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Evangelicals and Progressivism

Ira Chernus has an interesting article this morning in Salon on the necessity of Progressives finding way to ally themselves with evangelical Christians. Here are his closing paragraphs: It’s the…

Ira Chernus has an interesting article this morning in Salon on the necessity of Progressives finding way to ally themselves with evangelical Christians. Here are his closing paragraphs:

It’s the religious right, long the progressive left’s favorite target, that is now the richest target of opportunity. Because politically progressive evangelical Christianity is not merely a relic of the 19th century. It’s making a comeback.

That presents left progressives with a challenge. In your struggle for justice, would you ally with people who share your commitment to greater economic equality but would like to see government ban abortion and gay marriage? Today the question may seem abstract and hypothetical. Soon enough it may become a very real issue of debate for progressive strategists, and there are bound to be good arguments on both sides.

However, everyone should be able to agree that at least progressives outside the evangelical community should begin talking to folks inside that circle who are open to hearing the progressive message. Evangelicals will have to filter the message through their own beliefs, which means phrasing it in a somewhat different language.

Smart progressives will start learning that language, figuring out how to communicate with evangelicals and discover common ground. Smart progressives will also learn how to remind evangelicals, gently but persuasively, of their own radical political history, which many may not know.

The main goal here should be to make the progressive tent wide enough to make room for evangelicals. Though we are far from the 19th century, evangelicals can now, as then, bring a unique kind of energy into progressive movements that can pay off. As a side benefit, moving evangelicals to the left will also widen the cracks in the shaky conservative alliance and hasten the day when it can no longer hold itself together.

I've been preaching this for years, but I am less optimistic than Chernus that such an alliance between the progressive left and the religious right can be forged. Economic issues are abstract and tribal identity issues are deeply felt. The cultural left and the cultural right, despite what should be common ground for them on critical ecnomic issues, really don't like or trust each other; it's hard to see how they would ever get together in common cause. It's too easy for them to get distracted in a fight about abortion or gay rights, which is where their passions really lie. 

I'd also argue that there was a progressive side to evangelical Christianity when most Protestants felt that America was "their country"; it gave them a sense of noblesse oblige. After the Scopes trial, they've been on the defensive. They really believe that the modern world is out to destroy everything they cherish and that they are an embattled minority threatened with extinction. That's not a mindset that supports a more generous, idealistic politics.

Comments

16 responses

  1. JP Avatar
    JP

    Protestants don’t even know what they are anymore, so I’m not sure how this helps.
    The last Great Awakening didn’t do much in terms of strengthening Protestants.
    The mainline denominations are dying, which is going to leave us with Catholicism and the various small random Christian denominations.
    Genetic engineering is probably halfway to “solving” the issue of gay rights, so that issue should decline to nothing. Once the genetic, or epigenetic, switches are found, this goes away.
    Artificial womb technology is also nearly available, so that’s going to impact abortion.

    Reply
  2. Patrick Avatar
    Patrick

    I don’t identify at all with Evangelicals culturally, and couldn’t imagine voting Republican, but do feel alienated from the Democrats, who can only count on my vote because of how awful the GOP is.
    The gay marriage issue seems exceedingly minor, so I won’t get into that. But yeah, there are two things that trouble me about the Dems:
    1) Abortion. My metaphysics are a mess but at the very least I think that a fetus MAY be a person, so it makes sense to err on the side of not-killing.
    2) Immigration. Like Ralph Nader and Cesar Chavez, and for the same reasons, I’m a restrictionist. It always amazes me how easily leftists are hoodwinked by neoliberal logic on this issue (“grow the pie, then fix equity on the back end”). On no other issue would they accept that kind of argument.
    I don’t think the GOP can do anything about #1, and they want NOT to do anything about #2, so here we are.

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  3. Jonathan Avatar
    Jonathan

    This paraphrase may be a bit blunt, but how does the Chernus not boil down to: If we can just learn how these dolts [Evangelicals] talk to each other we can appropriate their language and use them.
    That may not be what he was intending to say, but I think that’s what it amounts to. It’s how professors usually speak. And they wonder why people mistrust them and find them distasteful. For the record I’m not anywhere near being an Evangelical, but I can’t see how they’re paranoid delusional freaks in thinking the Liberals want to do away with ideals they hold dear. I know mostly hypereducated Liberals and I can tell you: it’s true.
    I think that people of every stripe understand, somewhere deep down, that justice is systematic and holistic. You can’t ignore a few tricky issues and work together on what you have in common, which in this case is the dead obvious, namely that we’d all like a bigger piece of the pie. Or you can. . . for a little while. Sooner or later the shit hits the fan. The idea that Evangelicals and Liberals should come together on economic justice issues presupposes that economic justice is the most important thing, the trump card. But some people, for good reasons, just don’t see life that way. And this is quite apart from the very serious problem that we simply do not have a coherent, shared account of what economic justice is, or would be, no more so than we have a coherent, common way of talking about abortion or marriage or anything else.
    Or here’s another way of saying the same thing. What is the one church that makes the biggest deal possible about coming together for a common purpose, leaving everything that divides us at the door? The C of E / Episcopal Church. How are they doing these days?

