Do progressives believe that all religions are liberal at their true core?

Great Debates
1

I’ve often seen progressives argue that hard-line fundamentalist Christians or Muslims don’t reflect “true” Christianity and Islam, and that the true nature of a religion is found in its peaceful moderates.

This is often seen in comments to the effect of, “True Christianity is about showing love, feeding the poor, being egalitarian, not in ejecting illegal immigrants, being patriarchal, homophobic or canceling social welfare programs.” Or comments of, “Those people who attacked the Charlie Hebdo office, or throw gays off of rooftops, or force women to wear burqas, or hijacked airplanes on 9/11, are not true Muslims. True Muslims are moderate and nonviolent; after all, Islam is a religion of peace.”

(I don’t know enough about the other religions to comment about them; furthermore, progressives rarely discuss any religions other than Judaism, Islam and Christianity.)

Now…without getting too much into the weeds of theology, the Bible - even in the New Testament, the supposedly more-enlightened testament - did say many things about love, of course, but also says things that are extremely un-progressive, most notably the statement that anyone who dies unsaved is going to roast in fiery torture for all eternity, billions of years times billions, without end. That’s as un-liberal as it gets. (Same for statements about how slaves should submit to masters.) And the Quran, of course, calls for violence too.

But, is it a belief of many progressives that any religion, when practiced in its “true” form, will consist of peace, tolerance and nonviolence? It seems like, in the eyes of many liberals, that any time someone does violence or bigotry in the name of his religion, that he must be acting on a warped and distorted version of it, and that it’s not possible that his bad deeds may actually be a true, genuine practice of his religion.

2

I’d say it’s more likely the belief of most progressives is that religion is an inherently conservative bad idea that needs to go away.

If we have to wean reactionary evangelist jerks off their hate by first getting them to follow Jesus’s actually more mild-mannered teachings about love, so be it. But that’s just a stepping stone to getting rid of all that religious claptrap altogether.

3

No, violent people are rare and most people are peaceful. Ergo, in any large group, most people will be peaceful and a small minority might be violent. It’s not helpful to blame the large group for the violence of the few.

I think that’s all this is. It applies to religions, yes, but also everything else.

4

OK, but I’m not so much commenting about statistics of a group of people (what % of ____ are violent), as I am asking about the teachings of the religion itself. Otherwise, this thread could just as easily be a discussion of whites, Arabs, Hispanics, etc.

The Bible contains many verses of a conservative flavor, and many verses of a liberal flavor. Needless to say, conservatives cherry-pick to their heart’s content. But to many liberals, it seems like they consider the true version of Christianity to be only the liberal verses, and the same for Islam.

I get the impression many progressives see a Christian or Muslim who is liberal, helps the poor and needy, gives to charity, is nonviolent, is feminist, pro-LGBT, and think, “Good, that’s a real Christian/Muslim. That’s what their religion is all about.” They see a Christian or Muslim who says gay people will have terrible things coming to them, who wants wives to submit to their husbands, is sexist, wants women to cover up their bodies, is very authoritarian, etc. and think “That man is not practicing the true tenets of his religion!”

5

I don’t really consider myself a progressive, more of an old-school normie liberal, but I believe that all religions larger than someone’s storefront church have both liberal and conservative strains at their core, because they’re made up of people with different temperaments. Religion is often attractive to right-wing-authoritarian types because it offers a clear system of rules and hierarchies, but it doesn’t cause them to become right-wing authoritarians; they are like that because of some combo of genetics and upbringing, and would find some other system to glom onto if religion didn’t exist.

6

I think what you mean is that very few people are so innately driven to do violence that they would be willing to violate societal norms in order to do violence.

Lots of people throughout history have been perfectly willing to perform culturally acceptable violence.

The best example of this is shifting attitudes towards corporal punishment of children or domestic violence towards women in the United States.

7

Too late to edit: For example, as a Texan, I’ve seen a whole lot of progressives latch onto James Talarico, for instance (candidate in Texas) as a “true” Christian. They seem to believe that true Christianity is pro-gay, pro-trans, pro-feminist, pro-choice at its core. They call Talarico a real Christian and call his opponent, Paxton, a fake Christian. Now, Talarico did go to seminary, yes. But it makes me question what these progressives believe true Christianity is.

