Thread by @CarolHoward

Why isn’t the religious left as powerful as the religious right in US Christian traditions? Looking at straight-up demographics, we should be a strong force… pewforum.org/religious-land…

(I hate the term "mainline," but I’m going to use it here, because of the demographic data…)

Evangelicals make up 25% of our population. Mainline Protestants and Black Protestants make up 21%. Catholics are 21% and identify more with Democrats.

pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016…

Painting with a (very) broad brush, while Evangelicals are 25% of our population, religious movements that lean left are 42%. So why do we hear so much about evangelicalism & so little about progressive religious movements?

Part of it is the media’s bias. @GuthrieGF writes about this.

There are other reasons. A sampling. (Not everyone believes these things, of course.)

1) Many progressive pastors/churches have a strong commitment to the separation of church and state. We are very wary of a theocracy and we do not want to impose our particular religious convictions on to the larger population. We read the Handmaid’s Tale in 1985.

2) We believe in religious freedoms. While this has been interpreted to mean that a company should deny contraception to women and a baker should deny a cake to a gay couple, we look at it differently. We keep our religious freedoms in balance with living in civil society.

No one should be harassed on account of religious (or non-religious) opinions, as long as they do not disturb the public order established by the law. (I wrote about this in the foreword of Eleanor Roosevelt’s Moral Basis of Democracy)

amazon.com/Moral-Basis-De…

3) Though we will gladly speak out on issues, many pastors are unwilling to align ourselves with particular parties/candidates. In the #PCUSA, we say “God alone is the Lord of the conscience.” If you bind yourself to a particular party or candidate, you can lose your conscience.

Obviously, I just posted a link to Roosevelt. But I would gladly post the writings of Lincoln. I protested during Obama’s presidency. There's something about a prophet standing outside the city gates. If I weren’t a pastor, I might be aligned but with my ordination vows, I’m not.

We have seen the RR lose its moral standing on almost every issue… and at this moment they’re looking more pro-rape than pro-life. It’s a cautionary tale.

In seminary, we learned about the church’s role in Nazi Germany. There were Christians on both sides… but this is a chilling site for a pastor.

4) Evangelicals got into power by saying, “We can deliver X amount of votes.” We can’t say that. We’re less authoritarian and teach people to think for themselves.

5)Those are idealistic reasons. Here are some more complicated ones. In the mainline, our church members are mostly older, white, & wealthy. Often those members contribute the most. They can be more conservative and often put a lot of pressure on pastors to stay quiet.

6) Evangelicals put millions into think tanks & organizing. They started institutions and worked to take over liberal institutions. Almost every denomination can point to a conservative *outside* force that poured massive money into their seminaries, publications, & structures.

Progressive Christians, on the other hand, have not been as generous or savvy. We don’t give money to our own institutions, publishers, or thought leaders.