'Jesus never charged a leper a co-pay': rise of the religious left

[turbinetree]

From healthcare to tax and immigration, Rev William Barber and the Poor People’s Campaign are driven by faith to focus on the disadvantaged

by Lauren Gambino in Washington

Mon 21 May 2018 08.13 EDT

In his prayer at the opening of the US embassy in Jerusalem last week, a prayer delivered against a backdrop of violence in Gaza, the evangelical pastor Robert Jeffress said Donald Trump was a moral leader who stood “on the right side of you, oh God”.

Will evangelicals come out for Trump's Republican party in November?
Read more
Half a world away, outside the Capitol in Washington, the Rev William Barber led a moment of silence for the 60 Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers.

As one group of faith leaders celebrates the fruits of a decades-long alliance with the Republican party, another is mounting a multi-faith challenge to the dominance of the Christian right, an attempt to recapture the moral agenda.

“There is no religious left and religious right,” Barber, a pastor and political leader in North Carolina, told the Guardian. “There is only a moral center. And the scripture is very clear about where you have to be to be in the moral center – you have to be on the side of the poor, the working, the sick, the immigrant.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/21/christian-religious-left-william-barber-poor-peoples-campaign

[sarcasmo]

1. Republican Jesus gives Mulligans. I'm cool with the rise of the Religious Left.

[enid602]

2. Barber

The good Reverend's chances of reaching the White Evangelicals is small, as he is black. He might as well be a card carrying member of the ACLU.

[flibbitygiblets]

5. You bring up an interesting conundrum. White Democrats tend to be nonreligious

..the ones I know anyway...so where can we find any white, religious democratic leaders to join forces with this movement?

This is WAY outside my area of knowledge, so hoping others have ideas. Because if we can sway the religious to actually do the right thing, they'll vote our way.

[safeinOhio]

10. I have found a group you might be willing to work with...

redletterchristians.org

If you are claiming to be a Christian, please don't quote the OT, or even Paul..
Get a Red Letter Bible, they have been around a long time. All the words spoken by Christ are in red letters. He said nothing about gays, abortion or high taxes. Much more about love and kindness.

I love telling Bible quoters to not quote anything that Jesus didn't say to me.

[flibbitygiblets]

12. Thanks Ohio!

I'm not a Xtian, but I'd be willing to get involved, because the right has a lock on religious voters like they USED to have a lock on patriotism. I'll do some investigating.

[safeinOhio]

14. This group makes a great argument for

Liberal Christians.

I'm not a believer myself, but love to study religion.

[Downtown Hound]

3. One of the real formidable things about the right is their use of churches.

Whether or not you agree with religion or not, people seek it out because they want a sense of moral direction, support, and community. The church offers this. While we on the left have our own organizations, we have nothing that offers the sense of community and family that the right and their network of churches do. If we were to come up with an effective alternative to that, we would be unstoppable.

I'm very glad to see this development, even though I am very skeptical about the existence of God.

[NightWatcher]

8. Religion teaches people to ignore evidence and accept grandiose things on baseless faith.

It also teaches people to not speak up in this world, for their reward will come in the next life if they are obedient to authoritarian leaders who's sole basis for being in leadership is appointment by divine decree.

I want to associate with people who think critically and who are not satisfied by simply being born into the correct religion out of the nearly 4300 of them out there.

I do not want to see the Left reach out to and capitulate to the desires of people who are religious. I do not want the whims or dogma of religion to be represented in the Party's platform. I do not want to start meetings by asking the blessing of an Imaginary Being while the same IB ignores the thousands of children who will die today in squalor and starvation.

The Hereafter is a hustle!

Damn NW, aren't you being kinda harsh? Don't you know many people who are religious?

