Over the past few weeks, there has been a quiet but significant battle raging between religious progressives and and a coalition of evangelicals and centrists over who represents the real religious progressive voice in American politics.  I don't want to delve too far into it, but I thought I'd do a brief blow-by-blow summary for anyone who's interested.  More across the flip!

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In case you missed it, there was a full-on blogswarm this week, centering around the growing rift between the Religious Left and the Religious Industrial Complex.   The blogswarm was touched off by Sarah Posner's article in Religion DispatchesDispatches from the Religious Left.  PastorDan has a good, linky reflection on the blogswarm at Street Prophets; check it out if you want the gory details.

The main line of argument, which we've seen before, is something like this: Religious Left-ists argue that reproductive choice and gay rights are not compromise-able issues, they are fundamentally matters of conscience.  Democrats should not seek to "split the difference" with moderate religious voters over these issues, because people's fundamental rights are not something we should haggle over.  The Religious Industrial Complex, represented this week by Faith in Public Life, counsels Democrats to do exactly that, pleading that it is possible to win elections by cajoling swing voters on these sorts of issues.

The Religious-Industrial Complex (Digby's term, but popularized and used frequently by PastorDan) has been making these sorts of arguments for a long time, and I think they are largely dubious.  For one thing, I'm not convinced that religious moderates can be convinced by hair-splitting on abortion and gay rights; any kind of faith-based voting in this year's election was clearly overwhelmed by economic-meltdown-based voting, and there were other issues confounding the 2006 election results, too.  For another thing, I'm not sure we would want to do that even if we could.  Atheists and non-Christians, two groups that are significantly more progressive than religious moderates, are also growing quickly in size.  Because of that, appealing too heavily to religious moderates by giving up core convictions on reproductive choice and gay rights could be a double-whammy: not only would that roll back progress on important issues, it might be electorally disastrous.

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If you missed our book launch for Dispatches from the Religious Left earlier this week, you can check out many of the same speakers from the event discussing the Religious Left on GritTV:

A quick review of the video, over the flip..

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This weekend, I've been dissecting a selection of essays from Dispatches from the Religious Left, an anthology edited by Frederick Clarkson examining the vision and methods of the Religious Left. The book includes a brief chapter on new media, which my wife and I co-wrote.  This weekend's discussion included a look at PastorDan's essay on the role of the Religious Left, Rev. Deb Haffner and Timothy Palmer's essay on a theology of sexual justice, and Frederick Clarkson's essay on electoral politics and the Religious Left.  It's been a wide-ranging and fascinating discussion, and I've learned a great deal.  I hope you've enjoyed it as well.

If you're in New York this week, please join us for more in-depth, in-person discussion of these essays, and many others in the book.  We will be launching the book and, hopefully, a larger, ongoing discussion about the shape and vision of the Religious Left:

Tuesday, October 14, 2008
7:00pm - 10:00pm
Middle Collegiate Church
50 East 7th St., New York, NY
RSVP: http://www.new.facebook.com/event.php?ei d=25908349317

Fred Clarkson has more, but here's the short take: you won't want to miss a book launch featuring a famous gospel choir.

I hope to see you there!

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The book launch for Dispatches from the Religious Left is coming up on Tuesday, Oct. 14.  In anticipation of the event, I'm running a series this weekend on a few essays from the book.  Yesterday I wrote about PastorDan's essay on the role of the Religious Left (PastorDan responded here), as well as Rev. Debra Haffner and Timothy Palmer's essay on a theology of sexual justice.

The third part of the book is dedicated to "getting from here to there", and is a bit more nuts-and-bolts-oriented than the first two parts.  It includes the essay my wife and I wrote on new media, which focuses on helping religious organizations find their voice online.  However, since that material is probably pretty familiar to many blog readers, I'm instead going to focus on the contribution by Frederick Clarkson (who is also the editor of the book), titled "Three wheels that need not be reinvented".

Fred's main argument is that the Religious Left must get more involved in electoral politics.  By way of contrast he points to the Religious Right, which actively participates in party primaries, registers voters, and maintains high-quality voter lists that persist from one cycle to another.  All of these ingredients help the Right exert power far beyond its numbers, and Clarkson argues that the Left must respond in kind in order to realize its vision.  His chapter profiles three progressive political organizations in Massachusetts, and offers them as organizing models for Religious Leftists.

Join me across the flip for a discussion of these organizations, and the kinds of things the Religious Left will need to do in order to build cross-cyclical electoral power.

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