The Golden Age of the Religious Left: New York City and the Neglected Part of the American Left (audio)

Posted on April 30, 2021 by PLT Staff

Lecture given by Isaac Barnes May at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA (April 27, 2021). The lecture begins at 14:28. By focusing on New York City between the 1920s and the 1970s, May shows how the story of the American left is an incoherent one without the inclusion of the religious left. He specifically analyzes how philosopher Richard Rorty, in his 1998 book Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America, misreads the American left by ignoring the religious left. For a listing of all our Occasional Lectures, click here.

Excerpt: “Religion should always complicate the narratives we tell, and if you’re trying to tell the story of politics, you’ve got to gesture toward religion in some way. Rorty wants to have it not in there and even goes so far as to try to remove it, to scrub it out, and I don’t think that’s effective…Whatever we do, whether it is honor or critique, I really think this project needs to include the religious left…I’m not sure you can tell the story of the left by thinking it is just a story rooted in the nation.”

  • Audio Information
  • Date Recorded:April 27, 2021
  • Location Recorded:Charlottesville, VA
  • Audio File:Download File »
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