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

[psychic-serpent.livejournal.com]

It can differ from congregation to congregation. The UU I've been to the most as a visitor (usually a guest speaker) is First Unitarian here in Philly, which is hundreds of years old and has a very diverse tradition in the services. They definitely have different things going on at different times of the year, celebrating Christmas, Winter Solstice, All Saints, Easter/Passover, etc.

I do know several progressive religious folks who missed, in particular, the celebration of communion after attending UU churches for a while. One was raised by fundamentalist Baptist missionaries, if you can believe (!), so she ended up going to a very progressive ABC (American Baptist Church) congregation.

Although the UCC and UUA are probably some of the most progressive churches around there ARE conservative congregations in these denominations, too, so look into the particular church--don't just assume. And there are radical/progressive Presbyterian, Episcopal, Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, Reformed Jewish, Reconstructionist Jewish and even Conservative Jewish congregations out there.

One of the projects we've worked on for a while is a directory of "welcoming" congregations in the Philadelphia area (specifically welcoming GLBTQ people, their families and friends), but it would be fantastic if there were a national directory of such congregations. I don't know how many friends have moved away from here and left our congregation, only to write back to the church saying they've still had no luck finding a church home because they ended up moving to a rather conservative area. It's no fun to spend an entire service biting the inside of your cheek because you're afraid of reacting negatively to it while it's still going on.

[dendrophilous.livejournal.com]

I should have said I've been to three different UU churches in three different parts of the country. And there's only one in this city so it's sort of moot anyway.

They all celebrated the holidays, but I really like the lead-up to them you get with Lent and Advent and the whole "Second Sunday of Easter" concept.