Melissa Harris-Lacewell, associate professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton University invoked a different Martin Luther King Jr./Barack Obama analogy in a recent appearance on Bill Moyers' Journal. Just as King was an agitator to Lyndon Johnson, Harris-Lacewell argued, the country needs agitators to Obama. "The president needs Kings. I actually think it's plural. It's not a single King," she said, identifying three essential social-justice issues the Kings should push for: the recovery of New Orleans, ending racial and economic disparities in health care, and civil rights, including marriage equality for gays and lesbians.
The White House -- and in the period before inauguration, the transition -- has hosted 20 meetings with different religious groups. Although the complete list of who was included is not out in the open -- the White House has made a baffling decision not to release a list of participants -- some progressive religious leaders, particularly ones who have made faith-based cases for full marriage equality for LGBT people and policy-rich arguments for economic reforms, tell me that they have not been included in White House discussions.
A well-circulated myth persists that centrist evangelicals represent "progressive" or "liberal" religious groups and that Obama's meetings with them demonstrate his expansion of religious outreach beyond the Republican religious-right base. Last weekend, The Washington Post reported that groups to the left of Bush's religious-right base were finally getting a hearing with the new president's staff. The piece hinted vaguely at hot issues that won't be easily defused, like "abortion reduction" and speculated whether Obama will repeal the Bush-era rule permitting employment discrimination by recipients of federal faith-based grants. But there wasn't a lot of evidence in the piece that progressive faith groups -- ones that could really be Obama's Kings -- were present at these White House meetings.
2. Progressive Christians Promote Unions, Progressive Economic Policy, and Sexual Justice.
I've argued before that our electoral politics have become far too wrapped up in religious rhetoric and outreach. Because we live in a perpetual campaign, it's not just the campaigning that now demands God-talk and photo-ops with famous pastors. If Democrats do engage in outreach to religious groups, though, they most certainly should not ignore religious progressives making solid arguments in support of progressive policy.
Three new pieces from Christian left activists engage in serious examination of progressive policy. Peter Laarman, a former labor organizer turned minister and now executive director of the California-based Progressive Christians Uniting, recently published an argument for why progressive Christians should support the Employee Free Choice Act. When I asked Laarman whether he thought secular progressives would be reluctant to partner with a religious coalition, he said that although his viewpoint is "profoundly theological," such a partnership would have "no preachiness in it," but would take advantage of an opening to "create a critical conversation which has long-term political consequences." What's more, Laarman added, "I have religious reasons for advocating for a secular society … who the f--- are Christians to say that God approves their way?"
Frank Cocozzelli, a lawyer and associate director of the Institute for Progressive Christianity, just released an economic white paper, "Reclaiming Capitalism Through Principles of Distributive Justice," which argues for supporting pro-labor legislation as well as progressive taxation. "We have mostly focused on the spokes" of justice, Cocozzelli writes, such as reproductive rights, free speech, and LGBT rights, for example. Economic justice, he adds, "should be the hub and not just a spoke."
Cocozzelli chronicles the right's war on organized labor, on regulation (focusing in particular on deregulation of the financial-services industry and the ensuing meltdown), and on the social-justice teachings of the Catholic and mainline Protestant traditions. (For more on how the religious right has portrayed Christian social-justice teachings (and the New Deal) as Marxist, see Jeff Sharlet's book on The Family. Obama will speak at The Family's National Prayer Breakfast tomorrow. See also Rick Warren's comments just days before he was tapped to bless Obama's inauguration.)
On sexuality issues, the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing, has written a letter to Obama, urging him to end funding for abstinence-only education, avoid policy changes that make abortions more difficult to obtain, and support full marriage equality. "Our positions on these issues are grounded not only in social and scientific research, but also in the experience of individuals and communities who are frequently overlooked or marginalized in our society. Our positions uphold a consistent Biblical mandate, also expressed in other sacred texts, to love, do justice, seek equality, and act with compassion. Most important, they reflect a faithful affirmation of sexuality as a divine blessing, an embodied capacity for expressing love and generating life, for building relationships of mutual respect, and for promoting the well-being of people and society."
3. The Religious Outreach Game and the Faith-Based Initiative.
There's another way to look at the White House's strenuous religious outreach: as a sign that the Obama administration, like its predecessor, will play ball with religious interest groups. But this game is largely about appearances and electoral politics, not policy. One of Obama's first acts with respect to faith outreach, unfortunately, perpetuates the link between campaigning for religious votes and satisfying a largely center-right constituency that favors federal funds to houses of worship to help with their charitable work. His appointment of his campaign's religious-outreach director, Joshua DuBois, to lead his White House Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships -- his reformed version of Bush's troubled faith-based initiative -- puts the person once tasked with encouraging church-goers to vote for Obama in charge of a program that will dole out hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to faith-based organizations.
4. Focus on the Family Accuses Obama of Violating Christian Free Speech Rights, Acting Like a Nazi.
Michael Steele may have been elected chair of the Republican National Committee, outpolling religious-right favorite Ken Blackwell (who ended up throwing his support to Steele), but Rush Limbaugh is the religious right's man of the hour. A video on Focus on the Family's Web site, "Judgment to Rush", narrated by Focus radio personality Stuart Shepard, repeats the conservative talking point that Obama is trying to silence Rush, and preposterously asserts that conservatives' failure to speak up for poor Rush Limbaugh in the face of the fascistic criticism from all those "wild-eyed liberals" is like not speaking up against Nazism.
Against the backdrop of a sign that reads "Jesus Coming Soon," a woman rips off the poem attributed to Martin Niemoller: "When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent, because I was not a communist." She concludes, "When they came for me, well, actually, they didn't come for me, because by then, I was living in a socialist country, where my preacher's sermons are approved by the U.S. Department of Orthodoxy."
5. Christian Zionists Target Christian Campuses.
As part of its effort to recruit college students to Christian Zionism, John Hagee's Christians United for Israel (CUFI) this week held an Arab-Israeli Conflict Forum at the late Jerry Falwell's Liberty University. On hand was a representative of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and Randall J. Price, Executive Director of the University's Center for Judaic Studies. Price is also the executive director of World of the Bible Ministries, which publishes and promotes an array of books and other resources prophesying the end of days and the Second Coming of Christ -- a scenario in which, as we all know, the Jews do not fare well. AIPAC must be very glad that CUFI and Liberty University are looking out for the Jews.
Contact me at tapthefundamentalist at gmail dot com.
