Progressive Revival

The defeat of the Democrats choice to succeed Ted Kennedy in the U.S. Senate is being treated as though there is a decided shift of mass opinion to the Right in the U.S.  But it is the Obama Administration, not the people who supported him in 2008, which moved to the Right--in the name of being  pragmatists or realists-- in the process emptying their own agenda in regard to health care, environment, human rights, social and economic justice, and global peace of the critical elements that made those programs sound hopeful, and leaving many of their supporters feeling confused, disillusioned, and unable to rally around the politics that seemed so very far from "the change you can believe in" that we had been promised.

            Thousands of us saw this coming, and tried to warn Obama, but he wouldn't listen.

 On April 29, 2009, Tikkun and our education arm the Network of Spiritual Progressives bought the entire back page of a special supplement published in the Washington Post on the occasion of the 100^th day of Obama's presidency. We warned him that his presidency was in grave danger. Our point was simple and direct: "Your success depends on helping people believe that they can count on each other, that they are not alone in a ruthless world in which people are out for themselves, and there is a possibility of building a society based on kindness, generosity, and caring for each other. Unless your programs actually allow people to feel in their own lives that they are part of build a new society based on love and generosity of spirit, they will soon fall back into the older paranoid view-that we are all competing with each other and have to look our first for number one. And that will likely them right back into the hands of the most conservative forces in this society. It's that simple, President Obama: if your policies do not give people a personal experience of caring and generosity, people will quickly succumb to the fearmongers who compete in the media over who can make people most afraid, most cynical, and most angry. "

            Our add went on to tell President Obama that his supporters were beginning to feel mobilized because they cannot explain to themselves and others:

            *Why you are bailing out the bankers and the Wall Street crowd rather than prioritizing the needs of people who have lost their jobs and homes

            *Why you are not backing single payer (Medicare for Everyone) health reform but are instead preserving the interests of the health care profiteers and insurance companies that make our health care system so costly

            *Why you are escalating the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, when you must know that these are no win situations, and when you have even agreed with Rabbi Michael Lerner that the best way to achieve "homeland security" is not by attempting to dominate others around the world in an insane "war on terrorism," but instead by a Strategy of Generosity manifested in the Network of Spiritual Progressives' proposal for a Global Marshal Plan introduced into the Congress by Congressman Keith Ellison

            *Why you have failed to bring into your Administration more leaders of the peace, social justice, labor and environmental movements that gave you the critical support you needed to win the Democratic nomination for President.

            Our conclusion: "If the people who made your presidency possible stop feeling excited about your present direction, the populist energies that oculd be mobilized for fundamental change will instead by mobilized by the Right for reactionary goals, and you may find yourself without the base of support you need even for your scaled down goals." And now our worst fears and prophetic predictions are coming true. [If you were one of the many members of the Network of Spiritual Progressives or subscribers to Tikkun who donated to make the ad we published possible, I want to thank you for your ability to see what was ahead--and your willingness to back your wisdom with the money we needed to publish that ad!]

            But what could he have really done, many ask, given the way corporate interests seemed to have bought their way into power not only in the Republican party, but among Blue Dog Democrats in the House and Senate?

            It's true that if Obama had fought for the kind of change he led his followers to believe would be possible, he might have lost. But winning legislative battles is not the highest goal, as FDR and Reagan, the two most influential 20^th century presidents, learned. The most important thing a president can do is develop a worldview and convince the American public of that. Obama could have spoken the truth, told what he saw happening in Washington rather than trying to be a clever inside manipulator-a game that he was destined to lose. Any legislative victory won by compromising away the heart of what you are fighting for isn't worth much, and in any event, even good legislation can quickly be dismantled by the next president if you haven't won over the minds and hearts of the American people--and to do that you need to speak the truth and tell people what we are up against in  the system of global capital and its ethos of materialism, selfisness, and looking-out-for-number-one,  and what it would take to dismantle it and replace that system with a more humane and caring, environmentally sane and ethically and spiritually coherent society. And Obama could have constantly reminded his supporters that the 2008 election had shown that their yearning for a world of peace and justice, of love and caring and community and real solidarity and democracy, were not the private dreams of an isolated minority but the real needs of the American majority. By making us visible to each other, he would have empowered people to fight for programs that manifested their highest values (if and only if his programs did in fact manifest those values, which unfortunately they often did not).

