A US Religious Left?

[lpetrich]

Why Democrats Struggle To Mobilize A ‘Religious Left’ | FiveThirtyEight
The problem: while there are plenty of religious Democratic voters, the Democrats are more divided on religion than the Republicans, and they include more nonreligious voters.

First Cory Booker — who was literally anointed by his pastor ahead of his presidential announcement — was touted as a possible candidate of the “religious left.” Then Pete Buttigieg stepped in to claim that mantle, telling reporters that the left “need to not be afraid to invoke arguments that are convincing on why Christian faith is going to point you in a progressive direction.” Meanwhile, several other presidential hopefuls, including Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand, are all talking openly about their religion on the campaign trail, even making arguments for why their policy positions — whether it’s abortion rights or income inequality — are linked to their faith.

Religious pro-choice arguments? Why don't we ever see any pro-choice arguments like "God has given us sovereignty over our bodies"?

Comparing each party's primaries' voters:

• Democrats: religious affiliation 65%, white Christians 31%, nonwhite Christians 22%, non-Christians 12%
• Republicans: religious affiliation 84%, white Christians 70%

About Bernie Sanders, he "may be the only candidate in the race to say he doesn’t participate in organized religion."

“It’s hard to go up against Biden because he appeals to moderate Catholics and Protestants — he’s from their world,” said Ryan Burge, a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University who studies religion and politics. And according to the 2016 CCES survey, moderate Democratic primary voters are more likely to be religious than their liberal counterparts, so if Biden is also appealing to moderates, that could compound the challenge for his opponents. “If Biden is capturing most of the moderates, there just aren’t that many religious voters left to scoop up,” Burge said.

From some other polls, unaffiliated Democrats increased from 14% in 1998 to 28% in 2018. In the 1970's, the Xian fraction was 92%, the other religions were 6%, and the unaffiliated were 6%. But in recent years, the unaffiliated fraction has grown dramatically, at the expense of the Xian fraction. The non-Xian religious fraction has stayed approximately constant.

Now to be clear, most of the religiously unaffiliated don’t reject religion outright, so candidates who focus on faith may not run any serious risk of alienating these voters. In fact, according to the 2016 CCES data, only 9 percent of Democratic primary voters said they were atheists, while 8 percent said they were agnostics and 18 percent identified as “nothing in particular.” And notably, voters who fell into this last category were still surprisingly connected to organized religion. About half of these Democrats said they still attend church occasionally, and 37 percent said that religion is at least somewhat important in their lives.

On the other side, many affiliated people seem to be relatively indifferent to religion.

Of Democratic primary voters (very important, somewhat important, not too important, not at all important):

• Black: 62.3% 22.5% 8.0% 7.2%
• Hispanic: 36.9% 30.0% 13.8% 19.3%
• White: 25.3% 24.3% 17.7% 32.6%
• Other: 28.0% 23.7% 20.1% 28.2%

So it's blacks > Hispanics > whites and others

And black Protestants are already quite powerful in the party. As FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver wrote earlier this year, black voters (who are overwhelmingly likely to be Christian) constitute about one-fifth of the Democratic electorate and have a long and deep alliance with the Democratic establishment, making them a key constituency in the primary. According to the CCES, the vast majority of black Protestants and nearly three-quarters of Hispanic Catholics voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

... But while mobilizing specific subgroups of religious Democrats will still be important, the dream of building a cohesive religious voting bloc on the left looks more distant by the year. Democrats may not have much to lose by talking about faith and values — but it may not offer them much of a reward among primary voters either.

 

[ronburgundy]

Why Democrats Struggle To Mobilize A ‘Religious Left’ | FiveThirtyEight
The problem: while there are plenty of religious Democratic voters, the Democrats are more divided on religion than the Republicans, and they include more nonreligious voters.

Religious pro-choice arguments? Why don't we ever see any pro-choice arguments like "God has given us sovereignty over our bodies"?

Comparing each party's primaries' voters:

• Democrats: religious affiliation 65%, white Christians 31%, nonwhite Christians 22%, non-Christians 12%
• Republicans: religious affiliation 84%, white Christians 70%

About Bernie Sanders, he "may be the only candidate in the race to say he doesn’t participate in organized religion."

From some other polls, unaffiliated Democrats increased from 14% in 1998 to 28% in 2018. In the 1970's, the Xian fraction was 92%, the other religions were 6%, and the unaffiliated were 6%. But in recent years, the unaffiliated fraction has grown dramatically, at the expense of the Xian fraction. The non-Xian religious fraction has stayed approximately constant.

