Democratic Party

If democracy is a moral abstraction instead of an embodied struggle, it won’t survive.

In an effort to triumph over the religious right, many progressive Christians have married their faith and politics to the Democratic Party, leaving little to no gap between their political visions and the party’s policies. Instead of celebrating this as a successful strategy for re-ascendency, I see it compromising radical Christian commitments to peace and justice.

Last week while I was away, Tobin Grant linked to something interesting: new research, based on 40 years of General Social Surveys, that echoes Grant's own parsing of Pew's Religious Landscapes Survey.

In Mississippi these days, you may hear a candidate insist that “our children should be able to learn and pray in the best schools in the land." You might be surprised to hear the candidate refer to “the day I accepted Christ.” But you might be more surprised—especially if you hail from another part of the country—to learn that the candidate is a Democrat, John Arthur Eaves. At times Eaves seems to be trying to unseat GOP governor Haley Barbour by out-Jesusing him.