The Progressive William Jennings Bryan

If this NYTimes review is accurate, a new biography of William Jennings Bryan, A Godly Hero, is both interesting in its own right and relevant to the questions today about the lost connection (and possible reconnection?) between traditional religion and progressive politics.

Bryan is mainly remembered as the fanatical old fool Fredric March played in "Inherit the Wind." Michael Kazin's valuable biography of the Great Commoner, "A Godly Hero," aims to dust him off and resurrect him as a political model for small-p progressives in the new century. Kazin [a Georgetown history prof] presents a compelling case that Bryan, at his zenith, was not only a powerful and effective leader of a political-moral crusade but also a pioneering advocate of progressive ideas still with us today. . . .

Kazin also contends that Bryan's opposition to evolution was in part aimed at social Darwinism, which contemporary proponents used to justify war, exploitation by the strong and eugenics. . . .

The author criticizes current liberals who have sought to "quarantine the sacred from the realm of politics" and have lost the trust of the majority who "yearn . . . for a society run by and for ordinary people who lead virtuous lives" — Bryan's people.

Yet many of these people have presumably found a home on the religious right, where they support a narrow pro-business program that omits the concern for economic justice that galvanized Bryan. How could Bryan's Christ-inspired populism thrive in today's multicultural society? Still, there is a religious left that shows signs of reviving.

Tom