Straight White American Jesus - The Re-Emergence of the Religious Left
Aired: 2019-12-19
Duration: 04:40


=== Reemergence Of The Religious Left (04:39) ===

[00:00:00]  AXIS MUNDY AXIS MUNDY Hello, and welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
[00:00:29]  I'm your host, Dan Miller, Associate Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College.
[00:00:34]  And as always, I'm joined by my co-host, Brad Onishi, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Skidmore College.
[00:00:41]  Good to see you, Brad.
[00:00:43]  Yeah, good to see you too, Dan.
[00:00:44]  Sorry.
[00:00:46]  We have a long-distance relationship, so listeners, you have to bear with us.
[00:00:48]  Sometimes, you know, we start talking and catching up, and we get carried away.
[00:00:55]  So, all right.
[00:00:56]  Dan, we are talking about the re-emergence of the religious left, and over the last two episodes, we have basically traced a history of the religious left that is, in some ways, I think, illuminating, but also maybe depressing, right?
[00:01:10]  Last episode, we talked about Cultural victories when it came to values like interfaith dialogue and tolerance and equality and diversity.
[00:01:19]  We saw that in movements like early and mid 20th century gay liberation movements.
[00:01:24]  We talked about the civil rights movement and so on and so forth.
[00:01:27]  However, there's no doubt that mainline Protestants have seen institutional decline.
[00:01:33]  And what we mean by that is people have left the church.
[00:01:35]  There are lower numbers.
[00:01:37]  And there's also lower visibility.
[00:01:39]  There's a branding war that the evangelicals have won when it comes to Protestantism.
[00:01:43]  Today we want to sort of talk about what's happening now.
[00:01:45]  We've traced the history.
[00:01:46]  So what's happening in 2019?
[00:01:47]  And one of the things we want to talk about is the fact that since the election of Donald Trump, there has been a reemergence of the religious left.
[00:01:56]  There's been a reassertion to sort of put the values of mainline Protestantism in the public square.
[00:02:04]  One way to think about this is the religious right was formed because people felt like they were losing their country and their culture, right?
[00:02:12]  And whether or not that that perception was accurate in any way is something we've talked about a lot in this podcast.
[00:02:19]  However, the religious left, I think, felt something very similar.
[00:02:22]  When Donald Trump was elected and when 81% of white evangelicals voted for him, there was this sense that they see a kind of A loss of the values that they fought so hard to institute in our culture, and then a renewed determination to sort of organize and to counter many of Trump's policies.
[00:02:43]  So what we're seeing is over issues like immigration and refugees, broad coalitions are forming on the religious left between Jewish and Muslim and Christian groups.
[00:02:54]  on issues like the Muslim ban.
[00:02:57]  We are seeing, we saw like very coherent and cohesive coalitions against it.
[00:03:05]  Reverend Dr. Barber and others have restarted the Poor People's Campaign, which is meant to sort of highlight economic inequality and to assert that caring for the most vulnerable is a value that should be held in the public square, and it comes directly from the gospel of Jesus Christ and the kingdom of God.
[00:03:28]  So we are seeing a kind of like reorganization and reassertion of the religious left, Dan.
[00:03:34]  And one of the things you and I've talked about is this kind of fits in with your own story.
[00:03:37]  I mean, you have been part of many different kinds of churches in your life.
[00:03:43]  But one of the things that you found unexpectedly was the election of Trump really sort of brought you back into the fold of Christianity.
[00:03:51]  Let's talk about that.
[00:03:52]  What happened?
[00:03:53]  Where do you want to start?
[00:03:54]  Why do you think that happened?
[00:03:57]  What's going on there?
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