{"id":46,"date":"2008-12-02T05:39:45","date_gmt":"2008-12-02T05:39:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/comment-of-the-day-4.html"},"modified":"2008-12-02T05:39:45","modified_gmt":"2008-12-02T05:39:45","slug":"comment-of-the-day-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/comment-of-the-day-4.html","title":{"rendered":"Comment of the Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr. Science<\/a> weighs in on the question, Is There a Religious Left?<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

As “Your name” demonstrates, the answer to Tony’s question is “Yes”.<\/p>\n

Back in November 2004, Jeff Sharlet confessed it quite clearly,
\ntalking about questions he and Peter Manseau were asked while
\ndiscussing Killing the Buddha<\/i>
\nhttp:\/\/www.therevealer.org\/archives\/timely_001143.php<\/a>
\n“What’s the common denominator of American faith? What is it that most of us share?<\/p>\n

We lied every time. We offered up sincere but misleading tributes to
\nfreedom of speech as the American devotion. We avoided the answer that
\nhad made itself as plain as the two-lane roads we drove on: The
\ngreatest common denominator of American belief is anti-homosexuality.”<\/p>\n

I will extend that to say that opposition to women’s free choice of
\nabortion is a cross-denominational metric of the “religious right”.<\/p>\n

What these two tenets — anti-homosexuality and anti-choice — have
\nin common is opposition to anything other than traditional sex roles.
\nSo:<\/p>\n

The “religious right” is anyone who believes that the most important function of religion is to support traditional sex roles.<\/p>\n

The “religious left” is anyone who believes that the most important function of religion is *anything else*.<\/p>\n

Anything. If opposition to abortion and\/or gay marriage is not your
\nfirst-tier, make-or-break religious issue, you’re on the religious
\nleft. That’s all it takes. So in a way, yeah, you could say there’s no
\n“religious left”, because they have no unifying principle except not
\nthinking the patriarchy is all that. The only way the religious left
\ncould be unified is by coming out (pun intended) as anti-patriarchal.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Also, there’s an interesting comment string on polyamory<\/a> under Comment of the Weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Science weighs in on the question, Is There a Religious Left? As “Your name” demonstrates, the answer to Tony’s question is “Yes”. Back in November 2004, Jeff Sharlet confessed it quite clearly, talking about questions he and Peter Manseau were asked while discussing Killing the Buddha http:\/\/www.therevealer.org\/archives\/timely_001143.php “What’s the common denominator of American faith?…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":134,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment-of-the-day","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nComment of the Day - The New Christians<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/tonyjones\/2008\/12\/comment-of-the-day-4.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Comment of the Day - The New Christians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Dr. Science weighs in on the question, Is There a Religious Left? As “Your name” demonstrates, the answer to Tony’s question is “Yes”. 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