After a change in administrations and occupants of the White House, it is clearer now more than ever that the assumption that Democrat has to equal atheist and Republican has to equal the devout is no longer an opinion America can hold.
One can see this in the current nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, a Democrat and Catholic, to the U.S Supreme Court. Additionally, where President Barack Obama emphasized an open dialogue about his religious background during the presidential elections, Senator John McCain seemed hesitant to flash his religion too prominently, usually going back to the controversial story of a Vietnamese guard drawing a cross in the dirt, as his insistence of his religiosity.
This leads me to an idea found in a book by Frank Lambert called, Religion In American Politics, which talks about the reemergence of the religious left in 21st century America. Now, the religious left has rarely been thrown around as much as the religious right (if ever heard of at all) and Lambert claims both are hard to define easily because there are no, “monolithic card-carrying members.”
Yet as Lambert said, both the religious right and the left started out of a desire to fight for its own “moral vision,” and that many Americans have turned to the more outspoken religious right, because, “it is the only voice that they encounter that is willing to challenge the despiritualization of daily life.”
In an article released by the Pew Forum, the religious affiliation of those on the US Congress closely mimics the rest of America’s religious makeup.
With the increasing number of political members, Republicans and Democrats alike, now openly discussing their faith, one must wonder if the religious left will come more to the forefront of the American psyche, especially since liberals and conservatives seem to feel freer in working for liberal, social reform or more conservative morals, despite religious or political alignment.
Where individuals like Richard Dawkins have demonstrated the power of an atheistic perspective taking hold in America, often associated with a liberal bias, one might argue that Obama and Sotomayor show the power of the religious left in the way they are fighting for social change, even with their religion in tote.
Does this mean that Americans are looking for even more change they can believe in, or are Americans looking to change the way we look at what we believe?
