Religious Left finds their voice

It’s about time [1]:

At a church in Washington, hundreds of committed Christians met recently and tried to map out a strategy to get their values into the political debate.

But these are not the conservative Christian values which have been so influential lately. This is the religious left.

"Jesus called us to love our neighbor, love our enemy, care for the poor, care for the outcast, and that's really the moral core of where we think the nation ought to go"

Not that the religious left has been silent during this administration. Sojourners, for example, has developed a great deal of clout. But I have little confidence that this movement will go very far.

The Christian left may be far more in tune with the teachings of Jesus than the right. But that was never under dispute. The point of contention between the right and left, as I see it, is two-fold:

The first regards who is to be the recipient of these values of charity and works. Are they other Christians? Are they people of faith only? Or are they intended for all humans and perhaps even ecosystems? The left would lean towards the latter while the right appears to believe that non-believers, and more specifically non-Christians, are some sort of sub-species akin to animals that constitute a planetary scourge in the final end-times battle.

The second major difference, again as I see it, regards the emphasis on Jesus and the New Testament versus the bible as a whole. The right tends to be far more comfortable with the Old Testament principles, with its moral absolutes and iron-clad commandments. They are simple, spelled out in detail, and generally unambiguous. Whereas the left is more apt to find wisdom in the Beatitudes [2], one of the greatest declarations of morality in written history, yet far more abstract and demanding of critical interpretation.

While I applaud the left’s efforts to pursue an agenda of love and tolerance, the right is far more likely to resonate with the secular and fair-weathered religious who have been indoctrinated in a national culture based upon warfare and vengeance.

I hope beyond hope that I am tragically wrong about this.

[3]