This is taken from my Facebook Notes and very slightly edited
"Progressivism" was always inherent in Christianity. I have quoted several Christian precepts that point left. However it is much deeper and an integral part of the system, Which may explain the fact that much of the "Progressive" movement involved the clergy. Magnets do not attract paper and paper does not attract maganets. So why are the overwhelming majority of churches drifting leftward? and why is the Christian Left the best kept secret?
When the Progressive movement was founded in the latter part of the nineteenth centure. a third of it was made up of clergy
Note well that the leftward movement of the churches never was a march, but a drift, as if, despite their best efforts, they are being drawn irresistibly as if by the gravity of a black hole
Did you ever notice that the oh-so-secular liberals who had all kinds of problems wiht Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, have none with REVEREND Jesse Jackson and REVEREND Al Sharpton despite the fact that the latter is a known liar and both are race baiter? Nor are they even moderately critical of REVEREMD Farakhan
On the surface, that is, events, we see two things as well as the leftward drift of the overwhelming bulk of the churches, the clergy's role in the founding of the Progressive movement and the fact that the libs have their favorite preachers, the various precepts that I use to show that Christianity points left and history. The Essential Works of Marxism shows a long pre-Marx history of the Socialist/Communist "ideal". From John Zwingli on down, and various Christian fictional or proposed Utopias, have featured a "common pot" theory of economics, where all the earned and produced wealth of the community are put into a "common pot" and distributed on the basis of need. New Harmony and other real life utopia wannabes have held to this method of distributing the product of the community. It was only the Plymouth colony and the Freemasons that went the other way. The first to deal with the fact that it was more in the interest of survival to adopt an individualistic economic model and the second to sell themselves as part of the "Enlightenment". However the Enlightenment was the follow-on to the Age of Reason, which was the follow-on to the Renaissance. The Renaissance was the "Rebirth of Learning". But of what kind of Learning? Well, the Church had developed Theology to the highest level possible so it could only be secular learning. The Age of Reason began when Pope Urban VIII was reputed to have said to Gallileo "Proof destroys faith" Thus recognizing a basic incompatibility and drawing a line in the sand. Any fool knows that if it comes to a choice between medicine or prayer what persons will take when the chips are down, or as Ayn Rand put it "People will not willingly return to the sixteenth century as long as there is one microscope". Since then, the theistic systems have had to morph into something compatible with Reason and science to avoid extinction. But even Kant in his CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON knew that the two were basically incompatible and even said "I have impeached reaso to save faith" and Martin Luther called Reason "the devil's whore". So we know, even on the surface, that religion is incompatible with Reason and its product, individualism and its products: self determination and self responsibility and their political-economic consequence: Captialism. It should also be noted by those who insist that the United States was founded on "Judeo-Christian principles", that it took about 1790 years from the time of Christ for the US Constitution to be adopted but only 180 years from the Age of Reason and the revolt against faith for which some men paid with their lives or the threat thereto by the same "Judeo-Christians": Read Giordano Bruno and Gallileo
The roots of this leftward drift go deeper and come in three forms:
These are not optional but are built into the Christian system. So the "Christian Right" can exist only by being in declension. How can Sean Hanity say "it is more blessed to give than to receive" and complain about taxes? How long can Mike Savage rail against bilingualism in the face of Genesis and the directly stated meaning of the Tower of Bable's destruction? With what level of integrity can conservatives preach against class warfare in the face of "It is easier for a camel to pass throght the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter Heaven"? How long can Rush Limbaugh say that, for the liberals, emotion trumps reason and that his central tenet is a matter of faith, which is opposed to reason (in the form of proof -- Pope Urban VII and Martin Luther) and the abnegation of mentality and the products of that mentality and prattle on about being self responsible and self starting? Here is the tag end of all of this. In early 1975, in my last year at Providence College, I was known for being pro-capitalism and one of my classmates said that he could convert me to Socialism. I told him that he could TRY to convert me to socialism. When he asked "Are you a Christian?" I said "No, an atheist" and he said "Oh, then I can't talk to you [go any further in his argumentation]". Implicit and correctly inferred in my answer was that I was either not familiar or rejected the above and even at the age of 21, he knew what that meant. Had I been, he would have succeeded if I had not been there already
But why is the Christian Left such a well-guarded secret? It isn't well guarded, just not spoken of by both sides in this parent/child war. the "Progressives" do not wish to acknowledge their backward-looking origins for the reason best pointed to by Ayn Rand when she wrote "Lift the dark hood of your fellow traveler and see what past he represents". The mainstream conservatives don't want to acknowledge the Christian left; the overwhelming bulk of the churches, because it will bring them face to face with the hypocrisy that they have made a habit of blanking out for over a century. Thus we see the desperate attempt to keep "in God we trust" on the degraded money while the fact is "in gold we trust". We see the mental gymnastics of the Conservatives to keep "under God" in the Pledge of Allegence because to remove it would be to "change the pledge". This was added during my lifetime, yet that was NOT a change? Now, here's the Cosmic Joke on the conservatives. According to David Brudnoy; a man of the Righ, the pledge was written by a SOCIALIST MINISTER in the 1890's: Cute, huh?
