More than 400 religious and secular progressives will meet here in the nation’s capitol this weekend (June 11-14) to urge President Obama to be the man “they thought they elected in 2008.”
The Network of Spiritual Progressives wants Obama to make good on campaign promises to protect the environment, fight for the poor, rein
in big business, and work for global peace.
“I’m not interested in those who want to be either for or against Obama,” said Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia, Pa. “I want Obama to join us in the protection of the earth, protection of human beings.”
Waskow and about 34 other rabbis, pastors, priests, professors and congressmen are expected to speak at the four day conference, which will rally progressives around causes like a new “global Marshall plan” and a social responsibility amendment to the Constitution.
Many members of TEC, I should think.
[blockquote]The progressive religious movement has been eclipsed recently by the conservative Tea Party, but this weekend’s conference will hopefully swing the momentum leftward, said Gary Dorrien, a prominent social-justice ethicist at Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary who is speaking at the conference.[/blockquote]
Union Theological Seminary is an “Independent, multi-denominational seminary, educating leaders and ministers, workers for social justice, teachers and scholars.” Are they still educating clergy?
These people are, for the most part, professional religious parasites. They are progressives and socialists who let the laity of the denominations pay for them to have the time and money to lobby for their political agendas. It has little to do with spiritual things and all to do with getting and keeping power. With the complicity of government they live to force people to do what they, in their intellectually enlightened superiority, have decided is how the world should act. Their fellow travelers in the laity have the time and disposable income to help agitate and take over denominations so they can divert the tithes of others to further advance their socialist agendas.
This has played out since the beginning of the progressive movement in the early 20th century as the mainline denominations have been infiltrated by these people. Until the recent rise of the Internet, most of what they have done has been hidden from the mass of faithful folks who have no idea where their contributions go at the national level in their denominations.
At a further level, the faithful, orthodox laity have been put at another disadvantage because they have tried to act out of Christian love and charity, listen to the agendas of others and try to understand differing viewpoints. What they did not understand is that they have been dealing with committed idealogues who have a specific set of agendas, and who will do pretty much anything to achieve their objectives, rationalizing that the ends justify the means and cloaking their agendas by co-opting phrases such as “radical hospitality”, “wecoming the stranger”, and “inclusiveness.”
Their recent howling protests over what they see as Luddite laity trying to dismantle their precious progressive agendas only proves that the darkness truly does hate and fear the light.
What in the world is a “social responsibility amendment”???
Well, Obama listened to them the first time on healthcare reform and used up all his excess political capital on that and tied up government spending with that and TARP II to the end that no new social programs can realistically be funded for the next 10+ years.
OT here, but has anybody picked up on Schori’s extraordinary World Tour? This weekend she is in England at the liberal Southwark Cathedral in London (erstwhile home of Jeffrey Johns), and on June 27 she goes down to the Cathedral of Christchurch, New Zealand.
What is she up to?
She seems to be networking globally in creating her Alternative Communion among liberal Anglicans, to try to outflank RW.
What is she up to?
PB: Hello
Bishop: You are very welcome and we are pleased you asked to see us
PB: that is great to hear – I have always wanted to visit The Church of Scotland
Bishop: Actually we are the Scottish Episcopal Church but we are as important as they are
PB: I come because we need to reach out to the lost, the marginalised, and the dispossessed
Bishop: Not to mention the needy
PB: You must have many needs here
Bishop: Oh we do – just look at this place, falling about our ears, plaster raining down during Eucharist on the faithful – we tell them its manna, and well its hard to make ends meet these days
PB: we need to feed a hungry world
Bishop: oh yes, lots of clergy mouths to feed
PB: We need to build loose relationships based on mission and giving
Bishop: and taking
PB: Well I must be going – I look forward to building our relationship
Bishop: Thanks for coming – have a nice day
#3 Especially like, for example, civil rights, child labor laws, the Marshall Plan, and the UN declaration of Human Rights. I suppose the old time religion of jim crow, seven-day workweeks, isolationism and imperialism have their attractions.
As reasserters stop calling Christians “parasites” and listen to the listen to the agendas of others in order to understand their view, it may be possible there is some shared comprehension. But the social Gospel is not a recent invention in the church Catholic.
