GetReligion
Monday, April 07, 2025

Religious Right

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People keep asking: Why does press say 'religious left,' as opposed to 'Religious Left'?

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People keep asking: Why does press say 'religious left,' as opposed to 'Religious Left'?

Every now and then, readers — or people I meet in daily life — ask this question: Why do journalists write so much about the Religious Right (capital letters), while devoting way less digital ink to the actions, policies and beliefs of the religious left (no capital letters).

That is a complex question and you can hear me struggling with it all the way through this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in). The hook for this episode was my post that ran with this headline: “Thinking with David Briggs and Ryan Burge: Whoa, is religious left really on rise (again)?”

For starters, people tend to ask this question every four or eight years (hint, hint), when the mainstream press does another round of stories about the religious left surging into action in an attempt to counterbalance the nasty Religious Right.

The Religious Right, you see, exists all the time — because it is one of the largest camps inside the modern Republican Party. The religious left doesn’t play the same role in the Democratic Party, unless we are talking about the importance of politically (as opposed to doctrinally) liberal black-church leaders in strategic primary elections. You can ask Joe Biden about that this time around.

I guess the simple answer to the “RR” vs. “rl” question is that journalists tend to capitalize the names of groups that they see as major political or social movements — like the Civil Rights movement or the Sexual Revolution.

The religious left, you see, isn’t a “movement” that exists all the time — in my experience — for many mainstream journalists. The religious left is just ordinary, good, liberal religious people doing things that are positive and logical in the eyes of gatekeepers in newsrooms. This is “good” religion.

The Religious Right, on the other hand, is a powerful political movement consisting of strange, scary evangelicals who keep coming out of the rural backwoods to threaten normal life in American cities. This is “bad,” even dangerous, religion.

Now, there is another big irony linked to press coverage of progressive forms of faith.


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Thinking with David Briggs and Ryan Burge: Whoa, is religious left really on rise (again)?

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If you know your religion-beat history, then you know this name — David Briggs, who is best known for his years with the Associated Press.

If you know your GetReligion history, then you know that — for 17 years — we have been saying that the “religious left” deserves more attention. This is specially true in terms of the doctrinal beliefs of people in these blue pews and how those beliefs help shape their politics.

It seems that, every four years or so — a telling interval — we see a few stories about a surge of activity on the religious left and how that will impact politicians opposed by the Religious Right. It’s like politics is the only reality, or something.

Thus, several readers noted this recent Briggs byline for the Association of Religion Data Archives: “The decline of the religious left in the age of Trump.”

Say what? Here’s the overture:

President Trump has had a powerful mobilizing effect on the liberal and secular left in U.S. politics.

But will religious liberals also play a significant role in getting out the vote for Democrat Joe Biden in November?

Almost immediately after the 2016 election, some commentators began heralding the likelihood that a revived religious left would emerge from what many liberals considered the ashes of Trump’s victory.

But such hopes may be based more on a wing and a prayer than solid evidence of any such new awakening. Rather, there are several signs indicating “a notable decline” in political activity among religious liberals.


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Thinking about evangelicals, abortion and race: David French covers some complex history

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History is a complex subject and often not for the faint of heart.

With that in mind, allow me to ask a history question to evangelicals who want to know more about their own past. I would also like to ask this question to religion-beat professionals under the age of 60, or thereabouts.

In 1971, a major American religious group passed a resolution on a topic that was becoming more controversial — abortion. Of course, the Roe v. Wade decision issued on January 22 in 1973 would create a political, cultural and moral earthquake that continues to this day.

So here is my question: What religious body passed the 1971 resolution that urged its members to “work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.”

What was the name this giant religious group? This resolution was passed during the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. The same body reaffirmed that resolution in 1974 and in 1976 — after Roe.

Were these actions shocking, at the time? As historian Randall Balmer noted in a paper entitled “The Historian’s Pickaxe” (.pdf here):

Although a few evangelical voices, including Christianity Today magazine, mildly criticized the ruling, the overwhelming response was silence, even approval. Baptists, in particular, applauded the decision as an appropriate articulation of the division between church and state, between personal morality and state regulation of individual behavior. “Religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision,” wrote W. Barry Garrett of Baptist Press.