Now to be clear, most of the religiously unaffiliated don’t reject religion outright, so candidates who focus on faith may not run any serious risk of alienating these voters. In fact, according to the 2016 CCES data, only 9 percent of Democratic primary voters said they were atheists, while 8 percent said they were agnostics and 18 percent identified as “nothing in particular.” And notably, voters who fell into this last category were still surprisingly connected to organized religion. About half of these Democrats said they still attend church occasionally, and 37 percent said that religion is at least somewhat important in their lives.

On the other side, many affiliated people seem to be relatively indifferent to religion.

Of Democratic primary voters (very important, somewhat important, not too important, not at all important):

• Black: 62.3% 22.5% 8.0% 7.2%
• Hispanic: 36.9% 30.0% 13.8% 19.3%
• White: 25.3% 24.3% 17.7% 32.6%
• Other: 28.0% 23.7% 20.1% 28.2%

So it's blacks > Hispanics > whites and others

And black Protestants are already quite powerful in the party. As FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver wrote earlier this year, black voters (who are overwhelmingly likely to be Christian) constitute about one-fifth of the Democratic electorate and have a long and deep alliance with the Democratic establishment, making them a key constituency in the primary. According to the CCES, the vast majority of black Protestants and nearly three-quarters of Hispanic Catholics voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

... But while mobilizing specific subgroups of religious Democrats will still be important, the dream of building a cohesive religious voting bloc on the left looks more distant by the year. Democrats may not have much to lose by talking about faith and values — but it may not offer them much of a reward among primary voters either.

The whole point of a monotheistic God is create an unquestionable authority over all things. That is inherently anti-thetical to both liberty and equality, and thus to liberal values, but highly compatible with right-wing values. Plus, the men who wrote both the OT and NET, and Koran were sexist bigots and intolerant tribalists who imbued their God and their stories with these values. So any actual liberal claiming to derive their liberalism from these faiths is being dishonest and ignoring most of their claimed faith. Granted, they can try to myopically cling to portions of the Bible where Jesus commands caring for the poor, ignoring that this applies only to the poor who follow him, because he commands that people " who do not want me to reign over them, bring them here and kill them in front of me."

Plus, even thought all monotheism shares the same intolerant authoritarian God, they are also defined by their disagreements over which prophets and savior have the most authority in speaking for God's will. And although some liberal theists may wish to deny it, it is logically impossible to belief one sect is correct without believing the others are incorrect. Which means to sincerely push Christianity and Jesus as what the basis of society should be is to say that Jews and Muslims are wrong, which many leftists don't want to do but rightist Christians have no problem doing.

The level of intellectual dishonesty, hypocrisy, and cherry picking required to reconcile any monotheism with values of liberty, equality, and tolerance is a huge obstacle to any religious left remotely on par with the natural alliance of religion and the right.

 

[Brian63]

Whatever amount of intellectual dishonesty or hypocrisy or cherrypicking is required to maintain a Religious Left worldview, I would still strongly favor that over a (*relatively more*) consistent and coherent authoritarian Religious Right worldview. At the end of the day, at least the former will have picked out some of the better policy positions (gay rights, women's rights, etc.) that the Religious Right is opposed to. Ultimately a Secular Left should be our long-term goal, but in the short-term we just have to accept that our population (in the U.S. at least) is going to be very religious, and we might as well try to incorporate those religious views if they can be used for better social outcomes alongside trying to secularize the culture to a greater degree.

 

[ronburgundy]

Whatever amount of intellectual dishonesty or hypocrisy or cherrypicking is required to maintain a Religious Left worldview, I would still strongly favor that over a (*relatively more*) consistent and coherent authoritarian Religious Right worldview. At the end of the day, at least the former will have picked out some of the better policy positions (gay rights, women's rights, etc.) that the Religious Right is opposed to. Ultimately a Secular Left should be our long-term goal, but in the short-term we just have to accept that our population (in the U.S. at least) is going to be very religious, and we might as well try to incorporate those religious views if they can be used for better social outcomes alongside trying to secularize the culture to a greater degree.

Sure, a "religious left" would be far less dangerous than the religious right, precisely b/c it would be less sincerely religious and religion is dangerous. But for that reason, a religious left will never exist on any scale remotely similar to the religious right b/c it will be so patently phony and dishonest that it will fail to be what makes religion such an effective political tool.

A religious left would be to the religious right what a Tofurkey is to a Turkey, it has little appeal to anyone, even most tofu eaters.