Although definitely the progressive church might benefit from a more cautious sort of leadership. They should be encouraging wisdom, not partisan politics. They should insist, for example, that both parties work for the good of the country and challenge them to keep the stories accurate, and show proper care for the citizens who require help, and regulate companies that poison our environment. The prophets did not shy away from the task of telling the truth.
Hey there “religious left”…your not alone. Almost nobody who voted for the guy got who they though they were getting! Now here we are. Thanks a lot.
Yeah, I think you’ve got something there, azusa. I think she’s saying “I’ll get even with you, Rowan!”
#10; Now I see that clergy from the diocese of Southwark have written to the London Times to complain about this visit, which coems when the See is vacant:
http://acl.asn.au/southwark-clergy-write-to-the-times/#more-7785
However, there is a suffragan bishop, the evangelical Rt Rev Nick Bains, bishop of Croydon, but he doesn’t seem to have anything to say about this “border crossing”.
John #8,
There’s a big difference between social gospel and your Socialist gospel. I don’t recall Jesus calling out Pilate and telling the Jews to change their government. He called out the religious establishment, currently your favorite folks trying to get government to force people to act in accord with what they deem to be proper behavior.
These folks are most assuredly parasites, feeding off the host of the tithes of the faithful, and destroying churches in the process. No government mandate will cure the evil in men’s hearts; it just further feeds it and their lust for power and control. I also find it particularly distasteful that you fell compelled to fall back on the worn out cliche’s of claiming that social ills of America were all caused by those bad old fundamentalists in the South. Actually, more damage has been caused by the Communist and Socialist infiltration of organizations like the National Council of Churches and the United Methodist Church. Where is your faith in the power of God to transform people’s lives that you have to rely on government coercion to implement your version of paradise here on Earth.
Your comments really just prove my point.
#12 – Daniel, I don’t think I share your instinctive charity toward the unregulated market, but I definitely don’t believe in an economy that is fundamentally planned or in state capitalism / socialism. My views are empirical, rather than ideological. I’ve got few ideological commitments, but I’m a pragmatist and anti-utopian (I consider both with the ideals of the “free market” and communism utopian at heart).
I do think that sometimes democracy, in the form of competing and mutually reinforcing public institutions, tempers the extremes of the market. I believe that it is in the public interest to keep money moving, and government spending helps. My view is not particularly radical. It’s held by most mainstream economists. Granted, my view that the middle class is a good thing, and that our economy shouldn’t be like Brazil or Somalia is my opinion (and an imposition upon the wealthy), but I’m also aware that this requires policies that are inconvenient to some. Fortunately, this is a democracy, so sometimes you’re friends are in power, and sometimes mine are.
I do think that religious conservatives have a poor history when it comes to race, as the Southern Baptist Convention admitted a couple years ago. And of course, their “moderates” argued that federal legislation couldn’t change hearts. Changing hearts isn’t the point, however. Religious progressives were right about race, and other political issues, but you’re entitled to disagree. I’m willing to change my mind, but I’d appreciate some evidence, documentation or specifics rather than sloganeering.
I am confused, however, because I didn’t mention socialism. Nor did I mention religious fundamentalists. I do share that the NCC (and TEC) has some explaining to do, but not because of its theology, but because it has failed to equip or plan for building its member churches. It offers very little to parishioners in the pews. Perhaps we can agree that nobody cares what churches think about politics if they don’t have their house in order.
You mention “No government mandate will cure the evil in men’s hearts.” Perhaps. But this often sounds like an excuse. An excuse, for example, NOT to defend blacks who were routinely the object of terror throughout most of American history; an excuse not to offer reasonable ways for minorities to build wealth; an excuse not to guarantee voting rights for all Americans. It’s an excuse not to create peace, by demanding people’s hearts change first.
You can’t cure hearts, but you can create reasonable policies that give people a fair start and a fighting chance. Although people have every right to believe, for example, in white supremacy and that the earth is flat, the public – and churches – have no reason to believe, relativistically, that all such truths are equal. After all, sometimes people are wrong, even though their heart tells them so.
I also note that there has been a radical shift in anti-government attitude over the last 40 years. It used to be that people honored all institutions. There was a sense of civic responsibility. Now, in the midst of our prosperity, all we want is to be left alone. To me it’s not a particularly edifying, or responsible, rallying cry.