from the Religious Landscape Survey. Conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life from May 8 – August 13, 2007, the Religious Landscape Survey is a national survey of 35,000 adults with detailed information on religious affiliation and identity.
Labels: evangelicals, faith in public life, golden rule, public religion research, torture
Guest post by Omid Safi. Read the full text at Beliefnet's Progressive Revival blog.
The "p" word has had a tortured history with Muslims, as it does with many other religious communities. Ironically, it tends to work as a better marker to many non-Muslims of the social and political commitments of the Muslims who self-identify as progressive. For too many Muslims, the term progressive has often been a cover for overtly secular approaches, a tendency to operate outside the "tradition", or an insufficient grounding in the legal and spiritual traditions of Islam.
This is part of the difficulty of Muslims, like myself, who simultaneously embrace the terms progressive and religious. This was one reason that many of us came together to put together a volume titled: Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism. For us, our concern for the wellbeing of the whole of humanity, and an unrelenting commitment to emancipatory movements, arises out of our religious tradition. It is the very notions of serving as God's agents (khalifa), being held accountable for our actions, and speaking prophetically to the false gods of Market and Empire, Exclusivism and injustice, that inspire us. In another age, the false gods were made out of wood and stone. Today they are market realities and the violence of the military-industrial complex. Part of our radical monotheism is saying "no" emphatically to these false idols that ask for our ultimate commitment so that we can say "yes" to divine Unity and the oneness of humanity.
On the other hand, there is a hard secular critique from the Left that tends to distrust, fundamentally, (m)any religious voices that identify as progressive. Quite often, this center around issues of gender and sexuality. I both understand that distrust and sympathize with it, even as I point out to my secular friends the large number of emancipatory movements that have been grounded in religious traditions.
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Read the rest of Omid's thoughtful piece at Beliefnet's Progressive Revival blog.
Labels: muslim, omid safi, progressive religious movement
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Much attention has been paid to the role of the religious right in American politics, but this work offers an account of religious progressives who are seeking to make their own impact on public life. Jones, a scholar at the Center for American Progress, interviewed nearly 100 leaders from the four religious groups enumerated in the subtitle and discovered a diverse and vibrant community committed to issues like social justice, inclusion and economic fairness—a pluralistic hodgepodge Jones describes as "the other religious America." The author briefly depicts the long history of religious progressivism in America, but his book concentrates on contemporary activists, such as Jewish Funds for Justice or the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. Each faith has its own distinctive theological basis for its progressive politics, yet Jones also shows common characteristics, including a relational approach to truth and a belief in the unity of all humanity. This book will cheer religious progressives who believe their voices are underrepresented in the current conversation about faith and politics in America. (Oct.)I think the review does a good job of highlighting one of the things I tried to do in the book--show the distinctive theological approaches of each religious tradition and also identifying some common threads that hold the fabric of the new progressive religious movement together.
Labels: progressive religious movement, reviews
