Rev. Dr. Susan Thistlethwaite talks about the importance of religious education, Biblical literalism, and the emerging progressive religious movement that she calls a 'Second Reformation.'

In this new episode of Progressive Religious Voices, Rev. Dr. Susan Thistlethwaite, professor of theology at Chicago Theological Seminary and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, emphasizes critical thought and thorough Bible study as the backbone of progressive religious education and talks about the "divine human project" of helping to heal the world.

Here's a short excerpt from the podcast:
That’s the divine human project, to heal the world. And you contribute your piece. King was right, it may be slow, but 'the arc of history bends towards justice.' Isaiah 58 says, `You shall be called the re-builders of the walls, the restorers of houses in ruins.’ Our country is in ruins. I mean, seriously. And so Isaiah 58 calls us, `I despise your feasts, your solemn assemblies.’ [And God says], 'What are you doing? You’re over here, you’re wasting my time with all of this religious ritual when the world is broken, and it’s the world that I care about. It’s the world I created as God, and so your job as a human being is to work with me in the re-building of the world, the healing of the world.' That’s what you’re doing. You’re trying to help with others the world heal itself. So for me, it is the healing of the world, that’s the human project.

Click here to listen to the podcast.




About Rev. Dr. Susan Thistlethwaite
Rev. Dr. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite is professor of theology at Chicago Theological Seminary and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. She was president of CTS from 1998-2008. Her area of expertise is contextual theologies of liberation, specializing in issues of violence and violation. An ordained minister of the United Church of Christ since 1974, she is the author or editor of thirteen books and has been a translator for two translations of the Bible. Her works include Casting Stones: Prostitution and Liberation in Asia and the United States (1996) and The New Testament and Psalms: An Inclusive Translation (1995).

About the Podcasts
Progressive Religious Voices is a bi-monthly podcast of interviews gleaned from nearly 100 interviews with progressive religious leaders. You can subscribe to the podcast feed directly or on iTunes to get all the exciting interviews that we will feature throughout 2008.

Other Resources
If you enjoyed this podcast, you might also enjoy our podcast featuring Rev. Dr. James Forbes, Jr., President and Founder of the Healing of the Nations Foundation of New York and Senior Minister Emeritus of Riverside Church.

You can also read more about the growing progressive religious movement in my new book, Progressive & Religious: How Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist Leaders are Moving Beyond the Culture Wars and Transforming American Public Life.

Labels: Christian, podcast, progressive and religious, progressive christianity, progressive religious voices, susan thistlethwaite

This most recent selection from National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" mentions the work of my firm, Public Religion Research, noting the positive shift in the relationship between the Democratic Party and religious voters. You can read the full text here.

Obama Redraws Map of Religious Voters
by Barbara Bradley Hagerty

Religious language trips off Barack Obama's tongue as if he were a native of the Bible Belt. From the moment he emerged on the national scene, he has spoken to believers in a language few Democrats have mastered: the language of the Bible and of a personal relationship with God...

Pollster Robert P. Jones of Public Religion Research says that Obama's appearance at the 2004 convention was a turning point in the relationship between Democrats and believers. Then, a majority of Americans viewed the Democratic Party as hostile to religion. But Jones' poll this month found a remarkable shift.

"Barack Obama was perceived to be more friendly to religion than John McCain," he says. "And that is, I think, an indication of the real sea change that's under way, and the way in which religion is interacting in public life."

Continue reading the full piece here.

Labels: campaign, npr, obama, public religion research

Check out this piece from National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" that talks about the work of my firm, Public Religion Research, my new book, Progressive and Religious, and the change in the political landscape from 2004 to 2008. You can read the full text here.


How McCain Shed Pariah Status Among Evangelicals
by Barbara Bradley Hagerty

When it comes to evangelicals, John McCain has remade himself in eight short years. The Republican candidate was a pariah to religious conservatives during his run for the White House in 2000. This time around, he's not exactly a Messiah but he has won over his base...

"I think 2004 really was the high-water mark of the religious right in America," says Robert P. Jones, president of Public Religion Research and author of Progressive and Religious.

Jones says the culture wars do not excite religious voters the way they used to.

"What we had in 2004 was a very artificial constriction of religion to be about abortion and same-sex marriage," he says. "We also had in a way we hadn't seen before an artificial constriction of religion to be about one political party. And it's not sustainable."

