Steven Malanga on "the religious left"

Predictably, Malanga's WSJ commentary is quite critical and only passingly accurate or insightful. Less predictable--or at least, harder to take seriously--is his commitment to the odd idea that liberal religious activism is overwhelmingly about wealth redistribution in general and support for organized labor in particular. The result is one of those WSJ pieces that's full of names and facts but little overarching truthfulness--a red scare posing as a history lesson.

Still, I like one small thing about this--he correctly identifies the Protestant mainline as a driving force behind most left-leaning Christian political activity. Current "progressive" Christian movements are not driven primarily by evangelical ideological realignment, no matter how much those of us who come from that world and yearn to see the religious right's hegemonic grip released may wish that this were true (and no matter how many MSM stories report this as realized fact rather than as the germ of possibility).

So thanks, Malanga, for giving the NCC and the seven sisters (along with the Catholic bishops) the credit they deserve. If only you'd said more (actually, anything at all) about the historic black church, Latino pentecostals, or the peace church tradition...of course, these are pretty far down my list of complaints about the piece.