'Religious left' emerging as U.S. political force in Trump era

[Mormolyce]

Since President Donald Trump's election, monthly lectures on social justice at the 600-seat Gothic chapel of New York's Union Theological Seminary have been filled to capacity with crowds three times what they usually draw.

In January, the 181-year-old Upper Manhattan graduate school, whose architecture evokes London's Westminster Abbey, turned away about 1,000 people from a lecture on mass incarceration. In the nine years that Reverend Serene Jones has served as its president, she has never seen such crowds.

"The election of Trump has been a clarion call to progressives in the Protestant and Catholic churches in America to move out of a place of primarily professing progressive policies to really taking action," she said.

Although not as powerful as the religious right, which has been credited with helping elect Republican presidents and boasts well-known leaders such as Christian Broadcasting Network founder Pat Robertson, the "religious left" is now slowly coming together as a force in U.S. politics.

This disparate group, traditionally seen as lacking clout, has been propelled into political activism by Trump's policies on immigration, healthcare and social welfare, according to clergy members, activists and academics. A key test will be how well it will be able to translate its mobilization into votes in the 2018 midterm congressional elections.

"It's one of the dirty little secrets of American politics that there has been a religious left all along and it just hasn't done a good job of organizing," said J. Patrick Hornbeck II, chairman of the theology department at Fordham University, a Jesuit school in New York.

"It has taken a crisis, or perceived crisis, like Trump's election to cause folks on the religious left to really own their religion in the public square," Hornbeck said.

Religious progressive activism has been part of American history. Religious leaders and their followers played key roles in campaigns to abolish slavery, promote civil rights and end the Vietnam War, among others. The latest upwelling of left-leaning religious activism has accompanied the dawn of the Trump presidency.

Some in the religious left are inspired by Pope Francis, the Roman Catholic leader who has been an outspoken critic of anti-immigrant policies and a champion of helping the needy.

Although support for the religious left is difficult to measure, leaders point to several examples, such as a surge of congregations offering to provide sanctuary to immigrants seeking asylum, churches urging Republicans to reconsider repealing the Obamacare health law and calls to preserve federal spending on foreign aid.

The number of churches volunteering to offer sanctuary to asylum seekers doubled to 800 in 45 of the 50 U.S. states after the election, said the Elkhart, Indiana-based Church World Service, a coalition of Christian denominations which helps refugees settle in the United States - and the number of new churches offering help has grown so quickly that the group has lost count.

"The religious community, the religious left is getting out, hitting the streets, taking action, raising their voices," said Reverend Noel Anderson, its national grassroots coordinator.

In one well-publicized case, a Quaker church in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on March 14 took in a Honduran woman who has been living illegally in the United States for 25 years and feared she would be targeted for deportation.



'NEVER SEEN' THIS

Leaders of Faith in Public Life, a progressive policy group, were astounded when 300 clergy members turned out at a January rally at the U.S. Senate attempting to block confirmation of Trump's attorney general nominee, Jeff Sessions, because of his history of controversial statements on race.

"I've never seen hundreds of clergy turning up like that to oppose a Cabinet nominee," said Reverend Jennifer Butler, the group's chief executive.

The group on Wednesday convened a Capitol Hill rally of hundreds of pastors from as far away as Ohio, North Carolina and Texas to urge Congress to ensure that no people lose their health insurance as a result of a vote to repeal Obamacare.

Financial support is also picking up. Donations to the Christian activist group Sojourners have picked up by 30 percent since Trump's election, the group said.

But some observers were skeptical that the religious left could equal the religious right politically any time soon.

"It really took decades of activism for the religious right to become the force that it is today," said Peter Ubertaccio, chairman of the political science department at Stonehill College, a Catholic school outside Boston.

But the power potential of the "religious left" is not negligible. The "Moral Mondays" movement, launched in 2013 by the North Carolina NAACP's Reverend William Barber, is credited with contributing to last year's election defeat of Republican Governor Pat McCrory by Democrat Roy Cooper.

The new political climate is also spurring new alliances, with churches, synagogues and mosques speaking out against the recent spike in bias incidents, including threats against mosques and Jewish community centers.

The Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom, which encourages alliances between Jewish and Muslim women, has tripled its number of U.S. chapters to nearly 170 since November, said founder Sheryl Olitzky.

"This is not about partisanship, but about vulnerable populations who need protection, whether it's the LGBT community, the refugee community, the undocumented community," said Rabbi Jonah Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, using the acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.

More than 1,000 people have already signed up for the center's annual Washington meeting on political activism, about three times as many as normal, Pesner said.

