Zelizer's Book Corner: Frank Lambert's Religion in American Politics
When Reverend Rick Warren handles the invocation at Barack Obama's inauguration next week, the day after we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, many Democrats will be disappointed and hurt, even with the recent announcement that the progressive minister Sharon Watkins will give the sermon at the national prayer service on the day following the inauguration.
When Obama selected Warren, an outspoken social conservative -- who supported the campaign against gay marriage in California and has made numerous disparaging comments about homosexuals and women -- to give the invocation at the inauguration, many of Obama's supporters were furious. To select a person whose views stand in such contradiction to progressive Democratic principles seemed an affront to what this campaign was about. The invocation is just a symbol, but symbols matter in politics, and this one does not sit well with many Democrats.
There was another reason that many of Obama's supporters were hurt by the decision. This was a slap in the face to many activists given that Obama's victory benefited from a dramatic mobilization by progressive religious leaders and organizations to bring back the religiously faithful into the Democratic camp -- to separate the notion that there is an inevitable connection between conservatism and religion.
Making that separation has been difficult. Since the 1970s, conservative religious organizations and leaders dominated national politics. The Religious Right tapped into a tradition of political activism, most famously rooted in the fundamentalist attacks on Charles Darwin and evolution in the 1920s, and connected themselves to the Republican Party. While religious conservatives often felt that they were ignored by Republicans after the elections were over, they stuck with the GOP. They became an important source of electoral support for the party. Not only did evangelicals move solidly to the Republican fold, but formerly Democratic groups like Catholics did as well. This election cycle, desperate to stimulate enthusiasm within the base, John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his candidate because of her ties to this community.
But in the 2008 election, the strategy didn't work. Polls show that many religious Americans did not automatically move toward the right. Although most evangelicals refused to budge, younger evangelicals turned out for Obama. Catholics moved back to the Democrats and Jews and mainline Protestants voted for Obama in very high numbers.
The disillusionment with the Bush administration, and the conservatism that he represented, has left some religious Americans scratching their heads and rethinking their political affiliation. The mobilization of Democrats through organizations devoted to winning back the religious vote, such as Matthew 25, proved to be effective. While much of the press was focused on Reverend Jeremiah Wright and his polemical sermons in Chicago, there was much less attention paid to the dramatic emergence of new liberal religious organizations who were pivotal to Barack Obama's campaign.
The history of liberal religious activism is nothing new and the current generation of leaders would do well to gain a better understanding of just how deep this tradition is. Frank Lambert's Religion in American Politics is a perfect starting point. The book traces the connection between religion and politics since the founding of the nation. Lambert provides some fascinating analysis of moments when liberal religious figures were influential.
When some American groups started to fight against the institution of slavery in the nineteenth century, religious leaders were pivotal. A host of religious organizations drew on Christian theology to attack slavery. Churches split along regional lines as early as the 1830s. Some northern religious leaders accused southerners of privileging the "Slave Power" over God.
Religion was also an engine behind social reform during the progressive era. The Social Gospel Movement was composed of religious leaders who railed against the social conditions that many working and lower class Americans faced in industrial and urban America. Liberal Protestant and Catholics as well as Reform Jews were at the forefront of the campaign to combat the blight found in urban America. One member of the social gospel movement, Charles Brown, told Church leaders in 1904 that "Jesus would found the social order on the basis of human brotherhood in the service one another" rather than capitalist profit.
During the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, religious leaders were some of the most progressive voices on issues of war, social justice, and civil rights. The national Council of Churches, formed in 1950, preached the need for religious pluralism and tolerance. The Federal Council of Churches issued a statement in 1946 opposing America's decision to drop the Atomic bomb, proclaiming that "As American Christians, we are deeply penitent for the irresponsible use already made of the atomic bomb."
