Religion and Politics, the Sequel

American religion has seen two Great Awakening in its history and many predict that we are in the midst of a third such religious revival. Church attendance is higher than ever, more and more people are identifying religion and faith as important influences in their everyday life, and religion has almost inextricably linked itself to politics. For all of these reasons it way seem irrational, implausible and even impossible when Jim Wallis asserts that "The Religious Right’s Era is Over". However, Wallis is not postulating that religion is disappearing from politics, nor that it should. He suggests that the religious right is giving way to a new Christian coalition. He sees the dynamics of the religious world as being in the middle of a cultural revolution in which a focus on partisan politics is being overthrown by a desire to evoke social change and bring about justice and reform.

Wallis has labeled the current religious transformation a “revival for justice” that is ready to tackle the issues facing us today (par. 7). Covered in this revival are “poverty, and economic justice, global warming, HIV/AIDS, sex trafficking, genocide in Darfur and the ethics of the war in Iraq” (Wallis, Par. 3). Religion in his opinion is no longer synonymous with the war against abortion and the fight for “family values”. Its platform is broader, more diverse, and more relevant to our political and social climates.

Helping the revival garner strength is the removal of partisan politics from its ideology. Religious Americans are no longer de facto Republicans. Unlike Terry Fox, a leader of the Religious Right, who believed “We are the religious right...One, we are religious. Two, we are right.” (Kirkpatrick, par. 3) today’s Christians “know now that God is neither a Republican nor a Democrat” (Wallis, par. 4). The new era of religion and politics will be defined by spirituality, not religion, and will be centered on bringing about social reform.

One needs only to open a history book to understand how religion has been paramount in bringing about social justice. Examples are bountiful: “the spiritual revivals that helped lead to the abolition of slavery in Britain and the United States; the black church's leadership during the American civil rights movement; the deeply Catholic roots of the Solidarity movement in Poland that led the overthrow of communism” (Wallis, par. 6). Religion is naturally suited to accompany and inspire the rectification of social injustices. Just as the Civil Rights movement “needed an emotional dimension to whip up the enthusiasm of the people” and found that “no one could bring a crowd to an emotional pitch like the black preacher,” it remains true that social movements find salvation in religion because of the response it elicits from activists (Chappell, 62-63). We can only hope that this new relationship between religion and politics provides for victories as great as those of the past with the goal of creating a better future, regardless if that future is Democratic or Republican.

sources: "The Religious Right's Era is Over", "The Evangelical Crackup", A Stone of Hope by David L. Chappell