This was the era in which I came of age as a Southern Baptist preacher’s son in Texas — finishing high school and then heading to Baylor to study journalism and the history of religion in America. I bring this subject up because this slice of SBC history plays a crucial role in this weekend’s think piece, which is written by David French of The Dispatch, a cultural conservative who is an experienced legal mind on religious liberty issues. The title of his essay: “Fact and Fiction About Racism and the Rise of the Religious Right.”

The big issue for French is whether the X factor in the birth of the Religious Right was abortion or, as some now claim, racism.


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YouTube thinker: Methodist conservative chats with RNS' Jack Jenkins about religious left

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Every few years, like clockwork, American newspapers roll out pre-election features about a revival of activity on what can accurately be called the “Religious Left” — even if few journalists have granted it the upper-case-letter status of the ominous Religious Right.

From Day 1 here at GetReligion, I have argued that activity on the theological and political left is one of the most overlooked stories of recent decades. I have at least three reasons for saying that:

(1) The demographic implosion of the denominations known as the Seven Sisters of liberal Protestantism — the decline escalated in the late ‘70s and the ‘80s — left room in the American public square for the emergence of modern evangelicalism. Religious progressives, however, maintained crucial high ground in elite institutions of the left and right coasts.

(2) Progressive Catholics have always played a crucial role in the Democratic Party, even as — at the ballot box — it was easy to see a growing divide between liberal “cultural Catholics” and more conservative Catholics who worship once a week or even more.

(3) Journalists tend to focus on religious liberals as a political force, while paying little or no attention to THEOLOGICAL trends on that side of the church aisle (other than changes that affect LGBTQ issues).

Theological questions will be even more important for the Religious Left in the future, as the political left grows more and more secular (think atheists, agnostics and “nones”). How will this affect, for example, crucial ties to African-American churches, which tend to be more conservative on moral issues? And while we are at it, check out this new chart from political scientist (and progressive Baptist pastor) Ryan Burge, a GetReligion contributor (whose Twitter feed has been on fire the past couple of days).

I bring all of this up because of a fascinating video chat that took place the other day between United Methodist conservative Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion and Democracy and veteran progressive scribe Jack Jenkins — formerly of ThinkProgress and the Center for American Progress — who now covers national news for Religion News Service. The subject is a new book by Jenkins with the logical title, “American Prophets: The Religious Roots of Progressive Politics and the Ongoing Fight for the Soul of the Country.”


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Calling BS on NC-17

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The Ringer has published an odd report by Keith Phipps that traces the doomed path of the NC-
17 rating in a time when streaming TV has eclipsed the importance of films. Its headline is an
engaging two-sentence summary: “Thirty Years Ago, Hollywood Won the Battle Against the X
Rating. But It Lost the War.”

Phipps devotes nearly 2,600 words to this topic.

You just know that simple-minded religious people play a major role in this drama. His one reference to cultural conservatives (“a religious right eager to protest whatever they [sic] felt to be an affront to their values”) is as predictable as a media release from Americans United. He adds this:

“They didn’t lack targets and, in fairness, those targets felt closer at hand thanks to neighborhood video stores with curtained ‘adults only’ sections and scandalous music videos just a click away on cable.”

That’s as far as the fairness extends, though. This isn’t hard-news journalism, of course. Still, it would have been nice — interesting even — to see some serious discussions of the views of people on both sides of this issue. Diversity is often interesting.

Phipps makes no effort to demonstrate such eagerness or easily affronted values, but simply notes
these factors as though they were universally established realities.

But here comes an informative turn, as Phipps presents a few examples of films that were
harmed by the dreaded adjective controversial:

Though ultimately more talked about than seen, Jean-Luc Godard’s 1985 film Hail Mary — featuring a modern day retelling of the nativity story — earned protests and the condemnation of Pope John Paul II. But that was a mere prelude to what greeted Martin
Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988. …


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And this just in: Religious left is real, important, rather small and it's old news

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And this just in: Religious left is real, important, rather small and it's old news

Every four to eight years, mainstream journalists start writing hopeful stories about the potential for the religious left — that should be Religious Left — to rise up and save America from the Religious Right.

