Taking Back the Faith

Dan Wakefield in The Nation

A young man in Boston came up to [Rev. Jim] Wallis after one of his bookstore talks and said, "I'm gay, and I want to thank you for making me feel welcome tonight. But you know, it's easier to come out being gay in Boston than it is coming out as religious in the Democratic Party."

The African-American attorney Van Jones, founder and executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland (which challenges human rights abuses in the prison system) wrote on the Internet: "It is still commonplace to hear so-called radicals stereotyping all religious people as stupid dupes--and spitting out the word 'Christian' as if it were an insult, or the name of a disease. I thought progressives were supposed to be the standard-bearers of tolerance and inclusion."

Former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, an adviser to Union Theological Seminary, says:

You don't go into a liberal community and talk about your faith and your prayers--they snicker. So in divorcing it you lose track of it, you forget why we should care about social justice--is it just so we could be fair? What's the underlying principle of equality? We didn't talk about the values that underlie policy--why are we against racism, poverty? A lot of these issues I believe in come from my religious upbringing.