Black churches and preachers, such as Martin Luther King, headed the civil rights movement that transformed America and culminated with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. They drew on religious wisdom and rhetoric to explain their cause. There were many Jewish leaders and Jewish college students who marched with African-Americans in the South. Even as civil rights moved leftward, the clergy continued to participate. There was a small cohort of black ministers who formed the National Committee of Black Churchmen, which broke from the National Council of Churches, who said: "Black Theology is a theology of black liberation. It seeks to plumb the black condition in the light of God's revelation in Jesus Christ, so that the black community can see that the gospel is commensurate with the achievement of black humanity...."
The possibility for a revival of religious liberalism is very real. Warren no longer has to be the face of religion in American politics. The election showed there is still a lot of work to be done, particularly in attracting evangelical voters to the Democratic Party. But the changes that we have seen among religious Americans are significant and the emergence of leftward religious organizations has altered the political landscape. The leaders involved in this shift would do well to look back at their own history, traced so well in Lambert's book, to draw ideas and wisdom from previous moments when conservatism did not have a lock on this relationship.
More soon from the academy....
Julian E. Zelizer is professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. He is the co-editor of "Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s" (Harvard University Press) and is completing a book on the history of national security politics since World War II that will be published by Basic Books. For more information, see
www.julianzelizer.com
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This article highlights the basic difference between Liberalism and Conservatism: Liberals have a far more optimistic view of Human Nature than do Conservatives.
But this raises the question: if Conservatives believe that Human Nature is evil, why then would they want Freedom for those who are and/or those who believe differently than they? Consider the issue of Slavery, and which side of the issue that Liberals versus Conservatives were on.
Hmmm... it appears as though the prevailing opinions in the 'comments' see conservative evangelicals as the root of America's 'problems'
Well, last I checked, the first constitutions of most of the original States usually had something typical of New Jersey's 1776 Constitution:
Sec. XIX. ...but that all persons, professing a belief in the faith of any Protestant sect. who shall demean themselves peaceably under the government, as hereby established, shall be capable of being elected into any office of profit or trust, or being a member of either branch of the Legislatur
North Carolina's Constitution:
XXXII.(5) That no person, who shall deny the being of God or the truth of the Protestant religion, or the divine authority either of the Old or New Testaments
Seems the Founder's generation had a theme running here... maybe they knew something, after all, they designed our civil polity...
Declaration Signer Benjamin Rush on the subject:
...'the only only foundation for a useful education in a Republic is laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the life and object of all republican government
For Dr. Rush, Princeton education and all, 'Religion' meant the Biblical Christianity taught at his Alma Mater.
This is all very true, but you purposefully avoid the topic of social issues like abortion and gay marriage.
The fact has always been, in the political terms we use in this country (we have almost no "right" in the traditional sense), most religions are neither conservative or liberal, but have elements of both. The Catholic church, for example, is in religious terms about the most conservative there is. Hierarchical. Guided by Two thousand years of tradition. Believing in a natural order of things that is eternal. When it comes to economics and "social justice" issues, they are way to the left. But their views on abortion and divorce and homosexuality are at odds with those of most secular progressives.
The Republicans really only appealed to religious voters through these issues. The Democrats are going to have to moderate their stands on these issues or find a way to finesse them if they want to hang on to these voters.
In truth, faith, or the believe in something without evidence (or even despite evidence to the contrary), is one of the major dividers in religion. It seems the the different religions cannot agree such things. For a Christian, the truth of a virgin birth is beyond question. How could faith in such a truth bring such a person closer to a Jew or a Buddhist?
It is still premature to establish Alaska Agnositc or Arizona Atheist law schools to counter Tejas's Southern Methodist University or Virginia's Liberty [Baptist] University's influence upon the USA's laws & system of justice.
Tom said it best...
"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."
