For three decades, the reli­gious right has monop­o­lized media cov­er­age of reli­gion in Amer­i­can life. But the big sto­ry of the next few decades, spir­i­tu­al­ly speak­ing, might be the re-emer­gence of the reli­gious left as a pow­er­ful polit­i­cal force.

What’s going on in Illi­nois offers sol­id evi­dence for that the­o­ry. This past spring, the state’s Gen­er­al Assem­bly con­sid­ered two con­tro­ver­sial bills. One pro­posed to give courts the author­i­ty to seal the crim­i­nal records of peo­ple who were arrest­ed and then released because the charges were dropped or the defen­dant was acquit­ted. As it stood, the records could not be sealed if the per­son had a pri­or con­vic­tion. Employ­ers almost nev­er hire job seek­ers with a recent arrest on their record, so the law left large num­bers of peo­ple unem­ploy­able. The oth­er bill pro­posed the legal­iza­tion of med­ical marijuana.

Until recent­ly, both bills were polit­i­cal­ly tox­ic because vot­ing for them would leave politi­cians vul­ner­a­ble to the charge of being soft on crime or pro-drugs. Yet the Gen­er­al Assem­bly passed the bill on May 23, allow­ing court records to be sealed. The med­ical mar­i­jua­na bill fell short by only a few votes, but the Assem­bly will like­ly vote on it again this fall.

Both bills became polit­i­cal­ly viable in part because they were high pri­or­i­ties with Protes­tants for the Com­mon Good (PCG), a lob­by­ing orga­ni­za­tion that focus­es on Illi­nois pol­i­tics. Its exec­u­tive direc­tor, Rev. Alexan­der Sharp, said that a small invest­ment of time and ener­gy can have a big impact on pol­i­cy. ​“Leg­is­la­tors look at prob­a­bly 2,000 bills in any giv­en ses­sion,” Sharp says. ​“There’s extra­or­di­nary val­ue in sim­ply tak­ing the time to sit down with them and talk about a piece of leg­is­la­tion. They’re almost uni­form­ly recep­tive to that if you give them good, clear information.”

PCG dis­trib­utes edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to about 400 church­es, but its pri­ma­ry focus is leg­isla­tive lob­by­ing. It is orga­niz­ing a net­work of about 100 peo­ple across Illi­nois who will pres­sure leg­is­la­tors on short notice when pro­gres­sive voic­es might sway a vote in the Assem­bly. ​“That’s not a huge num­ber, but it can make a major dif­fer­ence,” says Sharp, who earned a Mas­ters of Divin­i­ty from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go in 1996, the same year he became PCG’s found­ing exec­u­tive direc­tor. ​“It’s strate­gic involve­ment that makes a big dif­fer­ence. An awful lot of what we’ve accom­plished has been because we were a dis­tinc­tive voice at the mar­gin that tipped the opinion.”

Anoth­er faith-based orga­ni­za­tion, Inter­faith Work­er Jus­tice, has been piv­otal in putting wage theft on nation­al and local leg­isla­tive agen­das. Kim Bobo, who found­ed the orga­ni­za­tion in the mid-’90s and is IWJ’s exec­u­tive direc­tor, said that its sin­gle-mind­ed focus on eco­nom­ic jus­tice has helped it coop­er­ate with con­gre­ga­tions across the the­o­log­i­cal and denom­i­na­tion­al spec­trum. It is espe­cial­ly active among Catholic church­es that serve pri­mar­i­ly Lati­no pop­u­la­tions. ​“There is a set of social issues that are very divi­sive with­in the reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty,” she says. ​“But when you come to eco­nom­ic mat­ters, the divi­sions are not as clear.”

IWJ, a nation­al orga­ni­za­tion based in Chica­go, con­sists of a loose net­work of local orga­ni­za­tions nation­wide. About 40 of its affil­i­at­ed groups fos­ter coop­er­a­tion between reli­gious insti­tu­tions and labor unions. IWJ also sup­ports 26 ​“work­er cen­ters” – places where vic­tims of wage theft can turn to for infor­ma­tion and legal support.

Bobo says there has been a notice­able uptick in activism among reli­gious peo­ple in the wake of recent anti-union activ­i­ty in Wis­con­sin, Indi­ana and oth­er states. ​“We’re see­ing a lot of reli­gious leaders…saying, ​‘You can’t bal­ance your bud­get on the backs of work­ers,’ ” she says. ​“t’s an oppor­tu­ni­ty to engage more people.”

IWJ has sup­port­ed fed­er­al-lev­el leg­is­la­tion aimed at curb­ing wage theft, with lit­tle suc­cess. But it has made progress at the city and coun­ty lev­els. Florida’s Dade Coun­ty, for exam­ple, passed the country’s first coun­ty­wide wage-theft ordi­nance in 2010. The South Flori­da Inter­faith Work­er Jus­tice chap­ter was key to mak­ing that hap­pen. A sim­i­lar ordi­nance is being dis­cussed in San Francisco.

These recent vic­to­ries by PCG and IWJ sug­gest a promis­ing strat­e­gy for the pro­gres­sive movement’s future: part­ner­ing with reli­gious peo­ple and insti­tu­tions to gen­er­ate reform at the grass­roots lev­els. That strat­e­gy was at the heart of the civ­il-rights move­ment in the 1960s. Where it could lead today, and the impact it might have on nation­al pol­i­tics, God only knows.

“A major­i­ty of the peo­ple in the U.S. con­sid­er them­selves spir­i­tu­al or reli­gious,” Bobo says. ​“So we believe that the moral lan­guage and the core prin­ci­ples [of reli­gion] res­onate with a lot of peo­ple in this country.”