Why we need a religious left.

• Author: Waldman, Amy
• Position: Cover Story

It was the Christian thing to do. That's what a series of letters to members of Congress from the Reverend Pat Robertson implied. Support Republican tax cuts for wealthy families, the letters said. Support the Republican version of welfare reform, which excluded provisions for child care, health care, and welfare-to-work assistance.

Among the letters' recipients was Representative Glenn Poshard, a fourth-term conservative Democrat from a poor rural district in Illinois. Poshard is a devout Southern Baptist, and he shares some Christian Coalition positions, particularly balancing the budget in seven years and scaling back Medicare. What this former church deacon couldn't figure out, though, was how a tax cut for the wealthy, and the extra cuts in Medicare and programs for the poor it would necessitate, was the Christian thing to do. "I had to ask myself honestly as a Christian, is that appropriate?" says Poshard. "Are [the tax cuts] something that Christ would recommend? I don't think he would." So Poshard went to the House floor to speak. "With all due respect to the Christian Coalition," he asked, "where does it say in the Scriptures that the character of God is to give more to those who have and less to those who have not?. . . If there is one thing evident in the Scriptures, it is that God gives priority to the poor." He quoted Jesus Christ: "When I was thirsty you gave me drink, when I was hungry you fed me . . . When you did it to the least of my brethren, you did it to me."

Poshard's speech was not, in and of itself, notable. For centuries, leaders have drawn on a religious tradition to champion the poor and downtrodden. In America today, however, Poshard's criticism was remarkable. As Republicans claim the halo of Christianity and religious virtue, liberal religious and political leaders have been slow to respond in kind, to show how the Judeo-Christian tradition cannot condone a conservative agenda that rewards the affluent at the expense of the disadvantaged, that takes money from plowshares to forge more swords, and that demands personal responsibility from the poor while excusing the well-off from their social responsibility. Most Americans, raised as Christians or Jews, know and accept the teachings Poshard spoke about. Yet it is the conservative right that has annexed the term "Christianity" in defense of the Republican agenda. (See "What's Un-Christian About the Christian Right," p. 44.)

From the religious left there have been only murmurs. "At the moment," says Tom Fox, the editor of the National Catholic Reporter, "the religious left is . . . saying `There's no one else here. No politicians are with us' . . . There is virtually no voice in the mainstream today speaking about poverty or the marginalized." Jim Wallis, a Washington, D.C. pastor and author of The Soul of Politics, says the progressive religious community couldn't do a Christian Coalition-like voter guide even if it wanted to: "There aren't enough politicians we could support."

Many liberal politicians, meanwhile, complain that religious leaders are not providing the moral support to challenge GOP policies. "I just can't figure it out," says Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY). "I don't see a profile in courage among those who are supposed to speak for Jesus. . . . The cuts that are taking place aren't going to be restored in the next 10 or 20 years. But [liberal religious leaders] now are like deer frozen in the headlights of a car."

Religious leaders on the right, of course, have been anything but frozen. In the early seventies, a progressive Baptist minister named James Dunn wrote a book on how Christians could become more involved in politics. A few years later, he saw a picture of the Moral Majority's Jerry Falwell reading his book. "We succeeded too well," Dunn, now head of the Joint Baptist Committee on Public Affairs, says. "The wrong people read the book."

Indeed, the succeeding years have seen the demise of the Moral Majority and a stronger phoenix rise from its ashes in the form of the Christian Coalition. In only six years, Robertson and his executive director Ralph Reed have built an organizational machine reminiscent of Mao Tse Tung that aims to build enough clout to swing any election in the nation. With a $24 million annual budget and four million activists, the Coalition is well on its way.

As conservatives have successfully used religion to make political inroads, liberals have become increasingly antagonistic to mixing religion and politics. The discomfort with which some liberal intellectuals treat religion stems partly from an understandable concern for the religious provisions of the First Amendment, a concern that some liberals have extended to argue that churches shouldn't speak out on political issues at all. Many liberals also associate religion with intolerance and Elmer Gantry-like evangelism. And some on the left hold the church, particularly the Catholic church, responsible for fueling the pro-life movement. The result, as Stephen Carter points out in his forthcoming book Integrity, is that everyone knows the Pope is firmly against abortion, and a good many liberals resent him for it.

What they don't know, Carter notes, or what they choose to ignore, is his opposition to the death penalty or his repudiation of consumerism or his commitment to helping the poor. Pope John Paul II's message on his recent visit seemed downright radical in America's political climate. "Is present-day America becoming less sensitive, less caring toward the poor, the weak, the stranger, and the needy?" he demanded. "It must not!" Similarly, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops recently spoke out harshly against Republican policies--partly because they fear cuts in programs for the poor will encourage abortion, but also, as one Cardinal said, because "the weakest members of society should not bear the greatest burdens" in the effort to balance the budget.

So when secular minds raised on rigid political dichotomies dismiss the Catholic church because of its position on abortion, they throw away the chance to...