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The US Religion and Socialism ! The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/2050303218774911
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Robert M Bosco
Centre College, USA

Abstract
This article examines religious socialism as an American social movement. It focuses on the most
recent iteration of this tradition, the Religion and Socialism Commission, formed in the 1970s as a
subgroup of the Democratic Socialists of America. Drawing on concepts from social movement
theory such as frame alignment and political opportunity structure, it argues that the Religion and
Socialism Commission ultimately failed in its attempt to transition from an organization into a
social movement. It then considers various possibilities for the future of religious socialism in the
United States, given new variables such as a changing political opportunity structure and the rise
of social media.

Keywords
religion, politics, socialism, critical theory of religion, religious left, United States, religion
and politics

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

Corresponding author:
Robert M Bosco, Centre College, 600 West, Danville, KY 40422, USA.
Email: Robert.bosco@centre.edu
2 Critical Research on Religion 0(0)

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 ulti-
mately 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 sympa-
thetic 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 con-
cerns, 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
Bosco 3

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 orga-
nization 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 organi-
zation. 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 congru-
ent 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 organi-
zation 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
4 Critical Research on Religion 0(0)

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 infor-
mation 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 sym-
pathetic to authoritarian regimes. One Commission member worried that focus on ideolog-
ical 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 pro-
vide 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, social-
ism 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 can-
celed. 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 struc-
ture meant that the RS-DSA never made the transition from organization to social move-
ment. 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.
Bosco 5

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 interpreta-
tion 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 organiza-
tion. 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 com-
patible 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
6 Critical Research on Religion 0(0)

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)

According to the organization’s constitution, its mission reflected a Kingdom Theology:

To permeate the churches, denominations, and other religious institutions with the social mes-
sage of Jesus; to show that Socialism is the necessary economic expression of the Christian life;
to end the class struggle by establishing industrial democracy and to hasten the reign of justice
and brotherhood on earth. (Dressner, 1978: 79)

The ideals of the party and the CSF’s Kingdom Theology mutually reinforced one another.
As Robert Handy (1952: 45) writes in his study of Christianity and socialism in America
between 1900 and 1920, “the key to understanding this movement of Christians into social-
ism is the identification that was made between the coming kingdom of God and the socialist
state to be inaugurated by the Socialist Party.” At the same time, the CSF embraced clas-
sical Marxist notions such as the economic interpretation of history and the concept of class
struggle, differentiating them from earlier Christian socialist movements in the 19th century
and bringing them more in line with the Socialist Party platform. Thus, the secular platform
of the Socialist Party anchored the theology of the CSF, strengthening the religious social-
ists’ ability to legitimate their understanding of the world and motivate collective action,
a hallmark of social movement framing (Tarrow, 1998: 109–110).
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
Bosco 7

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)

Eventually Christian Socialists came to represent the pacifist wing of the Socialist Party,
which stressed the gradual and peaceful spread of socialism through the ballot box. To be
sure, not all Christian progressives sympathetic to socialism agreed with the identification of
the coming Kingdom of God with the socialist state; certainly major progressive figures such
as Walter Rauschenbusch did not. Rauschenbusch believed in the social dimension of the
“Kingdom of God,” but equated its coming with the gradual evolution of political and
economic democracy, thus “resisting the typical socialist tendency of his time to produce
‘blueprints for a new humanity’” (Dorrien, 1995: 46). Yet, Rauschenbusch admitted, “the
spread of diluted Socialist ideas on many religious leaders has been one of the most fruitful
religious influences of the last forty years” (Handy, 1952: 53).
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 relation-
ship 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 move-
ment 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.
8 Critical Research on Religion 0(0)

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 theo-
logian 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 influ-
ential 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
Bosco 9

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” (4). 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 separa-
tion 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 funda-
mental 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 dor-
mant 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,
10 Critical Research on Religion 0(0)

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 edito-
rialized 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)

Cort acknowledged there were others in the liberation theology movement more sympathet-
ic to democratic socialism, but his words drew a severe reaction from liberation theologians.
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.

