When liberals fought for civil rights or against the Vietnam War, religious figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Berrigan brothers were important leaders. What a difference a few decades make.

"As conservatives have successfully used religion to make political inroads, liberals have become increasingly antagonistic to mixing religion and politics," notes Waldman, an editor at the Washington Monthly.

Many liberals think religious leaders should remain silent on political issues. They associate religion with intolerance and hypocritical evangelism, and resent the Catholic Church’s opposition to abortion (while ignoring Pope John Paul II’s "liberal" stands on the death penalty, materialism, and helping the poor).

But the estrangement from religion is not entirely the secular liberals’ fault.

During the 1980s, Protestant and Catholic clergy and laity passionately opposed U.S. aid to the Nicaraguan contras and the repressive government of El Salvador—and their campaign had an impact on Capitol Hill. But the churches, Waldman notes, have not fired up "the same passion about issues confronting Americans at home," such as conditions in America’s inner cities. Domestic policy, observes Sister Maureen Fieldler of the Quixote Center, a Catholic social action organization in Maryland, "doesn’t hold the glamour of Central America. You can’t go on a delegation to the inner city." Some members of the religious Left are involved in helping the inner-city poor—so deeply involved that they simply have no energy left over for political activism.

Secular liberals, Waldman argues, should help the religious Left to raise its voice again. The fact is, she says, that many of liberalism’s central values—"whether help for the downtrodden or support for peace— derive from the Judeo-Christian tradition. Liberals who disdain religion are inadvertently acting like embarrassed adolescents who shun their own parents."

"Why We Need a Religious Left" by Amy Waldman, in The Washington Monthly (Dec. 1995), 1611 Connecticut Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20009.