            Now it's up to us,  the tens of millions of Americans who really showed in 2008 the powerful commitment we have to building a world of love, kindness, generosity, environmental sanity and caring for others. We have to reconstitute that movement without Obama's help, before the disillusionment with Obama's compromises leads to the resurgence of the Right's policies, the surge of a know-nothing Tea Party movement, and the retreat into despair and self-imposed powerlessness by all those who are questioning whether there's any real possibility of replacing corporate power, materialism and selfishness with a more ethically and spiritually grounded community of caring.

           Please don't let your disappointment at Obama lead you or your friends into political passivity...because the alternative if you do that is Sarah Palin and The Tea Party extremists and the haters and fundamentalists, all of whom are now momentarily dressing themselves in the language of populism, but all of whom will actually only give even more power to the elites of wealth and power.

           That's why it is so important for you to become part of our efforts to reconstitute the movement of hope--and we can do that with your help. We need your ideas and involvement--and so we've created two conferences, a one day event on the Monday of President's Day weekend, February 15, at the McLaren Hall on the campus of the University of San Francisco on Fulton St. near Clayton; and a longer event June 11-14 at the Church of the Reformation on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. The conferences are co-sponsored by The Nation Magazine, Yes Magazine, Democracy Now, Op-ed News, Peace Action, 350.org

, the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and speakers will include Chris Hedges, Bill McKibben, David Korten, Congressman Keith Ellison, Riane Eisler, Rev. Brian McLaren, Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister, Peter Gabel, Rev. James Winkler, Rev. Conrad Braaten, Robert Thurman, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Rev. Gralan Hagler, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Jonathan Granoff, Marianne Williamson, Paul Wapner, John Dear SJ, John Nichols, Svi Shapiro, Bob McChesney, Rabbi Michael Lerner,  and many more. 

 Please register for one of these conferences now at www.spiritualprogressives.org/article.php?story=2010conferences

(To plan effectively, we need to know very soon if you'll be coming!) If you cannot come, please donate to make it possible for us to afford to create these events (the amount we are charging will not even come close to covering our expenses: donate on-line at www.tikkun.org or by sending a check to Tikkun, 2342 Shattuck Ave,#1200, Berkeley, Ca. 94704). Please help us spread the word--and let us know if you and your friends, colleagues, community members, would like to help us organize a "Support Obama to BE the Obama Americans Thought they were Voting For" conference in your area of the country! Please read the information at our website--this is not about trashing Obama, but about reconstituting the movement that made his presidency happen, and then moving together to bring about the changes that tens of millions of Americans and billions of people around the world desperately need to have happen.

(cross posted on American Values Network)

 

Twas a week before Christmas, and all through my city

Politicians were scrambl'n, it wasn't very pretty.

Health care and climate were up in the air,

But try as Reid might, the votes just weren't there.

 

The pols were all dug in, snug in their stances,

Yet more voters cared to watch Tom Delay's dances!

Tea party protestors were on message and mad,

With poor families suffering, the partisan bickering was sad.

 

FOX News was lambasting, O'Reilly cried foul,

Palin and Limbaugh continued to howl:

"Obama, the Muslim, will take Christmas away.

He's destroying our country, and he'll make your kids gay."

 

And so in this environ, I concluded my year,

Desperately searching for some true Christmas cheer.

What I got was a perk of winning, which came to my door,

An embossed White House invite, to their holiday tour.

 

"For you and a guest," the invite did read,

So I called up a friend, and she followed my lead.

With spirits renewed, we headed into the cold,

Then my blackberry buzzed, with further instructions in bold:

 

"The Secret Service requires much, we're sorry to say,

So bring your social, a picture, and no aerosol spray.