 

[Brian63]

The Religious Right has its share of patently phony and dishonest views and warped, inconsistent and incoherent theologies as well. Whether nonsensical religious theologies are more consistent with liberal or conservative political views is probably a worthwhile discussion for a separate thread, but not one I am in the mood for here and so will just leave it as is.

 

[Sarpedon]

Every time a religion breaks in two, there are those at the breaking point that decide they don't need either.

 

[ronburgundy]

The Religious Right has its share of patently phony and dishonest views and warped, inconsistent and incoherent theologies as well. Whether nonsensical religious theologies are more consistent with liberal or conservative political views is probably a worthwhile discussion for a separate thread, but not one I am in the mood for here and so will just leave it as is.

The fundamental contradiction between the authoritarianism of monotheism and the liberal values of personal liberty, equality, and democracy are THE reasons why a religious left does not exist at the level of a religious right, and thus directly addresses the question posed by the OP. So, it belongs squarely in this thread.

 

[Politesse]

Every time a religion breaks in two, there are those at the breaking point that decide they don't need either.

It's not broken in two. There have always been more conservatively minded people, more liberally minded people, and the majority of folks who find themselves somewhere in between those two poles. This is true of every organization founded for any reason, especially where politics have gotten involved.

 

[Jarhyn]

Why Democrats Struggle To Mobilize A ‘Religious Left’ | FiveThirtyEight
The problem: while there are plenty of religious Democratic voters, the Democrats are more divided on religion than the Republicans, and they include more nonreligious voters.

Religious pro-choice arguments? Why don't we ever see any pro-choice arguments like "God has given us sovereignty over our bodies"?

Comparing each party's primaries' voters:

• Democrats: religious affiliation 65%, white Christians 31%, nonwhite Christians 22%, non-Christians 12%
• Republicans: religious affiliation 84%, white Christians 70%

About Bernie Sanders, he "may be the only candidate in the race to say he doesn’t participate in organized religion."

From some other polls, unaffiliated Democrats increased from 14% in 1998 to 28% in 2018. In the 1970's, the Xian fraction was 92%, the other religions were 6%, and the unaffiliated were 6%. But in recent years, the unaffiliated fraction has grown dramatically, at the expense of the Xian fraction. The non-Xian religious fraction has stayed approximately constant.

On the other side, many affiliated people seem to be relatively indifferent to religion.

Of Democratic primary voters (very important, somewhat important, not too important, not at all important):

• Black: 62.3% 22.5% 8.0% 7.2%
• Hispanic: 36.9% 30.0% 13.8% 19.3%
• White: 25.3% 24.3% 17.7% 32.6%
• Other: 28.0% 23.7% 20.1% 28.2%

So it's blacks > Hispanics > whites and others

The whole point of a monotheistic God is create an unquestionable authority over all things. That is inherently anti-thetical to both liberty and equality, and thus to liberal values, but highly compatible with right-wing values. Plus, the men who wrote both the OT and NET, and Koran were sexist bigots and intolerant tribalists who imbued their God and their stories with these values. So any actual liberal claiming to derive their liberalism from these faiths is being dishonest and ignoring most of their claimed faith. Granted, they can try to myopically cling to portions of the Bible where Jesus commands caring for the poor, ignoring that this applies only to the poor who follow him, because he commands that people " who do not want me to reign over them, bring them here and kill them in front of me."

Plus, even thought all monotheism shares the same intolerant authoritarian God, they are also defined by their disagreements over which prophets and savior have the most authority in speaking for God's will. And although some liberal theists may wish to deny it, it is logically impossible to belief one sect is correct without believing the others are incorrect. Which means to sincerely push Christianity and Jesus as what the basis of society should be is to say that Jews and Muslims are wrong, which many leftists don't want to do but rightist Christians have no problem doing.

The level of intellectual dishonesty, hypocrisy, and cherry picking required to reconcile any monotheism with values of liberty, equality, and tolerance is a huge obstacle to any religious left remotely on par with the natural alliance of religion and the right.

I would like to point out that the universe itself does have an unalterable shape to the qualities which drive our ethics.

The universe has rules, rules plus goal define a game. All goals within have a best strategic set, Therefore there is a best strategy to exist in the universe provided one has a goal, and any strategy has value over another for said goal.

 

[Sarpedon]

It's not broken in two. There have always been more conservatively minded people, more liberally minded people, and the majority of folks who find themselves somewhere in between those two poles. This is true of every organization founded for any reason, especially where politics have gotten involved.

Every religious schism is based on politics. How many breaks of churches have we seen in America in our lifetime? More than I can count! Christianity is grinding itself to powder.