This is the sort of thing that we write about here at GetReligion and the topic came up again in a post called, “Mayor Pete evolving into Pastor Pete? Prepare for latest uptick in MSM ardor for religious left.” That led to this week’s “Crossroads” podcast. Click here, please, to tune that in.

The religious left, of course, has changed and evolved over the decade that I have followed it and reported stories about it. But, basically, we are talking about liberal Mainline Protestants, liberal Catholics, a few evolving evangelicals, liberal Jews and so forth and so on.

The problem, of course, is that so many of those ancient doctrines keep clashing with the creeds of the emerging Zeitgeist (mostly the Sexual Revolution, in post-Roe v. Wade America).

Lots of folks who were part of the old religious left go with the flow. But some are troubled. Go to any traditional African-American church and talk to people. Go to a multi-racial Assemblies of God church. Talk to Catholics who go to Vespers and then stay for Confession.

So, White House race after White House race, we see stories about the latest set of “lesser of two evils” challenges faced by people who are, sincerely, religious/moral traditionalists, but they are also economic populists. There are the people who do not exist, according to MSNBC and Fox News. They don’t fit in the Democratic Party’s faculty lounge or the GOP’s country club.

So is the latest attempt to raise up the religious left a valid story?

Of course it is. The African-American church vote really mattered to Barack Obama (think his evolving beliefs on gay marriage) until the moment in time when he no longer needed those votes.

Latino voters matter, as well. Hold that thought!

The religious left also is very important in mainstream newsrooms — at least the ones in which I have worked.


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If an evangelical crisis is truly on horizon, journalists should spring into action right now

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How often have we been informed that the religious left is about to revive with new power, or that the Religious Right will fade?

That sort of political punditry occurs alongside periodic warnings — or hopes, among politicos and many journalists — that America’s sprawling network of evangelical Protestant congregations and agencies is destined for big decline.

If this is true, journalists should spring into action immediately.

Evangelicalism was often the most dynamic force in U.S. religion over recent decades, with impact worldwide, and generally managed to resist the serious slide that afflicted the evangelicals’ more liberal “Mainline” Protestant rivals beginning in the mid-1960s. (This article will bypass changes among Roman Catholicism, historically black Protestant denominations, and other religious sectors.)

A notable example of negativism was “My Prediction: The Coming Evangelical Collapse,” posted a decade ago by the late Michael Spencer, a popular blogger and self-described “post-evangelical Christian.” He predicted “a major collapse of evangelical Christianity” within 10 years, which means just about now, that would “fundamentally alter” the culture of the West.

Further, Spencer prophesied that within two generations this Bible-based empire would shrink to half its present scope, with scads of dropouts, sagging budgets, shuttered doors, and ruined careers, and “nothing” would restore former glory. Etc. Read it all for yourself.

Some of this has in fact occurred, though not (yet) so dramatically, as reporters easily see in statistics of the largest evangelical denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention. Evangelicalism’s health is relatively stable despite cultural pressures. This brings to mind Mark Twain’s jest that “the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

But then last week — media pay close attention — pessimism was suddenly proclaimed by one of the most important voices in the evangelical establishment, Mark Galli, editor in chief ofChristianity Today magazine.


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New on the 2020 political agenda: Will a gay mayor (finally) rally the religious left?

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Our January 31 Guy Memo ho-hummed National Public Radio’s latest example of perennial wishful thinking in U.S. media about a substantial religious left (still lower-case) emerging to counter America’s familiar Religious Right (upper-case for years now). However, the Memo observed that, “President Trump remains unusually vulnerable to resistance on religious and moral grounds,” so journalists were advised to be “alert for surprises.”

Surprise! South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg has since soared from obscurity. And his substantive interview for a March 29 Washington Post article by Sarah Pulliam Bailey raises the prospect that the religious left could achieve new impact by rallying behind his persona. Such a 2020 scenario could replicate 1980, when triumphant Ronald Reagan boosted the early Religious Right – and vice versa.

