Religion in Politics and Social Movements

Today on From the Vault we found 2 programs that give us a glimpse at the contrast in the role that religion plays in shaping the political landscape and social movements. William Sloan Coffin makes a case for Brotherhood in 1968, and Fundamentalist Christians rally in Washington in 1980.

On August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous I Have A Dream speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. This marked an important moment in United States History as a religious leader spearheaded the Civil Rights Movement that would lead to the Civil Rights Act the following year.

On 47th Anniversary of Dr. King’s speech, August 28th, 2010 conservative talk show host Glenn Beck held a rally also in front of the Lincoln Memorial to rally the Conservative movement by evoking the style of religious ministers with phrases like  This day is the day that we can start the heart of America today, and it has nothing to do with Politics… it has everything to do with GOD.

Today on From the Vault we found 2 programs that give us a glimpse at the contrast in the role that religion plays in shaping the political landscape and social movements. We begin with a 1968 speech by famed Presbyterian minister and long time peace activist William Sloan Coffin.

William Sloan Coffin’s path to progressive politics is an interesting one. As a childhood friend of George Herbert Walker Bush, Bush brought Coffin into the exclusinve Skull and Bones Society as a senior at Yale University. Upon graduating from Yale, Coffin became a CIA case officer in 1950 but left dissolussioned when the CIA orchestrated the overthrow of 2 democratically elected leaders, Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh (Mossadeck) of Iran in 1953 and President Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala (Hawkobo) in 1954. William Sloan Coffin then enrolled at the Yale Divinity School and after being ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1956 he would become the Chaplain at Yale University where he would launch his lifetime activism in the Civil rights, Peace, and Gay rights Movements.

Here William Sloan Coffin speaking in 1968 on the destabalizing effect of the United States military buildup on dynamics of world politics.

Ever since the success of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have A Dream Speech at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the Conservative Religious groups have been trying to capture some of the zeal for their own causes.

Here is actuality from a Christian fundamentalist march on Washington on April 29th, 1980 in a Pacifica Program called Washington for Jesus produced by Tim Frasca and Adi Gevins and restored thanks to a grant from the American Archive

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