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mcbride -> RE: Can Liberalism and Religion be successful together? (7/19/2012 8:49:18 PM)
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Liberalism and religion, particularly Christianity, have already been hugely successful together.
It's highly unlikely that the United States, for example, would have a Civil Rights Act, or the large advances that came with it, without Dr Martin Luther King, and the church groups who made up the biggest single part of his movement. King was very explicit about the fact that his work was completely motivated by the requirements of his faith, and reminded people of that regularly. It's not for nothing that so many churches were burned by opponents of the Civil Rights Movement.
Was there a bigger political accomplishment in the US over the last century?
There's plenty of evidence to show that Catholics have been a big driver of progressive social policy, both in the US and elsewhere. The most liberal attitudes on social issues are found in Catholic Ireland, according to a number of sociological studies. More recent studies have demonstrated that rank and file Catholics are more likely to support gay marriage that the rest of the US population.
What's a tragedy is that in the United States, the incoherent melding of the right and fundamentalism have dominated the headlines, and social policy, but that doesn't undo the obligations toward their neighbours that most religions impose on the faithful, or the overwhelming evidence of what those obligations have produced.
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