Street Prophets is the forum that mobilizes progressive people of faith to name, discuss and take action on critical political and religious issues. So come on in and make yourself at home. We believe that most, if not all topics touching on faith and politics are appropriate on Street Prophets. While this forum represents people of widely differing (and often directly conflicting) theologies, our goal here is to focus on forwarding the progressive political discussion that our shared values make possible. The Street Prophets blog was originally founded by Daniel Schultz, a ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, and Markos Moulitsas, as an offspring of Daily Kos. Street Prophets seeks to change the "moral values" conversation by fostering community; promoting informed opinion and moving its members to action. We are believers in "justice, freedom, compassion and love," in the words of Rita Nakashima Brock. We are progressive, Democratic-leaning and vitally concerned with those whom Jesus called "the least of these." We are the faithful for whom the religious right emphatically does not speak. Its vibrant community of netroots faithful includes a broad range of faiths, including devout Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Mormons, Muslims, Atheists, Animists, and Neo-pagans. All who seek to promote a new conversation about the role of religion in America's public life are welcome here.
I discovered Daily Kos during the Kerry-Dean-Edwards Democratic primaries early in 2004, and Daily Kos has been part of my life ever since. One thing that attracted me to this website was that, while the diarists were primarily focused on getting Howard Dean, and then John Kerry elected President, diaries covered a wide range of subjects, one of which, promoted by Rev. Dan Schultz and others, focused on the need to revive and grow progressive causes within our nation's religious communities. Reverend Schultz and others, such as Ramara and myself, recognized that faith inspired so many of the 20th Century's leading activists - Dr. Martin Luther King,
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and
Dorothy Day, to name a few.
About a year after that depressing election, Markos announced that he was creating a new website, Street Prophets, which is described above. I eagerly sought out Street Prophets and joined that as well. I found a small but friendly group of "Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Mormons, Muslims, Atheists, Animists and Neo-Pagans" who "sought to promote a new conversation about the role of religion in America's public life." I eagerly shared my knowledge of Judaism and Talmud, describing how the Torah and the wisdom of the rabbis could guide us as we strive to build a better America and a better world. The audience at Street Prophets, compared to Daily Kos, was small but receptive, open, and friendly. I wrote a 6 part diary on the historical development of the Talmud and a 3 part diary on the Jewish calendar - the folks at Street Prophets, most of whom were not Jewish, appreciated learning about such matters. Later, Ramara began her weekly D'var Torah series, a project to which I regularly contributed. During this time, I separated politics from religion - religion at Street Prophets, politics at Daily Kos.
A few years ago, the managers of DK advised that they would no longer keep up a separate website for Street Prophets, but that we would be welcome at Daily Kos. Things were fine here for at least a year, but then a few DK'ers began to cause problems. But before I discuss those problems, let's pause for a few words of wisdom from my fellow Baltimorean, Henry L. Mencken.
Starting at 2:20:
I was born an agnostic. My father was one ahead of me, and his father ahead of him, so Agnosticism is nothing new to me. I point out one of the strange corollaries and that is this. A man who is an agnostic by inheritance so that he doesn't remember any time that he wasn't has almost no hatred for the religious. I get on very well with all kinds of ecclesiastics and all kinds of pious people, because I don't have any evil conscience in the matter. I'm not a renegade. No feeling of sin whatever. I assume they've got a right to believe any thing they please, being an extreme libertarian and believing in free speech and every other kind of freedom up to the last limits of the endurable.
I think there is a limit beyond which free speech can't go, but it's a limit that's very seldom mentioned. It's the point where free speech begins to collide with the right to privacy. I don't think there are any other conditions to free speech. I got a right to say and believe anything I please, but I haven't got a right to press it on anybody else. For example, take for instance the Catholic Church, which I am on good terms with, personally, but have no belief in whatsoever. I got a right to print my dissent from its doctrines, to utter them, and I have exercised that right for many years. But I have no right to go on the Cathedral steps on Sunday morning when the Catholics are coming out of High Mass and make a speech denouncing them. I don't think there is any such right. Nobody's got a right to be a nuisance to his neighbors, or to hurt his neighbors feelings, wantonly. If they come up to him and ask, "what do you think of this High Mass we just finished?" I think he has a right to answer. But he has no right to press his opinions on them.
Two individuals have refused to heed the advice of the Sage of Baltimore. They have hijacked the D'var Torah diaries, and a diary series on Islam, piling on one diary-long comment after another, piling on their extra long comments long after the diary has vanished from the front page. They have expressed their open hatred for all religion, which is their right, a right I would normally respect and defend. But their goal is to drive these diaries away from Daily Kos, because they can tolerate no dissent from their dogma. And that is an attitude that, in my opinion, endangers all diarists. (In fairness, their salvos into this weekend's D'var Torah, as of Saturday night, have been relatively mild.) They have, in the past weeks, not only disrupted diaries, they have disrupted a whole community. If they succeed, who will be next?
We have seen this intolerance before. In the Archbishop Torquemada. In Cotton Mather. But not just in the religious. Lenin and his fellow Bosheviks believed they could create a new society composed of New Men and New Women. They believed that religion was ignorance and they were determined to destroy this ignorance. Richard Pipes, in Russia under the Bolshevik Regime (1993) describes how in 1922 Lenin ordered the closing of all churches, and, a few months later, the closing of all synagogues. Churches and synagogues were stripped of their gold and silver. The Bolsheviks removed the Torahs from the synagogues, piled them high, and turned them into bonfires. Priests and rabbis were arrested that year in mass, and taken to a concentration camp on an island in the White Sea, where most would freeze and starve to death that winter. After Lenin's death, the anti-religious terror eased for awhile, but later, during the Great Terror of 1936 to 1939, Stalin launched a new wave of attacks, with even greater vigor. Stalin's secret police would question school children, and if the questioning revealed that their parents were secretly teaching their children religion, the parents would be arrested, charged with spreading anti-Soviet propaganda, and sent off to concentration camps in the frozen tundra of Siberia, from which few returned. And, during the Great Terror, 168,300 priests who had not yet been arrested, were arrested, with about 100,000 shot outright, and the remainder sent to death camps such as Kolyma in the frozen Siberian wasteland. This is the ultimate, logical outcome of fanatical religious hatred.
In the Jerusalem Talmud, Rabbi Ben Azzai called the story of Adam and Eve the greatest teaching of the Torah. But why is this fairy tale, which surely never happened, the greatest teaching of the Torah? Because the story teaches us that we are all the children of Adam and Eve, we are all brothers and sisters, and we must love one another as the brothers and sisters we are.
There are diaries on Daily Kos on music, on GUS, on national parks, on home gardening, on dogs and cats, on World War II airplanes. Surely there is a place for diaries on religion, as long as none of us tries to convert anyone else, and as long as all are respectful of other religions and respectful of atheists and agnostics as well. In fact, at NN13, there will be an interfaith service on Sunday morning, at which atheists will join and participate with Christians and Jews and perhaps others.
Drive progressive faith from Daily Kos, and it is the Religious Right that triumphs. Whatever our faith, or if we choose to have no faith, we should strive to be disciples of Rabbi Ben Azzai and not disciples of Lenin and Stalin. We must put an end to these hateful comments that hijack diaries and start treating each other as the brothers and sisters we are.