Plus, the delays may be long, security's tight,

That reality couple last month really they gave us a fright."

 

The Metro was slow, but we arrived at the gate,

Hoping and praying that we were not too late.

The cop looked us over, he patted me down,

"Let me see your ID," he said with a frown.

 

As we walked through the gate, angry protestors came by,

And with worries and fears returning, I let out a sigh.

How easy it is, to lose track of what counts,

When the pressures and uncertainty of politics continue to mount.

 

Now the White House is hardly a manger with hay,

But what happened next gave me hope on that pre-Christmas day.

You see, as I started to walk and wander around,

Off in the distance, I heard the most beautiful sound.

 

Just down the hall was a glorious chorus,

Singing of Bethlehem's star, and God's perfect love for us.

Then I turned to my friend and started to tell her,

"You know, I think that singer up there's my first cousin Keller!"

 

Up for Carolina he'd come, a trip with his school.

What were the odds he'd be here today?  Wasn't it cool?

That we'd meet in the White House after a year gone apart,

And he'd be singing of joy and of hope, with all of his heart?

 

And then it all hit me at once, it became clear as a bell,

A truth for this Season, upon which we should dwell.

Humans will struggle; we'll fight and we'll moan.

The poor will be with us; the suffering will groan.

 

But we all have been promised, that's not how the story will end.

And so each Christmas we celebrate, with family and friends

A child in a manger, and peace on this earth

As we join those whom we love, to remember Christ's birth.

 

So good tidings to all.  I wish you hope and good cheer,

As we await this coming Christmas, and a bright, hopeful new year!

In the typical fashion that have made Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins into heroes among those who hate (sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not) the religions of the world, we get below Hitchens' distortions endorsed by Dawkins. The approach is typical: a religious view is mis-described and distorted, then ridiculed--all made possible by quoting out of context and taking the least sophisticated possible interpretations of the tradition. Unlike Hitchens and fellow traveler Dawkins, I believe in intellectual honesty, and hence am first presenting a link to the entirety of Hitchens attack, so you can read it in context, then what I wrote that his misrepresents, then my comments. Then try to figure out why anyone with a serious intellectual curiosity would give a moment's attention to this clown.  Both Hitchens and Dawkins take the most primitive versions of religion, seemingly unaware of the variants of religion that have evolved through the ages. It's kind of like denouncing "democracy" and using as  proof texts the presidency of George W. Bush. Sure, it's real and was produced by a democratic system (well, not fully democratic), but showing its barbarity does not lead anyone with sophistication to reason in the Hitchens/Dawkins style: "this destructive behavior emerged in a democratic system, therefore democracy is worthless." Yes that is precisely the form of argument underlying most of Hitchens/Dawkins. But look at how they'd howl if we used the same form of argument against atheism and said: "Hitler and Stalin were atheists, they established political systems that persecuted the established religions of their societies, and those societies then killed tens of millions of innocents, therefore atheism produces genocide." The argument is ridiculous for the same reason that Hitchens/Dawkins are ridiculous. But being ridiculous is only the beginning. Look to see how dishonest or at least intellectually sloppy Hitchens becomes in an article that Dawkins then publishes on his website with praise. Please see the entire article, Bah, Hanukkah, here: http://www.slate.com/id/2179045/

Now, lets look at what Rabbi Lerner actually said about Chanukah and the rise of Greek forms of rationality and culture:

Though the holiday celebrated by lighting candles for 8 nights recalls the victory of the guerrilla struggle led by the Maccabees against the Syrian branch of the Greek empire, and the subsequent re-dedication (Chaunkah in Hebrew) of the Temple in Jerusalem in 165 B.C.E., there was a more difficult struggle which took place (and in some dimensions still rages) within the Jewish people between those who hoped for a triumph of a spiritual vision of the world embedded (as it turned out, quite imperfectly) in the Maccabbees and a cynical realism that had become the common sense of the merchants and priests who dominated the more cosmopolitan arena of Jerusalem.

