In a front page story in the Washington Post, a major
story reporting on our conference proclaimed in its first line "The religious
left is back."
"Long overshadowed by the Christian right, religious liberals across a wide
swath of denominations are engaged today in their most intensive bout of
political organizing and alliance-building since the civil rights and
anti-Vietnam War movements of the 1960s, according to scholars, politicians and
clergy members." I don't want to say that the conference was without some
problematic elements, and this report discusses them as well. I think a
spiritual movement must always be honest, self-critical, as well as affirming
what is good about what it is doing and accomplishing.
It's hard to convey the level of excitement and enthusiasm experienced by the
1,200+ people who attended the 4-day conference launching the Network of
Spiritual Progressives on the East Coast. (Our first conference held in July
2005 in Berkeley had attracted 1,380 people. We had had to turn away hundreds
more.)
One reporter told me that she had interviewed over a hundred random
participants. She had found the following:
1. Attendees were mostly Protestant and Unitarian, though there was a healthy
selection of Catholics and Jews. She also reported encountering Muslims,
Buddhists, Hindus, WICA, and a large number of spiritual but not religious
people who did not identify with any religion.
2. The attendees
came from 34 states
3. Attendees came because they are sick and tired of having the Religious
Right use religion or God language to justify militarism and war, cuts in
spending for the poor while cutting taxes on the rich, assaults on basic civil
liberties and human rights, assaults on homosexuals, and massive governmental
corruption. They wanted to have a different kind of voice speaking for religion,
God and spiritual people.
4. All of the people she spoke to expressed overwhelming satisfaction at what
they had encountered. The reporter noted to me that she had not found a similar
level of satisfaction at a conference like ours.
The All Souls Unitarian Church was a beautiful facility, but the 1,200 people
exceeded the capacity of the sanctuary, which typically holds about 1,000
people, so at least two hundred and sometimes more sat in an overflow room and
watched the events on a wide screen. The church had been deeply involved in
preparations and planning for the conference, and their involvement created a
sense of warmth and homecoming that helped make people feel that even though we
had more people than we expected, everything felt haimish (like being in one's
own home, something one can't get at the big hotels). In truth, we would have
had far more people coming if they could have been accommodated, but it turned
out that there were no hotel rooms available in Washington D.C. or even in the
neighboring suburbs like Alexandria or Arlington hotels. This was the week of
several big conferences and many people from out of town who wanted to come
found by three weeks before the conference that unless they had friends they
could stay with, they were simply out of luck.
The excitement was palpable from the start of the first session. After
prayers from a variety of different religious traditions, the conference erupted
in enthusiasm as Catholic nun (and Benedictine Sister) Joan Chittister, my
national co-chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives, presented a
compelling analysis of culture and spirituality, followed by Peter Gabel
(associate editor of Tikkun, chair of the program on Spirituality an Politics at
New College of California in San Francisco, and my collaborator in developing
many of the ideas that are now central to the NSP) who provided an engaging
account of the spiritual psychodynamics of contemporary society. Gabel was one
of the many "spiritual but not religious" people who spoke at the conference and
presented a perspective that spoke in a language that bridged the gap and showed
how humanists could equally find a home in the Network of Spiritual Progressives
along with progressive spiritual people.
I won't say much about my own talk on Wednesday afternoon except to say that
it will be available (along with many of the other talks) on audio recordings
that should be on sale on our website www.spiritualprogressives.org in
about a week, and that some of my friends said it was best talk ever (I'm not so
sure about that). In any event, I also had to announce that our NSP co-chair
Cornel West was not coming because his mother was facing an operation and he
would be with her in California. Later in the conference we prayed for her
speedy recovery and a moment of silence for Charlene Spretnak's dying
mother.
A central part of the conference was the presentation of the Spiritual
Covenant with America. While the entire Covenant and its interpretation can be
found in the last four chapters of my book The Left Hand of God: Taking Back
our Country from the Religious Right, we used a very scaled-down version to
present to Congress (you can find that version at our website www.spiritualprogressives.org.
Since we needed preparation for presenting the eight planks of the covenant to
Congress, we broke up into eight groups, each one focused on a particular plank
of the platform in order to work through some of the issues that might come up
around that plank. And then after that we broke into workshops on a variety of
issues in spiritual politics.
