I was watching a local PBS production (Austin Now) today, and saw an interview with Rabbi Michael Lerner (editor of Tikkun). He was mainly talking about his new book The Left Hand of God (which sounds quite interesting), but he also touched on the Network of Spiritual Progressives, something potentially meaningful to all of us and the things we discuss here. (There's a conference thing this month in D.C., if anyone in that part of the world finds it terribly interesting and immediately relevant.) They even have local chapters. I think it's worth taking a look at (as are Lerner and/or his new book).
(By the way, when I grow up, I want to be Charlie Rose.)
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The Q&A link on the left side of the screen is especially interesting/informative. here's the url http://www.spiritualprogressives.org/q-and-a
Thanks, Coye, for bringing this interesting movement to our attention. This organization raises some interesting and important points that are really worth thinking about, among them: an attempt to disrupt the equation God = republication/conservative, the effort to infuse a sense of ethics (though the content and foundation of such ethics is left necessarily in abeyance) into the ethical vacuum that defines contemporary American culture, and a move toward questioning the “materialism and selfishness that is the Old Bottom Line of American society.” I would argue that religious people in general, and Christians in particular, should have these and other issues at the forefront of their minds as they attempt to understand and engage in politics.
The position articulated by this long q&a raises for me, however, several pressing questions, about which some of you may know more than I do. I will number them for easy reference and eagerly await your responses:
1. What is the role of a specific, exclusive-by-definition faith (like Christianity) in an interfaith community? According to this document, “it is our contention that those organizations and individuals who do feel comfortable with our Core Vision and Spiritual Covenant and feel OK about working in an interfaith context with people who have very different theologies would benefit greatly from being part of one Network that could coordinate their efforts. We want to emphasize that it takes a certain kind of courage for people in religious communities to work in an explicitly pro-spiritual context with others who have very different visions of God or people who do not believe in God. The tendency among some will be to try to push God or spiritual consciousness out of the equation altogether and to forge a lowest common denominator approach. That is NOT our approach. We want to welcome people to bring the fullness of their own spiritual tradition into the NSP, with the understanding that others who are part of the NSP may strongly disagree with each other on theological issues and yet will respect each other's right to approach God and/or spiritual truth in different ways.” Is it really possible to enact an authentic “spiritual” community without evacuating specificity, or appealing to the LCD?
2. What does it mean to champion the spiritual or the religious outside of any faith tradition, Christian or otherwise? That is, when one says that his/her spiritual-political community includes “progressive people who are religious,” people who identify themselves as “spiritual but not religious” and “secular people who understand the need for a politics of meaning and a Spiritual/Religious Left and wish to support efforts to build it” is this terminology so capacious (yeah, it’s a word—think “capacity”) that it is really meaningless? Is “spiritual” just another word for “human” here?
3. Can you really be a progressive political organization if your members, to become members, must agree to accept the dictates of a centralized authority without question (even if the ethics/justice/suitability of these positions leaves room for improvement?) As in, “you are welcome to join the Network of Spiritual Progressives and to become active in our organization as long as you recognize that what is stated here is the framework and you agree to not try to struggle to change that framework. If you feel that doing that--accepting the framework as given and agreeing not to struggle to change it--would be too great a compromise on your integrity, please don’t join” [emphasis not mine].
4. Should we be nervous (I am, a little) that all the key texts of this movement, a la Joseph Smith, come from one super-enlightened guy, and that part of the movement seems aimed at indoctrination? “We also require chapter members to set up a process so that each new member gets to participate in a study group in which they read and explore the Core Vision, The Left Hand of God, this Q&A, and other key texts of our community before or while they are becoming active in local NSP work.”
#3 has some significant bold emphasis that got lost in my cut and paste job. Sorry about that.
