{"id":607,"date":"2014-06-14T10:33:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-14T10:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/06\/progressive-religion-or-just-religion.html"},"modified":"2014-06-14T10:33:00","modified_gmt":"2014-06-14T10:33:00","slug":"progressive-religion-or-just-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/06\/progressive-religion-or-just-religion.html","title":{"rendered":"“Progressive” Religion Or Just Religion?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
Last week\u00a0HuffPo Religion<\/em>\u2018s executive editor Paul Raushenbush wrote about a \u201cstunning resurgence<\/a>\u201d of progressive Christianity. The right, he notes, had been the \u201cdefault religious voice\u201d of the final three decades of the twentieth century\u2014but its loud, extended run may be over.<\/span><\/div>\n
Why did progressive religion languish for so long? Ed Kilgore has\u00a0explained<\/a>\u00a0this way: 1) the religious left is a smaller and less homogeneous movement than religious conservatism; 2) secular progressives have little use for religion; and 3) when political progressives\u00a0do<\/em>\u00a0decide to reach out to faith groups, they generally reach out to conservatives.<\/span><\/div>\n
This last challenge, Kilgore reminds us,\u00a0tends to reinforce the belief of both religious conservatives and many secular observers that the only\u00a0authentic<\/em>\u00a0faith traditions are those that identify godliness with patriarchal cultural conservatism and\/or literalist approaches to sacred texts.<\/span><\/div>\n
This discussion about progressive religion reminds me of the discourse around moderate Islam. These modifiers for religious identity represent an attempt to map spiritually motivated social engagement onto broader political trends in a way that distorts both religion and politics. \u201cProgressive\u201d is usually shorthand for the blue side of our nuance-flattening red\/blue political division. When the term \u201cmoderate Muslim\u201d is used, the person speaking or writing is usually a non-Muslim who is trying to gauge where Muslims fall in a stark \u201cus vs. them\u201d perspective on the world.<\/span><\/div>\n
This conceptual polarization presents a number of problems for religious groups and their potential for political impact.<\/span><\/div>\n
Using modifiers to characterize spiritual commitments\u2014whether \u201cprogressive\u201d Christianity (for example) or \u201cmoderate\u201d Islam\u2014 promotes the idea that groups with progressive or moderate values are outliers within their own traditions. And, conversely, this rhetoric privileges the points of view of coreligionists who adopt a more insular or exclusivist interpretation of a shared tradition. \u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
So modifying \u201cChristianity\u201d with the word \u201cprogressive\u201d tacitly accepts (or subtly asserts) that the values of progressives aren\u2019t at the heart of what Christianity is all about.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week\u00a0HuffPo Religion\u2018s executive editor Paul Raushenbush wrote about a \u201cstunning resurgence\u201d of progressive Christianity. The right, he notes, had been the \u201cdefault religious voice\u201d of the final three decades of the twentieth century\u2014but its loud, extended run may be over. Why did progressive religion languish for so long? Ed Kilgore has\u00a0explained\u00a0this way: 1) the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n"Progressive" Religion Or Just Religion?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Last week HuffPo Religion's executive editor Paul Raushenbush wrote about a "stunning resurgence" of progressive Christianity. 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