The Real Religious Left -- The One Yet To Be Organized

Via The Revealer comes an interesting article on the nascent "religious left," by By Jeff Sharlet, which was first "published in The High Plains Messenger, the politically heterodox online alt magazine from the heart of American fundamentalism." The entire article is well-worth reading, not that I agree with everything in it, but it is an interesting attempt to define what a serious religious left would look like and is accessible even to non-xians such as yours truly. Here are a few excerpts:

* "Splendid glory is a quality lacking in religious liberalism. The Christian Right has something close to it — stop by your local megachurch for the best Pink Floyd tribute show in America — but since the 1980s, what’s left of the religious left has been hunkering down in the bunkers of quiet reason, afraid of its own gorgeous past."

* "[O]nly someone who believes that his or her story is inextricably interwoven with that of the next person’s — and, for religious folk, with that of God — can turn that selflessness into power.

Power matters. The religious right knows that but doesn’t like to say it, since doing so would involve confessing how much it already possesses. The would-be religious left, as seen on TV, knows it, too, but doesn’t like to believe it, since doing so would involve admitting it doesn’t have any.

The real religious left — the one yet to be organized — will recognize the reality of power and appreciate its nuances; its applications."

* "Even solidarity grows poisonous when it’s infected by piety, since piety provokes the hierarchy implicit in holier-than-thou.

The religious right knows this, which is why it tries to hide its most pious feelings. Not through transforming the power it’s achieved into something truly egalitarian, but through surface maneuvers intended to show that some of the most powerful preachers in the world are just ordinary Joes . . . ."