What’s Religion Good For? Progressives Weigh In

It turns out that there’s nothing grassroots about the groups “Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good” and “Catholics United.” Emails published by WikiLeaks reveal that they’re astroturf groups created by Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and funded by George Soros and other outside donors “to organize for a moment like this.”

These emails certainly tell us a lot about the state of religion and politics today. But they also reveal an important and often overlooked historical connection. Those who have studied the progressive movement from the turn of the twentieth century onward probably won’t be surprised by WikiLeaks’ revelations.

The emails sent by Democratic Party operatives—including Podesta, John Halpin, and Jennifer Palmieri—certainly confirm what many conservatives have long believed. The types of liberals who associate with the Center for American Progress view traditionalist Catholics and Protestants with barely veiled contempt and disdain. Halpin sees them as bastardizing the faith, clinging to “severely backwards gender relations,” and willingly subjecting themselves to a “middle ages dictatorship.”

It’s clear that Podesta and others who have tried to force a “Catholic spring” have nakedly political motives. They’re frustrated by those Catholics who follow their church’s teachings on contraception and abortion and who have objected to some policies of the Obama administration, including Obamacare. One major goal of both Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United has been to weaken Catholic bishops’ ability to object to elements of Obamacare by working to divide and conquer the faithful.

Yet there’s something more than simple power politics evident in these emails. They reveal a view about the role religion should play in society that owes a great deal to early progressive reformers.

Read here