Leaders of the religious right who supported Trump say they see him delivering on his promises and welcomed plans to defund Planned Parenthood, whose healthcare services for women include abortion, through the proposed repeal of Obamacare.

"We have not seen any policy proposals that run counter to our faith," said Lance Lemmonds, a spokesman for the Faith & Freedom Coalition, a nonprofit group based in Duluth, Georgia.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...-idUSKBN16Y114

Wow so, finally something I didn't see coming in the Trump era.

[Wells]

I've got a lot of super liberal super catholic family. They can be an interesting lot.

[De Lupe]

They all sense the oncoming apocalypse with the first horseman taking his place in the White House.

[Kaleredar]

Religious people are disgusted with the fouth-mouthed, poorly behaved, several-times-divorced, silver-spoon-in-mouth born man child who displays nothing but contempt for the poor?

who'dve thought

[Mormolyce]

I've got a lot of super liberal super catholic family. They can be an interesting lot.

I mean in most countries Christians and even Catholics are left wing, America is pretty weird in that regard.

[Zyster]

Many religious people are more leaning left. How ever matters like pro life take precedence over the other values. And things like not purposely being a leech. You labeling all religious people as republicans because religious just shows a lack of understanding towards most religion.

[melodramocracy]

It's hard to be enthusiastic about anything that may increase religiosity in this country.

I agree completely.

[Wells]

It's hard to be enthusiastic about anything that may increase religiosity in this country.

I'd take honest to god leftist policies over increased secularism.

[Garnier Fructis]

Many religious people are more leaning left. How ever matters like pro life take precedence over the other values. And things like not purposely being a leech. You labeling all religious people as republicans because religious just shows a lack of understanding towards most religion.

It's less to do with lack of understanding and more to do with them not being anywhere near as toxic as conservative evangelicals. The ones trying to jam religion into legislation and schools are not the liberal Christians.

[TheCount]

They all sense the oncoming apocalypse with the first horseman taking his place in the White House.

And the Second Horsemen is sitting in the Oval Office!

[Zyster]

It's less to do with lack of understanding and more to do with them not being anywhere near as toxic as conservative evangelicals. The ones trying to jam religion into legislation and schools are not the liberal Christians.

Ignoring the fact there is nothing wrong with that, all religion is labeled the same when it comes to people labeling religions as republican. Hence the post. It is a completely lack of understanding.

[TheCount]

Ain't the lefts religious concept based on the idea that Jesus preached helping the poor and such? How could you twist that idea to serve the conservative ideals??
*mind blown*

[Wells]

How are any of those considered "left" - they are just humanitarian basically like Jesus taught.

Humanitarianism is leftism. Hard to be a humanitarian if you don't see inherent value in all humans.

[Arachnofiend]

Why do right wing Christians exist then?

Because Christianity was co-opted by the Roman Empire as a tool of the government and unlike our cousins in Europe we never got over Christianity being the "establishment".

[qwikz]

Why do right wing Christians exist then?

Cancer isnt discriminatory, it will spread everywhere it can.

Infracted

[Kaleredar]

Why do right wing Christians exist then?

something something godless communists, something something the gays

[Super Kami Dende]

I mean in most countries Christians and even Catholics are left wing, America is pretty weird in that regard.

I said there were plenty of Left leaning Religious people in a Thread the other day and got called an idiot because only "Conservatives are religious"

As usual once the left has something they can use to complain about Trump they will manage to take that on board as well.

[Mormolyce]

It's hard to be enthusiastic about anything that may increase religiosity in this country.

I don't think this is driving more religiosity (a la evangelical activity) but rather mobilising the typically silent left leaning religious people.

- - - Updated - - -

Why do right wing Christians exist then?

A bizarre deal with the devil in the US in the 20th Century, as far as I can tell. Also American evangelical Christianity has diverged quite a way from traditional Christianity.

[Anevers]

I don't think this is driving more religiosity (a la evangelical activity) but rather mobilising the typically silent left leaning religious people.

- - - Updated - - -



A bizarre deal with the devil in the US in the 20th Century, as far as I can tell. Also American evangelical Christianity has diverged quite a way from traditional Christianity.

I blame the Prosperity theology the similar movements before it personally.

[Mormolyce]

That is not the case. If that was true there would not be a section of the left called "Progressive Left". And Were it true now, the Progressive Left wont be in the early stages of splintering like it currently is now.

Oh this hurts my head.

There's no "progressive left" because the entire left is progressive pretty much by definition.

Early stages of splintering... the left has been subdivided into hundreds of factions for longer than I've been alive, the level of ignorance this shows on the topic is absolutely staggering.