NANCY PELOSI, the Democratic leader in the House, sounded like an Old Testament prophet recently when she denounced the Republican budget for its "injustice and immorality" and urged her colleagues to cast their no votes "as an act of worship" during this religious season.
This, apparently, is what the Democrats had in mind when they vowed after President Bush's re-election to reclaim religious voters for their party. In the House, they set up a Democratic Faith Working Group. Senator Harry Reid, the minority leader, created a Web site called Word to the Faithful. And Democratic officials began holding conferences with religious progressives. All of this was with the intention of learning how to link faith with public policy. An event for liberal politicians and advocates at the University of California at Berkeley in July even offered a seminar titled "I Don't Believe in God, but I Know America Needs a Spiritual Left."
Democrats are now misusing religion as badly as the right
A look at the tactics and theology of the religious left, however, suggests that this is exactly what American politics does not need. If Democrats give religious progressives a stronger voice, they'll only replicate the misdeeds of the religious right.
For starters, we'll see more attempts to draw a direct line from the Bible to a political agenda. The Rev. Jim Wallis, a popular adviser to leading Democrats and an organizer of the Berkeley meeting, routinely engages in this kind of Bible-thumping. In his book "God's Politics," Mr. Wallis insists that his faith-based platform transcends partisan categories.
"We affirm God's vision of a good society offered to us by the prophet Isaiah," he writes. Yet Isaiah, an agent of divine judgment living in a theocratic state, conveniently affirms every spending scheme of the Democratic Party. This is no different than the fundamentalist impulse to cite the book of Leviticus to justify laws against homosexuality.
When Christians - liberal or conservative - invoke a biblical theocracy as a handy guide to contemporary politics, they threaten our democratic discourse. Numerous "policy papers" from liberal churches and activist groups employ the same approach: they're awash in scriptural references to justice, poverty and peace, stacked alongside claims about global warming, debt relief and the United Nations Security Council.
Christians are right to argue that the Bible is a priceless source of moral and spiritual insight. But they're wrong to treat it as a substitute for a coherent political philosophy.
There is another worrisome trait shared by religious liberals and many conservatives: the tendency to moralize in the most extreme terms. William Sloane Coffin of the Clergy Leadership Network was typical in his denunciation of the Bush tax cuts: "I think he should remember that it was the devil who tempted Jesus with unparalleled wealth and power."
This trend is at its worst in the misplaced outrage in the war against Islamic terrorism. It's true that in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, some Christian conservatives shamed themselves by blaming the horror on feminists and gays, who allegedly incited God's wrath. But such nonsense is echoed by liberals like the theologian Stanley Hauerwas of Duke University.
"The price that Americans are going to have to pay for the kind of arrogance that we are operating out of right now is going to be terrible indeed," he said of the United States' response to the Qaeda attacks. "People will exact some very strong judgments against America - and I think we will well deserve it." Professor Hauerwas joins a chorus of left-wing clerics and religious scholars who compare the United States to Imperial Rome and Nazi Germany.
Democrats who want religious values to play a greater role in their party might take a cue from the human-rights agenda of religious conservatives. Evangelicals begin with the Bible's account of the God-given dignity of every person. And they've joined hands with liberal and secular groups to defend the rights of the vulnerable and oppressed, be it through prison programs for offenders and their families, laws against the trafficking of women and children, or an American-brokered peace plan for Sudan. In each case believers have applied their religious ideals with a strong dose of realism and generosity.
A completely secular public square is neither possible nor desirable; democracy needs the moral ballast of religion. But a partisan campaign to enlist the sacred is equally wrongheaded. When people of faith join political debates, they must welcome those democratic virtues that promote the common good: prudence, reason, compromise - and a realization that politics can't usher in the kingdom of heaven.
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Re "Nearer, My God, to the G.O.P." (Op-Ed, Jan. 2):
I am delighted that Joseph Loconte of the Heritage Foundation considers "a partisan campaign to enlist the sacred" to be "wrongheaded." Now perhaps he would like to spread that message to the religious right instead of cautioning your readers about the perceived dangers of the nascent, indeed scarcely visible, religious left.
I suspect that Mr. Loconte's article is an attempt to negate, in advance, any attempts by the Democrats to invoke religious values. So he feigns shock, shock at the very possibility. Anyone who has followed the antics of the religious right for the last 25 years is left in head-shaking wonder.
Bettie W. Roberts
Houston, Jan. 2, 2006
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To the Editor:
Joseph Loconte is wrong to equate Christian progressives who thump the Bible in defense of social programs for the poor and the oppressed with those on the religious right who cite the same source to justify discrimination against homosexuality.
The Bible has a multitude of passages that passionately call the faithful to care for the least among us, compared with only a few verses that, in passing, appear to condemn homosexuality.
