movement

by Seth Pearce, Living Liberally

This week Living Liberally launched Praying Liberally, our new network of local liberal meetups of progressives from a wide range of faiths to talk politics, say a collective prayer for "the least of these" in our world, and build community to organize around our common causes.

Since Monday, when Praying Liberally launched over at Street Prophets and got some mention on Daily Kos and Hullabaloo, we've gotten several requests to start new chapters, many from Boomers, some who've said they felt too 'old' for the Drinking Liberally crowd, which is fine. Different Liberallies appeal different people. But we still haven't gotten any requests from millennials.

This leads us to ask: is Praying Liberally just for the Boomers? Will the religious left die out?

It doesn't have to.

With interest in religion and spirituality rising on college campuses, and the fact that the millennial generation is one of the most liberal ever, the community potential is there.

Plus, The fact is there are many progressive religious youth orgs, such as Mitzvah Corps, that get young people engaged in social justice and other progressive causes.

But unlike conservative religious youth groups, progressive ones don't usually self-identify in ways that would explicitly denote them as progressive organizations. Also, these groups haven't formed solid coalitions with the progressive movement, and in that they fail to act as a legitimate gateway for youth into the progressive movement. Introducing youth involved with religious programs into the greater movement was one of the Religious Right's key skills as they grew their power in the last decades of the 20th century.

The progressive movement needs to build connections with these progressive religious youth groups through more liberal faith communities such as the United Church of Christ, Unitarian Universalist and Episcopalian churches, and the Reform and Reconstructionist Jewish movements. As well as the younger, more liberal generation of church-goers at traditionally conservative churches.

This relationship between "Church" and Progressive Movement could provide us with great new leaders, who like Barack Obama, would come to the progressive movement through their faith community. It could also infuse these religious organizations with new energy, connecting young people to faith in new ways and expanding the opportunities offered to them by their religious community as they see their church, synagogue, mosque or temple becoming more connected with their everyday lives.

But for now, while we try to convince the progressive movement to get involved with this kind of outreach, are there any millennials out there who want to start a Praying Liberally chapter?