Yes I do and I am tired of their weak mindedness (points to 90% of my own damn family)

[maddiemom]

9. Well said!

[flibbitygiblets]

13. I agree with your sentiments NW. But if you're saying you want party purity

then aren't you actively excluding a large segment of the population who votes? I'd personally be a lot more tolerant and respectful of Xtians if they actually acted like their namesake. Right now only the right is welcoming them, and yes, their childlike tendency to believe in fairytales makes them sitting ducks for manipulative con-men (Republicans).

Instead of shunning them, wouldn't it behoove us to convince them that our party is the one that Jaysus would have chosen? Who cares what dumbassery they believe, as long as they vote the right way? SOMEONE is going to take advantage of their naivete. Why not us for once?

Just a few thoughts.

[kwassa]

15. Religion is responsible for some of the great social justice movements in America.

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/democracy/reports/2010/04/14/7593/social-movements-and-progressivism/

An equally powerful strand of progressive thought emerged directly from religious values during the social gospel movement. These reformers argued that Christians should apply their teachings to public problems. American Protestant ministers and theologians during the 19th century such as Walter Rauschenbusch espoused this belief, as did politicians such as William Jennings Bryan, and settlement founders such as Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. Catholic social justice leaders such as Fr. John Ryan and Dorothy Day pushed for similar values and religious activism, and later civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. followed suit. Many of the most prominent social movements in American progressive history would not have been possible without the inspirational values and moral authority of socially conscious Christianity and Judaism, an idea that we explore in more detail in see part three of this series, “Social Movements and Progressivism.”

Progressives working within these faith traditions applied religious morality to the task of transforming American society during the industrial age away from the exploitation of workers and toward more cooperative forms of economic life. These faith-driven progressives insisted that society and governments uphold the fundamental notion that all people are equal in God’s eyes and deserve basic dignity, freedom, political rights, and economic opportunities in life. Religious progressives promoted the notion of community and solidarity above concepts of individualism and materialism, and worked to stop unnecessary wars and military aggression across the globe.

The social gospel movement and Catholic social teaching played influential roles in the progressive search for economic fairness and justice in the 20th century. Both traditions promoted the belief that any true commitment to the Gospels and the example of Jesus Christ demanded followers to take concrete steps to address oppression and hardship in this world and to replace the laissez-faire attitudes of the late 19th century with a more communitarian outlook. In his famous book, Progress and Poverty, Henry George, a popular economist and social gospel adherent, rejected the traditional notion of religion that allowed the “rich Christian to bend on Sundays in a nicely upholstered pew…without any feeling of responsibility for the squalid misery that is festering but a square away.”

[BumRushDaShow]

11. "we have nothing that offers the sense of community and family."

I know that black folk don't seem to be considered part of the Democratic "base" on DU but... but black Democrats often utilize the church for this purpose. Much of the Civil Rights movement came out of and involved churches (see MLK).

I.e., see what was dubbed as "Souls to the Polls", which is something the hypocritical purported evangelical-loving GOP have tried their hardest to stop.

Historically in this country, the only place that blacks were "allowed" to "congregate" WAS "church". It was illegal to teach us to read (so you had rote memorization and recitation of the bible after a few, who might have been secretly "taught" passages, became "preachers" ) and illegal for more than two to be together in public, so there was sanctity to being able to gather without being harassed... Until the KKK and other white terrorists started bombing the churches - like the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama -





Sarah Jean Collins, one of the survivors (she lost an eye due to this) -


This is her 5 years ago -

[SleeplessinSoCal]

4. worked in a church yesterday and witnessed the Pentacosting of a mainstream church

The "Praise Band" played with an underlying forcefulness that was frightening.

[cynatnite]

6. Jesus never checked work requirements before handing out bread and fishes. n/t

[Uncle Joe]

7. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread turbinetree

[turbinetree]

17. Your welcome

[sharedvalues]

16. I like "Can't be a Christian if you vote to take healthcare from poor kids"

But same gist

[jes06c]

18. Proud member of the Christian left here

[greyl]

19. Atheist, but if religious left can transform religious right to religious left, have at it.

I'll bide my time.