Once, a man in a club I was a part of asked me which church I went to, and I replied "I don't go to church; I am an atheist." He then said "Wow, I never heard anyone come out and say it like that." After a short pause, he said "I guess I am too, I only go because of my wife." One group you fail to mention above is the one that only participates because it is expected of them. The more conflict in the organization, the more it fragments, the weaker the forces keeping that person involved.

Back when everyone had to be a member of a church, forcing people to choose sides was an effective way to force people to support you in a power struggle. Now that there is another choice, one that people are increasingly taking, the tactic long used by priests to cement their power is backfiring on them.

 

[ronburgundy]

Why Democrats Struggle To Mobilize A ‘Religious Left’ | FiveThirtyEight
The problem: while there are plenty of religious Democratic voters, the Democrats are more divided on religion than the Republicans, and they include more nonreligious voters.

Religious pro-choice arguments? Why don't we ever see any pro-choice arguments like "God has given us sovereignty over our bodies"?

Comparing each party's primaries' voters:

• Democrats: religious affiliation 65%, white Christians 31%, nonwhite Christians 22%, non-Christians 12%
• Republicans: religious affiliation 84%, white Christians 70%

About Bernie Sanders, he "may be the only candidate in the race to say he doesn’t participate in organized religion."

From some other polls, unaffiliated Democrats increased from 14% in 1998 to 28% in 2018. In the 1970's, the Xian fraction was 92%, the other religions were 6%, and the unaffiliated were 6%. But in recent years, the unaffiliated fraction has grown dramatically, at the expense of the Xian fraction. The non-Xian religious fraction has stayed approximately constant.

On the other side, many affiliated people seem to be relatively indifferent to religion.

Of Democratic primary voters (very important, somewhat important, not too important, not at all important):

• Black: 62.3% 22.5% 8.0% 7.2%
• Hispanic: 36.9% 30.0% 13.8% 19.3%
• White: 25.3% 24.3% 17.7% 32.6%
• Other: 28.0% 23.7% 20.1% 28.2%

So it's blacks > Hispanics > whites and others

The whole point of a monotheistic God is create an unquestionable authority over all things. That is inherently anti-thetical to both liberty and equality, and thus to liberal values, but highly compatible with right-wing values. Plus, the men who wrote both the OT and NET, and Koran were sexist bigots and intolerant tribalists who imbued their God and their stories with these values. So any actual liberal claiming to derive their liberalism from these faiths is being dishonest and ignoring most of their claimed faith. Granted, they can try to myopically cling to portions of the Bible where Jesus commands caring for the poor, ignoring that this applies only to the poor who follow him, because he commands that people " who do not want me to reign over them, bring them here and kill them in front of me."

Plus, even thought all monotheism shares the same intolerant authoritarian God, they are also defined by their disagreements over which prophets and savior have the most authority in speaking for God's will. And although some liberal theists may wish to deny it, it is logically impossible to belief one sect is correct without believing the others are incorrect. Which means to sincerely push Christianity and Jesus as what the basis of society should be is to say that Jews and Muslims are wrong, which many leftists don't want to do but rightist Christians have no problem doing.

The level of intellectual dishonesty, hypocrisy, and cherry picking required to reconcile any monotheism with values of liberty, equality, and tolerance is a huge obstacle to any religious left remotely on par with the natural alliance of religion and the right.

I would like to point out that the universe itself does have an unalterable shape to the qualities which drive our ethics.

The universe has rules, rules plus goal define a game. All goals within have a best strategic set, Therefore there is a best strategy to exist in the universe provided one has a goal, and any strategy has value over another for said goal.

I'm having trouble figuring out what your saying and how it related to what I said. The best I can figure is your trying to argue for Randian moral objectivism and suggest that is similar to the authoritarian morality of theism. Before I bother arguing against either of those notions, could you clarify?

 

[Politesse]

Every religious schism is based on politics. How many breaks of churches have we seen in America in our lifetime? More than I can count! Christianity is grinding itself to powder.

I agree that schisms almost always concern the transmission of power, over and above principles. I don't think that necessarily connotes impermanence, though. There are some fairly ancient schisms. And I don't think I would consider the left vs. right dichotomy posited in the OP to be a schism as such. There isn't a "liberal church" and a "conservative church" so much as thousands of individual churches that find themselves somewhere along that supposed political spectrum, usually in an ambiguous and plural fashion and often somewhat perpendicular to those categories rather than falling squarely into them.

I do agree with you that religious authorities face an interesting challenge when it comes to coaxing obedience out of the profoundly anti-authoritarian younger generations of American society, but I don't think the usual political idiocy is the reason why; it would be an existential threat for them whether or not there was an ostensibly bipolar political system.

