The religious side of Occupy
As Occupy has continued to mature, its religious component has become more direct, up front and articulate.
People from a large variety of faith communities met at the Judson Memorial Church in New York in December and drafted a religious statement in support of Occupy called, Waking Force.
Subsequently a group of religious leaders from around the nation met last week at an ecumenical Seminary in Berkeley, affirmed the statement and developed an additional action agenda. The statement is described below.
As a people from various faith and spiritual communities, we find the OWS Movement a Waking Force that has dispelled despair, depression and denial about the gross injustices of society and the suffering of our people.
We stand together for engaged, transforming action that says:
• Yes to open democracy, fair justice systems, and public conversation that respect every person’s voice in determining the quality and future of our lives.
• Yes to just economic policies that create greater equality and that enable all to share responsibility for the common good.
• Yes to a generous society that provides high quality education, affordable housing, adequate income, meaningful work, and universal access to health care.
• Yes to strong environmental policies that guard the well being of the planet we all share.
• Yes to peace among nations based on human rights, compassion for all who suffer, religious liberty, mutual respect and civil liberties.
• Yes to immigration policies based on hospitality and generosity and respect for the vast diversity of human beings by race, sexuality, class, nationality, ethnicity, physical ability, occupation, gender and age.
• Yes to the transforming, creative works of human imagination and freedom that enliven our lives together and bring us life giving joy and laughter.
We are part of this very new movement because these values have been betrayed by an economic and political elite who have proven indifferent to the common good and their moral obligations to the public welfare.
Their betrayal cannot go unchallenged. We will continue to apply our Waking Force
to grow this movement and it effectiveness. The well being of the world’s people and the delicate balance of earthly life hang in this balance.
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Occupy Wall Street. It is a group of people emotionally invested in economic parity. The richest 1% stole our money and we want it back. The only tool we have to achieve that goal is government. We run government through politics. A political party is a group of people emotionally invested in a common goal, just like a religion. A political party is just another religion.
Imagine a natural resource that is powerful, ubiquitous, inexhaustible, and free. And, if you need a spike in supply, you can gin one up almost at will. And this natural resource requires almost no capital investment to exploit and transport. That natural resource is human emotion. Both politics and religion run on the same natural resource. OWS is just a great big oil field just waiting to be drilled for emotional profit. A political party is no place for divided loyalties. Religion will bleed off the energy we need to invest in making the government work for us. Mixing religion and politics just won't work for Democrats because the Republicans have all the authoritarians. All it will do for us is form a gigantic circular firing squad. Geez, it's bad enough already.
It's half the human experience. Politics, religion, sports and the Pepsi challenge all originate from the same place. Faith of one sort or another has fueled our evolutionary success since the Oldauvi Gorge and shows no sign of dissipating.
In this country, at this time, organized religion whether it's fundamentalist Christianity or new age subatomic mysticism has to deal with capitalism and its attendant science of mendacity, marketing, in the "marketplace of ideas". I don't care what kind of religion you call it, when it tries to attach its brand to a political movement it is competing for political power. And that never ends well.
Make no mistake, OWS is attempting to exercise power to control some of the most powerful people and organizations in history. Any organization be it some "new Christianity" or some corporation that attaches itself to that effort is just doing disaster capitalism. The sooner we learn that, the sooner we'll straighten out this mess.
And to answer your question, I was raised southern Baptist and my brother, who I idolize as one of the finest men I have ever known, was a southern Baptist missionary for many years. For my part, I was once a frighteningly effective salesman until I discovered what a horse's ass I had become and became an artist. The subtext of most of my work these days is, "If you can afford this painting, fuck you". You might say I've spent the last three or four decades in the study of what motivates people. 
Should the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. kept religion out of politics? What about the Rabbi Abraham Herschel?
The 3rd Selma Civil Rights March frontline. From far left: John Lewis, an unidentified nun; Ralph Abernathy; Martin Luther King, Jr.; Ralph Bunche; Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel; Frederick Douglas Reese. Second row: Between Martin Luther King, Jr. and Ralph Bunche is Rabbi Maurice Davis. Heschel later wrote, "When I marched in Selma, my feet were praying."
Do you think Democrats are immune to this shit? They aren't. Bring religion in and we will be pitting one faith against another. That's been tried before. It didn't work out so well.
...because like it or not, many are religious, and it will always find its way into politics. We've been trying your way and it's not working either. 
Do you want to guess what percentage of that 99% is religious?
You're also presuming that religion has nothing to say about wealth. Do you think Jesus would cheat on his taxes?
...Sparta and a number of North American tribes (notably the Iroquois and Choctaw). Spartan, an entirely illiterate state, was a civilization was practically set up as a sporting exercise and if need be war. In Spartan society the weak were discarded, men at together as if in teams, athletic training was encouraged, and the mark of manhood was murdering a helot (slave) without being detected (human hunting). The Iroquois and Choctaw play lacrosse and stickball respectively as a central competition to avoid war, it is an endeavor of central concern with historical games covering many miles and lasting days.
successful. 
...and considering that the Spartans defeated Athens in the Peloponnesian War and lasted as an organized independent society for roughly 1000 years. The Iroquois existed as an organized independent league for roughly 500 years we believe and the Choctaw slightly less. I'd say the verdict on our nation/civilization is very much still out.
Have people forgotten how important these organizations were in civil rights and social justice causes?