The cynical realists in Judea, among them many of the priests charged with preserving the Temple, argued that Greek power was overwhelming and that it made far greater sense to accommodate to it than to resist. The Greek globalizers promised advances in science and technology that could benefit international trade and enrich the local merchants who sided with them, even though the taxes that accompanied their rule impoverished the Jewish peasants who worked the land and eked out a subsistence living. Along with Greek science and military prowess came a whole culture that celebrated beauty both in art and in the human body, presented the world with the triumph of rational thought in the works of Plato and Aristotle, and rejoiced in the complexities of life presented in the theatre of Aeschylus, Euripides, and Aristophanes.

To the Maccabbees, the guerrilla band that they assembled to fight the Greek Empire and its Seleucid dynasty in Syria, and to many of the Jewish supporters of that struggle, the issue of Greek militarism, social injustice and oppression were far more salient than the accomplishments of Greek high culture. Whatever might be the value of Athenian democracy, the reality that it exported to the world through Alexander and his successors was oppressive and exploitative.

The "oldtime religion" that the Maccabbees fought to preserve had revolutionary elements in it that went far beyond the Greeks in articulating a liberatory vision: not only in the somewhat abstract demand to "love  your neighbor as yourself," "love the stranger," and pursue justice and peace, but also concretely in Torah prescriptions to abolish all debts every seven years, allow the land to lie fallow every seven years, refrain from all work and activities connected to control over the earth once a week on Sabbath, redistribute the land every fifty years (the Jubilee)  back to its original equal distribution.

The identification with the oppressed, enshrined in Judaism in its insistence that Jews were derived from slaves who had been liberated, and in its focus on retelling the story of being oppressed that was central to the Torah, seemed atavistic and naive to the more educated and enlightened Jewish urban dwellers, who pointed to the reactionary tribalistic elements of Torah and sided with the Greeks when they declared circumcision and study of Torah illegal and banned the observance of the Sabbath.

The miracle of Chanukah is that so many people were able to resist the overwhelming "reality" imposed by the imperialists and to stay loyal to a vision of a world based on generosity, love of stranger, and loyalty to an invisible God who promised that life could be based on justice and peace. It was these "little guys," the powerless, who managed  to sustain a vision of hope that inspired them to fight against overwhelming odds, against the power of technology and science organized in the service of domination, and despite the fact that they were dismissed as terrorists and fundamentalist crazies. When this kind of energy, what religious people call "the Spirit of God," becomes ingredient in the consciousness of ordinary people, miracles ensue.

    It is this same radical hope, whether rooted in religion or secularist belief systems, that remains the foundation for all who continue to struggle for a world of peace and social justice at a time when the champions of war and injustice dominate the political and economic institutions of our own society, often with the assistance of their contemporary cheerleading religious leaders. It is that radical hope that is celebrated this Chanukah by those Jews who have not yet joined the contemporary Hellenists.



Rabbi Lerner's commentary:

1.  If you read the original article, you will see that I do not say anything that could justify Hitchens claim that I said "away with all that" referring to rational thinking or Greek culture. What I did say was that the Maccabbees perceived that culture as part of the overall enterprise of Greek imperialism. "To the Maccabees, the issue of Greek militarism, social injustice and oppression were far more salient than the accomplishments of Greek high culture. Whatever might be the value of Athenian democracy, the reality that it exported to the world through Alexander and his successors was oppressive and exploitative." The same may help us understand (not agree with) the rejection of Western culture by some fundamentalist groups today, seeing that culture as fundamentally linked to Western imperialism.  Understanding that gives us a better way not to apologize for fundamentalism but to challenge it effectively.

Let me explain. The imperialists set a choice for peoples that they conquer: If you want our science, literature, and culture (all things that I value, and many others should too), then you must embrace our political, economic and cultural domination over you. The fundamentalists respond by saying: no, I don't want your economic, political or cultural domination, and anyone who wants true freedom and an opportunity to hold on to what is good in the religious traditions that we've developed must reject anything that smacks of Western versions of rationality, science, literature and culture.

But to those of us who are spiritual progressives, this choice is a false one imposed by two contending sides each of which has something to offer and each of which has much that is distorted.

