Religion and politics

Sandy Levinson

I have just finished a truly stunning book, Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, King's Last Campaign, by Michael K. Honey. It will be published by Norton in January. Based on remarkable archival work, Honey, a labor historian who has lived in Memphis, tells the story of the 1968 sanitation worker's strike in Memphis. Though long (some 600 pages), the book is illuminating about both the world of the time and, by contrast, the world of our own, when it is, among other things, unthinkable that national attention would be focused on a strike by sanitation workers. Today George W. Bush has the effrontery to take part in the ceremony marking the placement of a statue of King on the Washington Mall without the slightest understanding of what King was actually about, not only with regard to his pacificism but, in this context, to his militant devotion to economic justice and helping those at the bottom of the ladder.

But that's not the primary motivation for this posting. Almost every single chapter of Honey's book makes clear, once more, the absolute centrality of churches to the civil rights (and labor) movement in Memphis. This is most obvious with regard to African-American churches. King was only the most famous "reverend" to play a key role in the Movement. But there are also the white clergy (and rabbi); usually, they were pusillanimous and hesitant to move more than a step or two beyond their conservative members, most of whom supported the egregious Jew-turned-Episcopalian Mayor Henry Loeb, who rivals in obduracy George W. Bush. Still, it was their own turning against the Mayor, plus the consequences of the assassination of King, that ultimately led to the ending of the strike. There is simply no way of writing a history of Southern politics (especially) without paying lots of attention to religion.

Political liberals and secularists, like myself, have to wrestle with the meaning of this aspect of the Civil Rights Movement. Because of the "culture wars" of which Brian writes in his most recent posting, many, perhaps most, political liberal-secularists have been busy denouncing the role played by religion in American politics. But consider that the Catholic Bishops, who have, from my perspective, unfortunately concentrated their energies on the issues of abortion and same-sex marriage, have also engaged in eloquent criticism of American actions in the Iraq War, and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops is among the most important groups that still support the idea of a vigorous welfare state. One could obviously present other examples, including the attempts of Jim Wallis and others to present a more politically progressive version of Evangelical politics.

This is not a question of learning to talk about "values" or professing one's own religiosity. I remain a thoroughly secular Jew, with the operative word, when all is said and done, being the adjective. Rather, it is how "we" who have no religious "faith" manifest our respect for and make alliances with those who do have very deep religious commitments and are, as with King, quite literally willing to put their lives on the line in behalf of the most fundamental values of instantiating "equal concern and respect" even for those who pick up our garbage. (Jesse Jackson, who is too often derided, is surely the most eloquent speaker in the country today in behalf of King's late-60's commitment to what he called the "Poor People's Campaign" (which, of course, utterly failed, and not only because he was assassinated).)

I note, for the record, that the number eight and number fourteen books on this weeks New York Times Book Review non-fiction best seller list are, respectively, Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and Sam Harris's Letter to a Christian Nation. (Number #23 is Newt Gingrich's Rediscovering God in America.) I suspect that I am in substantial sympathy with the arguments that are made by Dawkins and Harris, neither one of which I've yet read. But I also suspect that their function, at this moment, is simply to reinforce the chasm between secular (almost inevitably) liberals and all persons of religious faith. "Deluded" or not, the people who are described in Honey's great book have a moral stature that is overwhelming. The title of the book, incidentally, comes from the tale of the Good Samaritan, who was walking on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho and stopped to help the stranger. One need not be religious to be a Good Samaritan, and one need not even believe that those who are religious are more likely to be Good Samaritans. But many Good Samaritans are religious, and we need to integrate that fact into any practical political strategy for bringing about a better American future.
Posted 3:59 PM by Sandy Levinson [link]