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You don't hear from the religious left much, because the left doesn't make a spectacle of our beliefs. We don't stand on street corners holding signs demonstrating hate. We don't push legislation meant to oppress minorities. We don't tell everyone they're worthless, poor, and degenerate and thus unworthy of being with God. We don't exalt guns, war, and capitalistic wealth as virtues.
The left attempts to do what Jesus' commanded people to do. Pray in secret, don't flaunt righteousness and success, and show compassion to the outcasts of society.
You don't hear from the religious left much, because the left doesn't make a spectacle of our beliefs. We don't stand on street corners holding signs demonstrating hate. We don't push legislation meant to oppress minorities. We don't tell everyone they're worthless, poor, and degenerate and thus unworthy of being with God. We don't exalt guns, war, and capitalistic wealth as virtues.
The left attempts to do what Jesus' commanded people to do. Pray in secret, don't flaunt righteousness and success, and show compassion to the outcasts of society.
often people forget that african americans are far more religious, on average, than white people. fundamentalist rural Christians and urban black church-goers have a great deal in common. anyhow, that is a huge segment of the 'religious left'
Fundamentalism is not the religious left, and most african american churches seem to be quite conservative. Also not left.
The question is - why American Christianity doesn't care to use these aspects of the Bible in their life and their quest for political power and influence? And why right wing Christian message resonates so well with America (even poor rural American voting Republican each time)?
Those aspects ARE used in lives and in quests for political power. It's that they are not thrown into everybody's face nonstop AS the motivation. Barack Obama is a Christian who uses the biblical call to help the helpless, to champion the plight of the poor, to stand up to the haves on behalf of the have nots. But he just doesn't flaunt his Christianity as such in people's faces. He states the principles he believes in, and every once in a while he might go into where his beliefs originate from, and his Christianity is a big part of that.
But the Christian right, on the other hand, LEAD with "this is what God stands for, so this is how Americans must live." So that religious message gets all the press, it being explicit rather than implicit.
As to why the right wing message resonnates w ith rural America, it's for multiple reasons:
1. Rural folks dislike the notion of shared social responsibility- they don't live in the city where it can easily be seen how better it is that the masses take care of the masses. They live where you either survive on your own or you don't.
2. Rural folks in predominantly rural states don't really get it that redistribution of wealth is actually HELPING their states, that it's the richer Mass or Cali that gets less than it puts in and the rural Alabama or Mississippi that gets back more money than it puts in. All they can see is THEIR money being taken and given away to poor city dwellers. They are blind to the truth that it's more like successful city dwellers' money being taken and given away to their states and communities.
3. Not being around the diversity that is generally seen in cities, they don't have to give a rip about the beliefs of others. They care about their beliefs and their neighbors generally believe the same thing as they do, so it's a self-reinforcing of our beliefs should be America's way of life, rather than shouldn't we all with different beliefs get along and live and let live.
Bottom line- they lack the insight and sense of this nation actually having great diversity that people in metro areas have. I guess you could say it's the difference between knowing there is a Grand Canyon somewhere out there in Arizona and actually going to visit the Grand Canyon in Arizona. The "awareness" is night and day between the two, and anybody who has actually visited will vouch for it. When you only HEAR about something and don't have any actual experience with it, it's just an abstract thought that can be dismissed if you choose to. That's not to say there aren't suburbanites who are for example against gay marriage, but my bet is that they are more open to government allowing it than rural people are. Rural people simply lack vision and lack a mindset of inclusiveness and reinforce those things amongst each other. And the horrible shape of their educational systems only exacerbates the problem, the lack. Heck, where were schools integreated LAST in America during the Civil Rights Era? Rural America. No sense of vision, no sense of inclusiveness, constant reinforcement of that in their little circles.
And the right wing conservative Republican message is tailor-made for that mindset. Democrats had the rural South. How'd they lose it? Civil Rights. The Democrat message changed to one of vision and inclusiveness, which contradicted rural mindsets, and it still does today, in a context of social rights. The Republican message today fits right in with it though.
Jesus was a radical and were he walking amongst us today (where we could see, feel, hear and listen to him) he would be condemned by the "religious right" in the USA. A "radical", a "leftist", and a Jew. A trifecta for the haters, who ... obnoxiously ... express their hate in God's name.
Make it four for four........of five for five. A lot of these backwards yahoos would look at the name "Jesús" and assume this brown-skinned cat was an illegal Mexican.
Fundamentalism is not the religious left, and most african american churches seem to be quite conservative. Also not left.
Most african american churches ARE left on most social issues. Where they diverge is in the issue of gay marriage, and that is only because they view government marriage as church marriage. In their minds, there really is no such thing as government marriage and church marriage, it's all the same thing. The reality is that there IS a difference, for reasons that originate in the constitution.
It is sort of a brainwashing thing, and the reason I say this is because:
-If they believe marriage is a sacred thing that is God-driven, ie. a religious institution, then what business does government have REGULATING and taxing (marriage license fees) a religious institution? Yet you don't hear them up in arms about government regulating marriage at all. If government all of a sudden said they were going to start regulating and charging fees for communion, you WOULD see them and pratcially all other churches up in arms with a GOVERNMENT IS GOING TOO FAR message, and they would be correct. Government should not regulate how churches operate, be it communion or marriage.
But nobody ever really talks to them with that kind of message, never really explains how church marriage and government marriage are two different things for two different purposes, sanctioned by two different authorities. Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's. And since nobody ever opens their eyes to that, they retain the same way of thinking on it, which is oppose laws allowing gay marriage.
But don't mistake their right-lean on that issue for an OVERALL right-lean in the african american church. It simply is not so. Left leaning political candidates can 9 times out of 10 count on the african american church for support. Conservative right candidates most of the time cannot.
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