"Through his organization and its predecessors Jackson has advocated universal health care, a war on drugs, direct peace negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis, ending apartheid in South Africa and advancing democracy in Haiti.[25] The following is the organization's list of major issues:
1% Student Loans
Jobs and Economic Empowerment
Employee Rights and Livable Wages
Educational Access
Fair and Decent Housing
Voter Registration and Civic Education
Election Law Reform
Fairness in the Media, Sports, and Criminal Justice System
Political Empowerment
Trade and Foreign Policy
Affirmative Action and Equal Rights
Gender Equality
Environmental Justice"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow/PUSH
...and that could drag us back 2000 years in-and-of-itself! BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD - why do you hate reason?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Graham
Like many white public figures, Graham had shown little concern for segregation until the civil rights movement began to take off in the early 1950s, and many of his early crusades were segregated. In response to the civil rights movement, Graham was inconsistent, refusing to speak to some segregated auditoriums, while speaking to others. In 1953 he dramatically tore down the ropes that organizers had erected to separate the audience; he recounted in his memoirs that he told two ushers to leave the barriers down "or you can go on and have the revival without me."
...
Graham became a regular in the Oval Office during the tenure of Dwight D. Eisenhower, whom he urged to intervene with federal troops in the case of the Little Rock Nine,[8] and it was at that time, on a Washington golf course, that he met and became close friends with Vice President Richard Nixon.[19] Graham was invited by Eisenhower to visit with him when the former president was on his deathbed.[44] Graham also counseled Lyndon B. Johnson, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and the Bush family.
Please note, somebody shot MLK, while Graham went on to "advise" every president up to and including Barack Obama.
The phrase "Absolute power corrupts absolutely." implies a continuum. Here is a somewhat more expansive quote:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dalberg-Acton,_1st_Baron_Acton
And how has the Graham continuum played out?
http://www.religioustolerance.org/reac_ter18b.htm
"We're not attacking Islam but Islam has attacked us. The God of Islam is not the same God. He's not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It's a different God, and I believe it [Islam] is a very evil and wicked religion."
"It wasn’t Methodists flying into those buildings, it wasn’t Lutherans. It was an attack on this country by people of the Islamic faith."
Members of the Pentagon's chaplain group issued a letter stating that: "...we are deeply dismayed and disappointed that the Pentagon Chaplain's Office has invited Mr. Franklin Graham, an extremely controversial and divisive figure, to perform the Good Friday Services at the Pentagon on April 18, 2003. Mr. Graham has made recent public statements that are not only insulting and offensive to Muslims but also to those who espouse ecumenism among the faith groups. Mr. Graham's negative statements concerning Islam and Muslims, which he has never recanted, fly in the face of what we stand for as Americans. By sponsoring and promoting a visit to the Pentagon by an extreme fundamentalist like Mr. Graham, the Pentagon Chaplain's Office is sending a message that it and the Department of Defense condone public displays of attitudes and thoughts that contradict not only Department of Defense regulations but also the American ideal of religious tolerance.
Religious influence and intolerance in the military has become a problem in this country the implications of which I should not have enumerate.
These people and more like them are the new Martin Luther Kings:
Identity politics brought long overdue social and economic justice to millions of Americans and that project isn't over yet. I doubt it ever will be. But it came at a price. It alienated millions of Americans who just didn't know what to make of all the women and minorities splashing around in their political pool. Not a few of them abandoned the Democratic party in favor of others who promised them a new morning in America through a return to the traditional values of white, male, christian privilege. These are their children:
It seems that Lyndon Johnson's observation regarding the south seems to have been optimistic. It probably has something to do with Richard Nixon's political acumen.
Too many liberals have misty eyed memories of Woodstock and daises in rifle barrels. That's not the kind of political reality we face today. It more resembles the circumstances surrounding the battle of Blair mountain.
Associations of people through religious affiliation are on the wane. Such associations are effective for conservative politics because of the traditional, one could say outright backward if not fascist, orientation of conservatism today. One of the primary pillars of that conservatism is it's reliance on religion for constituent cohesion. It makes no sense since the Republican party perpetrates the same political date rape of christian conservatives every four years and they just come back for more. But that dogged devotion to conservative ideology only serves to emphasize how completely the Republicans dominate the relationship of religion and politics. They own it. They own the organizational infrastructure, the most devoted believers, the language, and the ideological power of religion in this country. You take any sort or type of religion into a political fight with them and you will lose. I don't care how you reinterpret, spin, re-brand, or sell whatever new iteration of Christianity suits your fancy, it's over. This country is becoming more secular right along with the rest of the industrialized world. Liberalism is, by definition, an ideology of change. Clinging to the relationship of religion and government runs so against the progress made by mankind in the last three thousand years I quite frankly can't see how anybody who considers themselves a liberal could even countenance the notion.
Here's how it works: A religious leader goes to his flock and says, "There's a social injustice that needs our attention!" and they all trundle off in a group to speak out and raise consciousness to change the world. Everybody sees that particular flock and recognizes the righteousness of their concerns. The blog-sphere crackles, news anchors blather, pundits bloviate, and hopefully a politician will notice. S/he might even score a meeting with an actual elected public official. Thus, the sainted guru of spiritual enlightenment can go back to his or her flock and say, "Didn't we do good!" Everybody likes a winner and that puts butts in the pews. And money in the collection plate. And the flock looks to the guru to bird dog the next social injustice for them to attack.
So how do you distinguish a religious leader from a lobbyist? How do you distinguish a religious organization from a lobbying organization? Given the requirements of effective political action in today's world, how do you distinguish a religion from a media empire?
And another lamprey attaches itself to the ass of American politics.
What WOULD OWS have done if not for god? 
