The Left and Religion

For anyone who is wondering why the right has come to dominate politics, i would suggest you read "The Left Hand of God" by Rabbi Michael Lerner.

The main point of his book is that the left is failing to appeal to the spiritual needs of the American people. By spiritual needs, I mean people's need to be part of a support community where they are valued for who they are and where they can escape from the often soul-crushing workplace that capitalism has created. Spiritual needs also encompass people's desire to have a meaning in their life, a purpose that they can turn to when they are despairing about the horrors of the world. Unfortunately for the left, the Religious Right has managed to monopolize the political landscape when it comes to appealing to these needs. Of course the left has not helped itself, being anti-religious and demeaning to toward the American public. Having an aversion to religion is destroying the left. And there is no reason for it. Over half the Bible is about poverty and there is no reason why the left should not start appealing to people's moral and religiousness when it comes to fighting for social justice. Religion need not be oppressive, as so many people find it to be. It is just another institution in our society that the left has lost its influence over.
In fact, it seems that the left has been unable to even admit to itself that most of its members are indeed motivated by loving, caring, generosity, and other values that are spiritually based. No, they delude themselves into believing their altruistic and spiritual tendencies exist because they are simply in their own self-interest. I am guilty of this myself, looking for my own self-interest in my altruistic nature. If we put ourselves out there and stopped trying to rationalize our motivations as self-interest, we would probably see a massive upsurge in the left.
I hope one day the left will stop being so anti-religious. Certainly religion has been used to do alot of evil in this world... but so has every other belief system. The left itself has its Stalins and Maos who murdered and corrupted society. But, those atrocities are not representative of the average person who is a member of that belief system. Most people are inherently good, intelligent and human. To assume that one group of people is stupid, evil, or somehow less than equal to oneself is a VERY slippery slope, and will only bring woe and contempt. I always seem to find myself trying to convince people of that. They tell me I am not realistic. Well, I think I am the one who is being realistic. It is unrealistic to think people are not inherently good. For one thing, you will always end up alienating them if you see them that way. On the other hand, if you believe people to be good, then they will often (not always, but often) try to live up to that belief. It is both morally right and practical to see people as inherently good. And, this extend to the institutions they are a part of. Certainly those institutions can be used for ill. But, at their core, there is good. We must search for and embrace that goodness. There is no reason why the left should continue to be anti-religious... it is a stereotyping that has similar negative social consequences to racism and sexism (although currently less severe than those).

I say this with full knowledge that some people may be religious themselves, but find evangelicalism to be offensive. I encourage such individuals to purge those feelings, because if you get to know evangelicals you will find that prejudice against them is socially and personally destructive.