Religion in Coalition: Balancing Moderate and Progressive Politics in the Sydney Alliance

Abstract

This article examines how the engagement of diverse religious organisations and individuals in grassroots politics impacts the nature of politics and coalition building through a case study of an urban grassroots political coalition in Australia: the Sydney Alliance. Based on eight-months of exploratory ethnographic fieldwork in one campaign team, this article argues that whilst religious organisations bring significant symbolic and institutional resources to political coalitions, and can be flexible coalition partners, they tend to moderate both conservative and progressive political tendencies within a coalition and demand focused attention from organisers and leaders to manage the coalition dynamics. This article examines the way many religious activists understand their political action to be an inherent and necessary part of their religious practice: problematizing the characterisation common in much social science literature that religious engagement in more progressive politics primarily serves political, and not religious, ends. In doing so, it shows how political action can be directed both outward towards the work, and inward towards the ‘church’.

VOIP technology in grassroots politics: Transforming political culture and practice?

“…First and foremost, the use of pre-existing congregational space is non-contentious. As I have argued elsewhere (Hancock, 2019), the Sydney Alliance is a moderate political actor and it draws political power from bringing 'unlikely' political actors into political actionnot from disruption and contentious action.…”

“…Not only have particular ‘forms’ of political organisation been neglected in sociological literature on digital activism, comparatively less attention has been paid to the impact of digital technology on relational dynamics of grassroots political culture and organising than to its impact on mobilising. My focus on the relational in this article stems from both the Sydney Alliance's own emphasis on relationality (Hancock, 2019) and social movement research, including my own, that demonstrates the significance of relationships and social networks to successful mobilisation (Diani, 2002; Hancock, 2018). Bennet and Segerberg (2012, pp.…”

The Relevance of the Buginese Local Wisdom Values to Religious Moderation

“…The issue of religious belief sometimes becomes an easy ground to be gnawed at in undermining the foundations of the state. Religious practice and political action are fried so that religious and political goals are indistinguishable (Hancock 2019). Religious labelling sometimes changes the state's ideology through calls for jihad, accusations of infidelity, intolerance, truth claims, radicalism, and fundamentalism.…”