DSA's Religion and Socialism Commission: A Social Movement Analysis

Introduction

The critical tradition has long considered religion an ideology that obfuscates social reality and redirects the energy for social change. More recently, however, critical theorists have begun to consider anew religion’s emancipatory potential (see for example Mendieta, 2005). This article puts aside discussion about religion’s ideological functions and concentrates instead on the praxis of emancipatory religion by examining religious socialism as an American social movement. I focus on the most recent iteration of the tradition, the Religion and Socialism Commission, formed in the 1970s as a subgroup of the Democratic Socialists of America (RS-DSA). I use the concepts of social movement theory to explain the growth and decline of this organization and conclude with some observations on the possibility of its renewal.

Religious socialism is a vibrant but neglected tradition on the American religious left. In political science, studies of the religious left are scarce, and there is no existing study of religious socialism in the United States after First World War. ¹ John Cort’s Christian Socialism: An Informal History is a possible exception, but includes only a few pages on the topic, and as its title implies, is more of an extended opinion piece than a scholarly study. Yet, the tradition of American religious socialism is important to understand. From its development we learn that the American religious left is far more diverse than is often assumed, extending beyond liberal theology and the Social Gospel. The tradition is also relevant to today’s political climate, as American democratic socialists attempt once more to ground their notions of justice in a moral idiom to appeal to both left and right on the ideological spectrum (Schulson, 2016). Finally, as the latter part of this article demonstrates, some contemporary activists concerned with topics as diverse as racial justice (e.g. the Black Lives Matter Movement), LGBT rights, environmental degradation, Islamophobia, and immigration reform, have begun to coalesce into virtual networks under the banner of religious socialism.

This article provides a new starting point for research into American religious socialism. The DSA’s Religion and Socialism Commission represents an important test case of the capacity for religious organizations coming from the political left to engage in what critical theorists would call “emancipatory” politics. The argument here is that the RS-DSA ultimately failed in its attempts to transition from an organization into a social movement, and concepts from social movement theory help to explain why. Crucial to the explanation is the concept of frame alignment (Snow et al., 1986). Any group of dedicated activists, no matter its number, must successfully make its way of understanding the situation at hand clear and convincing to others. In other words, the organizations’ interpretive “frame” must “align” with those of potential members. This may happen in various ways, but particularly relevant in this case is “frame bridging”—connecting with potential members who may be sympathetic to the group’s values and goals but who lack the resources or inspiration to join and act collectively. The RS-DSA was unable to effectively accomplish this work of frame bridging because the organization spent an inordinate amount of time on ideological concerns, particularly in abstract debate over whether orthodox Marxism or social democracy was more compatible with Christianity. At issue was the extent to which American religious socialism should include within its interpretive frame: class conflict, dictatorship of the proletariat, centralization of state power, or the necessity of violence in social change. This challenge of how to align multiple conceptions of justice in the RS-DSA’s ideology made it difficult for the Commission to form durable alliances with like-minded groups both at home and abroad, such as liberation theologians, American Christians Toward Socialism (ACTS), and the International League of Religious Socialists (ILRS).

In addition, the larger social and political context in which the RS-DSA operated—the political opportunity structure—gives a more complete picture of the circumstances that contributed to weak frame alignment. There was no lack of sympathetic organizations on the religious left during the 1970s, when the RS-DSA came into existence. In fact, early issues of its journal, Religious Socialism, brim with enthusiasm and letters to the editor in support of the new Commission. Lists of left-wing religious activists, all of whom were potential members in the RS-DSA, were long. But socialism as a political ideology was weak and had all but vanished as a serious alternative in the United States during the Cold War. The weakness of socialism in America and the absence of a viable socialist party robbed the RS-DSA of a crucial political ally. For a contrast, I discuss how earlier in the 20th century, the Christian Socialist Fellowship (CSF), the largest Christian socialist organization in America, enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship with the Socialist Party. The party provided the CSF with a political ideology of secular salvation that complemented quite well the Kingdom Theology espoused by the CSF. In fact, this alignment of secular and theological frames helps to account for why so many Christian socialists joined the American Socialist Party and through it, engaged in numerous forms of contentious politics such as wage protests and labor strikes.

As of this writing, the RS-DSA has re-emerged as an online network with a Web site, podcasts, blogs, and links to social media. This could provide the electronic infrastructure for a revitalization of this organization and religious socialism generally in the United States. New life as a virtual network makes the ideological inconsistency that hampered the organization in the past seem far less crucial. Today’s activists are much more concerned with progress on issues such as criminal justice, immigration reform, racial justice, LGBT rights, and health care. Emptied of its traditional ideological content, therefore, religious socialism may prove amenable to a wide number of different frames, as what counts as “religious socialism” expands. In other words, American religious socialism may become harder to define, but easier to mobilize. I discuss this possibility further in the conclusion.

Social movement theory

Key concepts from social movement theory such as frame alignment help us to understand the challenges the RS-DSA faced when attempting to make the transition from organization to social movement. Frame alignment refers to the process by which individuals’ interests and values are made congruent with the interests and values of a social movement organization. An organization must articulate a meaningful interpretation of a situation in order to gain new members and inspire them to contentious politics. If it cannot, important goals and issues will fail to resonate with potential members, even those already sympathetic to the organization’s values. David Snow et al. (1986) propose four processes by which frame alignment may take place: frame bridging, frame amplification, frame extension, and frame transformation. Frame bridging refers to “the linkage of two or more ideologically congruent but structurally connected frames regarding a particular issue or problem” (467). Frame amplification refers to the process of foregrounding beliefs or values considered particularly sensitive or inspiring to potential movement members. Frame extension refers to when a movement attempts to expand its frame to include issues incidental to its primary one, as when a peace movement extends its goals to include racial justice.

Finally, frame transformation may be required when the cause promoted by an organization goes against widely held societal beliefs or lifestyles. Sidney Tarrow (1998) points out that frame transformation may be quite radical, as when individuals experience a wholesale change in their interpretation of themselves and their place in the world. Such a process might capture the experience some have when they arrive at a new self-understanding through religious faith. Thus, it is, perhaps, no accident that examples of this type of framing tend to be religious ones (Snow et al., 1986).

Each of these forms of frame alignment are evident to some extent in the case of the RS-DSA, but it is the process of frame bridging that I focus on here. Frame bridging “involves the linkage of a (social movement organization) to…aggregates of individuals who share common grievances and attributional orientations” (467). It may apply to cases in which an organization tries to appeal to “ideologically congruent but untapped and unorganized sentiment pools” or to already existing organizations who might be sympathetic to the group’s cause (468). Frame bridging is often achieved by outreach and diffusion of information by way of face to face contact, direct mailings, telephone, or mass media. Lists of subscribers and activists are crucial to such bridging work. The ultimate goal is to achieve ideological congruence in a way that inspires.

Frames may fail to resonate because they are confusing, contradictory, or too abstract. In the case of the RS-DSA, abstract internal disputes over social democracy and Marxism, and which one is most compatible with Christianity, overtook efforts to organize and recruit new members. Moreover, as Mayer Zald and Roberta Ash (1966: 337) argue, organizations intensely focused on ideology are particularly prone to the development of factions: “movement organizations concerned with questions of ultimate ideological truth and with theoretical matters are more likely to split than movement organizations linked to bread and butter issues.” Ideological disagreement indeed sparked factionalism in the RS-DSA at certain critical junctures, such as in the early 2000s, when the original leadership moved to take back control of the journal Religious Socialism after some members grew too sympathetic to authoritarian regimes. One Commission member worried that focus on ideological questions had forced the Commission into an “ideological ghetto” (Deutsch, 1993).

For a group of like-minded people to successfully create a social movement, more than one variable must fall into place. The concept of political opportunity structure takes into account the larger political context in which social movements operate and provides a more complete explanation for why the RS-DSA struggled to sustain itself in the 1980s and 1990s. Political opportunity structure describes features of the political environment “that provide incentives for collective action by affecting people’s expectations for success or failure” (Tarrow, 1998: 77). For social movements operating in democratic systems, elite allies emerge and disappear as different political parties come to power (Tarrow, 2006). Unlike the CSF in the 1920s, the RS-DSA did not have the benefit of a strong socialist party on which to focus its loyalty, complement and help frame its theological arguments, and provide influential political allies. Members of the Commission were dues paying members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), but as the 1980s turned into the 1990s, socialism had lost its appeal. The power of the DSA declined, and the relationship between the Commission and the DSA became estranged. Membership in the Commission declined steeply, subscriptions to Religious Socialism dropped and planned conferences were canceled. Socialism had lost its appeal in America and dragged religious socialism down with it.

The combined effect of weak frame alignment and lack of a political opportunity structure meant that the RS-DSA never made the transition from organization to social movement. As a result, it could not provide its members with any “payoff” in the form of opportunities to participate in contentious politics—a perception that change is possible was never created. That is why, by the 1990s, the Commission had slipped into what Zald and Ash (1966) term “organizational maintenance” mode, wherein the main function of an organization becomes securing the resources required to ensure its very existence.

Historical context

Religious socialism is the conviction that socialist principles of economy and society follow logically from the tenets of one’s religious faith. In the United States, religious socialism has mostly meant Christian and Democratic socialism, although Christian Socialist movements have at various points claimed the support of Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and even atheists and agnostics. Nonetheless, the predominant religious socialist orientation in the American context has been rooted in various Christian traditions including Episcopalian, Methodist, Congregationalist, Catholic, Presbyterian, Unitarian, and others. Approaches range from the kingdom theology of the CSF (discussed in more detail below), to the Christo-centric emphasis on self-sacrifice of William Porter Bliss’s Society of Christian Socialists, to Rauschenbusch’s Christianized social order, a democratic socialist vision of mixed private and public ownership (Dorrien, 1995: 46). Other variations of religious socialism exist. For example, Paul Tillich’s socialism could hardly be characterized as a logical derivation of socialism from Christianity. Rather, according to Tillich (1991: 40), religion is immanent in culture and society: “the religious principle is actualized in all spheres of spiritual or cultural life.” Here religious socialism refers to a religious impulse expressed in socialist principles. This immanent approach, however, is not typical of American religious socialists, who have tended to argue that the principles of democratic socialism reflect the authentic interpretation of Christianity.

The DSA’s Religion and Socialism Commission was founded in the 1970s by a Catholic, though Unitarians, Jesuits, Methodists, and Jews held leadership positions in the organization. This was not always the case. For WDP Bliss, the best-known Christian socialist of the 19th century, only Christianity, with its focus on self-sacrifice and salvation, could provide the true foundation for socialism. Moreover, throughout its history in the United States, religious socialism has had to overcome the challenge of espousing a political ideology widely considered foreign, if not hostile to, American values such as self-reliance, individual freedom, and democracy. Thus, we find Bliss emphasizing that Christian socialism is compatible with individual freedom and is a “perfectly Anglo-Saxon conception” (Bliss, 1890: 23). The RS-DSA maintained that the basic principles of religious socialism could be found throughout the long history of American civil religion, dating back to John Winthrop’s “City on the Hill.” Like American Christian socialists of the 19th century, the RS-DSA argued consistently for a democratic socialism that would protect political democracy from corruption by corporate interests.

The first modern American Christian socialist movement was the Christian Labor Union (CLU), founded in 1872 in Boston, Massachuetts, by Congregationalist Minister Jesse Jones and financed by T Wharton Collens, a judge from New Orleans. The group published the first Christian socialist periodical in the United States, Equity: A Journal of Christian Labor Reform. This journal, as well as a second, The Labor-Balance, ceased publication after Collens’s death in 1878. The CLU advocated for both a strong state and decentralized producer cooperatives, but wavered on the question of labor violence. It backed the Erie Railroad (1875) and the longshoremans’ strikes (1877), both of which involved violence, on the basis of Christ’s proclamation in the New Testament that “I came not to bring peace but a sword” (Cort, 1988: 225). Although the organization was small and short lived, later Christian social reformers came to regard Jones and Equity’s editor Edward H Rogers, as “pioneers of all social gospel agitation in the labor field” (White and Hopkins, 1976: 147). The best-known Christian Socialist of the 19th Century was undoubtedly Bliss, whose Boston-based Society of Christian Socialists had chapters New York City, Ohio, Illinois, and Kansas until its demise in 1896.

It was the CSF, organized in 1906, however, that represented “the high water mark of an institutionalized Christian Socialist movement in America” (Dressner, 1978: 78). The CSF provides an instructive contrast to the RS-DSA, for unlike the RS-DSA, the CSF benefitted from a more favorable political opportunity structure. Specifically, the CSF enjoyed a close relationship with the American Socialist Party. The party provided the movement with elite allies, a stable organizational hierarchy and served as an ideological anchor for the CSF’s theology. This favorable political opportunity structure facilitated member engagement in contentious politics.

The CSF began with a journal, Christian Socialist, edited by EE Carr, a Methodist minister and Socialist Party member from Danville, Illinois. Over the course of its decade long existence from 1906 until the American entry into the First World War, the CSF had about 1500 registered members and 27 chapters nationwide, while many thousands attended its national conferences. The Christian Socialist had 20,000 registered subscribers by 1907 (Cort, 1988: 242). Carr claimed that year,

The Christian Socialist has not only succeeded beyond any of its predecessors, but has been able to unite religious people of all denominations in all parts of the country in common work. And out of the agitation accomplished by this paper the Christian Socialist Fellowship was born. (Carr, 1907: 5)

Members of the CSF also brought in new members to the Socialist Party as the party increasingly became the “focus of loyalty for most of the Christians in Socialism” (Handy, 1952: 47). Bliss encouraged his supporters to join the party, while other well-known figures such as John Spargo promoted socialism in the churches. In 1909, Spargo (1909: 16) wrote triumphantly that “only in the United States is there a perfectly harmonious and intimate relation between (the Christian Socialist Movement) and the regular socialist political party.” The strategy achieved results, prompting socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs to proclaim at a 1908 CSF conference,

a few years ago, a meeting like this would have been impossible…I am glad I can call you ministers of the Man of Galilee my comrades, for it isn’t long ago that I felt a great prejudice against you as a class.” (Handy, 1952: 50)

While the CSF ultimately broke from the Socialist Party over America’s entry into the First World War (with the party opposing and the CSF supporting American involvement), the success of the CSF can be attributed in large part to their mutually beneficial relationship with the Socialist Party. This key feature of the political opportunity structure lent legitimacy to the organization’s theological framing of social problems, providing the movement with a mobilizing ideology. In return, the CSF provided the Socialist Party with new ranks of loyal members.

The Religion and Socialism Commission: Origins

At a 1974 Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) meeting in Chicago, a small group of “Protestants, Catholics, and Jews who favor the DSOC concept of working within the left wing of the Democratic Party” came together as the “Religious Caucus” of the DSA (Religion and Socialism Commission, 1977a: 4; see also Cort, 1988: 279). Shortly after, they would change their name to the Religion and Socialism Commission (RS-DSA). The RS-DSA was led by John C Cort, a Catholic and former Peace Corps worker who found his calling as an activist while working with Dorothy Day in the Catholic Labor Movement in New York City. Under Cort’s leadership, the fledgling organization began to publish a quarterly newsletter, Religious Socialism, in the spring of 1977. Membership in the DSA was a prerequisite for membership in the Commission, and until today, the RS-DSA is open to DSA members of all faiths whose socialism is inspired by their spiritual identity.

Early issues of Religious Socialism and activist lists give a sense of the geographic scope and diversity of the network of organizations sympathetic to the RS-DSA and provide a snapshot of the religious left at the time. In the first issue, a section entitled “Some Current Religious Socialist Organizations” lists groups such as the Center for a Just Society, based in Boston, and the Center of Concern, based in Washington, DC. The latter was led by Joe Holland, a Jesuit priest who was “particularly involved in promoting Christian-Marxist dialogue” (Religion and Socialism Commission, 1997a: 3). Other groups included Christians Concerned with Relations with eastern Europe, based in Elgin, Illinois, and the Religion and Socialism Committee of the American Academy of Religion. Under “Some Jewish Organizations” we find Workman’s Circle, Jewish Socialist Bund, and Jewish Socialist Verband, all based in New York City, and Chutzpah, in Chicago. A list of “Religious Activists” from a 13 November 1977 DSOC-organized conference on full employment in Washington, DC includes the Presbyterian Congregation for Reconciliation (from Dayton, Ohio), representatives from Bread for the World, (Cleveland Heights, Ohio), the Society of Friends (Baltimore, Maryland), the Jewish Labor Committee, (Portland Maine), the Tressler-Lutheran Service Association, (Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania), the Institute on the Church in Urban-Industrial Society (Chicago, Illinois), the Dominican Community of Racine, Wisconsin, and many others. The American religious left at this time was thus geographically diverse, but dominated by Christian and Jewish activist organizations, a trend that would moderate only slightly beginning in the 1990s. While every organization was not a dues paying member of the Religion and Socialism Commission or the DSA, their representatives attended DSA-sponsored meetings and wrote sympathetically about the Commission in the pages of Religious Socialism. Most importantly, however, this list of supporters illustrates the wide range of organizations available for combined action with the Religion and Socialism Commission. The relevant question is whether the RS-DSA will be able to successfully bridge its interpretive framework with the frames of these sympathetic organizations.

The RS-DSA had an auspicious beginning. Maxine Phillips (2017), a member of the organization’s Executive Committee, says of this period that “the parent organization was in the news, Mike Harrington had a lot of credibility, and people were eager to work with the group.”. The group also enjoyed the support of a number of high-profile left-leaning theologians, such as Harvey Cox of Harvard University, Catholic eco-feminist theologian Rosemary Ruether, and Cornel West. German theologian Dorothy Solle also joined out of solidarity during her time at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Solle’s work, and particularly her conception of “Christofascism” would remain particularly influential throughout the history of the Commission, because it seemed to accurately describe attempts by right-wing Christian fundamentalists in the United States to use political power to undermine democracy, legislate morality, and shore up support for neo-liberal economics (Faramelli, 2016a; see also Solle, 1970).

What did members of the Religion and Socialism Commission believe? While a definitive list risks papering over important disagreements, one source in particular provides a window into the group’s overall ideological orientation. In June 1977 at St Paul’s United Church of Christ in Chicago, the DSA held a one-day conference on religion and socialism on the topic, “Is Democratic Socialism a Vehicle for Religiously Motivated Social Change?” Attendance seems to have hovered in the 1970s, and the conference included breakout sessions on the church and labor, led by Richard Poething of the Institute for the Church in Urban Industrial Society, members of the World Without War Council, and the Alliance of the Catholic Laity. Other sessions addressed Liberation Theology in Latin America, led by Father Joe Mulligan of the Jesuit Center for Third World Awareness, and a seminar on Religion, Feminism, and Socialism led by Catholic theologian Rosemary Ruether.

The featured speaker was Peter Steinfels, then editor of the journal, Commonweal. His speech, entitled “The Attractions and Temptations of Religious Socialism” lays out the main themes of American religious socialism. Acknowledging the Weberian notion that capitalism incubated successfully in the Protestant ethic, Steinfels goes on to claim that capitalism’s “full flowering” in the United States required a rupture with any religious restraint, until its “inalterable laws had the air of idols and graven images that Christians and Jews alike had refused to worship” (Religion and Socialism Commission, 1977b: 3). Capitalism in advanced industrial nations may have done away with mass misery, Steinfels argues, but American capitalism in particular has developed a corporate and political elite that threatens the survival of American democracy.

Faced with this situation, religious socialists must avoid certain “temptations” such as nostalgia for a pre-industrial past, “the denial of conflict and the vaporization of “love” into a sentimentality that clouds over all hard choices” (3). In other words, religious socialists must give up quixotic attempts to cajole American capitalists into appreciating the law of love—by which Steinfels seems to have meant concern for the poor over oneself—and resist the temptation to seek political power in order to legislate morality, for “political life has an autonomy that must be respected”. Finally, religious socialists must combat the growing tendency to use the language and symbols of religious faith to “mobilize and propagandize politically” (4). For these reasons, the Religion and Socialism Commission would always argue strongly in defense of American democracy against corporate power and the separation of church and state.

Steinfels closes his talk by reminding listeners that Jonathan Winthrop’s “City on A Hill” sermon, although “anti-socialist insofar as it describes the divisions of society into rich and poor as immutable expressions of God’s will,” at the same time offers a vision of cooperative community with which American religious socialists could readily appreciate (4–5). In this sense, Steinfels argues, the “City on A Hill” concept embodies the ambiguity of the American experience. Steinfels urges American religious socialists to reclaim that part of the City on a Hill that enjoins us to “share in toil and suffering—to act justly—and to make other’s experience our own” (5). Steinfels’ speech is important because it articulates fundamental themes that would reappear in the pages of Religious Socialism for the next three decades: the contradiction between advanced industrial capitalism and the teachings of Christianity; the radical distortions of Christian teaching promulgated by the religious right, that serve as a superstructure for unfettered free market accumulation and personal wealth; and finally, that democratic socialism is not only the logical political expression of Christianity but also has deep roots in American history and civil religion.

Not all organizations sympathetic to religious socialism shared this basic vision, and the RS-DSA often found itself at odds with others on the religious left. The reasons for this have to do with the RS-DSA’s focus on ideological differences with other organizations, which negatively impacted the Commissions’ ability to bridge frames successfully. Tension between the Commission and liberation theology illustrates this clearly. After going dormant after the Russian Revolution and the First World War, religious socialism in the United States was revitalized in the 1970s in large part because of the influence of Latin American liberation theologians. One important figure was Sergio Torres, a Chilean priest who served as the Executive Director of a New York-based organization, Theology in the Americas. The organization sponsored well-attended conferences on liberation theology in Detroit (1975) and another on Labor and Church Dialogue in New York City (1977). Also influenced by liberation theology was ACTS, based in Detroit. ACTS was the American chapter of the international organization Christians for Socialism, organized in 1972 by pro-Allende priests in Chile. The Religion and Socialism Commission found itself at odds with this group as well.

One of the first tasks before the Religion and Socialism Commission was therefore to bridge the ideological divide and bring “the Liberation Theology people” together with the DSA (Religion and Socialism Commission, 1977a: 1). From the beginning, however, relations between the RS Commission and liberation theologians in the United States were tense. This was partly a function of the stridently anti-Marxist stance of Cort, who editorialized in the pages of Religious Socialism against what he saw as the revolutionary Leninism of Latin American liberation theology, sometimes singling out both ACTS and Theology in the Americas by name. In the first issue of Religious Socialism, for example, Cort had written about Latin American liberation theology that

some of the leaders of this movement…have taken a kind of Marxist-Leninist revolutionary stance that opts for a dictatorship of the proletariat and, in (Gonzalo) Arroyo’s words, ‘regards democracy (as) an ideological ruse which safeguards the interests of the ruling classes and functions exclusively within the confines of this capitalist system.’ (3)

In response, Torres (1978: 1) sent a letter of protest to the National Chairman of the DSOC, Michael Harrington, in which he wrote,

in the name of the Latin American theological community associated with the liberation current in contemporary Christian theology, I would like to protest the attacks, insults, and untruths cast by Cort against our community in DSOC’s quarterly bulletin, Religious Socialism.

The difficulty the RS-DSA experienced in bridging its interpretive framework with that of liberation theology reflected a wider ideological debate within the Commission over how far to go in accepting classical Marxist concepts such as the dictatorship of the proletariat and class conflict. Although Cort’s experience with the Catholic Labor movement in New York City was a positive one, his experience there with labor unions was not. He found them anti-democratic and doctrinaire, and it soured him on conservative Marxist-Leninism for good (Faramelli, 2017). The lead article of the first issue of Religious Socialism asked whether a believing Christian or Jew “can also be a Marxist” (Religion and Socialism Commission, 1977a: 2). Cort asked readers to consider whether the Marxist-Leninist orientation toward violence could ever be reconciled with “the spirit of Christ,” whether Marx really believed in democracy or rather in the dictatorship of the proletariat, and whether there was something to be said for private ownership as a guardian of human rights. After all, Cort noted, the DSA constitution “speaks of ‘social ownership’ rather than public ownership of the means of production” (2).

In the end, Cort admitted that the attempts to partner with Christians for Socialism and liberation theology groups had failed. In a speech at Rosemont College in Pennsylvania he remarked, “although the editor has made an effort to engage spokesman for Christians for Socialism for this dialogue, this effort has been unsuccessful to date” (Cort, 1978). He then reiterated his charge that “most liberation theologians” believed in “Leninist, anti-democratic, tendencies” arguing that “it is our feeling that this kind of wide distribution of productive power is also at best calculated to protect and preserve those basic rights and freedoms, including the freedom of religion, without which there can be no ultimate liberation.” Here, Cort argues, along with Steinfels, that American religious socialism should stand for the defense of American democracy and seek to balance, rather than sacrifice, the rights of the individual with the Christian ethic of community. Thus, the attempt to forge a religious socialism in an American context created ideological tensions that impacted the Commission’s ability to bridge interpretive frameworks and form partnerships at home and abroad.

1980s–1990s: Expansion and decline

In the 1980s, the Executive Committee of the Religion and Socialism Commission began to take steps to grow the movement. A 24 April 1982 letter notes that “the most pressing business is to organize ourselves effectively and to extend the work of the Commission” (Van Buren et al., 1982: 1). The Committee attracted volunteers to help with recruitment, organize regional conferences, and assist with the editing and distribution of Religious Socialism. With DSA, the Commission participated in the “burgeoning, exciting American Peace movement” (1). Executive Committee member Barbara Van Buren represented the Committee on the Religious Taskforce for the UN Special Session on Disarmament. A July 1983 letter excitedly reports that the Commission was focused on “its task, its relationship to local groups, and its leadership structure” (Phillips et al., 1983: 1). During this period, Cort stayed on as an editor of the Religious Socialism newsletter and as a member of the group’s executive committee, but the day-to-day tasks of running the journal, handling the group’s finances, and organizing conferences had shifted to a small group in Pennsylvania, particularly Jack Spooner, a committed Socialist.

The RS-DSA also attempted to form international linkages, notably with the ILRS. Founded in 1920 and headquartered in Sweden, the ILRS began as a network for leaders of social movements and religious branches of socialist and social democratic parties in Europe. After the Second World War, the ILRS was reshaped to work as a safeguard against religious oppression inside the European left. Although its center of gravity always remained in Europe, as it still does today, the League had formed important links with liberation theologians in Latin America, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and the ANC Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. By the 1980s, the League could point to widespread partnerships with Christian Socialist political parties around the world. After the end of the Cold War, churches and religious socialist organizations from central and eastern Europe and the Baltic states joined the League (Dalman, 2017).

It was not long before problems of frame bridging emerged between the RS-DSA and the ILRS. Cort and Spooner attended the 1983 ILRS convention in Stockholm, but returned home frustrated. A letter from Cort recounts how the two were “stymied” on pushing two questions to a vote: condemning the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the suppression of Solidarity in Poland (Cort, 1988: 348–349). The ILRS apparently intended to mention and condemn only “Western” acts of aggression, not those of Soviet or Soviet-allied states. The ILRS and the RS-DSA remained on friendly terms throughout the 1980s and into the 2000s. Nevertheless, the two organizations were never able to resolve their ideological differences to a point that allowed for joint engagement in contentious politics.

In the early 1990s, the RS-DSA encountered new difficulties. In December 1992, Secretary Jack Spooner reported to the Executive Committee that subscriptions to Religious Socialism were dropping at an alarming rate. Prospects were dim for three national conferences planned for 1993. Spooner had heard nothing from contacts in Pittsburgh and Columbus. In numerous letters, Spooner cajoled members into action and pleaded for a new and disciplined editorial team for Religious Socialism. Spooner finally gave up hopes for any major conference in 1993. “Screw the big names—there are none,” he wrote in a 1993 letter to the Executive Committee, “let’s get to work either to make religious socialism worthy of its name or get out of the business” (Spooner, 1993a: 1). By that time, Commission membership had dropped from over 300 to 47 members in the East, 11 in the Central US, and 20 members in the West.

In addition, there was growing disillusionment with the group’s parent organization, the DSA. The Religion and Socialism Commission had to market itself to DSA members, but the DSA was not forthcoming with activist lists. Letters and reports note growing frustration with the centralization of power within DSA. When one member of the Executive Committee sent a letter resigning from the RS-DSA, Spooner (1993b: 3) wrote “this is the third I’ve received in two months from members leaving DSA because of national office ‘politics’ and non-responsiveness to requests and inquiries.” At a 1993 Commission meeting in Columbus, minutes reveal complaints that the DSA was “too intellectual; too social-democratic; too New York influenced; and too top-centered, with locals being treated as franchises rather than as important creative enterprises in themselves” (Religion and Socialism Commission, 1993: 1). As a result of this growing tension with DSA, in 1995 the Commission was forced to shift strategies, from pursuing its own agenda within the DSA, to focusing on organizational maintenance and its own survival, and particularly the survival of the journal Religious Socialism.

Finally, the RS-DSA experienced factionalism that culminated in a crisis of leadership in the mid-1990s. Cort and other Executive Committee members had grown increasingly uncomfortable with the sympathy shown by some members of the Commission toward repressive regimes, particularly Cuba. A Winter 1995 article in Religious Socialism sympathetic to the Cuban regime brought the matter to a head. Phillips recalls,

Cort, who was a staunch anti-communist, became concerned about the drift toward approval of some of the so-called socialist countries that were in fact authoritarian regimes. He called a meeting of “old-timers” to take back the magazine…there were bad feelings on the part of those who were ousted, and I do not know whether they have ever become active again. (Phillips, 2017)

Contemporary developments

By 2006, the RS-DSA and its periodical Religious Socialism had gone dormant following to the death of Cort and the departure of important personnel such as the organization’s webmaster. In 2015, Phillips resurrected the Religion and Socialism periodical online. Today, religious socialism in the United States exists more as a virtual network than a formal organization, with an active blog and a Facebook page. But the Commission itself no longer exists. Phillips (2017) commented,

unfortunately, times have changed in that people no longer have the ‘leisure’ time that they had in the past to give to activities. We no longer have the ‘big names.’ I don’t have the technical skills. We rely on a rotating team to post articles, and I do a lot of editing. I hope at some point to have a fully functioning editorial team.

Articles posted online at religioussocialism.org reflect the network’s changed composition and concern for an increasing number of topics. Contributors to the site apply emancipatory interpretations of Christianity, Judaism, and other religions to a range of contemporary issues, most commonly on race relations (Ware, 2016; Wilkes, 2016), immigration and refugees (Ratzman, 2016; Thelle, 2017), environmental justice (Faramelli, 2016b), and homophobia and LGBTQ rights (Stell, 2017). “Throwback Thursday” posts show continued interest in the work of Solle and Cort. The power of the religious right remains an issue of concern; one contributor writes “such purveyors of perverted religion have delegitimized religion in the eyes of so many, particularly those who cannot stand injustice and the abuse of power” (Shaddox, 2017; see also Joyce, 2017).

Will this collection of like-minded activists and intellectuals be successful in making the transition from online network to social movement? A renewed Religion and Socialism Commission must still work within the confines of the DSA, and this brings unique organizational and political challenges. Phillips (2017) notes that “the tensions within the organization as a whole have to do with the old…dilemma of doing electoral work within the existing system or creating a new party or eschewing party politics altogether for movement-building.” Any of these options would require close cooperation with the DSA. But a more fundamental question arises: can a newer, less ideologically driven and more issue-oriented version of American religious socialism overcome problems of framing that hampered the growth of this tradition in the recent past?

Conclusion

After a promising beginning in the 1970s, the Religion and Socialism Commission of the Democratic Socialists of America encountered a series of obstacles that ultimately prevented the organization from growing into a social movement. The Commission did not lack energy; members organized workshops and meetings on religion and socialism around the country, participated in a number of direct mailing campaigns, and travelled abroad for international conferences. But the RS-DSA was unable to frame the concept of religious socialism in a way that allowed for “bridging” with other organizations already sympathetic to its cause. The organization enjoyed a friendly relationship with the ILRS, but was never quite able to coordinate participation in contentious politics because, in the RS-DSA’s view, the League was too sympathetic toward Soviet and Soviet-backed regimes. When it came to liberation theologians and related groups in North and South America, the RS-DSA found them anti-democratic, “Leninist,” state-centric, and overly focused on class conflict. The Commission was far more concerned with forging a pro-democratic, distinctly American version of religious socialism free of any conceptual elements associated with Leninism or the Soviet model. The geopolitical context of the Cold War intruded on the efforts of American religious socialism in unforeseen ways, impacting the RS-DSA’s ability to align its interpretation of religious socialism with that of other organizations.

At the time of this writing, the RS-DSA is attempting to reconstitute its membership. Yet, the future of American religious socialism is uncertain. The political opportunity structure—the overall political and social context in which the organization operates—is not what it once was. If, as Tarrow (1998: 19) has argued, “people engage in contentious politics when patterns of political opportunities and constraints change,” today’s political opportunity structure may prove more favorable to a renewed RS-DSA. The Democratic Party is currently split between a centrist faction and a faction further left, led by Bernie Sanders and the Progressive Caucus in the US Congress. Bernie Sanders has described himself as a Democratic Socialist, and frames economic and social inequality in moral terms that may resonate with potential RS-DSA members. Meanwhile, membership in the DSA—the Religion and Socialism Commission’s parent organization—continues to increase (Heyward, 2017). Such developments may well provide a political opportunity for religious socialism to regain traction.

Other developments may constrain the future growth of American religious socialism. Today’s networked activists operate with a far more flexible interpretation of what religious socialism refers to than the CSF or the RS-DSA. Self-identified religious socialists now contribute articles to a blog and Web site maintained by the DSA. Topics range from race, immigration, refugees, the environment, US foreign policy, LGBQ issues, feminism, and more. Twitter, Facebook, and other forms of social media are used as well. It is not unusual for new cycles of movement activity to accompany technological developments (Snow et al., 1986: 468; Tarrow, 1998: 145). Worth noting in the present case, however, is the absence of conversation about the scope and meaning of religious socialism itself. Gone are questions about movement ideology, and comparatively little attention is paid to the critique of capitalism. The current stage thus represents something of a paradox: new energies collect under the banner of religious socialism just as the meaning of the term becomes more nebulous.

Returning to social movement theory, it may no longer be very useful to think in terms of “frames” to be bridged or extended given these recent developments. The new ideological flexibility is most likely a consequence of the lack of organizational hierarchy among today’s religious socialists. This suggests that there is no longer much left of religious socialism to frame, and no movement leadership to do the work of frame bridging. Moreover, as I pointed out above, religious socialists that participate in fora such as new social media are far more concerned with issue oriented politics (race relations, refugee policy, etc.) than spending time on establishing consistency between Christianity and Marxism, for example. It is therefore probable that today’s religious socialists will be absorbed by other organizations that engage in direct action based on issues.

In conclusion, religion represents a powerful source of social critique, but a purely theoretical recognition of this fact is not enough. Religions’s emancipatory potential must be examined according to concrete conditions and with empirical rigor. This article represents a step forward in that direction. It deploys concepts from social movement theory to help isolate the variables that have contributed to episodes of success or failure of religious socialism in the United States. Sustained empirical analysis will help the critical theorist of religion to predict whether and how small groups of religious socialists will grow into movements capable of collective action on a significant scale.