Left wing religion

[pegkerr]

I have been doing a lot of comfort eating in the last few days, which is not my usual pattern, but it seems right. I walked to Kieran's over the lunch hour and gorged on their pot roast sandwich and bread pudding with whiskey sauce. I will doubtless fall asleep at my desk this afternoon.

As some of you know because I've been commenting in various people's journals, I have been brooding with a great deal of pain over this last election, and especially the set back to gay rights, which feels like a blow to the core of my Christian faith. I had taken along a copy of Lavender Magazine because I was hoping that Jacob Reitan's column might offer some comfort (Reitan writes about matters of faith for the gay community). The column was written before the election, but it was amazingly prescient. As I ate, I read the column, and Reitan's words were exactly what I needed. Talking about one of my greatest personal heroes, Paul Wellstone, Reitan wrote:

Wellstone’s faith focused on action. One need look only as far as his conception of the Almighty to understand why.

“I think the prophetic tradition of our faith is that to love God is to love justice. And, hey, I don’t meet that goal, but I try to do everything I can to live by it,” Wellstone once said to the Rabbi Laureate of Temple Aaron Synagogue in St. Paul.

That theistic understanding is the root of the religious left. Unlike the religious right, which focuses on what particular theistic tradition to believe in, and what citizens should not do, the religious left embraces different beliefs in the name and cause of justice.

The religious left is neither pious nor exclusionary. It does not damn or spread fear. Rather, it evokes hope and compassion.

Primarily, the religious left calls individuals to personal accountability, and criticizes persons only when they do not share the load of society’s burdens. It understands that all members of society are God’s children, and all deserve to experience and live out the glories of Her world.

That's the kind of faith I can believe in, that I can get behind. I want to find other believers who think the same way. Where are they, and what can we do together?

Comments

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Kerry won my respect, finally, as more than not-Bush when I heard him say that he was personally opposed to abortion, as a Catholic, but that he did not feel it morally justified to force his views on anyone else.

I'm reasonably certain that it's also statements like that that lost him the election.

They are not evangelical, and Bush's people are evangelical. Which is why they frighten me.

I'm not Christian, but I am a moral animal. Can I come too?

[pnh.livejournal.com]

"Evangelical" isn't a synonym for "pushy fundamentalist". This guy is an evangelical, as are a lot of these folks. A lot of black civil rights crusaders have been one or another variety of evangelical. Jimmy Carter is an evangelical.

Yes, the evangelical emphasis on conversion and bearing witness can lead to some pretty toxic social behavior, but find me a religion that doesn't have a dark side. Meanwhile, while I'm not any kind of evangelical, it seems to me the least we can do for the Fred Clarks of the world to not let the right-wingers make off with exclusive rights to the word.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Fair cop. Sloppy language use on my part.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I think that the term you were actually reaching for is "fundamentalist." "Evangelical" essentially just means outreach-oriented. "Fundamentalists" are the "no shades of grey" people.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

No, it's more that I was using sense 6, below, and carelessly ignoring senses one-through-five, and also the positive uses of the word evangelical:

e·van·gel·i·cal (vn-jl-kl, vn-) also e·van·gel·ic (-jlk)

adj.

1. Of, relating to, or in accordance with the Christian gospel, especially one of the four gospel books of the New Testament.
2. Evangelical Of, relating to, or being a Protestant church that founds its teaching on the gospel.
3. Evangelical Of, relating to, or being a Christian church believing in the sole authority and inerrancy of the Bible, in salvation only through regeneration, and in a spiritually transformed personal life.
4. Evangelical
1. Of or relating to the Lutheran churches in Germany and Switzerland.
2. Of or relating to all Protestant churches in Germany.
5. Of or relating to the group in the Church of England that stresses personal conversion and salvation by faith.
6. Characterized by ardent or crusading enthusiasm; zealous: an evangelical liberal.

I was intentionally avoiding the word "fundamentalist," but in so doing I wandered int oa different linguistic trap. It's a manifestation of my general tendency to assume the world can read my thoughts, which is a particularly ironic failing for a fiction writer.