Wonderful article on liberal Protestantism

This is a very well-written article from today's Chronicle of Higher Education:

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v51/i44/44b00601.htm

From the issue dated July 8, 2005

A Liberal Dose of Religious Fervor

By WARREN GOLDSTEIN

To listen in on debates about the current American political landscape is to be overwhelmed by a tide of print and talk about the importance of religion. But by the odd alchemy of American politics, "religion" has come to mean "politically conservative religion," often used interchangeably with theologically conservative evangelical or fundamentalist Protestantism.

In the wake of the Terri Schiavo battle, the touring Ten Commandments, and a national television broadcast featuring the Senate majority leader arguing that filibusters (particularly the Democratic kind) are anti-religious, one could conclude that the religious scene has been divvied up between godless secularists and Bible-thumping descendants of William Jennings Bryan.

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As representatives of a mainstream religious force that leads and sustains activism on behalf of racial and gender equality and combating injustice, religious liberals ought not to forget their past or give in to the dominant narrative of their own demise. Just as it's entirely too soon to write the epitaph of political liberalism, reports of the death of liberal religion, especially liberal Protestantism, have been wildly exaggerated.

Warren Goldstein is a professor and chairman of history at the University of Hartford. He is the author of William Sloane Coffin Jr.: A Holy Impatience (Yale University Press, 2004).
http://chronicle.com
Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 51, Issue 44, Page B6

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