General Question
Would you consider yourself to be a spiritually progressive person?
Here’s one example of what I mean by ‘spiritually progressive person’:
From Wikipedia: The Network of Spiritual Progressives (NSP) is an international political and social justice movement based in the United States that seeks to influence American politics towards more humane, progressive values. The organization also challenges what it perceives as the misuse of religion by political conservatives and the anti-religious attitudes of many liberals. In the international sphere, the NSP seeks to foster inter-religious understanding and work for social justice. The Network of Spiritual Progressives was founded based on three basic tenets:
* Changing the bottom line in America
* Challenging the misuse of religion, God and spirit by the religious right
* Challenging the many anti-religious and anti-spiritual assumptions
* Challenging behaviors that have increasingly become part of the liberal culture
Today, institutions and social practices are judged efficient, rational and productive to the extent that they maximize money and power. That’s the ‘old bottom line’. Now here is the New Bottom Line for which the NSP advocates: It believes that they should be judged rational, efficient and productive not only to the extent that they maximize money and power, but also to the extent that they maximize love and caring, ethical and ecological sensitivity and behavior, kindness and generosity, non-violence and peace, and to the extent that they enhance our capacities to respond to other human beings in a way that honors them as embodiments of the sacred, and enhances our capacities to respond to the earth and the universe with awe, wonder and radical amazement. Educating people of faith to the understanding that a serious commitment to God, religion and spirit should manifest in social activism aimed at peace, universal disarmament, social justice with a preferential option for the needs of the poor and the oppressed, a commitment to end poverty, hunger, homelessness, inadequate education and inadequate health care all around the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_of_Spiritual_Progressives
‘The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right’ is a 2006 book by Rabbi Michael Lerner. In it, Lerner argues that that in order for progressive politics to survive in America, liberals must develop a respect for progressive forms of religion that can provide inspiration and a sense of “meaning” in people’s lives. Lerner argues that the Religious right seduces many well-intentioned Americans who hunger for higher purpose into supporting political candidates whose policies ultimately exacerbate the spiritual and moral vacuum that creates the desperation that makes the Religious Right appealing in the first place. The pivotal thesis is that American culture is dominated by a technocratic rationality and a bottom line of money and power that causes deep levels of depression in a large part of the population. This in turn makes much of the population vulnerable to being easily seduced by authoritarian forms of religion and tempts them to reject liberalism altogether, its strengths as well as its weaknesses. Lerner further argues that the cultural excesses of the Left in the 60s and 70s led to backlash in the 1980s. Rabbi Lerner believes that a solution is to develop a progressive form of religion which can speak to people’s real spiritual and emotional needs without pulling its followers into the dark side of religion.
Even if you haven’t heard of the NSP and their ideas, would some of their ideals and objectives match with your own? Would you consider yourself to be a spiritually progressive person? Have you heard about (or read) Michael Lerner’s book?
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