Hey Andy,
thank you for your thoughtful reply and questions. I want to get back to this subject, but grading and drinking have been getting in the way this week. I will try to think about some of these concerns and write back soon. It would also be great to hear what some OTHER PEOPLE think (whether they would call themselves progressives or not). We cannot simply give religion and/or spirituality in this country over to people like Pat Robertson (who claimed that the attacks on the Twin Towers were acts of divine retribution for our national wickedness-- and maybe the floods in MA: "that's what you get for sanctioning same-sex civil unions"). The right has largely forgotten that there are moral values that don't involve genitalia, and the left has forgotten that religion is more than an attack on Darwin and a chastity belt. How do we effectively act to bring Christian concerns and ethics to American politics? Are organizations like this the way to go? I'm trying to think through Andy's questions about ecumenical partnerships and the particularity of the faiths in those partnerships, and I would love to hear what some of the rest of you think. I'm going to eat some ice cream now... strawberry.
Coye, you've hit on one of my pet peeves. The concept that Republican positions are the positions that Christians should automatically take strikes me as ridiculous. However, I am skeptical that these spiritual progressives have much to offer Christians. The progressives seem to be more bent on turning religion into a tool of the left, because they see Republicans as using religion as a tool that Democrats do not know how to use. Unless Christians realize that Christianity should transcend politics, why should Christians bother to think out positions on a variety of political issues? If Christians don't see their faith as transcendant, why not figure out where one stands on a few important issues and then trust a political party, which stands for those few things, to feed one the rest of the positions that one should take?
Back to the spiritual progressives, I'm skeptical that they have enough cohesiveness to accomplish anything:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/19/us/19faith.html?hp&ex=1148097600&en=16ddfc3260cab0dc&ei=5094&partner=homepage
The article reminds me of a few Simpsons lines:
Lisa: Wow, look at all these flavors! Blessed Virgin Berry, Command-Mint, Bible Gum?
Lovejoy: Or, if you prefer, we also have Unitarian ice cream. [hands Lisa an empty bowl]
Lisa: There's nothing here.
Lovejoy: Exactly.
I can resonate much more with the following group even though I do not agree with them in lockstep. http://www.sojo.net/ To me, Sojourners presents a model for promoting Christian political thought and action that does not just follow party lines.
What I intend to be the main point of this post is that bringing Christian concerns and ethics to the arena of politics should not begin with rallying behind a political stance. It begins by rallying in response to the fact that Jesus loves us. Then, we respond likewise in love. Unlike a group such as the spiritual progressives who have no unifying theological or doctrinal positions for what such love should look like, we have the Bible, the Holy Spirit, and church tradition to look to for guidance. To get Christians (especially Christians on the right) to examine or reexamine their views, appealing to these sources strikes me as much more effective than an all-inclusive ecumenical group. Appealing to things that people consider authoritative can have an impact.
On a bonus note, Christians need to realize that they aren't going to agree on everything in politics because God never wrote us a bullet point by bullet point political platform. Christians need to love each other as brothers and sisters in Christ, regardless of what side of the political aisle on which they fall.
Coye, I hope this provided some fodder to kick around. Unfortunately, I have a much easier time offering up opinions than raising thoughtful questions like Logemann. I don't quite have his tact. I'm interested in hearing how people will respond to me, that includes my fellow non-lefties who Coye has already called to speak up.
The NYT article that Strauss references includes this little vignette about Tony Campolo’s presence at the conference—I have been trying to find a transcript/recording of what he said, but without success, so I’ll have to stick with the brief newspaper account—that begins to address some of my questions about the role of Christians in an interfaith community (especially one defined by a vacuous, content-less notion of spirituality). According to the article, Tony Campolo tried to make a case for applying actual religious teaching (rather than “key texts” of this community written by super-enlightened guru Rabbi Michael Lerner) to progressive political thinking.
Shockingly, it didn’t go so well.
“Mr. Campolo, the Baptist minister, explained to the participants in a seminar that many people on Capitol Hill were religious, and that to reach them and to establish authority, liberals should rely on the Bible.
“‘You have no right to be a spiritual leader if you haven't read Scripture,’ he told the group. ‘People in Congress respect the Book, even if they don't know what it says. If we don't recognize this, we don't know squat.’
