Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism by David R. Swartz (review)

As the past ten American presidential elections have shown, the twentieth century alliance of evangelicals and Republicans emphatically defines both evangelicalism and conservative politics in America today. Their focus on sanctity of life and marriage and freedom of religion issues has forced a sharp partisan divide along religious lines. Yet, this monolithic relationship is less than 50 years old, and before the religious Right (and its alliterative counterparts the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition) there was the evangelical Left. This theologically conservative but politically liberal bloc has longed worked to integrate social justice and human rights issues into a broadly pro-life evangelical political agenda. In his fascinating new history, David Swartz works to complicate and correct the established religio-political narrative in America by investigating the origins, early history, and legacy of the evangelical Left.

On 23 November 1973, a group of evangelicals gathered in Chicago to discuss progressive political action and reform. The Thanksgiving Workshop for Evangelical Social Action attracted a broad demographic of evangelicals who advocated for peace, simple living, civil rights, gender equality, and the poor. It was heralded at the time as a turning point in the political engagement and public identity of American evangelicalism. Swartz centers the book around this event, dedicating each chapter to one of the conference attendees and their unique perspective and explaining how the early success, but ultimate failure, of the Thanksgiving Workshop represents broader trends in evangelicalism.

Swartz lays the groundwork for the movement with evangelical social engagement pioneer Carl Henry, anti-Vietnam War senator Mark Hatfield (ROR), civil rights activist John Alexander, peacenik Jim Wallis, and Christian World Liberation Front leader Sharon Gallagher. In the wake of WWII, evangelicals emphasized "passive conservatism" (3) and a moderate approach to politics. However, with Henry's arguments for social engagement, Hatfield's principled public service, and Alexander, Wallis, and Gallagher's radical alternative political perspectives, the new evangelical Left helped to shift the focus of evangelical debate from personal faith to public action.

In addition to changing political focus, the Thanksgiving Workshop created broad coalitions among national and international evangelical groups. The influence of Samuel Escobar and Latin American theology, Richard Mouw and Dutch Reformed theology, and Ron Sider and the simple living movement were integral in creating a new kind of global and inclusive evangelicalism. However, this diversity and ecumenism ultimately served to hinder the evangelical Left. Swartz argues that because the Thanksgiving Workshop "failed to construct a common language and political philosophy," (3) it could not hold together its disparate parts and the group fractured into female, African American, Anabaptist, and Reformed organizations.

In Swartz's skillful hands, the mini-biographies that form the basis of this book come together with insightful historical analysis to create a vibrant portrait of a conflicted but dynamic movement that illuminates some of the major implications of the movement today. These figures are often overlooked in evangelical histories, but they are key to the politicization of modern American evangelicalism, a turn that has profoundly shaped American politics.

In the 1970s the evangelical Left failed to build a lasting coalition, but Swartz maintains that their greatest legacy was the transformation of the evangelical political mind; they effectively "carved out space for the rhetoric and activism of social justice" (266) within evangelicalism as a whole. The evangelical Left fought passionately to mobilize evangelicals to progressive social and political action, but in the end it was within the newly political religious Right that this strategy prevailed. They successfully used the Left's activist principles and rhetoric to create a solid political message and powerful voting bloc that situated evangelical political power solidly in favor of more conservative social issues.

The real twist ending to Swartz's book, of course, is the twenty-first century resurgence of the evangelical Left. Wallis and his Sojourners community never disappeared, and they continually attract new generations of evangelicals. Sider...