It is bad politics and worse theology for the religious left, whose policies generally align with the great social themes of the Old and New Testaments, meekly to stand by out of an exaggerated deference for the separation of church and state while the religious right - which suffers no such inhibitions - co-opts God and the Bible for its own purposes.
Kerry D. Sullivan
Georgetown, Tex., Jan. 3, 2006
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To the Editor:
Joseph Loconte is on target when he says "democracy needs the moral ballast of religion." But he doesn't explain exactly how religion should inform public policy.
He rightly insists that democratic virtues like prudence, reason and compromise provide critical filters for religion in the public square. But these filters serve us only if they transcend the self-interested, partisan impulses that unfortunately rule today's politics.
Both the left and the right are guilty of not scrutinizing how their faith-based ideas serve the common good.
I hope that Mr. Loconte's article leads to a larger discussion about identifying the criteria by which religious claims are mediated as they move from an individual's perspective to the greater good. Unless we can get past these self-serving assertions, religion's moral ballast is hollow at best.
James A. Donahue
Berkeley, Calif., Jan. 4, 2006
The writer is president and a professor of ethics, Graduate Theological Union.
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To the Editor:
What ever makes Joseph Loconte think that political parties can somehow tailor their philosophies according to "prudence, reason, compromise"? Or that voters ever suppose that politics is meant to actually "usher in the kingdom of heaven"?
The kingdom of heaven is a dream that different people see from different perspectives, realizing that their society is going to be, at best, a dim reflection of their dream.
They vote for candidates they believe best support their values, whether those values be greed or altruism, security or service. What they get in a democracy is not so much reasoned compromise as victory of a prevailing attitude.
Republicans won the 2004 election on the basis of values, and the Democrats recognize this.
Republican values have since had a chance to be seen in the light of administration policies, and the Democrats know this, too.
(Rev.) A. Karl Boehmke
Clayton, Mo., Jan. 2, 2006
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To the Editor:
Encouraging religious progressives to speak out is a matter of fighting fire with fire. So if the prophet Isaiah encourages certain Americans to remember the importance of responsible community and caring for the neediest, that's a nice counter to the right wing's personal-property agenda.
And it's superb tit-for-tat that the theologian Stanley Hauerwas reminds us that there will be dire moral consequences for this administration's arrogance.
After all, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Ralph Reed and Tom DeLay seem to have convinced some Americans that George W. Bush's incompetence and recklessness are just part of his mission from God.
Pam Walton
Mountain View, Calif., Jan. 2, 2006
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To the Editor:
Joseph Loconte accuses the Democrats of potentially misusing religion as badly as the right has done. Does he forget that we Democrats are often called "godless liberals"?
We are only trying to set the record straight that our political fervor comes from deeply held beliefs, most of which were developed at church and from our upbringing.
In addition, I think that his article describes how much the right and the left have in common.
He alludes to this in his conclusion, where he mentions democratic virtues - prudence, reason and compromise.
I would add truthfulness, love and caring for the downtrodden and the belief that each person counts: that is democratic in the fullest sense.
Frederick E. Simms
Birmingham, Mich., Jan. 2, 2006
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To the Editor:
Joseph Laconte is right that "politics can't usher in the kingdom of heaven."
Jesus in particular predicted endless calamities in human history; the Christian creed looks to "life everlasting," beyond death, for perfection.
But the New Testament, like Hebrew scripture, condemns the enrichment of the wealthy at the expense of the poor.
Jesus commands service to the hungry, the stranger, the unclothed, the sick, the imprisoned - "the least of these my brethren."
Which politics is more consonant with biblical teaching: the Republicans' redistribution of wealth to the already rich, or the Democrats' effort to keep benefits that protect the health and dignity of the poor?
Frederick A. Smith
Garden City, N.Y., Jan. 3, 2006
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To the Editor:
Forgive the irony, but I can find only one word for Joseph Loconte's article about the idiocy of mixing religion and politics: Amen.
Rob Poggenklass
West Branch, Iowa
Jan. 2, 2006
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So how are Democrats going to explain this newly feined religious push to their degenerate armies of aethiests, homosexuals, and pro-abortion nuts and still appear genuine to believers???? Stay Tuned Folks.
The answer for Democrats is not to use Religion but to point out the hypocrisy of the Right. Awareness is the most important part as it took two elections before Democrats could even see the manipulation of the Churches taking place. Now, it can bed addressed with very pointed and valid questions. Where are the moral values that Bush and the GOP have professed? Why would they take such actions if they are moral?
Democrats do not to stoop as low as the GOP to address religion.
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Why yes, shoeshine is the power of the soul. This one time I was visiting france and attacking spain with donkeymonkeys and then there was large amounts of gonads and strife!%¤
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