    Reply
  4. Jack Whelan Avatar
    Jack Whelan

    Patrick–I don’t talk about immigration because I don’t know my own mind about it. I used to be an unabashed restrictionist in the sense you describe. I think there is sense in the argument that if you take one more person on the lifeboat, then everybody drowns, but I’m not sure we’re at that point yet in absorbing our Hispanic friends from the south. The real issues are never going to be dealt with until there’s critical mass for international labor organizing.
    Jonathan–I think that Chernus is writing in a venue read by many liberals to educate them regarding the debt that progressive tradition in Anglo-American societies owes to evangelical Christians. Chernus doesn’t say it, but I will. Progressivism in America owes far more more to that Christian tradition than it does to Marx and the secular left. And so we must answer question why it has abandoned that part of its own tradition and whether it might be retrieved.
    I understand where you’re coming from. You’re sentiments are very similar to those Mike McG, who comments here from time to time, has eloquently voiced. And maybe you are picking up on something that I’m not, but I prefer to see Chernus’s view on this matter as similar to mine: One of the great challenges we confront as a nation as we go into the next century is egregious income inequality. If we’re middle class and educated, we’re probably not feeling its negative effects that intensely yet–maybe some mild discomfort–and the most articulate, active Evangelicals would fit that description, too.
    They’re not feeling it. They don’t know many people who are feeling it, but they are feeling what you and Mike describe, which is the scorn of the liberal elites, and that makes it understandable why they don’t want to work with them on economic justice issues. Way too abstract. But they will be more interested in such alliances when they start feeling the economic heat more. Until then, you’re right. Other things are more important.
    BTW–an interesting interview with Marilyn Robinson articulates that progressive evangelical mindset very beautifully: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/marilynne-robinson-on-faith-and-conservatism/

    Reply
  5. Patrick Avatar
    Patrick

    Jack,
    This is your space, so I’ll bow out on the immigration topic after this last comment.
    Ultimately, we’re talking about the marginal economic impact of an additional low-skilled immigrant, ceteris paribus.
    And the situation we’re in now is that the working poor and working class are not in short supply, but decent jobs for them are. So I can understand feelings of compassion toward our Southern neighbors, and I admire the courage of anyone who uproots their life to provide something better for our family.
    But to give something away that’s not your own–and then pat yourself on the back–really takes some balls. Liberal elites (not you, obv.) make public displays of their own ostensible virtue and compassion, but they’re not the ones taking the hit from an increase in the number of unskilled workers. Rich and middle class liberals are being compassionate on the dime of the working class. In fact, the economic benefits of unskilled immigration (cheaper restaurants and housecleaning services, e.g.) redound to the benefit of the middle class, and to the detriment of American workers.
    I’d say anyone who thinks we’ll make things right on the back end, a la Kaldor-Hicks, hasn’t been paying attention to the past few decades.
    This may make me primitive, but my obligation and the obligation of my government is first to my countrymen. We have coercive power over one another, so we’re in this together, and we need solidarity as Americans.
    I’ll leave the argument there, because many people disagree with that first principle and I haven’t ever seen any point in arguing about it.

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  6. JP Avatar
    JP

    “I think there is sense in the argument that if you take one more person on the lifeboat, then everybody drowns, but I’m not sure we’re at that point yet in absorbing our Hispanic friends from the south.”
    The Mexican fertility rate has been declining for some time, so this isn’t even the issue anymore.
    http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=mx&v=31
    The current question is the actual human carrying capacity of the Earth and the question of sustainability.

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  7. Patrick Avatar
    Patrick

    While I’m in class warrior mode (but changing the subject), how about Boeing? Damn.

