In 2009, the mainline Christian denominations continued to be drawn into conflicts around wedge issues such as same-sex marriage and ordination of women. These conflicts over wedge issues may be exacerbated by religious conservative activists, including the misnamed “Institute on Religion and Democracy” (IRD), and overseas groups such as the conservative Anglican bishops in Africa who continue to intervene in the U.S. Episcopal Church. Indeed, according to some observers, groupslike the IRD use wedge issues to deliberately sabotage mainline and liberal Christian denominations.
2009 saw growing rifts in the Episcopal Church, and ongoing conflict in the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), etc. I was unable to determine if the United Church of Christ continued to face the problem of conservative individuals funded by outside groups taking over local congregations. Back in 2006, in an interview with Dan Wakefield, theologian Harvey Cox said, “The energy of mainline Protestant churches has been absorbed by the battles over abortion, and over gay rights and gay marriage that’s divided entire denominations in recent years. There’s nothing left over for the kind of battles that were fought in the past for peace and justice in the nation and the world.” (The Hijacking of Jesus, p. 102) Three years later, the situation has not changed.
Unitarian Universalism, closely related as we are theologically and historically to the mainline churches, has been affected in different ways by the continuing conflicts over wedge issues. Because we embrace same-sex marriage, women’s right to choice, and ordination of women, Unitarian Universalism has become marginal in U.S. political culture; it is difficult to believe that any Unitarian Universalist could become president of the United States. We Unitarian Universalists seem to have embraced our politically marginal status to the point where many Unitarian Universalists automatically stake out politically liberal positions — without ever determining if political liberalism and the Democratic party can be equated with religious liberalism. This peculiar politico-religious orthodoxy continued to hamper open conversations about, and honest critiques of: second-wave feminist theology; identity politics; and the way we are beholden to consumer capitalism. Yet second-wave feminism primarily benefits upper middle class white women; identity politics forces the kind of binary identity choices that we say we deplore in theology; and consumer capitalism directly contradicts several of those “seven principles” that we tout.
In another part of the region where liberal religion and politics intersect, the religious right has been doing a very good job or helping liberal Christians (and, to the extent they bother with us, helping Unitarian Universalists) stay on the margins. A very public example of this marginalization is Barack Obama. Religious conservatives forced Obama to repudiate his liberal Christian UCC church during the campaign, and since then the Obama family has not settled on a regular church to attend — I suspect that the Obamas can’t stand the theology of the politically acceptable churches, while Barack Obama can’t stand the political consequences of attending another UCC church, or any liberal Christian church for that matter. The situation has gotten bad enough that, to the best of my knowledge, the Obamas did not attend church on Christmas eve. (A BBC commentator has suggested that the Obamas would best fit in with Florida Street Friends Meeting [Quaker] in D.C., and I suspect he’s right — but such a church choice would be political suicide.) Obama is but one prominent example of the marginalization of liberal Christianity in U.S. political life.
As a religious educator, I can’t help adding that this is not good for the religious education of the Obama children. Their children need exposure to a living religious community in addition to whatever home-based religious education the Obamas may provide. Michelle, forget the political cost to Barack — take the kids to Florida Street Meeting!
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One can only hope that in 2010 we religious liberals — especially we Unitarian Universalists — learn to start from liberal theology, rather than starting from liberal politics. Instead of toeing the politically liberal party line, let’s clearly articulate the religiously liberal party line: that individual salvation is not good enough because we have to save the whole world; that it’s most important to help those who are poor, those who are suffering, and those who have been pushed to the margins of society; that women are just as good as men; that consumer capitalism treats human beings as mere consumers, and falsely states that the highest good in life is buying more stuff. From a pragmatic point of view, maybe we’ll be doing many of the same things — but we’ll have religious, not political, reasons for doing them.
And if we can do that, we’ll really be newsworthy.
[i]…that the highest good in life is buying more stuff.[/i]
I don’t know if this theology sells in some of those places where those conservative Anglicans and Methodists do very well.
Bill @ 1 — This should be one of the areas where we religious liberals can make common cause with religious conservatives. There is no Mosaic commandment that we shalt buy more stuff. Jesus told us to bring out credit cards out from under the bushel basket and put them on a lamp stand. This is one area where I can talk freely with my fundamentalist cousin.
