August 30, 2000
Lieberman's Revival of the Religious Left
By ELEANOR BROWN
WASHINGTON -- When we hear the term "religious activists" on the evening news, we think automatically of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and a parade of conservative Christian evangelicals. But now Joe Lieberman, a Jewish, mostly liberal Democrat running for vice president, is talking about God, and as he does so, reviving a potent tradition of a different kind of religious activism, one that that had lain dormant since an assassin's bullet struck down Martin Luther King in 1968. When Mr. Lieberman called for a "new spiritual awakening" in America in a sermon Sunday at a black church, he nourished the hope of those more than ready for a rebirth of a nationally prominent religious left.
Mr. Lieberman's presence on the ticket has driven a wedge between the words "religious" and "right," a pairing that many had come to see as automatic.
His words echo Dr. King's in haunting ways. It is "midnight within the moral order," Dr. King once wrote. "At midnight colors lose their distinctiveness and become a sullen shade of gray." He added, "Midnight is the hour when men desperately seek to obey the Eleventh Commandment, 'Thou shalt not get caught.' "
Mr. Lieberman condemns a "values vacuum," which he describes as "an amorphous area where moral certainty fears to tread" and where there are "fewer and fewer bright lines and more and more blurs of gray." For some, he says, "the Ten Commandments have become little more than another 'do and don't' list."
Similar words about moral relativism might be said by the religious right, of course, but to far different political ends. If Mr. Lieberman succeeds at reuniting morality and political liberalism, he will have revived one of the most powerful movements in American history -- a potent force in the abolition of slavery, labor reforms and the civil rights movement.
In the last few decades, the debate about religion in public life has been unable to move beyond a divisive standoff between religious conservatives and liberal secularists who are overwhelmingly hostile to public displays of religiosity. These secularists have embraced an understanding of the Constitution as mandating a wall of separation between church and state. In the interest of fostering social cooperation and undermining religious bigotry, liberals insist that we shed those aspects of our identities that are non-negotiable -- including our religious identities -- before entering the public sphere.
Liberals have misidentified the source of the problem. What is problematic is not vibrant religious activism in the public square, but the consistent association of religious devotion with a particular set of dogmatic political opinions. And conservatives have exacerbated the misconception with their strong-arm tactics and unwillingness to entertain debate on their political views.
Sadly, public religiosity is now automatically associated with a core set of political positions. The intensity of the fundamentalist Christian conservative opposition to abortion may be understandable, relating as it does to the central religious idea of the sanctity of life. However, the Christian conservatives have taken on other controversial political positions with no clear connection to religious belief. What, for example, does Christianity have to do with supply-side economics?
This is why Mr. Lieberman is so important. By severing the connection between religious devotion and political conservatism, he has injected a new force into the wider political debate. Although much has been made of his moral rhetoric, he receives high ratings from liberal groups and on many issues holds views diametrically opposed to those of the religious right. Mr. Lieberman demonstrates that people of religious faith can, and do, disagree on important political issues that imply deeply held moral beliefs. More important, he represents a willingness -- rarely seen among liberals at the national level -- to ground his political positions in specific religious commitments.
Eleanor Brown, a lawyer, is a fellow at the New America Foundation.