Jones' polls show abortion and same-sex marriage don't even rank in the top five issues for evangelicals, much less other religious voters.

Continue reading the full piece here.

Labels: campaign, mccain, npr, progressive and religious, public religion research

'And For the Sin Of Greed That We Have Committed...'
by Rabbi Jennie C. Rosenn

I wanted to highlight for everyone this recent editorial by Rabbi Jennie Rosenn, a contributor to my new book, Progressive and Religious. She uses Yom Kippur liturgy to challenge Jews not only to respond individually to the needs of their communities, but also to work collectively with social justice groups to fight for systemic transformation. You can read the full piece here.

This is a strategic moment for the broader Jewish community to join with Jewish social justice organizations around shared values and collective action. Jewish social justice organizations, as reported in our recently published research, “Visioning Justice and the American Jewish Community,” stand on the forefront of organizing across religious, ethnic, and class lines to fight for some of the systemic changes we need — fair labor practices, universal healthcare, affordable housing and immigrant rights. In recent times we have witnessed solid examples of alliances between broader Jewish communal agencies and Jewish social justice organizations — in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; in the face of genocide in Darfur; and on behalf of abused workers in Postville, Iowa. This is another such moment of need.

The broader Jewish community, together with Jewish social justice groups, can bring a compelling Jewish voice to every media outlet and decision-making table to help bring an end the war on the poor and middle class and to affirm the basic rights of housing, healthcare, education and pensions. In broader terms, they can define the values and principles that should determine governmental policies going forward. It is time to reframe our role as Jewish citizens and to take collective responsibility for making our values manifest in our policies.

Jews of every generation and affiliation — from those active in secular social change to those devoted to their local federations — can also act individually on this responsibility. Congregants can engage their synagogues in congregation-based community organizing. Jews of every generation can do volunteer service that addresses real needs in poor communities and speaks to the root causes of poverty. Professionals in transition from the private sector can bring their intelligence and skills to the Jewish social justice field. And we all can ensure that our tzedakah remains robust; these are days that call for shoring up, not scaling back, our giving.

Continue reading here.

Labels: guest voices, jewish, progressive and religious, progressive judaism

Check out this story in the Nation that talks about the work of my firm, Public Religion Research, to work for a broader religious agenda of social justice and the common good. You can view the full article here.

Democrats Chase Evangelical Votes
Sarah Posner

When Barack Obama proclaimed that "we worship an awesome God in the blue states" at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he sent a tingle through many young evangelical Democrats. The party was set to nominate John Kerry, considered by many evangelical activists to be religiously tone-deaf, but these Democratic faithful were already eyeing Obama as the un-Kerry, an unabashed believer ready to praise God in public...

Peeling away moderate and conservative evangelicals with a message of public service and social justice may prove to be a challenge, even with evangelical discontent with the GOP. But Robert Jones, author of the new book Progressive and Religious, maintains that "the real numbers are yet to be seen...there are still double-digit uncommitted voters. Those folks who aren't knee-jerk partisan voters will wait it out." Jones admitted that in 2006 "most of those evangelicals came home to the Republican Party," but he is not so sure this year. "The story will be where the uncommitted evangelicals break...I think we will see numbers breaking in a way that will surprise people."

Creating such a surprise has been the goal of Jones and some of the clients of his consulting firm, Public Religion Research, which has worked with new organizations in Washington to promote a broader religious agenda. One of his clients, Faith in Public Life (FPL), a nonprofit incubated at the Center for American Progress after the 2004 election, was at the forefront of promoting a more robust discussion of faith in this year's presidential campaign. Throughout the season, FPL has advanced the story line that less conservative religious voters are not only keen on having their voices heard in the public square but also on hearing about how presidential candidates' values guide their policy decisions. FPL organized the Compassion Forum at Messiah College in April, at which Obama and Hillary Clinton were put to the test of establishing their religious credentials, and pressed for the one at Warren's Saddleback Church.

Another one of Jones's clients, the centrist think tank Third Way, partnered with prominent evangelicals to produce an October 2007 white paper, "Come Let Us Reason Together," on how progressives and evangelicals could find common ground on divisive culture-war issues like abortion and gay rights. (Jones was a co-author.) FPL played a key role in promoting its signers, evangelical centrists like David Gushee, president of Evangelicals for Human Rights and professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University; Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners, who moderated two of the four Faith Caucus panels at the DNC; and Joel Hunter, the Florida mega-church pastor and registered Republican who gave the benediction on the closing day of the DNC. All three have been promoting evangelical interests in non-culture-war issues, with Gushee focused on environmental issues and ending torture, Wallis emphasizing fighting poverty and Hunter addressing environmental issues.