 

[Sarpedon]

Yes, American churches have had the relief valve of people being able to switch churches at will, unlike some other countries. I consider that one of the primary reasons that America is relatively religious compared to Europe, say. It is likely that left and right forces will simply switch churches until homogeny is achieved within a given church. However, my point remains that for every swap that occurs, the chance remains for people to just not bother anymore.

 

[Jarhyn]

I would like to point out that the universe itself does have an unalterable shape to the qualities which drive our ethics.

The universe has rules, rules plus goal define a game. All goals within have a best strategic set, Therefore there is a best strategy to exist in the universe provided one has a goal, and any strategy has value over another for said goal.

I'm having trouble figuring out what your saying and how it related to what I said. The best I can figure is your trying to argue for Randian moral objectivism and suggest that is similar to the authoritarian morality of theism. Before I bother arguing against either of those notions, could you clarify?

Definitely not randian LOL. But the structure of the universe necessarily demands that there is some objective strategy for pursuing any given goal.

My thoughts are that human cultural morality will progressively approach this theoretical optimal. Without turning this into a mudwrestlimg match, I'm just going to pose that Rand had a very shortsighted and psychopathic view of ethics. In reality, social cooperation and co tribution, treating the collective of collective supporters as you treat yourself will always give the best probabilistic personal outcomes over time.

Randian ethics fails specifically because it rejects the equality of the collective in favor of asymmetric bargaining and thus opens the collective to a very efficient race to the bottom.

 

[Politesse]

Yes, American churches have had the relief valve of people being able to switch churches at will, unlike some other countries. I consider that one of the primary reasons that America is relatively religious compared to Europe, say. It is likely that left and right forces will simply switch churches until homogeny is achieved within a given church. However, my point remains that for every swap that occurs, the chance remains for people to just not bother anymore.

That doesn't really square with my observations of American congregations generally, and I have visited many. Congregations are sort of like "states"; you could characterize them as left- or right- leaning, but you'll make bad predictions on the basis of that stereotype. In the end, Christian Americans are every bit as middle-leaning as the American public in general.

I don't doubt that people have fluid approaches in finding a congregation that fits their political inclinations, but most people are not exactly political radicals to begin with. People who overtly identify as politically leftist or progressive are especially uncommon, and you would expect an echo of this in the likelihood of finding an intensely motivated religious congregation made of entirely leftists. From what pool is one drawing to try and build such a community? That is not to say that there isn't a highly motivated and resilient religious liberalism (there always has been, from the very origins of the faith up to the present), but again echoing the dynamics of American secular life, you'll have better luck looking for it in academia than in a non-academic, organically forming social organization. There aren't a lot of openly leftist Bingo or automotive clubs either, but that isn't because bingo-playing or car collection inherently conflict with leftist ideology.

 

[Sarpedon]

Don't forget that your experiences might be atypical. I don't remember the exact statistic, but Americans in general tend to think little of changing from one sect to another (40% have at least once, is my vague memory) to say nothing of changing from one congregation to another in the same sect. In my personal experience, when my (Anglican) church brought on a gay interim pastor, about 10% of the congregation started going to a different (still Anglican) church.

So my position is informed not only by personal experience, but also statistics.

 

[Politesse]

Don't forget that your experiences might be atypical. I don't remember the exact statistic, but Americans in general tend to think little of changing from one sect to another (40% have at least once, is my vague memory) to say nothing of changing from one congregation to another in the same sect. In my personal experience, when my (Anglican) church brought on a gay interim pastor, about 10% of the congregation started going to a different (still Anglican) church.

So my position is informed not only by personal experience, but also statistics.

I've been studying Christianity in its various forms for more than a decade, from multiple ethnographic vantage points.

 

[Sarpedon]

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/geneveith/2018/02/when-christians-change-churches-where-do-they-go/

Ok, but the article above cites a statistic that 1 in 6 American changes changes "churches" in this case meaning 'sect' not 'congregation' in a 4 year period. That is enormous. This would greatly exceed my previous guess of 40%. Study it or not, you seem reluctant to see facts that would distress you, or draw conclusions that would be disagreeable.

This shows that church affiliation in America is quite fluid. The article goes on to state that non denominational churches were the biggest beneficiary of people coming to them, but also had a high rate of change within itself. This supports my thesis that people look to change churches based on their feeling at home, philosophically and politically. A non-denominational church does not need to conform to a given church's dogma, so probably have a high degree of variation between given congregations. That these are at the epicenter of the changes is very much in line with my theory.