Two Different Takes on "Liberal Christianity"

CBS News ran this piece on their Evening News broadcast called "Religion Taking a Left Turn." They talk to several leaders of the emerging "religious left" including Tony Campolo and Jim Wallis. Their focus appears to be on issues like poverty, child care, the environment, and ending the war in Iraq. Let's see, that's helping the poor, caring for children and our natural resources, and promoting peace. Sounds like good Jesus stuff to me, and certainly a lot better then what is being spewed by the Religious Right.

Taking another approach is Charlotte Allen, an editor for Beliefnet, a conservative religious news source. In an op-ed piece she wrote for the Los Angeles Times, Allen states her belief that the declining membership in more moderate-to-liberal denominations, such as the Episcopals and Presbyterians, is due to "blurred doctrine and softened moral precepts."

If the majority rules in the United States, which is what I believe she is implying (and is also an increasingly common Religious Right arguement), then why worry about proselytizing nations where Islam and Hinduism is practiced by the overwhelming majority? These days, a majority in popular opinion often points more to the resources that side has to make their point and influuence people than it does the merit of what they are saying.