For Torres, the issue was political, not personal. Torres explained to Harrington that a
campaign was underway by a group of conservative German theologians to destroy liber-
ation theology in Latin America. Cort’s mischaracterizations, he argued, provided “further
ammunition for this dangerous campaign” (1). Torres (2) concluded his letter: “We of the
Third World know how easily the industrialized North dismisses our culture, our intellec-
tuals, our creativity. We ask that DSOC and its bulletin Religious Socialism rise above such
colonial arrogance.” In his response of 15 June 1978, Harrington (1978: 1) defended the
journal but acknowledged its “consistent thread of anti-Marxism.”
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
Bosco 11

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 liber-
ation.” 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 repre-
sented 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.
12 Critical Research on Religion 0(0)

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 mem-
bership 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 frustra-
tion 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 sympa-
thetic 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)

Declining membership, tensions between the Commission and the DSA, excessive focus on
matters of ideology, and factional splits took their toll on the organization. An excerpt from
an Executive Committee report illustrates the growing frustration:

It may be the time for the executive committee of the prime religious socialist organization in
North America to consider seriously whether we are part of a movement to bring religious
values into the socialist camp and socialism into our religious communities and if we are,
then to behave as activists with a cause that justifies the priority of time and energy which it
deserves. If, on the other hand, we are interested only in intellectual discourse, then we should
Bosco 13

plan accordingly and make the best of what appears to me as a dying and relatively insignificant
exercise. (Spooner, 1992)

Finally, disagreement about ideology and tactics began to manifest in RS-DSA’s regional
chapters. Boston, for example, had for long been a reliable center of religious socialist
membership due to its concentration of liberal theologians and strong regional history of
organized labor. In 1992, the Commission partnered with organized labor in Boston, host-
ing a monthly series of religion and socialism forums with the Catholic Labor Guild and
others. According to a letter from Executive Committee member Judy Deutsch (1993), this
initiative was taken partly out of nervousness, as “many of us see a danger that the religious
left remains enclosed within an ideological ghetto.”

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.

As of this writing, the Religion and Socialism Commission is attempting to reform itself, as
the Bernie Sanders Presidential campaign and Donald Trump’s election have brought new
members into the DSA. Phillips (2017) notes that “since the election, more people have
joined the RS group than in the preceding three years.” “Joining” such a network may
include a range of activities, from writing articles online for religioussocialism.org, to joining
the group’s Facebook community. The demographic profile of new members remains 70%
male—unchanged since the 1970s—but there are more people of color, and a greater
number of LGBQ or transgender individuals. “At the same time,” according to Phillips,
“some of my old comrades who spent the last 30 or 40 years raising families and working in
social change organizations or labor unions have now retired and become active again.”
More Catholics seemed to have joined, there is an increasing presence of self-identified
Buddhists, and a small number of Muslims.
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 contin-
ued 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
14 Critical Research on Religion 0(0)

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 orga-
nizational and political challenges. Phillips (2017) notes that “the tensions within the orga-
nization 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 struc-
ture—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 oppor-
tunity 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
Bosco 15

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 organiza-
tions that engage in direct action based on issues.
In conclusion, religion represents a powerful source of social critique, but a purely the-
oretical 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.

Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank the staff of the John C. Cort Papers at the Catholic University of
America and the Tamiment Library in New York City for their generous help with the archival
research for this project.

Note
1. On the lack of studies about the Religious Left in Political Science, see Wilcox and Fortelny (2009).
See also Laura Olson (2007).

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Author biography
Robert M Bosco is an Associate Professor of the International Affairs at the Centre College
and a Research Associate at the Center for Critical Research on Religion. He is the author
of Securing the Sacred: Religion, National Security, and the Western State (University of
Michigan Press, 2014). His work has also appeared in the Journal of International Relations
and Development, the International Political Science Review, Peace Review, and the Journal
of Buddhist Ethics. His current work focuses on religious socialism and religious anarchism
in the United States and Europe. Bosco holds a BA in Philosophy from Wheaton College
(Norton, MA), an MA in International Affairs from the American University’s School of
International Service, and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Connecticut.