The Religious Left: Telling Hard Truths Since 1780

By DON ROLLINS

The year was 1780, and the occasion was the swearing in of the Rev. Frederick Augustus Conrad Muhlenberg as the first Speaker of the US House of Representatives. A learned and progressive pastor in the Lutheran tradition, Muhlenberg would later cast the deciding vote against yet another commerce-driven war with Great Britain, and vigorously rebuke John Adams when the latter suggested “His High Mightiness” as the proper way for regular folks to address their presidents.

Some two-and-a-half centuries later, Muhlenberg’s call for a liberal government undergirded by a liberal gospel is more salient than even many on the political left suppose; for while life under Trump has sent whole segments of the progressive tribe in search of their political souls, at least one strain has been hard at work defining the spiritual version.

Ask most liberals about the Religious Left, and be prepared for some head scratching, literal and figurative. In a culture used to defining movements according to their purity of doctrine, level of organization and leaders’ name recognition, the notion of a loosely connected constellation of believers-activists just doesn’t register.

More the pity, for that label denotes a tradition within a tradition that has since Muhlenberg’s time provided a progressive theological grounding for activism, from abolition to suffrage, unionism to Black Lives Matter. Better yet, for all the aggregate decline within organized religion in America, there are clear signs of a resurgent liberal religious presence within and beyond the Democratic Party.

To be fair to those perplexed by the Religious Left, there can be no tidy definition given the many issues, actors and informal coalitions that comprise the movement. The better tact is to name some of the characteristics common among those who embrace the label:

There is a force that dwells within, among and beyond us

That force sides with the oppressed, the suffering and the forsaken

We are responsible for one another, and the planet we share

We are accountable to future generations for the choices we make

We are called, one and all, to be justice seekers, and peacemakers

Power exists to bring dignity and equality where there is none

In no way an exhaustive list, these commonalities point to the centrality of relationship within today’s Religious Left. In such a paradigm, the movement’s heartbeat is not doctrinal, nor even missional, but relational. The end is what Frederick Muhlenberg called the [kingdom] of God — that state of being and relating in accord with our highest ideals.

The resurgence in religious-political liberalism is in part a response to Trumpism, but also the rise to power among Black leaders steeped in the Black church. Likewise the influx of non-Christian believers.

But beyond these trends is the even more intense urge toward an intersectionalist understanding of what ails us as a nation — that nexis where poverty meets race, homophobia meets discrimination, climate change meets corporate interests. This is a woke theology of evil, in which every injustice sooner or later overlaps with every other.

This is not to say mainstream Democrats are embracing the Religious Left in record numbers. As author and Religious News Service reporter, Jack Jenkins, cites in his book “American Prophets: The Religious Roots of Progressive Politics and the Ongoing Soul of the Country,” overly identifying with the Religious Left could easily cost the party in numbers and dollars.

Second, there is no internal compact among Democrats about how much religion is too much for the secularists, and how much non-Christian influence is too much for the Christians. So there is no danger of a Religious Left takeover, such as Reagan brokered with the Religious Right.

Much has changed since the day Frederick Muhlenberg ascended to the speakership. More wars have been waged, more bowing before misplaced power has gripped the White House. Yet, there is a straight line running from the first to the 117th Congress. It’s the line linking faith with telling hard truths.

Don Rollins is a Unitarian Universalist minister living in Hendersonville, N.C. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2021

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