4.4 • 645 Ratings
🗓️ 3 March 2020
⏱️ 50 minutes
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0:00.0 | Hello, current affairs listeners. It's your host, Pete Davis here. We have an episode for you today |
0:06.1 | on a theme that is one of my favorite hobby horses for long listeners of the show. You'll be |
0:12.1 | thinking, oh, here he is talking about it again. That hobby horse is the religious left. |
0:18.0 | There is a very interesting history of the intersection of religion and politics in America. |
0:23.3 | For much of American history, politicized religion was often associated, and it's hard to believe |
0:29.0 | today, but it was often associated in the public eye with left-wing justice causes, |
0:34.7 | abolition, women's suffrage, the social gospel, the civil rights movement, |
0:39.2 | pacifism, immigrant labor rights, lots of preachers, nuns, priests, reverends, rabbis, popes, pastors |
0:46.5 | involved. Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, Jane Adams, you've heard the names, Daniel Berrigan, |
0:53.1 | Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, so many more. |
0:55.9 | But then, in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, with the rise of the moral majority and Pat Robertson |
1:03.6 | and Jerry Falwell and peaking with George W. Bush's openly evangelical presidency, |
1:10.2 | politicized religion for most people around today, |
1:12.9 | especially young people, has been most often associated with the right. |
1:17.6 | And ever since there's been a perennial question of what can we do to revive a religious |
1:25.2 | left again, a religious left that has been such an important tradition |
1:28.6 | in the history of American politics and justice. And there are some folks trying to do that. |
1:34.9 | And I'm here with one today. Josh Davis is the executive director of the Institute for Christian |
1:41.8 | Socialism, the newly founded, I should say, Institute for Christian Socialism. |
1:46.4 | Josh, welcome to the Current Affairs World headquarters. |
1:50.4 | Thank you, Pete. It is wonderful to be with you. Thank you for the invitation. |
1:53.6 | So glad to have you on. I'm going to just give a quick statement of what your mission statement is, |
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