Larry Hollon challenges the idea that mainline leaders are “leftist”. I certainly agree.
Those who call the leadership of the mainline churches leftist today are simply mischaracterizing those leaders, in my opinion. There is no leftist, radical voice advocating change by taking to the streets, tearing down institutions and upsetting the social order today as was the case in the sixties.
Neither are there theoretical frameworks advocating for socialism or state capitalism coming from the the left. That form of sixties radicalism has either been co-opted, marginalized or abandoned. Those who in former times would have been known as moderates or progressives are called leftists by some today, but, that doesn’t make it so. As I view the leaders I’ve seen in mainline religious groups, they don’t have a leftist agenda, nor any political agenda.
A few have called the federal budget a moral statement. Surely, that’s not a radical position. A few have called for social justice for the poor and vulnerable, but within existing public policies, and that’s not a radical position. It’s simply calling for critical review of priorities about how we expend national and state resources. I can’t figure out why this is viewed as politically unacceptable. It’s a fundamental part of the democratic process. At most, those who advocate this position say that our values should inform our decisions about how we spend our money. That is hardly radical.
Left has been, one might say , Left Behind. But the “Left Behind” crowd, and their closely related and politically aligned Religious Right cronies, have been taught to pin that lable on anybody who does not share their hubris about the righteousness of their cause. Al Mohler of the Southern Baptists, and several of his fellow denominational leaders, perpetuate and encourage this kind of characterization. Bush himself feeds it constantly by what would seem would be outrageous distortions of the statements of political opponents (ie. Saying during the campaign that “my opponent thinks the world would be better off with Saddam in power”, when Kerry actually said the opposite, but that Bush went about unilateral removal, which was the wrong way to deal with Saddam —even adding that “Saddam deserves his own special place in hell”, and yet Bush gets away with such ridiculous distortion).
But so it is with the Religious Right, and so it is with many who are more moderate than they, but have been schooled in the politics of assasination of motive and character. Al Mohler attacks Brian McLaren for the wrtong kind of orthodoxy, and I’ve even heard liberals attack Jim Wallis for “being just like the Religious Right” and questioning his motives, or his commitment to Biblical justice.