Christian Alliance for Progress Launch Creates a Big Splash!

The Christian Alliance for Progress (what some have called Move.on.org group for moderate and liberal Christians) has officially launched its national campaign to reclaim Christianity and transform American politics. And the group has already made a big splash.

So what's a big splash? How about the Chicago Tribune?
Religious progressives speak out

By Lisa Anderson
Tribune national correspondent
Published June 23, 2005


NEW YORK -- With the stated goal of reclaiming the issue of faith from the Christian right, a new political organization for religious progressives launched Wednesday, joining a small number of liberal religious-oriented groups and think tanks that sprang up around the faith-infused 2004 election. Unlike many of those groups, however, the new Christian Alliance for Progress describes itself as a grass-roots organization with plans for a national membership, and it is based in Jacksonville rather than New York or Washington.

"For years, we've been hearing the name of Christianity be used to speak about hatred, division, war and greed," said Patrick Mrotek, the Jacksonville health management consultant who founded the group. "We believe we can no longer stand by and watch the language of our faith used in that manner, and we think it is time to reclaim our faith," he said in a telephone interview after a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington.

Supported by private donations, the group began organizing four months ago and has attracted 3,000 to 4,000 members so far, according to Kathleen LeRoy, vice president of operations. She also said "dozens of people" have agreed to head chapters of the Christian Alliance for Progress across the country.

In terms of this grass-roots effort, the alliance is modeled after the Christian Coalition, the conservative political organization founded by Pat Robertson in 1989 to mobilize the religious right.

"They're couching their effort as a conscious response to the religious right, but they also have a positive agenda, which they lay out," said John Green, director of the Bliss Institute of Politics at the University of Akron and a fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.In fact, the agenda of the alliance is similar to those of other progressive organizations, such as Sojourners, headed by moderate evangelical Rev. Jim Wallis, and the Center for American Progress, founded by John Podesta, former chief of staff in the Clinton White House.

And the Philadelphia Inquirer?
Posted on Thu, Jun. 23, 2005

Religious Democrats aim to close the God gap

By Dick Polman Inquirer Political Analyst


WASHINGTON - Liberals say they believe in God, too.

It's one of the hottest trends in politics today. Prominent Democrats are suddenly quoting from the Bible - as John Kerry said recently, "I went back and reread the whole New Testament" - but what's truly striking is the determination of liberal Christians to create an effective religious left.

That's why Tim Simpson trekked to Washington yesterday. A Presbyterian pastor from Tallahassee, Fla., he wants to counter the power of the religious right, which works in tandem with the Republican Party, and, as he sees it, "has taken control of the language of our faith... to promote an extreme and divisive political agenda."

As religious-affairs director of the newly minted Christian Alliance for Progress (which was unveiled yesterday at the National Press Club), Simpson said in a subsequent interview, "We decided we could continue to sit around and grouse, or we could do something about it." So this fledgling grassroots organization, headed by a trio of devout Christians with seed money from private Florida donors, argues that progressive values mirror the teachings of the gospel.

It's a Democratic-friendly message - the same message that the bestselling liberal evangelist Jim Wallis has been imparting to Democrats in private - and it's designed to close the God gap that has increasingly plagued the party at election time. It's also a priority message for former Clinton White House aide John Podesta, whose think tank, Center for American Progress, has been hosting events this year for people of faith. It's also an uphill struggle worthy of Sisyphus.

The problem for the underdog Christian left is that, since the advent of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Republicans have successfully promoted the argument that a vote for Christian values is a vote for the GOP. The exit polls tell the story. Last November, Kerry won only 21 percent of white evangelical Christians (thereby dooming his candidacy). Al Gore's share in 2000 was only 30 percent.

Kerry was partly victimized by the GOP's hardball rhetoric. In Arkansas and West Virginia last autumn, the Republican National Committee sent out flyers telling evangelical Christians that "liberals" would ban the Bible if Kerry won.

Depicting the Democrats as godless is still a GOP tactic, as evidenced three days ago, when Rep. John Hostettler of Indiana said on the House floor: "Like a moth to a flame, Democrats can't help themselves when it comes to denigrating and demonizing Christians."

But Simpson said yesterday - and Wallis has argued this point as well with Democrats - that many in the party have exposed themselves to GOP caricature by telegraphing their discomfort with religiosity.

Simpson said at the Press Club launch, "There is a sector of folks on the left that have been enormously vocal about [stressing secularism], that have shouted down the vast majority of folks on the left who are people of faith, who do believe in God... . We don't believe that people should have to check their faith tradition at the door of the public arena." The party's secularism, he said, has alienated a lot of voters who don't necessarily wish to embrace the religious right.

Check out this photo of our buddy
Public Theologian.

Or this piece quoting him extensively in the American Prospect.

Even the BBC was interested c/o Jesus Politics


Progressive Christians are on the march! James Dobson must be scared since he is already attacking the group. We'll have much more on this in the next week or so.