“A young man with long hair and a tunic challenged Mr. Campolo.
“‘I thought this was a spiritual progressives’ conference,’ he said. ‘I don't want to play the game of “the Bible says this or that,” or that we get validation from something other than ourselves. We should be speaking from our hearts.’”
Now, I am looking for a better account of this because I’d like to hear a) what Campolo responded, b) whether this tuniced young man was representative of the majority (which seems likely, but one hates to assume), and c) if Campolo stayed at the conference or just left because it seems that, whatever else you want to say about him, he is not one to shy away from scripture and wouldn’t associate with a movement that tries to remove all meaning from the term “spiritual” apart from some sort of self-referential authenticity (perhaps I am tipping my hand a bit as to my position on question #2 above).
But what this encounter seems to suggest, apart from my unanswered questions, is that an appeal to traditional Christianity (or any other “traditional” faith) in a movement such as this one becomes very difficult. Which leads me to ask again: What is the place of confessing Christians in a movement defined by spirituality without religion, or religion without Christ? Surely there must be ways to enter into such conversations (though none of you have yet been forthcoming on this point), but it seems to me, at least, that the Network of Spiritual Progressives isn’t setting itself up for success in this arena.
Strauss also makes another great point when he says that this movement seems to aspire to the same backward thinking already in evidence among some conservatives--that religion/Chrsitianity is a tool for already established political ideologies. In fact, it seems to me, that things should be the other way around: political thought should flow out of theology (though I would be unwilling to go all the way with this analogy and say that political thought should be just a tool for theology).
To try and answer Andy's questions, I'm thinking that you celebrate the positions that you have in common, helping people in the religious group to understand why you can agree with them on some matters and not on others. Could a non-Christian ecumenical group be a useful conduit for Christians in politics? I suspect yes, but I do not have the time to give an answer now as to how or under what circumstances.
Well, I spent 10 hours on the road yesterday AND attended a high school graduation, so I don't feel totally sharp today, but I would like to add something: I think that, if we are honest, we have to admit that the passage between politics and theology is not a one way movement. Our theology should, must and inescapeably does inform our politics. Our politics also informs our theology. Why? Because we are humans, and humans are political animals. While this construction is usually applied to "politics" in its most general connotations, the generalized level of politics underlies the narrowly construed politics that take place on the hill (all the partisan wrangling boils down eventually to haves and have-nots, linguistic and racial identities, regional bias, religious affiliations). I don't think that anyone can claim that their theology developed in a political vacuum, and we have to keep that in mind.
That being said, I think that many of us (progressive and otherwise) can identify a number of political concerns that originate in theological concerns. (Personaly, I can point towards a concern about unjust economic inequalities, condemnation of racism and sexism, and a suspicion of nationalism.) As Strauss pointed out, not all Christians share the same political concerns or the same opinions on various issues. I have at least two responsibilities. One, (as Campolo pointed out) I should go to others who identify as Christians and reason theologically with them about political action (Jesus continuously talks about the poor--how should that shape government/ecomonic policies). I also am responsible for taking action to help the poor, work for peace, ect., and I have to act now (as oppossed to whenever I can convince enough Christians to do so). If I want my action to be as effective as possible, then I need to work with others (we are talking about political action). I can work with others who share my political views for a variety of reasons. The question might be, is there any benefit to working with those who share my political convictions because of religious beliefs?
I think there might be. One phenomenon I run into in the academy is the number of progressives who view religious belief as a vestigal organ of superstition, at best a crutch, at worst an opiate or terrible hindrance to progress. In their opinion, religion is not useful for achieving progressive political ends; religion either hinders us or provides an unnecessary (and dangerous) sugarcoating to political action. In this view, politics can either attack or tolerate religion, but it can't really embrace it. That situation and opinion doesn't as often present itself with Jewish or Muslim or even sympathetic non-religious people. That's one thing that makes an ecumenical political coaliltion attractive.
wow. much longer than I intended. talk more later.
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