Updated: This claim is open to strong challenge but even if it is true there is zero chance of being able to reverse decline of religion affiliation. How would anyone do anything here? Make believing in the Resurrection a leftist cause? All in all Christianity has been a destructive and controlling legacy. The world has to move on…I am a student of multiple religions but the idea I would go to a Church community for leftist support is ridiculous. The case of Martin Luther King is misleading here. He was not a conventional Christian but a student of Hegel and Tillich, a lot like my Dad,a preacher who was not a theist, as far as I could tell, but, who knows. The point here is this essay at Jacobin could never replicate with, evidently Rev. Barber, the sourceof this perspective, what King did, and the communities referred to were slave communities that passed through abolition into a fascinating brand of Christianity, but one that is unique and transient, and really a great case of singing from the Protestant hymnal, but weak on theology, as are all Christianities. When I critiqued historical materialism of the Marx canon I knew ahead of time I would be writing this post: the Christians would steal a march on the wicked Marx. So, one should be clear, Marx sounded a secular note, and he was right to do so but his canon turned out to be flawed, and purveyed a brittle brand of materialist philosophy. So what it can be upgraded, but one thing that is not possible is for the left to step backward into god beliefs enforced by religious dogmas of the Christian church. If you don’t see why you don’t deserve to be a leftist/activist leader. The suggestions in this essay will lead in the end to religious war and in case you think we haven’t enough of that go read the history of the Reformation, one of the most violent and unending conflicts in history, and it went on and on and on until everyone just go tired of it.
This kind of essay at Jacobin is dangerous because it implies that religious entities should control the left, and therefore what about those don’t buy it? They will be Christian heretics and all parties will get into a fight and the implication is that leftists will go to hell, etc…
So, I would strongly suggest, NEVER try to force a secular humanist into a retrograde Christian post. The gesture is violent and will be met promptly with, stare down my gun barrel.
Christianity cannot serve us now. Jesus was not/is not your personal savior. The Christianiy theology was a fraud and our knowledge of Jesus in any case is essentially zero
The decline of religious affiliation in the United States has harmed the Left more than the Right. It has also produced millions of spiritual-but-not-religious Americans who are lonely and hungry for a nourishing community. We should organize them.
Source: As Religious Institutions Decline, the Left Loses Out. We Can Change That.
1848+: The End(s) of History 