As I describe in my books The Politics of Meaning (1996), Spirit Matters (2000) and The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country From the Religious Right (2006), a spiritual progressive embraces science and rationality, though it also embraces forms of rationality that have been developed by women and that integrate aspects of emotional, spiritual,  and ecological literacy into our conceptions of rationality (all of which are increasingly now being explored by social science and psychology).  But a spiritual progressive also embraces "A new bottom line" in which institutions, social practices, corporations, government policies and even our own behavior are judged "efficient, rational or productive" not only to the extent that they maximize money or power (the Old Bottom Line), but also to the extent that they maximize love and caring, kindness and generosity, ethical and ecological sensitivity, enhance our capacities to experience others as embodiments of the sacred and enhance our capacities to respond to the universe with awe, wonder and radical amazement at the grandeur of  all being.  This is a conception of rationality and productivity and efficiency that does not derive from the wisdom of Athens or Rome and their powerful armies, but from Jerusalem (though it is shared by many of the other wisdom traditions of the world).

So trying to suggest that in embracing some aspects of what the Macabees were trying to accomplish one must thereby be committed to rejecting all that is good in the West is an outright distortion, and reflects either intellectual sloppiness or a willful desire to distort.  It is this same approach that appears over and over again in the tirades of Hitchens and, to a lesser but nevertheless significant extent, in the writings on God of Dawkins.

[By the way, you might also want to read an updated version of my analysis of the meaning of Chanukah in the current issue of Tikkun magazine, part of which you can find at www.tikkun.org]



2.  Hitchens is joined by David Brooks in the N.Y. Times on Thursday, Dec. 17 where Brooks talks about the resistance to Syrian Hellenistic rule as a resistance to Western culture.  As I've argued above, Hellenistic culture was part of the imperialist package, and that was part of what the Maccabees struggled against. But the struggles between Syria and Egypt to dominate Judea which went on from the death of Alexander in 325 BCE till the actual rebellion against Syria by Jews in 165 BCE was not a struggle about whether Syria or Egypt would have the primary honor of extending Greek culture to the Jewish peasantry. They were not fighting about who could present the Greek plays or philosophy or science or be the most effective in teaching the masses how to reason according to the Greek's system of logic. Rather, the struggle was about who would have the right to exploit the Jewish (and other) peasantry, take away the agricultural surplus (and some of the basic necessities) so as to enrich their own Syrian or Egyptian society. The Maccabees were set into motion when the Syrians started punishing by death those who practiced Judaism, but the underlying grievances had much to do with the economic imperialism that motivated the Hellenistic powers.



3.    It is true that the revolt we celebrate at Chanukah did not produce an ideal society. The grandchildren of the Maccabees created a corrupt theocracy that I would not have wanted to live in. And some fundamentalist expansionists in Israel today rely on the Chanukah story as part of the cultural foundation for their oppressive rule over Palestinians. But that does not invalidate the celebration of Chanukah as we in the spiritual progressive world interpret it.

Here we have to understand the value of partial victories in the struggle for human liberation. I celebrate the American Revolution on July 4, even though what followed from it was a society in which slavery grew and prospered. I celebrate the parts of that revolution that opened up a process that could eventually lead to an expansion of democratic rights, even though at first the democracy it achieved was really restricted to the well-to-do men of the colonies.  Similarly, I celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall and of Soviet-style communism even though the societies that emerged in Eastern Europe reestablished forms of capitalism that have so far denied to many the fundamental human rights of education, employment and health care that were more widely available before 1989.

My point is that we have to recognize how to celebrate partial victories that can (but won't necessarily) be built upon in the future, because that's all we are likely to get in any given lifetime--partial and somewhat flawed victories. If all we can focus on is "what has not yet been accomplished," we create a psychological dynamic that leads to depression, passivity and what I call in a 1990 book Surplus Powerlessness.  So, yes we can celebrate partial victories, and build upon them, and while we might give lots of focus all year long to the limitations of those victories, it is not a bad idea to have a few days dedicated to celebrating what was accomplished, however lacking.

