Leonard Pitts

Religious conservatives in the past arrived too late to the fights against sexism, racism and AIDS, said Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Leonard Pitts, who implored conservatives in the future to be ahead of the curve instead of struggling to catch up on issues like homelessness, poverty and gay rights.

“People of faith, people of American values and people of courage ought to be the first to step up when the mob comes calling about some ‘other,’” Pitts told a sold-out crowd at Coe College’s Sinclair Auditorium last night. “Getting there on time is an act of courage. It is also an act of faith.”

The syndicated columnist and best-selling author spoke at Coe’s annual Contemporary Issues Forum, which in past years brought to campus George H.W. Bush, Lech Walesa and Ken Burns.

Faith seems to loom larger in politics now than it did 50 years ago, Pitts said, but today it seems shrunken, small and mean. When he is struck by the silliness of what often passes for faith in politics these days, Pitts said, he thinks about James Zwerg, one of the Freedom Riders — college students in 1961 who worked to desegregate public transportation in the South.

Zwerg told Pitts in an interview in recent years that being part of the group, and being beaten for a cause he believed in, was the “purest expression of his faith,” Pitts recalled.

“Consider what faith in politics once meant,” Pitts asked the crowd, compared with discussions now about the “war on Christmas” and charges that churches with a social gospel are teaching socialism.

“It’s so often shallow, hateful, silly and shrill,” Pitts said.

Conservatives, especially religious conservatives, have not been on the forefront of past issues like civil rights, women’s rights and support for people with AIDS, Pitts said. He wonders why it took them so long on those big issues, when their support could have made such a difference at the beginning. That pattern could offer a context for the thought process today behind conservative malice for certain groups, including gays and Muslims, Pitts said.

“I issue a challenge to stop being late for the revolution, stop being late for the evolution,” he said.

For those who doubt the day is coming when cultural change happens on issues like gay rights, Pitts told the audience to conduct a thought experiment: Think about your grandfather’s reaction to having a secretary of state named Hillary or a black president named Barack Obama.

In 20 or 30 years, he said, some of these current fights will strike future generations the way some people now view an old Birmingham, Ala., law about against blacks and whites playing checkers together: as an oddity of the past.