Pundits quickly reinforced the Buttigieg religion angle, including Father Edward Beck on CNN, Kirsten Powers in USA Today, Andrew Sullivan of New York magazine and The Atlantic’s Emma Green.

Buttigieg has never run statewide and is merely the mayor of Indiana’s fourth-largest city (South Bend of Notre Dame fame). But the Harvard alum, a boyish 37, has already been a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, businessman and Navy intelligence officer serving in Afghanistan. His golden tongue in rallies and TV appearances is inspiring early success.

The mayor could aid Democratic designs in the Big Ten states that are likely to (again) determine whether Donald Trump wins. The amiable Midwesterner ranks third behind East Coasters Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders in Emerson’s latest Iowa poll and well outpaces Amy Klobuchar from neighboring Minnesota. Focus on Rural America’s polling of Democrats who plan to attend the Iowa caucus puts him at 6 percent, tied with Klobuchar and another fresh face, “Beto” O’Rourke.

Journalists take note: Buttigieg is a religiously significant figure who underwent a spiritual turn at a Catholic high school and at Oxford. He became a devoted and articulate Episcopalian, came out in 2015, and married his gay partner in church last year. That, and his social-gospel outlook, mesh with leaders and thinkers in “mainline” Protestantism’s liberal wing, alongside Catholics of similar mind.

Among Buttigieg’s numerous religious comments in the opening phase of his campaign, the most remarkable came April 7 before a packed LGBTQ Victory Fund rally. He admitted that as a youth “I would have done anything to not be gay,” said his same-sex marriage ‘has moved me closer to God,” and challenged “the Mike Pences of the world” with this: “If you’ve got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my Creator.” (Notably, some media lower-cased his C.)


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Deja vu, all over again: Why is the rise of the old religious left an oldie that's ever new?

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One characteristic of our religion beat is that old story themes never die. Sometimes they don’t even evolve very much.

You know the headlines. “Local family redoes this year’s [pick a religious holiday] or “[Name of denomination] elects first [race or gender] official” or “Sensational find proves [pick your favorite Bible story]”or “Sensational find disproves [your most disliked Bible story]”

Another perpetual theme can be seen in the occasional announcements that a new “religious left” (lower case) is arising to challenge the “Religious Right” (usually upper case). This is rather strange, since through much of the 20th Century, religious politicking was largely liberal and it never disappeared. Activism remained especially central among African-American Protestants.

So the media were caught by surprise when the Rev. Jerry Falwell first joined the political thrum in 1979 with Moral Majority, followed by the Rev. Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, et al. Such upstarts continued to monopolize ink through evident (though uneven) impact, amplified by their opponents’ continual clear-and-present-danger alarms.

Now the man-bites-dog angle works in favor of religious liberals and a good story hunch to keep in mind is whether the religious left might launch an effective counterattack. Which brings us to this January 24 item on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” by veteran, award-winning correspondent Tom Gjelten, now a religion specialist.

“The provocations of President Trump may finally be changing” the religious right’s monopoly, he reported, bringing forth “a comparable effort” by religiously motivated liberals.

Gjelten’s exhibit A is Faith in Public Life (FPL), led by a Presbyterian Church (USA) minister, the Rev. Jennifer Butler. Her organization says it has recruited nearly 50,000 local faith leaders and seeks broad support from “mainline” Protestants, Catholics, Jews and those in other religions, in contrast with the right’s narrower religious constituency (as in conservative Protestants, conservative Catholics and many Orthodox Jews).

The FPL website assails President Donald Trump’s “white racist” policies. On immigration, the group opposes adding any miles to the border wall and the hiring of more border agents, wants the 2020 Census to fairly count people regardless of immigration status and fights “Islamophobia.” FPL favors “reproductive rights,” criminal justice reform, voting by felons, and “common sense” gun laws. It works for LGBT protections, and against efforts to “use religious freedom as a justification for discrimination.”

Gjelten admitted that “the religious left, having been largely eclipsed in recent years, has a ways to go before it can match the clout of the religious right.”


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