Religious Left
The Religious Left or more specifically the Christian Left (aka Liberal Christians) are individual or groups of religious people who combine the Christian faith with liberal politics. They sometimes agree with Conservatives about issues such as abortion and same sex marriage but they see issues such as global warming, poverty, and war as moral issues. While most Christians see poverty and war as important moral issues, the Religious Left takes liberal positions on how to mitigate or resolve these issues. For example, while conservative Christians believe in individual charitable giving, many liberal Christians think that government has a duty to resolve these problems. They believe in public healthcare, public education, and social welfare. They also believe in more globalized (UN) control of wars, treaties and other international relations. Liberal Christians tend to accept homosexual behavior. They have been criticized by conservativ Christians as straying away from original Christian teachings. Conservative Christians believe that Christ is a personal savior, not a societal one. Liberation Theology was also espoused from Christian leftists. Members of the Christian left tend to scoff at the doctrine of original sin, in this sense, they are the living decendents of the social gospel movement. The authenticity of the beliefs of those of the Religious Left are highly questionable.
Christian Leftists
- Tommy Douglas - Minister and former leader of the NDP. Founder of Canadian Public Healthcare.
- Jimmy Carter - Evangelical Leftist and Former President of the United States.
- Hugo Chavez - Venezuelan Leftist President who calls Jesus the world's first socialist.
- Jesse Jackson - Liberal civil rights activist.
- Daniel Ortega - Nicaraugan President and former revolutionary. Tried to combine Marxism with Christianity despite the fact that Marxism is heretical due to its atheism.
Members of neo-orthodoxy
Neither strictly Christian left nor right were members of the Christian neo-orthodoxy movement. These theologians have characteristics in commmon with both the left and the right. Its members include the Swiss theologian Karl Barth and the first generation American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. They rejected much of the liberalism of the social gospel but still held biblical criticism in high regard and never fully questioned the liberal foundations of science and academia.