To tell you about each of the plenary sessions and workshops would be too
much for one communication, so we'll try to print parts of some of these in our
September or November issues of the magazine. Suffice it to say that there were
mostly wonderful speakers and presenters, a few who were only moderately
wonderful,a very few who didn't quite rise to the level of being wonderful, and
a few who didn't show up at the last moment because of personal illness or
illness in their families. But overall the level was very high, serious and
sophisticated ideas presented by engaging speakers in a language that was easily
accessible, not academic, and always highly connected to the spiritual and
religious and political issues facing our country in 2006. And what was
particularly amazing was their willingness to contract their egos and speak in
15-20 minute spots when they were often nationally known figures who are used to
having 60-90 minutes and being the center of attention.
These were
mostly celebrated figures in their own arenas (take, for example, Taylor Branch
whose monumental three volume study of Martin Luther King had been universally
acclaimed, or Rev. Bill Sinkford, the national president of the Unitarian
Universalist Association, or America's most famous Islamic theologian Sayyed
Hossein Nasr, or Rev. Bob Edgar the chair of the National Council of Churches of
Christ, or Episcopal Archdeacon Michael Kendall or Rabbi Arthur Waskow or--well
the list goes on and includes over 120 speakers and presenters, all of whom came
to this conference by paying for their own transportation and accommodations and
then agreed to speak for only a short period of time, a true modeling of
ego-contraction that made the spiritual progressive conference possible).
Thursday morning we had hundreds of individual or small group meetings on
Capitol Hill with Senators and Members of Congress or sometimes their aides. If
you can imagine the reality of having hundreds (approximately 400) such
meetings, it was quite amazing. Suddenly Capitol Hill was aflame with discussion
of a Spiritual Covenant with America. In sessions on Friday people gave feedback
and shared amazing stories of how they were able to articulate ideas they
originally doubted their capacity to present, and how amazing it was for them to
find receptivity (except among thse who were greeted by pure cynicism). Overall
most people had very good experiences as they tried to explain at least one
particular program plank. That morning I had a private "off-the- record" meeting
with U.S. Senator Barack Obama. The one thing I can say about the meeting is
that Senator Obama was very much in sync with the approach of the Network of
Spiritual Progressives and I was very encouraged by my conversation with
him.
We then proceeded to Lafayette Park across from the White House for our
Pray-In for Peace. Prayers led by Methodist Bishops, Episcopal and Catholic
priests, Muslims, focused both on urging a new receptivity to the Spiritual
Covenant with America. I also led prayers for the healing of the brokenness and
fear-driven consciousness of the people in the White House including President
Bush. I emphasized that while we were not interested in decreasing the intensity
of our critique of the hateful and murderous policies of these people, we
nevertheless continue to see them as God's children, created in the image of God
and embodiments of the sacred, deserving to be seen in their complex humanity
just as we ourselves need to be seen that way and not as demons. So we prayed
that there would come to them a speedy healing, recognizing that as long as they
held power that we very much need for them to recover from the demons that
currently twist their consciousness into supporting hate-driven homophobia and
murderous policies toward the people of Iraq.
The tone of much of this prayer-gathering was quiet, respectful, and
God-oriented. But the tone changed decisively when we brought up Cindy Sheehan
to speak. Suddenly the scene was dominated by the electronic media as television
cameras and paparazzi jockeyed for position to get the best angles on her and
the thousand of us who had made it to stand opposite the White House. From a
tone of contemplation and reflection the energy shifted more to cynicism and
anger, and I personally was disappointed. I had hoped that we could model a
different energy for a peace rally, and had managed to do that through much of
the event. But the presence of the cameras seemed to elicit from the remaining
speakers a different and more confrontational vibe and talk of the Spiritual
Covenant and our positive vision of an alternative to war receded as more
millitance appeared in the language of the next speakers. (I should add that
that evening when Cindy Sheehan spoke to our conference back at the All Souls
Church we heard a much more reflective, spiritually-centered Cindy whose depth
seemed in stark contrast to the more cynical and provocative voice she had put
forward at the demonstration). And yet, given the war and the legitimate anger
that it generates in all of us, I had to say I felt proud to be identified with
Cindy and with Medea Benjamin and the Code Pink women who, at our invitation,
took the stage and led a spirited march across the street to the gates of the
White House to deliver 40,000 signatures from people who had signed a petition
asking the President: DON'T BOMB IRAN.