"Come Let Us Reason Together" focuses on an issue that is anathema to the religious right, and may also spoil Democratic chances to peel off moderate evangelicals and Catholics--abortion. The white paper stresses the value of abortion reduction, and while no reproductive rights groups were openly critical of it, none endorsed it. Wallis and Hunter lauded the adoption of the abortion reduction plank in the Democratic platform, hailing language that they said was included after religious leaders' input. (Reproductive rights advocates also declared victory, claiming the strongest prochoice plank in party history.) In his acceptance speech, Obama tried to straddle the line between his prochoice base and the religious abortion-reduction advocates: "We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country."

Continue reading the full text here.

Labels: faith in public life, progressive and religious, public religion research

Torture and Evangelicals: Faith takes a back seat
Tom Krattenmaker

I wanted to recommend for everyone this recent piece that features both Progressive & Religious and our recent poll on attitudes on torture among white evangelicals.
You can read the full piece here.

Then there's the integrity of the Christian religion -- already shredded, unfortunately, in the minds of many skeptical Americans... The new findings about evangelicals and torture certainly won't help in that regard. Commissioned by Mercer University and the Washington-based Faith in Public Life, and conducted by Public Religion Research, the survey finds that 57 percent of white evangelicals in the South believe torture can be justified. By comparison, an earlier poll by the Pew Research Center finds just 48 percent of the general public in support of torture.

Even more illuminating is this finding from the new poll: The evangelicals surveyed are far more likely to turn to life experience and common sense (44 percent) than Christian teaching (28 percent) in forming their opinion on torture. In other words, the segment of the population presumably most serious about their Christian faith is disinclined to be guided by the Bible on one of the central moral questions we face.

It comes as some relief to know that a different result emerged when the pollsters tweaked the question and challenged those surveyed to re-approach the issue with the Bible in mind, particularly its "do-unto others as you would have them do unto you" precept. Then, a majority agreed that torture should never be used.

Religion scholar Robert P. Jones, whose polling firm conducted the survey, believes evangelicals' support for torture probably stems from two major impulses: Fear, and the understandable but unrealistic yearning for absolute safety from terrorists.

"When you reach for ultimate security and find it ever more elusive, you then begin to rationalize your principles in the way you treat people," says Jones, author of the new book "Progressive and Religious." "It extends all the way down to doing things that [before 9/11] would have been unthinkable, like rationalizing away the Geneva Conventions, and talking about how in these times we're living in, the old morals don't apply."

Labels: evangelicals, faith in public life, guest voices, public religion research, torture

Progressive and Religious recently received this positive review by David M. Kinchen of Huntington News. Thought I'd share it here.

BOOK REVIEW: 'Progressive & Religious' Profiles America's Liberal Diversity of Faith

By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic

Robert P. Jones has discovered a group that many thought had disappeared: Believing Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists who believe in America's traditional tolerance of other religions and who also support "progressive" -- the current name for "liberal" -- causes.

Based on his own research and in-depth interviews with nearly 100 Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists, his intriguing book, "Progressive & Religious: How Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist Leaders Are Moving Beyond the Culture Wars and Transforming American Public Life" (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, MD., 280 Pages, notes, sources, index, $24.95) shows that -- in the U.S., at least -- there is a countervailing force to the much profiled religious right.

Progressives who are believers are caught between the rock of religious belief dominated by fundamentalists of all faiths and the hard place of fellow progressives who believe that all religion is a relic of a superstitious past, something that should be sloughed off so progressives can get on with the real task of eliminating war, hatred, poverty and other social ills.

The latter group, which Jones calls neoatheists, includes such best-selling authors as Christopher Hitchens ("God Is Not Great") -- for my 2007 review click here: http://www.huntingtonnews.net/columns/070710-kinchen-columnsbookreview.html -- and Sam Harris ("The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason," "Letter to a Christian Nation"). For my 2006 review of Harris' "Letter to a Christian Nation" click here: http://www.huntingtonnews.net/columns/061008-kinchen-review.html.