In fact, all of the attempts to keep an unofficial state religion are the scorched-earth tactics of a losing side hoping to delay the inevitable in the hopes that some miracle will happen. Some day, the Democrats will get that. Then what? Well they could test the statistic which says that the overwhelming bulk of the American people believe in God and the American people can find out just what that entails or the whole thing can collapse like the house of cards that it is. No matter what, this blows the Christian Right into the next galaxy since they lose either way since if the American people accept the logical results of their belief. the US joins the Euro-Socialists: Greece, Spain, Italy et al, and the conservatives are out the door, or the American people reject it and both the Progressives and conservatives hit the dumpster
Now here is the tag end of THAT. The liberal commentator, Jay Diamond, a self-described Christian, made this comment which showed that the Christian Left has a clue. Regarding the modern understanding of Capitalism "Their [the conservatives'] economic system is a product of a devout Russian atheist": Oops!
Now, your next question would be "is religion good or evil?" My answer would be "No system is is either good or evil". A system is either true, based on the idea that factual premises and valid reasoning yield true conclusion, false; not following that paradigm, or mixed , sometimes following that paradigm and sometimes not. Only acts can be good or evil and only persons, based on the predominant moral status of their actions. Now a system can have ramifications. When Pope Urban VIII said proof destroys faith and was prepared to use force and torture to enforce his edict as a matter of policy, he was evil. As for Martin Luther, he drew a wrong conclusion based on what he had observe, which was the MISUSE of Reason and a perfectly natural conclusion. It is just that his premise was false. The basic premises of religion are false since they rest on supernaturalism and mysticism; just like the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy. But that's all one can say. Good or evil has to be judged by cases. If anyone disrespects the Dominicans or the De La Salle Brothers, they're going to get both barrels from me. Thomas Aquinas added a rational component to the Catholic religion that makes it a mixed system. The tragedy of the Christian Right is that these are by and large good folks that are misguided. If they took their religion to heart, they would be a Christian Al Qaeda : As I said, religion has tried to morph into something compatible with rational thought and good men can be deluded by being indoctrinated at an age where they are too young to be able to think competently about such issue but that is not confined to religion; most Red Diaper Doper Babies sneer at the Christian Right but are as deluded and thrice more, and Ayn Rand repeatedly referred to Khrushchev as a "man of faith as much as any". Progressivism is also false at the root since forced redistribution is 180 degrees out of phase with the first rule of Behavior and just why so many psychologists and psychiatrists, who HAVE to know that subscribe to "Progressivism" has some rather ugly implications and does point to evil, either for professionals in the field allowing themselves to be deluded or for professionals in the field spreading this falsehood to "get something" at the price of integrity. But, given the actions I have seen by the two professional organizations over the last 3 decades, including collusion with the Soviet system of torture and Pedophilia: "transgenerational love" in a sexual context, I am not surprised one bit: Shrink; modify thine own behavior
In sum and substance, there is a symbiotic relationship between religion and the Left. One provides the existential, psychological and moral foundation for the political ideology upon which the other acts. The only quarrel they have is in the name of what. But they both agree on and have and will further join forces to abolish capitalism and the individualism and human worth upon which it stands. Thus is understood the letter that Ayn Rand got at her Empire State Building HQ after her essay on the Papal encyclical "Populoorum Progressio" in the mid-60's. "Only The Kremlin, The Vatican and the Empire State Building know what's going on"
Having been in both systems, I understand this from the inside
How does any of this square with Capitalism? If you look at the above and substitute "State", "society" or "Collective" for "God", guess what you have. Now, none of these speak to the betterment of the idea of God, they only disenfranchise the human person. The inevitability of the will of God, independent of anything that is done means things are already decided and the fix is in with more force than a million Gestapo, KGB or IRS agents and a thousand times more rigidly than Obamneycare or the EPA, so don't bother to have any gumption because it does not matter. "GIVE us this day our daily bread" makes you a supplicant, mendicant, or in plain talk; a beggar and at such a basic leveil as to make you little more than a doll. The lack of property, a staple of the Left, means you have nothing to call your own. Yet we are told that Christianity ennobles man. Honest analysis shows that it sets him up to be a pointless, worthless, rightless plaything. Here are all the elements of a collectivist system. and THIS is what the conservatives will fight tooth and nail for. Of course they don't recognize it. Just listen to the hours of words and look at the reams of pages that are written to keep Toto from pulling aside the curtain or Dorothy from recognizing what she sees. When presented with the idea that Christ was a liberal, Eric Harley and Gary McNamara just laughed and Rush Limbaugh kind of sneered but none of them presented anythimg with intellectual meat. Ditto Howie Carr because that is one thing they can't hack without a teleprompter because they are not spontaneously evasive enough on their own