I had asked our spiritual progressives at the rally to talk to the media
people about the intention of our rally to focus on the Spiritual Covenant with
America and in particular to point seven in our Covenant about defense policy
and homeland security in which we call for a Global Marshall Plan, but it was
useless. The notion of us presenting a positive alternative rather than just
being "anti" was lost on the reporters present. The media all clustered around
Cindy as the celebrity and one of them told one of our NSPers directly: "I don't
care what you people are talking about, our job is just to cover what Cindy
Sheehan says." And thus the media coverage of that afternoon was largely about
Sheehan, though NBC news clips did also mention that Sheehan was speaking at a
pray-in for peace led by religious leaders. It's a problem that will emerge for
us again in the future: do you invite "celebrities" to speak at your event,
knowing that it is precisely the presence of the celebrities that will give it
publicity, but on the other hand that the celebs may take a different tack and
that in any event the media will focus on them and not on your message, or do
you avoid the celebs, but then you can be relatively certain that you get no
media attention whatsoever? The advantage of the attention, however slight, is
that it conveys hope to millions of others that we have no other way to reach
that there are other people out there who share with them the desire to take God
away from the militarist and supporters of homophobia, racism, sexism and
class-ism. The disadvantage is that the media often make us look much less
interesting, attractive and sophisticated than we actually are.
Nothing better illustrated the dangers of media than the story that appeared
the next day in the New York Times by their religion reporter Neela Banerjee. In
a startling distortion of our conference, Banerjee reported that the NSP had no
specific programmatic ideas and seemed ot have no focus when approaching
Congress. Whereas we had spent the vast majority of time in the first two days
focused on the Spiritual Covenant with America and how best to present it, and
had then done so, Banerjee did not even mention the Spiritual Covenant or what
we meant by a commitment to a New Bottom Line. I would have been disappointed
but not shocked had she taken our specifics, e.g. the Global Marshall Plan, the
Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, our call for Single
Payer Universal health care, or any of our other specifics and done the usual
media cynicism critique. But her report was not just cynicism but outright
distortion she simply claimed we had no focus when the entire energy of the
conference had been on the very specific focus of presenting the Spiritual
Covenant. If she had explained that she had read the whole covenant and then
chosen to attend the one platform group that was not about policy, the plank no.
2 on taking personal responsibility, pointed out that we had such a plank
precisely to counter the claim of the Right that progressives and liberals ONLY
focus on what government can do and avoid personal responsibility but spiritual
progressives were, as spiritual people, equally interested in personal
responsibility and transformation, and if she had further pointed out that in
our "talking points" for that platform we encouraged elected officials to take
one half day per week for themselves and all their employees to get out of their
offices and do hands-on helping work in a day- care center, soup kitchen,
homeless shelter or the like, she would at least have been honest about what she
had experienced and then perhaps mentioned what the other planks were. But
without that, the story felt like an unconscionable distortion.
The Times story stood in marked contrast to the next day's Washington Post
front page story which located our conference in the whole reality of a new
spiritual left coming into prominence in the U.S., and our leadership role in
helping to create that. Written by Post religion reporter Alan Cooperman and by
Alyce Murphy, the story also explained that we were not only critiquing the
religious right but also the religio-phobia in some quarters of the Left. And it
prominently mentioned the Spritual Covenant with America, as did the right-wing
Washington Times (it was only the NY Times that refused to engage with what was
really happening, a policy that was equally reflected in its pathetic coverage
of the huge anti-war demonstration that took place in NYC in late April, almost
as if the news coverage of the Times was at war with the relatively independent
and progressive-friendly Editorial page).
Another exciting development: an anonymous donor came forward and offered to
match every donation to Tikkun or the Network of Spiritual Progressives of
$1,000 or more, and to double every donation of $5,000 or more, and this offer
will remain through the last week in August. At the conference some people
gathered together and pooled their resources to come up with thousand dollar
donations, and they have already been matched. On the other hand, the amount of
money we need to seriously launch a spiritual/religious progressive movement far
exceeds our current financial resources.
The remaining two days of the conference were focused both on deepening our
own spiritual practices and understanding, and also at preparing to take the
messages and approaches of spiritual progressives back into our own communities.
All through the conference we had small groups of ten meeting to give each other
personal support and to provide a place for feedback and integration of the
experience in our personal consciousness and lives.
After our last conference a group of people of color had gathered and agreed
to take responsibility to make sure that we would be more successful in the
future in recruiting peoples of color into our organization. In addition, we
sent letters to every African American pastor in the Washington area and gave
them the following offer: if money was an obstacle, we would give each church 30
free admissions to the conference so as to ensure a higher percentage of
participants of color. We then sent a staff person, our new national organizer
Nichola@tikkun.org , to meet with
African American pastors and church leaders and for months pursued them and
others urging participation. I was disappointed to see the low percentage of
peoples of color at the conference. Afterwards, another group of people of color
came together and committed themselves to do the outreach with us for the future
to bring in the much-desired diversity, which I very much value and which our
organization is committed to as a priority issue (and which is already reflected
in our leadership and the speakers that we include at our events).