Thomas Jefferson
There are no religious liberals! The very history subscribed in the post shows lineage. Blacks freedom from slavery by the northern Republicans led them back to the south and the predominate Democratic party that was church instilled community organization of the south. As blacks began to move freely about the country they found power and leadership that was greatly needed in the southern Democratic church. Amazingly with the south totally destroyed and burnt to the ground it was the southern church that instilled unity and community to the northern black. This unity was transported to the north where it was transformed and folded into the politics of large money based northern cities. Large numbers of voters could be found and captured in the parishes and church communities. Seldom did the black gain in the north till the south erupted into civil rights from within the church. However there was an unproductive change in the Democratic church that turned to political issues first and God serving second. Thus the south began to embrace Biblical conservatism Gods rules not man. These rules reject mankind worship, and acceptance usually means surrendering to Biblical principals. The south turned to conservative right. Liberals have destroyed the Catholic church, they're closing their doors. And as for the vote, it is the 18% who say Jew - Catholic who swing the vote. Liberals voice no religious affiliation accept self service. To hold the 18 the administration must serve the religious voiced 18%. and their beliefs.
My "stimulus plan" would have a nice 10% tax on all organized religion. It IS a business.
Religion separates us, Faith bring us together.
-Someone smart
As has been widely reported in the news, the majority of U.S. businesses pay no taxes. If "organized religion" is indeed a business, why would we treat it any differently?
Religious movements supported abolitionism in the nineteenth century, progressive social reform movements in the early twentieth century, social justice, civil rights, and peace in the 1940s, 50s and 60s. They used religious insights and religious language to call for justice and compassion.
Other religious movements used religious rhetoric to argue for slavery, segregation, and wars.
Somehow in the 1980s the "religious right" managed to convince the media that religion, particularly Christianity, was inherently conservative and bigoted. We need to stop buying this line. World religions generally call for compassion and justice. The adherents of those religions may ignore those calls or interpret them in different ways, but there is nothing in the human religious tendency that makes religion inherently hateful or unjust.
Such nonsense, all religions by nature are racist, elitist, misogynist, and homophobic. How more hateful and unjust can you get?
You're preaching to morons. Save your keystrokes!
Well done.
Thank you for reminding me that not all people with religious affiliations are unintelligent, passive, ineffective and may I dear say conservative. Some individuals with religious affiliations have been instrumental in making powerful political change in a way that has not just profited themselves but many Americans who do not share their religious beliefs...
Besides the most obvious slap in the face to Gays and Lesbians, women, AIDS activists, progressive religious groups, etc., I can't understand why Obama would have chosen Rick Warren for an inaugural honor; Rick Warren, who all but openly mocked Obama during the Saddleback debates. Disdain and downright disrespect oozed from RW's body language and tone, for all of America to see. Now that Obama has come out on top, the Rick Warren's want a place at the table.
I understand wanting to be inclusive, but opening the door to the very groups that have contributed to the destruction of America is just wrong. You can't reason with the unreasonable.
Well... duh. Religion and politics ARE THE SAME THING.
We're fairly smart here - let's stop pretending religion is some gift from some cloud being and admit it was created to control people.
Just like politics.
You don't have a god - you have an idea of one.
Seconded!
thirded?
Yeah, yeah, we've heard all these glowing stories of all the wonderful things religion has done before. Any good they have done only goes to make up for the vast vast amounts of damage they have done to America and the world. Get over it, religion is a mental disease and has always done more hard than good.
People don't realize the disproportionate influence of liberal religions like Unitarians and Quakers on the things that made America great. The Founding Fathers (Most of whom were Unitarians!) would be horrified at current efforts to emphasize all things "Christian
This is why, to many United Methodists, the location of the George Bush memorial library at Southern Methodist University is disgusting. Jesus taught peace and Bush started the longest war in American history based on lies. The Bishops of the UMC and many concerned members have spoken in protest and voted against this move. In the end, money talked.
Having lived in Dallas very near SMU, I can honestly say that SMU is a bastion of far right-wing conservatisim. There's a reason we called them Smutants. SMU is far removed from the ideals of the Methodist church.
Put it this way - Ann Coulter would feel very comfortable at SMU.
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