>>> Katha Pollitt wrote:
Several listmembers have said things along the lines of the Left should
be more sympathetic to, tolerant of, willing to work with religious
people, more careful about distinguishing religious belief from
particular noxious political positions held by some religious people.
etc.
the Nation has run article after article making these points on no evidence and distorted quotes (some from me!). But WHO exactly is doing all this chastising of everyone who believes in god? WHO is refusing to work with Sister Helen Prejean on death penalty stuff, or the methodist church on social justice issues? Who says Cornel West is a jackass because he's a minister? Where is the "left" attack on the Methodists or the presbyterians or the maryknolls or the reform branch of Judaism? the issue is not about casting religious people from "the left" because they believe in God, but about the specific content of certain faith-based conservative political causes. Let's have some concrete citations -- not anecdotes about some rude thing that happened twenty years ago, or some vague impression.
I don't care whether people believe in God or not -- as someone said, most people believe lots of foolish things, including me no doubt -- so if my friend Peggy wants to believe in Jesus, fine. but I don't want to pay for their schools, I don't want my child to have to say their prayers or listen, in public school, to their abstinence-only garbage, and I don't want their doctrines running my personal life, whether its my right to a divorce or my right to read books about gay history in the public library. >>
__ Me: I kinda agree with Katha. It seems to me that the left is so well trained in not being anti-religious so as not to be sectarian, that it has reached a point where the ideology of atheism has been utterly silenced. As she says, there is absolutly no problem of leftists attacking believers. All you have is the totally phony posturing from some Christians as if they were still being persecuted as in the Roman empire, Daniel in the Lion's den and all that; when in fact we are in a Christian theocracy.
I don't propose that we start attacking progressive Christians, but some how atheists have to have more of a voice in public discourse. We must struggle to legitimize it. In fact, the above mentioned avoidance of sectarianism has turned into severe opportunism.
And I think leaving public discourse on "god" to believers is a profoundly corrupting influence on mass consciousness that does contribute to the current collapse of the left and triumph of the bourgeoisie .
Charles Brown