In a long-delayed response to the emergence of the Religious Right, there are stirrings of life on the Religious Left, reports the intrepid Amy Sullivan in (subscription-only) Salon. Her departure point is a press conference held last week by leaders of five mainline Protestant churches (the Protestant Episcopal Church, the United Methodists, the Presbyterian Church USA, the United Church of Christ, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America) denouncing George W. Bush’s proposed budget as “immoral.”While greeting this development, Sullivan goes on to indict “liberal” Protestants (the primary components, outside the African-American churches, of the “Christian Left”) for a self-marginalizing, secularized approach to political engagement in the past, complemented by a hands-off attitude towards religion by these churches’ natural allies in the Democratic Party. She also notes that mainline churches have been frequently paralyzed by internal denominational fights in recent years, exemplified by the current travails of the Episcopalians over same-sex unions.If anything, I suspect Amy’s being too nice to her fellow (and my fellow) mainline Protestants. Look at that list of denominations represented in the anti-Bush press conference again. They were once the dominant religious, cultural and political forces in America. They have been shrinking in numbers, and in influence, for decades, even as fundamentalist and pentecostal denominations grow like topsy. There are certainly demographic and sociological reasons aplenty for their decline, but you don’t have to be a conservative to understand that religious liberals have largely lost their prophetic voices somewhere between weekly worship services and the host of civic and political organizations they support with great energy and commitment.The steady secularization of mainline Protestantism over the second half of the twentieth century is an old and familiar story. But its relationship to the counter-secularization now championed by the Christian Right is less well understood. It’s fairly safe to say much of the political and social teaching being hurled at congregations across the religious spectrum is dangerously disconnected from its scriptural and theological roots. This gives religio-political conservatives an advantage, given the natural tendency of religiously minded people to value what they understand as “traditional values.” And it gives fundamentalists a crucial advantage, because they can selectively find “inerrant” scriptural support for any number of right-wing cultural and political positions.That’s why the revival of mainline Protestantism as a religious force, and as a poltical and cultural force, point in exactly the same direction: a movement to rediscover and proclaim the profoundly un-conservative message of the Law, the Prophets, the Gospels, the Church Fathers, and Church History, with a minimum reliance on modern sociology or Identity Politics.Let the Christian Right be the faction of bad physical and social science, bad economics, and distorted, selective history. Let them be the ones who dress up secular agendas in “God Talk.”Sure, the Religious Left needs to adopt better organizational methods, better communications strategies, and better tactics. But above all, “liberal” Christians need to save themselves as religious communities before they can fulfill their calling to help redeem the world for truly Christian values.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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July 11: If Biden “Steps Aside” and Harris Steps Up, There Should Be No Falloff in Support
At New York I discussed and tried to resolve one source of anxiety about a potential alternative ticket:
One very central dynamic in the recent saga of Democratic anxiety over Joe Biden’s chances against Donald Trump, given the weaknesses he displayed in his first 2024 debate, has been the role of his understudy, Vice-President Kamala Harris. My colleague Gabriel Debenedetti explained the problem nearly two years ago as the “Kamala Harris conundrum”:
“Top party donors have privately worried to close Obama allies that they’re skeptical of Harris’s prospects as a presidential candidate, citing the implosion of her 2020 campaign and her struggles as VP. Jockeying from other potential competitors, like frenemy Gavin Newsom, suggests that few would defer to her if Biden retired. Yet Harris’s strength among the party’s most influential voters nonetheless puts her in clear pole position.”
The perception that Harris is too unpopular to pick up the party banner if Biden dropped it, but too well-positioned to be pushed aside without huge collateral damage, was a major part of the mindset of political observers when evaluating Democratic options after the debate. But now fresher evidence of Harris’s public standing shows she’s just as viable as many of the candidates floated in fantasy scenarios about an “open convention,” “mini-primary,” or smoke-filled room that would sweep away both parts of the Biden-Harris ticket.
For a good while now, Harris’s job-approval numbers have been converging with Biden’s after trailing them initially. These indicate dismal popularity among voters generally, but not in a way that makes her an unacceptable replacement candidate should she be pressed into service in an emergency. As of now, her job-approval ratio in the FiveThirtyEight averages is 37.1 percent approve to 51.2 percent disapprove. Biden’s is 37.4 percent approve to 56.8 percent disapprove. In the favorability ratios tracked by RealClearPolitics, Harris is at 38.3 favorable to 54.6 percent unfavorable, while Biden is at 39.4 percent favorable to 56.9 percent unfavorable. There’s just not a great deal of difference other than slightly lower disapproval/unfavorable numbers for the veep.
On the crucial measurement of viability as a general-election candidate against Trump, there wasn’t much credible polling prior to the post-debate crisis. An Emerson survey in February 2024 showed Harris trailing Trump by 3 percent (43 percent to 46 percent), which was a better showing than Gavin Newsom (down ten points, 36 percent to 46 percent) or Gretchen Whitmer (down 12 points, 33 percent to 45 percent).
After the debate, though, there was a sudden cascade of polling matching Democratic alternatives against Trump, and while Harris’s strength varied, she consistently did as well as or better than the fantasy alternatives. The first cookie on the plate was a one-day June 28 survey from Data for Progress, which showed virtually indistinguishable polling against Trump by Biden, Harris, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Gavin Newsom, J.B. Pritzker, Josh Shapiro, and Gretchen Whitmer. All of them trailed Trump by 2 to 3 percent among likely voters.
Then two national polls released on July 2 showed Harris doing better than other feasible Biden alternatives. Reuters/Ipsos (which showed Biden and Trump tied) had Harris within a point of Trump, while Newsom trailed by three points, Andy Beshear by four, Whitmer by five, and Pritzker by six points. Similarly, CNN showed Harris trailing Trump by just two points; Pete Buttigieg trailing by four points; and Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer trailing him by five points.
Emerson came back with a new poll on July 9 that wasn’t as sunny as some for Democrats generally (every tested name trailed Trump, with Biden down by three points). But again, Harris (down by six points) did better than Newsom (down eight points); Buttigieg and Whitmer (down ten points); and Shapiro (down 12 points).
There’s been some talk that Harris might help Democrats with base constituencies that are sour about Biden. There’s not much publicly available evidence testing that hypothesis, though the crosstabs in the latest CNN poll do show Harris doing modestly better than Biden among people of color, voters under the age of 35, and women.
The bottom line is that one element of the “Kamala Harris conundrum” needs to be reconsidered. There should be no real drop-off in support if Biden (against current expectations) steps aside in favor of his vice-president (the only really feasible “replacement” scenario at this point). She probably has a higher ceiling of support than Biden as well, but in any event, she would have a fresh opportunity to make a strong first or second impression on many Americans who otherwise know little about her.