Another concern: at one point one of our speakers said that what we are
really about is reviving the New Deal and about half the crowd stood up and
cheered. Many of us in the leadership looked at each other in despair. Our whole
message had been: include and transcend, or, in other words, yes, we want to
affirm the best in the liberal agenda, but NO, it was not enough because it
didn't speak to the deep spiritual crisis generated by the ethos of materialism
and selfishness that was endemic to the economic and political arrangements
fostered by the competitive marketplace and its privileging of the old bottom
line of money and power. All our venture was based on trying to address this
additional level of human need, and trying to show why the New Deal/Fair
Deal/Great Society etc. had failed to retain the allegience of those who
economically benefited form those programs (in part because the programs
addressed human beings as if they were only economic maximizers of self-interest
and had not sought to address their full humanity as ethical and spiritual
beings (a crass summary here but this is fully articulated and explained in The
Left Hand of God , which is the necessary foundation for serious participation
in our movement). Some of us posited that the applause didn't represent an
abandonment of this analysis, but only an enthusiastic embracing of the liberal
agenda, which is, after all, one part of what we want to affirm. Others thought
it reflected the desire to affirm the day-to-day work of social justice and
peace activists who rarely can find a job paying them to do spiritual
progressive work and who, doing the more liberal agenda work, nevertheless
deserve to be praised and recognized for the goodness of the work they do,
however incomplete we might think it to be. I do affirm that work, and so in
that respect felt it was appropriate for people to cheer if that was their
reason. But it set off alarm bells in our heads about how much of what we are
saying in this movement has yet been absorbed even by its activists.
We decided, then, to concentrate energy in the next year on A) a training
program for Spiritual Progressive Activists (details yet to be developed--we
hope to have something in the next few months), and B) regional conferences of
Spiritual Progressives. We are aware of the danger also that other groups,
calling themselves "spiritual activists," "sacred activists" or "religious
progressives" are also appearing on the scene, using the positive energies we've
developed, but actually not really involved in any coherent struggle with the
Religious Right for the heart and minds of America, not organizing an actual
activist organization with a program and activities, and not willing to commit
to making the Spiritual Covenant central and shaping of their activities. Some
of these are idealistic but unfocused, others are simply a new slogan to get
customers for marketing spiritualitysomeone even told me, "now that you've made
spiritual progressive a new category, I'm going to market it because I can make
a living doing so." Of course, some of these gatherings may be a useful place to
recruit members for the Network of Spiritual Progressives, and so some of us may
want to go to them for that purpose, but on the other hand, they are likely to
cause a certain amount of confusion and even disillusionment as others go to
them thinking that they are getting the Network of Spiritual Progressives and
instead encounter "spiritual activism LITE."
But another part of our agenda now is to bring the Spiritual Covenant into
public discourse. Among the activities we hope to see: 1. Local groups seeking
the endorsement for the Spiritual Covenant by local city councils, people
running for office, unions, churches and synagogues and mosques, professional
organizations, etc., and 2. Creation of a caucus within whatever political party
you are part of (e.g. Spiritual Dems, Greens or Republicans). We strongly urge
our members to NOT make the caucus too open, but rather only open to people who
already agree with the New Bottom Line and the Spiritual Covenant with America,
otherwise the diversity within the caucus will paralyze it from playing the role
it should play: to advance those ideas to the larger political party. Imagine,
for example, how powerfully impactful an education we could do if we had set up
Spiritual Democrats as a way to educate about our New Bottom Line and Spiritual
Covenant with America.
Well, we have a full set of ideas about what to do now. You can find them on
our website under the title "OK, I've joined the NSP. Now What?"
We are in an amazing place faced with tremendous possibilities. I believe
that if we work persistently and conscientiously, we can make a huge impact. But
this can't be simply by saying, "right on, Rabbi Lerner, we are behind you, let
us know what happens" but rather by saying "yes, I'm going to be an ally either
by getting involved in the activities the NSP is recommending or at least by
joining the NSP, stretching my finances as much as possible to give very large
financial donations, or by spreading the ideas in every part of my life."
The good news from Washington, D.C. is that we are not alone, that there is
tremendous enthusiasm throughout this country for a new voice, that there are
allies with their own strategies with whom we can work, and as God or the Spirit
of the universe is trying to communicate, in this moment, "we are IT."
For more on the conference "Spiritual Covenant" see http://www.tikkun.org/rabbi_lerner/news_item.2006-05-15.7487741783