winterbadger | (no subject)

I posted this as a reply in mintogrubb's LJ, but I wanted to copy it to mine so as to retain a copy of it. My apologies to anyone who thus has to read it twice.

America, I believe, is a secular and progressive nation at heart. This is just a phase they are going through, and I believe they will soon grow out of it.

I don't agree that America is at root a secular nation. America, IMO, is a fundamentally religious country, which has been moved by its moral conscience in different directions at different times. It was a national appeal to morality and conscience that ended up bringing about the Civil War and the emancipation of slaves, and those at the hands of a Republican president who talked a good deal more about God's plan for America than this president has done. It was a strong appeal to morality that created the New Deal. It was a strong appeal to morality, coming in part from a broad sweep of religious leaders and a Texan president that brought us the Great Society. It was the national conscience, moved in part by one of the greatest American religious leaders of all time, that brought us desegregation and the Voting Rights Act.

Religion is, for better or worse, a major element of American life, political as well as social. We proclaim ourselves "one nation under God" and that "in God we trust". We assert the rights that are given to us by "our Creator". I think that religion is not necessarily regressive, nor is its absence necessarily progressive. I'm not religious myself (at least not at the moment), but I recognize that most of my countrymen are, and that that has, in the past, been what drove many of them to do things to make our country a better place as well as what moves many of them now to do things that (I think) would make it a worse one.

What I do see lacking in America today is an overt sense of faith in the liberal/progressive part of the political spectrum, a strong voice or voices for religious liberalism. And I think that that's what makes many middle-ground Americans, for whom religion is part of their life, fundamentally uneasy with liberal politicians. I think we need someone who, while not inclined to pray on street corners, will make the case for the progressive social agenda from a religious or moral viewpoint *as well as* the practical political/economic viewpoint.