    Reply
  8. Jack Whelan Avatar
    Jack Whelan

    Re Boeing. The corporate culture there is borderline Enron.
    Tim Egan the other day on the machinists strike:
    This didn’t happen in a broken town with a broken industrial heart. It took place in one of the most prosperous metropolitan areas on the planet — Seattle — home to Starbucks, Costco, Microsoft, Nordstrom and Amazon.com, which is on its way to becoming the world’s largest retailer.
    But then came the final item, a vote of the people who actually assemble the planes. By a 2-1 margin on Wednesday, the machinists of Puget Sound told Boeing to stuff it. With this act of economic suicide, the state could lose up to 56,000 jobs on the new 777X plane. Cue your metaphor — the Alamo, Custer’s Last Stand, Braveheart.
    The events of the last few days show the utter bankruptcy of economic policy prescriptions offered by both political parties. You want tax breaks and deregulation — the Republican mantra? The $8.7 billion granted Boeing this week is the largest single state-tax giveaway in the nation’s history. It wasn’t enough. You want government training for schools and highly skilled workers — the Democratic alternative? There was plenty of that, to Boeing’s liking, in the package.
    What Boeing wants is very simple: to pay the people who make its airplanes as little money as it can get away with. It needs to do this, we’re told, to stay competitive. It has all the leverage, because enough states — and countries — are willing to give it everything it asks for. Who wouldn’t want a gleaming factory stuffed with jet assemblers, a payroll guaranteed for a generation?
    Boeing is on a roll, its stock at a record high despite the troubled rollout of its 787 Dreamliner, and the pay of its C.E.O. boosted 20 percent to a package totaling $27.5 million last year. It is not impelled, as the auto industry was five years ago, in the midst of bailouts and cutbacks. Boeing could afford to be generous, or at least not onerous. But it’s easier to play state against state, the race to the bottom.
    Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/opinion/egan-under-my-thumb.html?_r=0

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  9. Patrick Avatar
    Patrick

    It’s obscene.
    I brought up something along these lines, policy choices disguised as economic facts-of-nature, to one of the more intelligent graduate students I know. This guy’s response, and this is a hardcore Democrat in a policy program, was “skill up.” I didn’t have the energy to dive into the hour-plus argument required to deconstruct all of the assumptions underlying that facile reply. Assumptions, by the way, that smuggle in a bunch of normative claims while pretending to neutrality… anyway, I just rolled my eyes and had a drink.
    The point is, the hegemony of economics as a discipline is ruining our thinking. You can see it in a few of the comments on that NY TIMES piece. Sure, it’s only a small percentage of people defending Boeing, but these are the people most likely to be or to influence policymakers. Who have we got, besides Elizabeth Warren, that doesn’t buy into this BS?

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  10. JP Avatar
    JP

    “This guy’s response, and this is a hardcore Democrat in a policy program, was “skill up.” I didn’t have the energy to dive into the hour-plus argument required to deconstruct all of the assumptions underlying that facile reply.”
    Part of it the problem a complete failure to understand the entire system as a whole.
    In any event, we’ve been here before. And it looks like we are going to be here again.

    Reply
  11. Jack Whelan Avatar
    Jack Whelan

    This was the point of my post a few weeks ago, Crashing the Frame. Most people are conventional thinkers, and so until you crash the conventional mindframe you can’t win any arguments because they don’t “feel right”. People just cannot accept arguments or ideas that don’t fit the conventional wisdom. So in the same way that Goldwater seemed crazy in ’64, so ideas like single payer or the idea that companies should have any commitment or loyalty to their employees or to the cities that they have become identified with seem crazy now.
    Why? Because it’s all about “staying competitive”, even when relatively superficial analysis shows it has little to do with that. But that’s all you have to say: It’s about staying competitive, and like Pavlov’s dogs we all go, “Oh yeah, right. Thanks for returning me to the real world.” And it is reality, but it’s real only in the sense that conventional frames shape what is possible for us to think, not what it is possible for us to do.
    Elizabeth Warren is a frame crasher, and I think she’s serious about it. But I thought Obama was a frame crasher, too. I don’t think any individual can do it. Reagan crashed the New Deal frame because Neoliberal thinking seemed edgy and cool compared to stodgy New Deal/Great Society conventional thinking and because very powerful interests wanted it crashed.
    What powerful interests are there to support Warren? MSNBC? A few obscure left leaning think tanks? Because we’re not just talking about better ideas winning here; we’re talking about first having to crash the existing Neoliberal frame, and as I said in the earlier post, you cannot crash an existing ethos/values frame except with a pathos/emotional frame. And all that pathos, which was up for grabs in 2008, was absorbed by the Tea Party because the left’s pathos is preoccupied by sexual identity politics. We need a left alternative that is as passionate about economic issues as the Tea Party is. And it needs to have a blue collar/average American ethos, not one that is suffused by the ethos and hippy aesthetic of the New Left.

