Religious Liberals Sat Out of Politics for 40 Years. Now They Want in the Game.
The New York Times’s Laurie Goodstein reports, “Across the country, religious leaders whose politics fall to the left of center, and who used to shun the political arena, are getting involved – and even recruiting political candidates – to fight back against President Trump’s policies on immigration, health care, poverty and the environment.” The Rev. William J. Barber II, a progressive religious leader, started “Moral Monday” demonstrations in North Carolina to oppose conservative policies such as voting-rights restrictions; the protests helped defeat the state’s Republican governor in 2016. The Rev. Jim Wallis, an evangelical social justice advocate, said, “The fact that one party has strategically used and abused religion, while the other has had a habitually allergic and negative response to religion per se, puts our side in a more difficult position in regard to political influence.”