CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (ABP) — A group of young Democrats met during their party's national convention to discuss how they can help the Democratic Party “regain its moral footing,” as one participant described it.
The meeting, “Faith in Politics Roundtable: Restoring Religious Vision,” was held July 28 in a meeting room on the Harvard University campus, just outside Boston. The session was convened by a group called the 2020 Democrats, an independent, year-old network of about 3,000 high school to college-aged people from across the country who want to unite their peers around a progressive agenda for the nation.
Earlier in the day, a “People of Faith Luncheon” likewise urged Democrats gathered for their national convention to integrate moral and religious values into their party's policies and positions.
At the meeting of younger Democrats, moderator Nathan Wilson began the discussion by asking the approximately 30 participants what comes to mind when they hear the term “religion and politics.”
“Jerry Falwell!” one participant immediately responded, to a mixture of laughter and groans from the audience.
Wilson is an ordained Disciples of Christ minister and former director of public policy for the Washington anti-poverty group Call to Renewal. He said that response — and the names of other leaders in the Religious Right — is regretfully common when talking about the intersection of faith and the public sphere. “The list doesn't really warm the hearts of progressives,” he said.
But, as Wilson and other participants argued, the realm of moral issues in politics goes far beyond the common topics — abortion, sexuality issues and public displays of religion.
And they think Democrats can change that for the better.
Wilson and his fellow 2020 Democrats members have begun a project to get the party to use more faith-based arguments in talking about those social issues on which they think the Democratic Party has a moral edge.
The Harvard meeting was designed as a brainstorming session to come up with ideas the group can implement or pitch to Democratic opinion leaders — ways to explain how their faith motivates them to be passionate advocates for economic justice, human rights and religious freedom.
“A lot of Democrats are actually afraid [to talk about faith],” said 16-year-old Emily Hogin, a high school student from California. “They get pushed away from it” for fear of offending people who don't share their religious creed.
But participant Josh Green — one of the meeting's conveners — said that, though he understood that problem and that Democrats should respect the separation of church and state, most people's religious convictions provide at least a portion of the motivation for their political beliefs.
“One of the things I see [in Democrats] is the internal separation of church and state,” Green said. “People don't even acknowledge that their religious faith informs their political views.”
However, many of the young Democrats warned that they shouldn't misuse religion for political ends. “A lot of ministers, I think, are very conservative,” Jarrett Brown said. “They manipulate their analyses of the Bible, and they manipulate [moral critiques of] public policy so they can tell their congregations how to vote.”
However, Jeff Fallis of Macon, Ga., said religious progressives — and particularly progressive Christians — need to be more aggressive in confronting what they believe are the manipulations of the Religious Right. “The Democrats haven't come out and said [to Religious Right leaders], 'You're just a bunch of Bible-thumping bigots who don't represent the Spirit of Christ within you,'” he said.
Several discussion participants said that support of church-state separation itself can be defended on religious grounds. “We're always afraid to talk about faith as Democrats,” said Bryan Specht, a 31-year-old political consultant in Chicago. “But if we can talk about it in the sense that there is no more important thing for us to defend than a person's right to express their faith, then” Democrats can re-claim part of the political discourse on religion.
One of the meeting's conveners, Lucas Smith, asked the group: “Is the word 'morals' even reclaimable for the left?” Smith, who works for the Episcopal Church's publishing house, said conservatives have concentrated moral language on a handful of political issues. “I think we lost it about 15 years ago.”
But Specht countered, “There [are] a lot of people who are doing it right.” He pointed to Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), an African-American Baptist minister who is a passionate advocate for the liberal side of many social, economic and foreign-policy issues.
Tom Wyler, a 25-year-old political consultant and former aide to a congressman, agreed. “We need to expand the idea of what is a religious issue in politics,” he said.
-30-