It also makes me wonder if they think true Islam is pro-LGBT, pro-feminist, too.

8

True progressives are of course atheists. They are far more likely to look at the actual history of religions and conclude that “liberal” is not a good definition.

9

Speaking as a progressive atheist, that’s a crock of shit.

10

Generalizations about a group as meaningless as “progressives” are in the eye of the beholder. Our observations are equally valid.

11

Speaking to Christianity in the USA, which seems to be the vast majority of what your OP was about…

I think you are close, but 180 degrees wrong in placing the directionality of misunderstanding.

Christian Conservatives tend to always say the Bible is the literal word of God, and is infallible. Then they cherry-pick the verses that serve their particular goals: religious, political and social.

Those that oppose said agendas, especially if they share the same faith (and there are countless sects and flavors of Christianity), are playing their own game against them by showing the blatant hypocrisy.

They point to all of the pieces of the Bible that have elements in line with the Progressive political and social goals and ask the Conservatives to own up to their own claims: If all the Bible is true, then why is this [ Progressive ] view less the world of God then your Regressive view?

So in general Progressives acknowledge that Christianity/The Bible (and even what books you accept) is a many-faceted thing, and point that truth out to Conservatives every day who insist that it somehow isn’t.

Otherwise, it’s almost always people who aren’t professional religious scholars making these claims on both sides - everyone is doing cherry picking and always has in service of their own goals. It has nothing to do with Progressive/Conservative thought, just about how all religious texts and teachings are products of their times and everything that has happened since.

You just have to be honest about your bias or not. And Christian Conservatives (and I’m sure some hardcore Jews and Islamists) often claim the primacy of their interpretation over any other readings of their support works.

12

In Judaism, there’s the perpetual debate over the principle of tikkun olam (Hebrew for “repairing the world”). Progressive sects tend to view it as a central pillar of their religious practice, to be implemented via social justice initiatives, while more traditionalist sects are just as likely to warn against those initiatives as a distortion of “real” Jewish values.

13

I mean, even the fundamentalist Islamic terrorists still claim that Islam is “the religion of peace”. I think that we can all agree that they have a very twisted notion of what “peace” means, but they still think that it’s central to their religion.

14

I consider myself somewhat to moderately progressive, depending on what metric we’re using.
I think that most religions are ultra-conservative at their foundational cores. Most were invented, popularized, or forced upon the masses by warlords and kings, and warlords and kings don’t really like things that benefit other people unless it benefits them more. I think we could safely lump priests into that class, as well.

The teachings and doctrines that spring from that core can be more or less liberal. Christ, for instance, said that he was god come to earth and that we got religion all wrong. Love god, love each other–that’s pretty much it. So I think Christ was pretty liberal.

But people being what they are, we found a way to again turn those teachings into things that would benefit us more than other people.

15

Nope. All things being equal…they ain’t. Do you have any facts, evidence, studies etc. to back up your claim?

16

Speaking as a progressive Christian, you’re wrong.

17

It very much is not. Progressivism isn’t that nebulous. It is a secular concept, and thus does not depend on the existence or non-existence of any deity.

You don’t need to not believe in God to say that humans can continually improve in knowledge, to say the government should work for the common good, to oppose oppression, to support regulation of capitalism and economic reform, to support unions and reducing the influence of money in politics, and so on.

One of the reasons I identify as a progressive is that I see my religion better represented in that ideology than I do conservatism. It wasn’t some arbitrary choice. When the founder of your religion says “blessed are the poor” and that “you can’t worship God and money” and “those who don’t aid the oppressed will be sent away to eternal darkness,” it’s hard to align otherwise.

18

None whatsoever. Does anybody here have any facts, evidences, studies, etc. to back up what they’re spouting?

19

I was referring to your claim, which wasn’t presented as a blind supposition or guess, but as a fact. I didn’t know that I was supposed to address every else’s posts first.
By the way, what is a “true progressive?”

20

Not really: