Abstract

Susannah Heschel

The article focuses on the Democratic Party in the United States, following its defeat in the 2004 elections. Democrats are being advised to respond to their election losses by enhancing their rhetoric of religion. Major movements of social advancement in this country have spoken in the name of the prophets, not in the name of churches or religion. Martin Luther King Junior, for example, spoke as a prophet, not a priest or theologian, and in fact was regarded with suspicion by many religious leaders, including in the black church. Prophets denounce hypocrisy and insist on justice as the tool of God and the manifestation of God. Democrats have to challenge the legitimacy of the Christian right in the name of the prophets. We have to unmask the unholy passions that inspire the apocalyptic zeal of so many Christians, Muslims and Jews: the ressentiment that has been fostered by the right wing, and the loneliness that makes apocalyptic fantasies so appealing. We need a new civil rights movement, a mobilization against the President George W. Bush regime, against its nascent totalitarianism, with marches on Washington that will stir the dormant American conscience. A movement can become powerful in America if it speaks in the voice of the prophets, insisting on our duty as citizens to resist a government that is subverting justice with its deadly policies.