What's really at stake in all this is the ability to think about religion in a more nuanced way. I think I understand why David Brooks and Christopher Hitchens seem to identify with the Hellenists--they never met an imperialist they didn't embrace. They have been among the more enthusiastic supporters of U.S. imperialism in the last decade, so naturally they'd find more in common with the imperialists of the past. But that doesn't mean that I or spiritual progressives find more in common with the fundamentalists of the past. On the contrary, we reject both alternatives and embrace instead a path that is both pro-science and rationality as well as  pro-spiritual consciousness, God, and progressive forms (but not reactionary versions of) religion. In fact, that is what Tikkun magazine (subscribe at www.tikkun.org) and the Network of Spiritual Progressives (join at www.spiritualprogressives.org) are all about, and that is why we find ourselves in the forefront of the struggle against Israeli occupation of Palestinians, the U.S. role in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Russian role in Chechnya, the Chinese role in Tibet, and the human rights violating societies of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, and countless others.  In fact, you don't have to be a religious person or believe in God to be a spiritual progressive--you only have to support the New Bottom Line described above. And with that understanding, you can see why we support both Chanukah and Christmas and many other religions' celebrations, at least the versions of them that are being developed by spiritual progressives, while rejecting the ethos of materialism, selfishness and me-firstism (and chauvinism of every kind including that embodied in some interpretations of "Jews as the chosen people") that have been fostered in the contemporary world by the logic of capitalism.   

Emily Dickinson, the poet of exquisite doubt, was born today in 1830.

Progressive faith makes room for doubt.  In many ways, Dickinson should be considered the patron saint of ambiguous Christianity.  She grew up in revivalist New England, where she several times flirted with her peers' evangelical religion and attempted to have a conversion experience.  Evangelical Christianity, however, never took.  Ultimately, she refused to confess the faith, ceased attending church, and transformed the language of doubt into her primary language for God.  She explained her religious experience as "a loss of something ever felt I--/The first that I could recollect/bereft I was--of what I knew not."

One of her biographers writes of this as Dickinson's "disenchantment," something that few of her contemporaries experienced but that would become a widespread phenomenon in the twentieth century.   Another describes Dickinson as "the Cheshire Cat" of doubt who welcomed ambiguity "playfully" and embraced an unsettled version of Christianity that "doubts as fervently as it believes."  Certainly, Emily Dickinson wrote for a sort of spirituality in which doubt and faith existed in a paradoxical relationship.

Nowhere was the paradox more grace-filled than her depiction of Jesus as "the Tender Pioneer," a compelling figure worthy of both imitation and love:

Life--is what we make it--
Death--We do not know--
Christ's acquaintance with Him
Justify Him--though--

He--would trust no stranger--
Other--could betray--
Just His own endorsement--
That--sufficeth Me--

All the other Distance
He hath traversed first--
No New Mile remaineth--
Far as Paradise--

His sure foot preceding--
Tender Pioneer--
Base must be the Coward
Dare not venture--now--
(#698)

Of faith, Dickinson wrote, "On subjects of which we know nothing, or should I say Beings, we both believe, and disbelieve a hundred times an Hour, which keeps Believing nimble."  Thank you, Emily, on this your birthday, for making belief an art.  Here, at Beliefnet, we paradoxically honor your doubt.  

This blog is adapted from Diana Butler Bass, A People's History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story (HarperOne, 2009), 243-246.

On December 7, Faith in Public Life released a statement condemning the anti-gay bill in the Ugandan Parliament that submits homosexuals to draconian punishments for their "crimes."  Sadly, many prominent Christians have refused to speak out against the human rights abuses enshrined in the legislation.  Faith in Public Life, however, produced an eloquent statement on Christian responsibility in the face of oppression--and gathered an impressive, inclusive, and diverse list of signers to support their plea to treat homosexual persons with dignity and respect.  Despite how fractured the faith community can be, this statement shows that Jesus' call to love our neighbor as ourselves can unite Christians in the face of moral evil.  

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