As one who trends toward the views of Hitchens and Harris, I was startled to find an echo of something I had written about a few years ago after one of my many visits to Chicago: The remarkable tolerance of diverse religious beliefs in one Chicago neighborhood, Albany Park, on the Windy City's north side. I called it the "Chicago Solution."

Interviewing a progressive Muslim in Chicago, Dr. Eboo Patel, Jones notes that unlike in other countries such as India (clashes between Christians and Hindus or Hindus and Muslims) or Iraq (Sunni vs. Shia, Muslims vs Christians, Kurds vs. Arab), different sects in the U.S. at least aren't killing each other:

Here's what Patel says (Page 155):

"Now, think about the American achievement....We are the most religiously diverse nation in human history and the most religiously devout society in the West in a moment of global religious conflict. Sunnis and Shias don't kill each other here, and liberal Protestants and evangelical conservative Protestants don't kill each other in Boise, and Orthodox Jews and Reform Jews don't throw rocks at each other on Devon Avenue in Chicago."

Just before I wrote this review, I read about violent clashes between India's dominant Hindus and the tiny minority of Christians in India's Orissa state:

The New York Times reported (Oct. 13, 2008) that:

"India, the world’s most populous democracy and officially a secular nation, is today haunted by a stark assault on one of its fundamental freedoms. Here in eastern Orissa State, riven by six weeks of religious clashes, Christian families ... say they are being forced to abandon their faith in exchange for their safety. The clash of faiths has cut a wide swath of panic and destruction through these once quiet hamlets fed by paddy fields and jackfruit trees. Here in Kandhamal, the district that has seen the greatest violence, more than 30 people have been killed, 3,000 homes burned and over 130 churches destroyed, including the tin-roofed Baptist prayer hall where the Digals [a family profiled in the story] worshiped. Today it is a heap of rubble on an empty field, where cows blithely graze."

Earlier I had read about attacks on Christians by Muslims in Mosul, in Iraq's north. And the list goes on and on....

People interviewed by Jones -- among them David Saperstein, Michael Lerner, Jim Wallis, Brian McLaren, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Feisal Abdul Rauf, Eboo Patel, Kecia Ali, Surya Das, Robert Thurman and E.J. Dionne -- reinforce the author's point of view that virtually every major progressive political involvement in American history (for instance: the struggle for Civil Rights in the South, the fight against child labor) has had progressive religious voices leading the way.

Jones says that "To judge all of religion by the behavior of the far Christian right...is to mistake the part for the whole. As I hope this book makes clear, these voices do not represent all Christians, much less all religious people."

"Progressive & Religious" is a thought-provoking, very readable book that shows that it is possible to be both religious and progressive -- at least in America and other multicultural countries like Canada and Australia.

From: http://www.hintonnews.net/columns/081014-kinchen-columnsbookreview.html

Dr. Omid Safi talks about Islam's relation to modernity, tradition, justice, and the emerging progressive religious movement.

In this new episode of Progressive Religious Voices, Dr. Omid Safi, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, describes the interplay between tradition and modernity that allows for a dynamic, progressive Islamic faith.

Here's a short excerpt from the podcast:

I think an important challenge that all of the religious traditions have had to deal with is simply the challenge of history, and in particular, the set of transformations that have come about through the Age of Enlightenment. Many of our religious traditions, Islam certainly included, have many beautiful teachings that I think are very resonant with some of what we think of today as international human right norms. And people like me who oftentimes think musically are very interested in this resonance of modern international secular human rights norms and traditional Islamic values. At a musical level, how do these two notes resonate with each other, without saying that one derives from the other one or that they must be collapsed into one and the same. It’s sort of a symphonic approach at that level.

Click here to listen to the podcast.




About Dr. Omid Safi
Dr. Omid Safi is an associate professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina and author of Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism. Holding a Ph.D. in Religion with a concentration in Islamic Studies from Duke University, Dr. Safi's primary areas of research involve progressive Islamic thought, the social and intellectual history of pre-modern Islam, and Islamic mysticism. He frequently gives presentations dealing with various aspects of Islam, religion in the contemporary world, and spirituality and mysticism at churches, mosques, synagogues, and civic groups.

About the Podcasts
Progressive Religious Voices is a bi-monthly podcast of interviews gleaned from nearly 100 interviews with progressive religious leaders. You can subscribe to the podcast feed directly or on iTunes to get all 24 exciting interviews that we will feature throughout 2008.

