Faith Based Social Progress?

  The Reverend Jim Wallis, a progressive, liberal evangelical was on Bill Maher tonight and made the point that every socially progressive movement in the history of the U. S. had faith believers in their midst, even if there were faith believers on the other side. He may be right. He probably was not. But he (and Maher, and the rest of the panel) ignored the fact that ALL of those movements including Martin Luther King's, had non-religious, agnostics, and atheists, and the ideas came not so much from the Christian Bible, which can be interpreted anyway one likes, but from rational, reasoned thought and experience.

   From the "founding fathers", to the gay rights movement (which, if it now has "evangelical" support, it gets it too little, and WAY too late) the traditions are from philosophy and reason. Not from religion. I'm sorry no one on the panel was willing to speak up to that fact.

   Every movement for progress in this country has always been hindered by the church. From the Tories who believed God was on the side of  King George III, to the civil rights battles of the 50's and 60's (and today) the rallying cry to stop progress has been distinctly, and most vocally church-driven, where progress takes place in a mix, at best, of the faithful and the nonbeliever. Reason is on the side of progress, not mythology. Always has been, always will be.