Glory, Glory Hallelujah: Reclaiming Our Progressive Religious Heritage

Religion's Progressive Tradition is Being Lost

In the United States today, religious arguments and commitments are mostly identified with the political right. They are rarely heard on the left. There are "faith-based" organizations that work for social justice or for human rights, but even they rarely invoke their religious heritages to justify their political positions. Anti-religious views have become widespread on the left with the result that the deep roots of religious commitment to social justice in Western Civilization are being lost.

The Fight For Social Justice is Not a Fight For Theocracy

We can reclaim our progressive, religious heritage in support of our fight for social justice, but we must avoid promoting theocracy. Religion in America is a private matter. We are NOT a Christian nation, and we should NOT base our laws on biblical sources. We do NOT believe that the Bible is the word of God. We know that it was written by many people over a very long period of time, and it expresses their beliefs about what they saw as the will of God. The people who wrote the Bible lived in societies that were very different from ours. They accepted practices like slavery that are abhorrent to us.

We also recognize that religious institutions have always been divided over questions of social justice. On one hand, religious people have been at the forefront of movements like the antislavery movement. On the other hand, religious authorities have generally taken conservative, political positions. This division appears clearly in the contrast between two bits of English verse. The first expresses the view of religious institutions by claiming that social inequity has been ordained by God.

The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate,

God made them high and lowly and ordered their estate.

The second expresses an opposing view.,

When Adam delved and Eve span

Who was then the gentleman?

In spite of the conservatism of religious institutions, religious progressives have found strong support for their views in their religious traditions. They have argued their positions in ways that ultimately could not be refuted because of their deep roots in a shared religious tradition. We can reclaim that tradition.

The American Religious Tradition is Central in the Struggle For Social Justice

The centrality of our religious tradition in the drive for social justice in American society has one of its most moving expressions in the words of the Civil War song “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” I suggest that before reading the rest of this blog, you follow this link. Read the words of the song and think about what they mean. Most of us today do not believe as the song's author believed, and we would not write as she did in 1861, but there is no missing her sense that her cause flowed directly from her religious tradition.

A more recent example may be found in the sermons of Martin Luther King, Jr. Here is one example.

Christians are always to begin with a bias in favor of a movement which protests against unfair treatment of the poor, but surely Christianity itself is such a protest. The Communist Manifesto might express a concern for the poor and the oppressed, but it expresses no greater concern than the manifesto of Jesus, which opens with the words, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captive, recovering the sight of the blind; to set at liberty them that are bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

Another example may be found in the liberation theology of Latin American Catholics in the late twentieth century. Liberation Theology has played a major role in the development of contemporary, liberal Catholicism.

We Must Reclaim the Progressive Religious Position

We progressives in the United States need to reclaim the heritage of religious support for social justice because by doing so, we can show that our cause has very deep roots in our culture. We need to remember the words of the prophet Isaiah, Chapter 58,

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:

to loose the chains of injustice

and untie the cords of the yoke,

to set the oppressed free

and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry

and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—

when you see the naked, to clothe them,

and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Then your light will break forth like the dawn,

and your healing will quickly appear.