the religious left

[d_rawk]

From today's Ottawa Citizen:

There's a politics and the pulpit movement stirring, and it isn't coming from the right.

In fact, Preston Manning, the dean of political science among Canada's evangelical Protestants, has urged those faithful to check their tongues at the door. Where two or more are gathered on Parliament Hill, let them not speak of God too loudly. Voters, as polls show, are easily spooked by Bible thumpers.

So why are left-leaning Christians behaving like they're born again - again?

A fledgling faith and social justice caucus has sprung up in the NDP, spearheaded by Sault Ste. Marie MP Tony Martin. His fellow Catholics, Ontario MPs Charlie Angus and Joe Comartin, are charter members, as is Winnipeg MP Bill Blaikie, a United Church minister. Unlike Prime Minister Stephen Harper, an evangelical Christian, these folks are not prone to "God bless Canada" amens.

Instead, they are taking baby steps to make the NDP more inviting to progressives of all faiths. This isn't going over well with some party faithful. Despite an image of the NDP as the United Church at prayer, the party has, over the years, downplayed its social-gospel roots.

The MPs started meeting last year, after their support for same-sex marriage landed them in the hard pew. Angus and Comartin were denied communion in their churches, and Martin was stripped of his parish duties. Feeling chafed by their churches and misunderstood by their party, these NDPers looked for some wiggle room. Is the left attempting to court the religious vote? Possibly. But religious progressives also admit that for too long, they have allowed their conservative counterparts to silence moderate voices and set the "religious" agenda.

Christopher Duncanson-Hales, who helped kickstart the movement, met a voter during the last election who told him, "I didn't know Catholics were allowed to vote for the NDP."

[...]

[Tommy] Douglas used his faith to champion universal health care and pensions while [Ernest] Manning used his to resist them. Yet both men viewed their Depression-era movements as profoundly different means to the same end: the provision of food, comfort and dignity for those down on their luck.

In today's secular, multifaith world, the question is this: Do Canadians reject the mix of religion and politics because we equate it with intolerance, exclusion and a narrow Judeo-Christian point of view? If so, would we look more kindly on a spiritual answer to the religious right?

[...]

Unlike the right, which mobilizes the faithful as a power bloc within the Republican party, the left sees itself as a civil-rights movement built around social-justice causes. Its leaders invoke the legacy of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Father Daniel Berrigan and Rabbi Abraham Heschel, who during the 1960s battled racism, unjust war, nuclear proliferation, poverty and threats to civil liberties. In another time, Canada had similar heroes. The most compelling reason for the left to find God again is to stir its soul. After all, where are the modern-day Douglases and Woodsworths?

I followed some of the internal NDP discussion/debate about the faith caucus when it began. There is a lot of tension, but also a lot of bridges being built.

I don't want to editorialize on this too much ... just throwing it out there for discussion ...

[Hux]

I think the NDP would be wiser to focus their energy on the secular centre-left voters who will be heavily woo'd to vote Liberal in the next election.

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Somebody's got to provide an alternative to those godless Liberals .

I know there is a fairly even spread through the political spectrum for Canadian evangelical voters (you hear some evangelicals on the right lamenting this). Religious groups in the US were among the loudest voices within the country protesting the invasion of Iraq, and calling for jubilee in 2000. Even the evangelical left gets a larger presence with the rise of the right - people like Ron Sider and Tony Campolo.

I don't know - how do you make people compassionate. Vatican II produced statements that led to the "preferential option for the poor" that was so well picked up on in Liberation Theology through the 1970s and 1980s....

One wonders....

[Hux]

Somebody's got to provide an alternative to those godless Liberals .

Oh God not you too. Next time you're over we'll have a sit down.

[d_rawk]

I think the NDP would be wiser to focus their energy on the secular centre-left voters who will be heavily woo'd to vote Liberal in the next election.

Yes, well, I don't think it is exactly an election strategy sort of thing. It's just an internal caucus - like a Women's caucus in any party isn't primarily about winning people to the party, although that might be a natural discussion that happens inside of it ("are women put off by the party, and/or by politics in general? If so, how do we correct this?", etc..) There is after all already a women's caucus, an environmental caucus, a youth caucus and even a socialist caucus within the NDP. It certainly doesn't have the force of the party behind it - if anything, I think a lot are embarrassed by it.

I find it interesting though that there tends to be a stronger reaction against this type of thing. And I can relate to it on certain levels. But I do tend to think that a truce needs to be called between the secular humanists and the liberal-minded people of 'faith'. It should be an easy bridge to cross, but the one side perceives a sort of arrogance bordering on bigotry, and the other side is worried about getting preached at. Not to mention that the loudest voices tend to be the evangelical ones that paint a rather drab, beige-feeling, safe, boring, 'wholesome' picture that unfortunately gets tacked onto everything outside of the secular.

It's an interesting debate to watch, though.