“Not Left-Wing, Just Human”: The Integration of Personal Morality and Structural Critique in Progressive Religious Talk

Abstract

AbstractResearchers have posited a bifurcated discursive field with regard to United States politics, with secular progressives at one pole and religious conservatives at the other. This division is typically understood to be both ideological and stylistic, with secular liberals possessing a robust language for speaking about structural inequality but lacking transcendent rhetoric about morality, and conservatives having the opposite discourses available to them. Yet this view steers us away from groups that complicate this picture, such as progressive religious communities. This article uses qualitative data collected among progressive religious groups to demonstrate that, through their ability to integrate discussions of structural inequality and personal morality, these communities create a rhetorical style that blends critical discourses with calls for righteousness. To understand different rhetorical positions, we have to examine the on-the-ground meaning making represented by politicized talk within communities that provide actors with the categories of identification which make social action possible.