Is There A Religious Left?

Depends on what your definition of religion is. If it includes the worship of the Leviathan state and the sacrament of abortion, sure:

It's not hard to discern what's going on here. After years of getting their hats handed to them by the so-called Religious Right and after losing the "moral values" voters by a margin of 82% to 18% in the 2004 elections, Democrats and the political Left have resolved they can't beat 'em, so they'll join 'em. Their policies are now inspired and endorsed by the Big Fella Himself.

They have a tough row to hoe. Fewer Americans (29%) today view the Democrat Party as "friendly to religion" than did last year (when that figure was 40%), according to a Pew Research Center poll from late August. Indeed, after three consecutive years of decline in the "friendly to religion" department we can detect an inversely proportional relationship between the Democrats' use of religious rhetoric and their public image on religious amiability.

Why?

First, merely slapping the Jesus label on stale social welfare programs won't make them popular, particularly when the vast majority of Democrat leaders in Washington oppose efforts to invite churches of all denominations to take part in the welfare game through President Bush's stagnant Faith Based Initiative. According to Pew, allowing churches to apply for public funding to help fight poverty is viewed favorably by 66% of the American people.

Second, Democrats have been breathing their own exhaust regarding Republican greed. Yes, the GOP is viewed as disproportionately favorable to business, particularly big business. And yes, many Americans are skeptical of any claims of altruism by big business. But the resultant fallacy that most Americans are searching for their inner Karl Marx and all they need is the Democrats to tell them raising taxes is What Jesus Would Do is an absurd leap, which, frankly, leaves many Americans shaking their heads.

Third, most Americans of faith know full well Jesus cares deeply for the "least of these" (by the way, try to imagine the Bill Bennett-style firestorm of controversy if a Republican politician referred to African-Americans as "the least of these" as the above referenced reporter did). But they also know that nowhere did Christ prescribe compulsory charity as a remedy for poverty. The liberals' attempt to buy their way into Heaven by extirpating indulgences from others is not what Jesus has in mind.

Fourth, the political Left assumes that poverty programs in the United States which have transferred trillions of dollars from rich to poor in the last 40 years (to say nothing of our individual charitable efforts) amount to nothing. Our policies still "favor the rich at the expense of the poor," as the talking point goes. And they're right. The poor sadly are still with us. Which ought to explain something to the political Left that we on the Right have accepted as a given for decades now: government-run social welfare programs don't benefit the poor; they suspend them in penury.

Fifth and finally, the political Left is deeply conflicted internally on the matter of religion in public life. To begin with, there exists within the Left a powerful secularist element that would love to exclude any mention of Christianity from the public square. These are the folks who run those obnoxious anti-Christmas campaigns every December and shriek about church-state separation whenever anyone breathes a word about Intelligent Design. There is an actual organization called the Godless Americans Political Action Committee. And of course we've all heard of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. How are these folks going to react if the Religious Left ever gains any momentum within the Democratic Party?

If Jesus were a Supreme Court nominee, the Democrats would vote him down, as they wouldn't find any documentation indicating he'd support Roe v. Wade.

That's the quandary of the "religious Left" in a nutshell.