This past weekend a big conference titled Examining the Agenda of the Religious Far Right was staged in New York. Over 500 people participated including numerous reporters and documentary film makers. Conference participants heard an unusually diverse range of critical perspectives on the religious right. I was honored to be among the speakers — but I spent alot of time in very worthwhile listening.
Those who wanted to be there, but were unable to come, will be pleased to learn that the conference sponsors plan to edit the conference down to an hour long film, which they plan to broadcast and make available on DVD. A book based on the main conference presentations may be in the works. Those who would like to know what I said, can check out these blog posts (here, here and here) which provided much of the substance of my talk.)
An unexpected highlight for me was meeting novelist Kurt Vonnegut, who was among many notables who had come to hear as distguished, smart and often inconoclastic a bunch of journalists, authors, activists, and academics ever assembled to talk about this subject. Nothing quite like it had ever been done before. We can only hope that it will be done again and again, and all over the country.
A report on the conference by columnist Ellis Henican was featured on page A2 of New York Newsday on Sunday. “There’s plenty of anger and exuberance and outrage in the room,” he observed. “This is New York, after all, where skepticism is always in style. But [Chip] Berlet might be onto something… something that could actually work in the battle against religious extremists, by whatever name: Don’t insult them. Engage them. And don’t back down.”
“The group… gathered for the weekend at the CUNY Graduate Center on West 34th Street. They’re some of the brightest minds and shrewdest strategists among people who look with alarm at the collusion between Christian evangelicals and Republican politicos. The word theocracy keeps coming up.”
The Washington Times, the famously unprofitable pet project of Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a longtime advocate of theocracy himself, described the event as a gathering of “Secular humanists and leftist activists” who were maybe engaging in “conspiracy theories.”
The conference was unique in a number of ways. It was not focused on single issues, although many were discussed. It was not sponsored by an organization with a particular institutional interest or point of view to promote or justify, although several presenters were affiliated with institutions that specialize in this area. It was open to fresh and interesting perspectives, and did not insist on unanimity or conformity. It was mostly about information and analysis, but it also emphasized ideas for action — something the attendees made clear they wanted more of.
Rev. Bob Edgar, General Secretary of the National Council of Churches, speaking at the opening session on Friday night, offered a quote that stayed with me. He said “we are the prophets, the disciples, and the leaders we have been waiting for.” People came looking for answers, and they got some. But Edgar is right. As citizens, it is up to us to determine the outcome of the central struggles of our time.
[Crossposted from FrederickClarkson.com]
Let’s get to work.
Thanks for that upbeat report. After all these years of people like yourself trying to sound the alarm it seems that people are starting to slowly wake up to what is happening around them.
It does help that the religious right seem to believe they have a bigger ‘mandate’ and are starting to come out of the woodwork with their theocratic ideas. I hope they keep overeaching and start to look more/more fundamentalist and scary to regular people.
It’s also pretty funny that Mr. Mooniepants is trying to make it sound like a gathering of conspiracy nuts. I guess secular humanist and leftust activists is supposed to be some sort of dreaded insult, right?
Yes. The basic frame for a generation has been that it is the people of faith, against the people of no faith; believers as against non-believers; Christians vs. secular humanists. And so on.
If there is a single most important frame for the theocrats, it is this.
for the Bill O’Reilly show.
What are they physically going to do about Theocracy??
It’s nice to have a group with like-minded thoughts being discussed- like here and dailykos- but talk is cheap.
I see no actions that are working. My question is- are we also to be blamed for the loss of Democracy because we CANNOT do anything but talk about it?
We can all blog until our fingers are raw and bloody and it still doesn’t change anything as we sit on our arses. We can talk, and whine and moan and groan until our voices are hoarse, and we still cannot do anything about it. This is the part I don’t get.
What has caused us to be so dumbed down and inactive? We only react with gasps….
Well, I think its unfair to ask what are “they” going to do?
Reread my diary.
No one has done anything quite like this conference before. And I was given a plenary platform to talk on my thoughts on what to do — things I do myself, I might add — and it was very well recieved. I diaried about much of it in preparation, field testing and getting feeback on ideas. (You may very well have read them here or on Kos.)
I also announced a project at the conference, where people can talk online about tactics and strategy in a focused fashion on a scoop site like kos or BooMan. My colleagues and I have launched a prelminary, start-up blog — http://talk2action.blogspot.com/ — while we get organized and get the scoop site established. I will post a diary about the project here, and on Kos on the next few days.
Personally, I am active on many fronts and encourage others to do the same. I blog, because I am a writer. But I am also a citizen. And I act like it.
I agree we need to move from talk to action. And thats what the project is about.