I constantly encounter people who automatically equate religious affiliation and/or beliefs with a conservative mindset. To some extent, haven’t we, as liberal religions, failed to counteract this? Of course, you raise a good point, Dan, about wedge issues. Toss a few red herrings at a dwindling denomination (looking at numbers, I’m pretty sure most left-leaning faiths fall into that category), and they fight endlessly, driving out more people.
Thanks for discussing this, Dan. These are the issues we must confront boldly and head on. I’m far from convinced that we are.
Jeremiah wrote:
-snip-
“I constantly encounter people who automatically equate religious affiliation and/or beliefs with a conservative mindset. To some extent, haven’t we, as liberal religions, failed to counteract this?”
Jeremiah,
People may equate religious as synonymous with conservative because of the observed correlation (many religious people are conservative and many conservative people are religious).
For example, one of the significant demographic trends in the recent California Prop. 8 vote was the impact of religion on this vote. Those who described themselves as religious were the strongest supporters of prop 8:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_8_(2008)#Results
As religious liberals, we need to remind folks that there are religious alternatives to conservative religious practices and beliefs.
But we cannot delude ourselves into thinking that the majority of religious folks are religious liberals like UU, UCC, and Quakers.
When critics of religion like Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers criticize religious leaders like Ted Haggard and Rick Warren, many religious liberals complain that these so-called “fringe” religious leaders are not reasonable mainstream examples of religion.
But Haggard and Warren have both received invitations from US Presidents — Haggard to visit the Bush White House and Warren to lead a prayer at the Obama Inauguration. These conservative religious leaders may not as “fringe” as religious liberals think they are.
@Dan, You need to read Brink Lindsey’s “The Age Of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and Culture”. It’s attitudes towards the production and consumption of all this stuff that very much defines left and right in America.
Moses was concerned about coveting other peoples stuff. The Jesus birth story has the theme of taxing people’s stuff and getting a headcount of where the taxable bodies were about.
So stuff an old theme, although the age of vast abundance, at least among us in the west, a pretty new thing.
Jeremiah @ 3 and Steve @ 4 — I think Jeremiah is absolutely correct, that we religious liberals have failed to counteract the perception that “religious” = religious conservative. I cannot count the number of times I have heard Unitarian Universalists say something like, “Well, I go to my UU church but I’m not really religious,” and things like, “But UUism isn’t really a religion, and I’m not really religious.” I’d be willing to bet that there are just as many religious liberals (loosely defined as religious people who accept science, feminism, and non-literal readings of the Bible) as there are religious conservatives. So do we talk about evangelicals like Brain McLaren and Richard Cizik who are natural allies to religious liberals? We do not. (Steve, even you fall into this trap by picking Haggard and Warren as your representative religious conservatives.) And do we talk openly about religious liberals who are really making a difference? If we do, we tend to ignore or obscure their religious leanings — how many times have you heard UUs describe Barack Obama or Tim Berners-Lee as a religious liberal? — how many UUs actually know who Jim Wallis, John Buchanan, and Gary Dorrien are? (Hint: they’re all religious liberals who are making a big difference in liberal religion.)
So anyway: we religious liberals absolutely must learn to identify ourselves without shame as religious. Which is a task that I personally find difficult, but I believe it must be done.
Bill @ 5 — You write: “It’s attitudes towards the production and consumption of all this stuff that very much defines left and right in America.”
Yeah, I know. That’s why I’m in religion, not in politics. It’s very, very good that the current prosperity has reduced human suffering. But in religion, we continue to look beyond consumer goods to the rest of life — to paraphrase the Bible, we do not live by laptops alone.
Consumer Hedonism IS a religion.
But I agree; we need to get the word out better that liberal religion exists. Many people have no idea we are here.
Maybe we need a catechism like what you said: let’s clearly articulate the religiously liberal party line: that individual salvation is not good enough because we have to save the whole world; that it’s most important to help those who are poor, those who are suffering, and those who have been pushed to the margins of society; that women are just as good as men; that consumer capitalism treats human beings as mere consumers, and falsely states that the highest good in life is buying more stuff.
I’d be careful about calling *all* UUs, UCCs, and Quakers liberal. Not out here in the Midwest they’re not. Not religiously, not politically. Many anecdotes as evidence, which I shall spare you.
