Rev. Welton Gaddy, State of Belief, warns against using religion as a political tool.

madfloridian

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Sun Dec-21-08 02:12 AM
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Rev. Welton Gaddy, State of Belief, warns against using religion as a political tool.

Edited on Sun Dec-21-08 02:12 AM by madfloridian

His show on XM 167 on Sundays is one we never miss. He is one of the most intelligent refreshing voices in the religious world today. I grew up in the rigid atmosphere of the Southern Baptist Church, still recovering. He is a pleasure to hear, and I believe his type of Christianity is what Jesus Christ would have blessed.

Religion and the Democratic Party

So, where is the Democratic Party going with religion? Is the nation entering a new era of �Mutual Assured Devoutness �(MAD)-a religious version of the cold war�s �mutual assured destruction�? Is religion becoming as Pastor Dan Schultz of Street Prophets asks, a new religious industrial complex? And if Democrats no longer look down at their shoes when they talk about their faith, is it only if their faith is mainstream Christian? How do American Muslims, Hindus, Baha�is, Sikhs, Humanist, and even atheists, just to name a few other beliefs, fit in?

As we look to the future of religion and politics, what role will religion have in uniting or dividing the nation? In crafting our founding documents our early leaders sought to protect religion from politics and politics from religion so that both could flourish as positive influences. The positive role of religion is tarnished if it becomes just another political tool that plays one side off of another. As we start with a new Administration and a new Congress, all parties should pray that does not happen.

He links to a post by Sarah Posner, another of my favorites in the realm of fundamentalism. She writes The FundamentaList at the American Prospect.

This article is from Religion Dispatches.

Battling for the Soul of the Democratic Party

The Making of the �Religious Industrial Complex�

Eyes aimed upward, the loudly faithful Democrats have achieved a lot in four short years. The party launched a Faith in Action initiative and hosted, for the first time, a faith caucus at its convention. Under the leadership of then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic caucus organized a Democratic Faith Working Group, which meets regularly with religious constituencies to craft policy.

Operatives and advocates sprang up to offer advice on how to win over religious voters. Amy Sullivan, an editor at Time magazine, published The Party Faithful, both a castigation of Democratic elites for allegedly failing to understand or connect with religious voters and a blueprint for electoral outreach. Mara Vanderslice, the former director (and critic) of John Kerry�s religious outreach opened Common Good Strategies to advise Democratic candidates on faith outreach, before founding the Matthew 25 Network, which supported Barack Obama. Burns Strider, the Pelosi aide who helped launch the Faith Working Group, went on to become the religious outreach strategist for Hillary Clinton�s presidential campaign and runs his own consulting firm, the Eleison Group. In 2007, Religion News Service named him, Sullivan, and Vanderslice among the �twelve most influential Democrats in the nation on faith and values politics and issues.�

While the Democrats have come a long way in four years, Strider said, those efforts cannot match decades of organizing. �We�re going to see continued �bringing into the fold� faith organizing within campaigns and within the party,� he told an audience at the National Press Club last month.

...."By 2008, the constellation of organizations and initiatives that had cropped up inside the Beltway began cultivating the public personae of a new generation of religious leaders. Pastor Dan Schultz of the Street Prophets blog calls this constellation the �religious industrial complex.� Within this constellation, many believe, is the new generation of �broader agenda� religious leaders who hold the key to electoral success: swing Catholic voters, weekly churchgoers, and evangelicals.

Posner further goes on to ask "is the Religious Left Getting Left Behind by the Beltway Constellation?"

Yes, I think so. Perhaps because of the beltway bubble, perhaps unthinkingly. But it's a good question and needs an answer.