Other Resources
If you enjoyed this podcast, you might also enjoy our podcast featuring Dr. Eboo Patel, founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based international nonprofit that is building the interfaith movement through service and dialoge.

You can also read more about the growing progressive religious movement in my new book, Progressive & Religious: How Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist Leaders are Moving Beyond the Culture Wars and Transforming American Public Life.

Labels: islam, muslim, podcast, progressive islam, progressive religious voices, safi

The recent “Faith and American Politics Survey,” a survey sponsored by Faith in Public Life and conducted by our firm, Public Religion Research, contains a fresh, in-depth look at youth, religion, and politics in the 2008 election cycle. One of the most interesting insights revealed by the survey was a new look at the fate of the so-called “God gap,” the high correlation between rates of religious service attendance and partisan vote. Whereas the relationship between religious attendance and vote was nearly linear in 2004, our new survey found that monthly church attenders—a critical group (15% of registered voters) that John Kerry lost to George W. Bush 49% to 51%—are now supporting Barack Obama over John McCain 60% to 32%.

A Quick Look Back at 2004

In the wake of the 2004 elections, we heard much about the “God-gap.” In 2004, Bush captured the vast majority of voters who were in the pews every week, and Kerry remained the favorite among those who seldom or never attended religious services. Further analysis revealed that this correlation was not a byproduct of other variables. Regression analysis on the 2004 exit polls indicates that religious attendance was one of the strongest independent predictors of vote—stronger than a variety of other possible predictors such as age, gender, income, and education.

In 2004, voters who attended religious services more than once a week were six-times more likely to support Bush than those who never attended. If you compare this gap to the more familiar “gender gap,” the power of religious attendance becomes evident: in 2004, men were only one and a half times as likely to support Bush than women. In the general population, the only demographic variable that rivaled religious attendance was race (specifically, being African American), with religious attendance ranking as the second strongest independent predictor of vote. Significantly, among whites, religious attendance was the strongest single predictor of vote in 2004.

Monthly Attenders Swing for Obama in 2008

In 2008, the pattern of support in the general population among those who attend most and least often has changed little. Republican candidate John McCain leads Democrat Barack Obama 54% to 38% among voters who attend religious services once a week or more, and Obama leads McCain 61% to 29% among voters who attend seldom or never. Among the general population, there is one major difference, however, between 2004 and 2008. This year, six-in-ten voters who attend services once or twice a month are now supporting Obama, an 11-point swing from 2004....

...

You can read the rest of the column at ReligionDispatches.org.

Labels: culture wars, election, exit polls, god gap, public religion research

Note: Cross-posted from Beliefnet's Progressive Revival Blog.

Given the divisive role religion played in the 2004 election, many progressives have been waiting for a resumption of the culture wars in this election season. Yet despite the addition of Sarah Palin to the Republican ticket, (a Pentecostal governor who strongly opposes abortion rights), there is little evidence that the social issues which played such a prominent role four years ago will dominate the 2008 election. Neither the new ruling today by the Connecticut Supreme Court striking down a law prohibiting gay and lesbian couples from getting married, nor the battle in California over a ballot initiative to repeal the current law that guarantees gay and lesbian couples marriage rights seem likely to reignite the culture wars nationwide.

The newly released "Faith and American Politics Survey," sponsored by Faith in Public Life and conducted by my firm, Public Religion Research, offers some key insights into this changing American religious landscape. Like other recent surveys, we found that religious Americans, like all Americans in this election, care much more about the economy, gas prices, and health care than they do about abortion or same-sex marriage. In fact, 83% of Americans say the economy will be a very important factor in their vote in November, compared to just 28% who say that same-sex marriage will be very important. Even among white evangelicals, the issues of abortion and same-sex marriage do not rank in the top five most important issues for the election.

Perhaps more importantly, we found that younger Americans of faith (18-34) are not their parents' culture war generation. On issues from gay and lesbian rights to the role of government at home and the role of America around the world, young Americans are bridging the divides they have inherited from the previous generation and are ushering in an era where the common good trumps ideological orthodoxy....

...

Read the rest of the article at Beliefnet's Progressive Revival Blog.

Labels: abortion, catholics, Christians, culture wars, election, evangelicals, exit polls, Homosexuality, public religion research, same-sex marriage