I’d also note, politely as we often do in the Midwest, that the “religious liberal party line” offered here sounds, to this ear tuned to the beat of the heartland, quite political.
Dan wrote:
-snip-
“So do we talk about evangelicals like Brain McLaren and Richard Cizik who are natural allies to religious liberals? We do not. (Steve, even you fall into this trap by picking Haggard and Warren as your representative religious conservatives.)”
Dan,
I was picking these two examples because they both have access to mainstream political and media power (or had access prior to the sex and drug scandals in the case of Ted Haggard).
Richard Cizik was forced out of his leadership position in the NAE for supporting same-sex civil unions.
Brian McLaren is influential in the “emergent church” movement, but I do question his influence in the wider conservative evangelical movement due to his more flexible hermeneutics compared to his more conservative colleagues.
Warren is in a position of mainstream religious power and influence with politicians. I don’t think we can say the same thing about Cizik or McLaren.
We may not want to hear this, but as a “first-order approximation” a minister like Rick Warren or Joel Osteen is the public face of “religion” in US popular culture.
Richard Cizek, Brian McLaren, Jim Wallis, the UCC’s Rev. John Thomas, the UUA’s Rev. Peter Morales, the Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, etc simply aren’t viewed as a “representative” public face for religion in North America.
Religious liberals are so few in number that they are ignored as a social or religious trend by the mainstream media and other folks outside of liberal religion.
I’m not certain the line you draw between politics and religion such a good thing Dan.
We’re at one of those moments in History when everything get’s redefined. Look at this Nigerian terrorist fellow and you find a guy struggling with God and “Stuff”, and how one reconciles God’s Laws i.e. Sharia, with all of this stuff. He came to some very bad decisions, and in part because the more liberal religious side to Islam’s taken some very bad knocks… it was once there too… read of fellows like Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan –and Afghan contempory and follower of Ghandi– who felt betrayed by Ghandi too at partition. Little known in the West were we’re in the habit of tossing King and Ghandi –a Christian and Hindu– as peace models to Muslims.
Anyways, point is we’re all confronting globalization and the huge output of “stuff” with all of its attending conflicts, and trying to reconcile that world with our images of God and God’s rules for living our lives.
In that sense God and Politics very much come together. I fear today’s UUism failure is to close itself to the Political Conservative in the West, and the Political Liberal in Islam and the Middle east (Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan who?). A bad set of blinders….
Steve @ 10 — Yes, you’re right, the religious conservatives have more access to power right now. That still takes me back to my point that religious liberals don’t acknowledge themselves as religious liberals. I mean, Obama is pretty clearly a religious liberal — if he would just come out and say that he is a religious liberal (realistically, in his second term, when he is less politically vulnerable), and if lots of other political leaders would come out and admit that they are religious liberals, I think it has the potential for changing the current climate in which it is difficult for us to acknowledge publicly that we are religious liberals. I’m not talking about UUA bumper stickers here, I’m talking aboutthings like this. Let’s be proud of and public about being religious liberals!
Bill Baar @ 11 — Yeah, you’re right, I shouldn’t try to separate religion and politics as much as I do. And really, I’m all about the social gospel and liberation theologies (feminist liberation theology in particular) — which are theologies that are essentially linked to social change. Maybe I’m just trying to get away from highly partisan politics as currently practiced in the U.S.?
You also write: “we’re all confronting globalization and the huge output of “stuff” with all of its attending conflicts, and trying to reconcile that world with our images of God and God’s rules for living our lives.”
That is a really nice summation of the problem. Thank you for that. And yes on the “bad set of blinders.”
@Dan
You’re Welcome…and happy New Years…
…and one last thing. I am so tired of UU’s who define our religion by what it is NOT. We’re not dogmatic, we’re not creedal, we don’t require this, we don’t require that. And people wonder why we are mocked?
How about we work on what we ARE? We DO walk a religious path together, finding the Divine in an individual fashion, guided by our ministers and other leaders. We DO work for the salvation of all on this beautiful precious planet. We DO respect the significance of all people. And so on, and so forth.
This is the legacy of excising centuries of tradition from both U’s, which is to some extent, understandable. But selling the general public on a church for people who don’t like church would make for a terrible advertising campaign. Oh, wait…