>>> Carrol Cox writes:
[SNIP]
The leftists on this list, I dare say, can be divided with little remainder into two groups: those whose practice has involved almost continuous close collaborative work with religious people for as many years as they have been on the left (in my case 30+) and those whose relationship to religious people consists of whining to other leftists about how we have to work with religious people. And religious people who can be worked with are not so damned tender either. They can take it.
As the gulf war was nearing an end and the anti-war movement was melting away, our committee here had what proved to be a last meeting, and at one point the question of when to schedule our next meeting, and I suggested the following Sunday. "That's Easter Sunday," someone remarked, and I spontaneously squeaked out, "Oh those damned christians." Everyone laughed good-naturedly (and my wife and I happened to be the only non-catholics in the room).
That's been my experience for nearly 35 years. That's been the experience of almost every leftist from different parts of the country with whom I've worked. Never once, in those decades, have I ever heard any fellow leftist get up and claim that we musn't work with christians. And yet this stupid thread has been going on as if the revolution depended on convincing all those leftists around that they should stop spitting in the face of their christian comrades.
____________
Me:
I agree with Carrol's point above. In general, Leftists are not anti-religious in their conduct or speech in their work with religious or theist progressive political activists.
Carrol, do you agree that it is an accurate generalization that religious belief and group membership adversely affects the political economic ideology of the masses of working people ( I am not referring to the small numbers of religious believers who interpret their religion as dictating progressive political activism and with whom we work with well) ?
Charles