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  12. JP Avatar
    JP

    The “frame” of the Roaring Twenties redo that we just passed through is relatively easy to “crash” once you past through Peak Finance, which was what 2008 was.
    We’re five years past it into the closest thing we get to a depressionary grind at the moment.
    However, the entire problem still boils down to Dunbar’s number. Megacorps/Megagov are *never* going to function that well because they are fundamentally at odds with human nature. This is beyond the entire good/evil paradigm (which I use as one of the primary lines of orientation for my worldview), in the sense that it’s non-optimal for human beings.
    Granted, the best megacorp is much better than a human-sized corp dedicated to the darker sides of human nature.
    At some point, we need to address this problem and figure out a rhizome solution.
    “Rhizome” in this case is just shorthand for some kind of interlinked human social/economic network that is based around Dunbar’s number rather than failing to recognize it.
    I’ll dig up one of Mike Alexander’s old political cycle articles at some point as an example of the paradigm failure this time around.

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  13. Jack Whelan Avatar
    Jack Whelan

    JP–I’d be interested to see the article, but ultimately it comes down to people having the pathos to get organized (whether in rhizomes or the old-fashioned way) and the logos or shrewdness not to get coopted as the Tea Party has been.

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  14. JP Avatar
    JP

    “JP–I’d be interested to see the article, but ultimately it comes down to people having the pathos to get organized (whether in rhizomes or the old-fashioned way) and the logos or shrewdness not to get coopted as the Tea Party has been.”
    One of the subjects in the article was that the recent zeitgeist has been more dysfunctional than usual. It has nothing to do with rhizome. He talks about the political cycles. I’ll harass him and see whether he can point me to it.
    Organization the old fashioned way isn’t going to get us to where we need to go because it results in the wrong structures at the wrong scale.
    That is to say, I wouldn’t be able to put my energy into it because I know that it’s not a durable solution to the problem.
    Jeff Vail is the one who’s babbling about rhizome as opposed to the political subsidies of the Roman Empire. I thought he was a wackadoo until I figured out that Dunbar’s number is a hard limit on social organization.

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  15. Jonathan Avatar
    Jonathan

    JP, I have to ask where all this prophetic business about Dunbar’s Number is coming from. As I understand it, it’s just a way of describing one aspect of our socializing tendency. So people have a capacity to carry on meaningful relationships with 150 or 200 other people at a time. That would make sense for a species that went through aeons of hunter-gatherer tribal living and then thousands of years of village life. We know this about ourselves. The most a postulate like Dunbar’s number tells me is that something like Facebook is absurd. But I knew that already. As a species we also have a tendency to organize on very large scales. I look to the idea of the Church and the idea of the University as two ideas of larger-scale organization that need urgently to be developed. (Instead they are being co-opted by the economics hegemony that Patrick described, and by the rights-based ethical discourse that too often goes hand-in-hand with that hegemony.) Church and University are organizational ideas that are not constructed on a financial bottom-line the way commercial corporations and governments must be. When I say Church and University of course I’m not talking about particular, currently existing institutions.

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  16. JP Avatar
    JP

    I just tripped across Dunbar’s number, so I’m not even sure what it really ultimately means, in terms of social organization, except that it causes abstractions to be made at larger population levels.
    We have the ability to organize large scales, but in order to properly run these organizations, you want them as *human* as possible, meaning that you look at people as individuals as well as their place in the organization.
    I’m trying to solve history, and this is an important part of the solution at a very basic level. I have a vague sense of where we need to go, but I only have a limited idea of how in the world to get there.
    Dunbar’s number has something to do with accurate decision making at larger scales. It’s an inherent problem in any larger organization.
    Essentially it’s why (in words often attributed to Stalin), “When one man dies it is a tragedy, when thousands die it’s statistics.”
    Here’s a psychology today article (a publication that is only useful about 5% of the time), that points this out:
    http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/darwins-subterranean-world/201311/top-10-evolutionary-mismatches?tr=HomeEssentials
    10. You are surrounded in your day-to-day life by a higher proportion of strangers than would have ever been true of our pre-agrarian hominid ancestors.
    9. You run into a higher total number of people than would have ever been true of our pre-agrarian hominid ancestors.
    4. You are exposed regularly to politics at a global scale – often discussing or being involved in issues that potentially pertain to thousands, millions, or even billions of other humans.
    And yes, we need to reorganize some sort of functioning human structures at the level of mind and spirit. However without a vision, I don’t know where to start. I need blueprints.

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