In Dispatches from the Religious Left:  The Future of Faith and Politics in America (Daily Kos review here) we sought to highlight religious progressives who are unconnected to the faux Religious Left and, as I told Bill Berkowitz at the time that we intended that the book serve as "application of jumper cables to start a necessary conversation."

The conversation now continues with the publication of Dan Schultz's book Changing the Script:  An Authentically Faithful and Authentically Progressive Political Theology for the 21st Century. (Daily Kos review here).  I am not going to delve into the ideas of the book here, except to broadly agree that his view that we need to be able to think for ourselves and to ask good questions, and not merely line up behind given answers, is an essential part of the project.

I started out this post wanting to highlight a review of Changing the Script by theologian (and friend of this site) Brent Hege at The Revealer.  Here are a few excerpts:  

He points a way forward for religious progressives yearning for a new order by tapping into that long and noble history and Christian hope. Taking his cue from Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggemann's critique of an American narrative of "therapeutic, technological, consumerist militarism," Schultz suggests that just such a fundamental shift of narratives, a "change of scripts," is required to pull America back from the brink of economic, social and psychological collapse and to direct us toward a new, more just future where the dignity of every person is valued, where American power is expressed through mutuality and cooperation rather than force, and where inequality, not difference, is the scourge to be defeated.

The use of "narratives" to address the problems facing American society at the dawn of the 21st century and to suggest a progressive vision to correct those problems reveals the scope of Schultz's vision in Changing the Script. The problem, as he understands it, is not merely one of policy or individual motives or the trajectory of current events. Rather, the problem lies in the narratives we inherit and continue to tell ourselves in order to make sense of the world and navigate our way through it; the scripts we follow when living our lives. History does not unfold blindly, nor does it stretch bare before us for interpretation. We understand the world and the events of our lives always with the aid of a certain narrative, a comprehensive framework from which we draw meaning and value. We follow scripts prepared for us, often unknowingly, that instruct us on how our lives should unfold and we chart our paths forward with their aid, often, understood as "the way things are." We inherit them from our culture, from our history, from politicians, media and corporate advertising, and, yes, from our religious traditions. But there is nothing inevitable or obvious about these narratives; nor is there any reason why they cannot (and, Schultz argues, must) be changed if we are to chart a new course for our national life. From Brueggemann, then, Schultz borrows this theme of narratives to unravel the stories we tell ourselves and to reveal what we have long suspected, that our unexamined scripts are corrupting the "soul" of the nation and leading us into an unsustainable, perilous future.

What Schultz presents in this book is not a systematic description of American political life, nor is it a professional work of academic theology, biblical scholarship, or ethics. It is, true to his style, a work that blurs the line between church and society, between academy and populace, between religious and secular progressives (this is, I suspect, precisely what he means by subtitling his book "an authentically faithful and authentically progressive political theology for the 21st century). The vision of the "big tent" drives the style and the arguments Schultz makes, preferring coalition-building to the further entrenching of divisions, common ground to a siege mentality. What Schultz is after here is not the impossible dream of a sudden end to the divisions between Right and Left. Rather, he insists that among progressives (both religious and secular), there is so much more that unites us than divides us.

Commonalities that emerge from our shared history in the struggle for equalities while navigating our religious differences, is a theme of much of my work, such as how to find a common narrative of religious equality in American history, and not allow religious and non-religious progressives to be pitted against one another.

But what I tried to emphasize in assembling Dispatches was that am authentic  Religious Left cannot be created in specific response to the Religious Right, or explicitly to counter it (although it may have that effect if it is a successful movement.) Rather, a Religious Left must become what it needs to be on its own terms.  To my mind, this means, as Dan and Brent say, that religious progressives must find and speak from their own identities and religious traditions.  I think it also means figuring out how these things can better shape our politics. I told Bill Berkowitz in our interview:

"...religious progressives seem to be politically stalled, distracted, and lacking a coherent strategy and effective tactics. Therefore, it is safe for government officials to ignore them, and we can see the results on just about everything that really matters.

Both the secular and religious left have generally failed to learn any lessons from the tremendous successes of the Religious Right over the past few decades. And what lessons have been taken are too often the wrong ones. Several Dispatches contributors are exceptionally well informed about the Religious Right, and discuss what lessons can be drawn from the experience of this formidable movement--and rightly caution us about others. One of the themes that emerges in the book is that the religious left needs to reestablish a significant capacity for "organizing" in the broad, social, political and electoral sense. It has been a key to successes in the past but seems to have been abandoned in favor of think tanks and public relations strategies....  it is time for a conversation about what is and is not working and to consider what might be done differently and to go out and get it done."

Two years out, [now four] I would add that any nascent Religious Left political movement must of course, not only not ape the Religious Right in organization and style, but to actively seek ways of acquiring and wielding power consistent with the values of justice. These values are rooted, as Hege notes, in the great religious traditions. But respect and advocacy for the democratic values of religious pluralism and separation of church and state are also essential, even as learning how to navigate it can be tricky.  While church and state need to be separate, religiously rooted values and democratic political and constitutional values must be considered together in order to achieve justice in an American political context.  Part of what this means, is learning to master the tools of grassroots electoral politics, which were intended as, and are still available to effect democratic political change. Failure to do these things, pretty much means abandoning the playing field and ceding the game.