Thanks, Mike!

Thanks to Mike Perry for blogging the Fordham conference on "Religion and the Future of Liberal Politics," where I spoke last month. My menial administrative duties kept me from getting around to reporting on it. This was the kickoff program for the Steinfels' new Center for Law and Culture at Fordham, a terrific intiative of which we at Villanova are all bitterly jealous -- but good for Fordham at making such great use of their talents! The program had an audience of about 350 -- about half seemed to be there for the liberalism and half for the religion. Coming right after the election and the panic over the role of religious values in the Bush victory, I think there was a lot of interest in in the question of whether there was ANY future for religion in liberal politics. I tried to draw attention to the grand tradition of prophetic voices in movements usually defined as "liberal" ranging from the abolition to the civil rights movements to the tradition of the labor priests (think Karl Malden in "On the Waterfront") to the antiwar and antipoverty movements of the 60's (think Dr King and Michal Harrington), and made my pitch for the Seamless Garment Party. For a somewhat more coherent version of my remarks than the transcript, see the paper under my name in the sidebar entitled "Reflections on Religion and the Future of Liberal Politics." I thought the best presentation was by Tom Kelly, a Fordham sociologist, who argued that the religious voice was needed to pull the Democratic Party back to its core concern for the poor.

-Mark