Peter Laarman at Religion Dispatches on a sobriety test for religious progressives:It may be in the nature of the work these days for politicians to pin a bright shiny ribbon on something pretty awful and say it reflects “moral courage.” But when progressive religious leaders engage in the same kind of misdirection we have a serious problem. Such leaders are welcome to make the case—as many have—that the overall public interest will be served by enacting what Democrats are still pleased to call health care “reform” despite every last craven sacrifice of principle and despite every last dripping slice of pork handed out to this senator and that representative, to this lobbyist and that campaign contributor.
I don’t mind if their honest position is that the legislation should pass. I myself think it should pass. But I do mind very much if they describe such a smelly and corruption-laden legislative product as unalloyed glad tidings for the uninsured and underinsured—or as some kind of historic vindication of popular sovereignty in America. Again, spinning it that way is what politicians do—and we all saw the President doing just that before Christmas, even going out of his way to chastise “the Left” for whining about what the Senate bill leaves out—but it is revolting to see religious leaders doing it.
Responsible religious leaders need to stay sober and stop cheerleading for the Democrats and for the Obama White House team just because they’re not total Visigoths.
And that’s my point in what I posted two days ago about the film “Up in the Air”: when progressive religious leaders engage in the same kind of misdirection we have a serious problem. When even religious leaders who claim to be committed to gospel values—e.g., to defend the least among us, to analyze social structures from the viewpoint of the least among us first, to effect social programs that finally include the least among us—when even religious leaders begin to bless and cheer for the soulless corporatism that now rules our nation politically and culturally, we’re lost.
We’ve lost our soul. When even our “progressive” religious leaders spend a disproportionate amount of their time nattering on about abortion as the key and sole moral challenge facing us today, while bankers and corporate executives reach deeper and deeper into the pockets of anyone they can fleece with impunity, we have a serious moral problem.
We’ve lost our soul. And it’s been crystal clear for some time now that the neoconservative and religious right aberrations of faith aren’t able to point the way to its retrieval. They’re in large part responsible for our present loss of soul.
But it’s also becoming increasingly clear—to me, at least—that the corporatist center of the Democratic party is no more capable than is neocon ideology of pointing us in the direction in which salvation lies. Whatever answer may still be out there for us—unless the only possible option left to us is to capitulate to government by corporations—will have to come from some place other than the center.
It will have to come from the many little people of the world who have simply grown weary of expecting morally vacuous, soulless political leaders on both sides of the political house to provide the leadership we need. It will have to come from ourselves and not our elected representatives and president.
