We talk with Fred Clarkson, co-founder of Talk2Action, about the book he just edited: Dispatches from the Religious Left: The Future of Faith and Politics in America. We also talk with Chip Berlet about the essay he contributed to the book. And contributor and organizer Leo Maley tells us about how the religious Left organized successfully in Massachusetts to support marriage equality for same-sex couples.
Fred Clarkson is a one of America’s foremost experts on the religious Right. He’s the author of Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, Common Courage Press, (1997), co-author of Challenging the Christian Right: The Activist’s Handbook, and has penned many other articles and essays on the Christian Right.
Chip Berlet is senior analyst at Political Research Associates (PRA) near Boston, and co-author of Right Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort. His essay, Religious Right, Religious Left, fiirst appeared in The Public Eye magazine and is reprinted in Fred Clarkson’s collection of essays, DISPATCHES FROM THE RELIGIOUS LEFT: The Future of Faith and Politics in America.
Read an excerpt by Frederick Clarkson from DISPATCHES FROM THE RELIGIOUS LEFT here.
Please! Secular is not Atheist. Chess is Secular because it has nothing to do with religion (despite the Bishops). Any person of any religion can play by the same rules and you don’t get any special rules because of your religion.
By falling into the Right Wing framing of Secular as atheist you play into the bipolar world of Religion vs the Devil rather than a pluralistic society that everyone and anyone can play by the same secular rules.
Lose that and the religious right will/has insisted it get special privileges by contrasting themselves with Secularism and pluralism will be dead.
Freedem is entirely correct–good point!