Can the religious left reclaim the political respect it enjoyed a generation ago?
Despite a rich history and a high level of visibility in the 1960s and 1970s, we have heard very little about the American religious left in recent decades. Observers have wondered whether there might still be a religious left in the United States to counterbalance the religious right. For example, America’s preeminent religious historian, Martin Marty, has mused: “[Perhaps] the religious left flies stealthily low and gets unnoticed. Or [maybe] there is not much of a religious left about which to speak.” The political mood of the United States since the 1980s has not benefited the religious left. The dominant political story of the end of the 20th Century was the ascendancy of conservatism after the New Deal and Great Society eras. The Protestant left has tried since the 1980s to continue articulating its 1960s-style peace-and-justice agenda, but these attempts have gone largely unnoticed. The Protestant left might also be hindered by its longstanding support for a high wall between ch
